The Chaos Point Part 2

THE CHAOS POINT

THE WORLD AT THE CROSSROADS

ERVIN LASZLO

PIATKUS BOOKS               2006

PART II

 

PART ONE: THE TIDES OF TRANSFORMATION

 

Chapter 1: New Thinking for a New World

• Einstein told us that we cannot solve the significant problems we face at the same level of thinking at which we were when we created the problems. He was right: The problems we face today cannot be solved at the level of thinking that gave rise to them.
• We are trying to do just that. We are fighting terrorism, poverty, criminality, cultural conflict, environmental degradation, ill health and other sicknesses of civilization with the same kind of thinking – the same means and methods – that produced the problems in the first place.
• Two examples will make this clear. Governments fight terrorism by tightening security. They fight not so mush terrorism as terrorists. Terrorism, they say, is to be eliminated by preventing terrorists from carrying out their base projects, and the best way to do that is to hunt them down, put them in jail, or kill them – before they kill us.
• Why do people become terrorists? Heads of government and heads of security dismiss the question; they say that terrorists are simply evil criminals, enemies of society. They us the kind of thinking the terrorists do.
• Terrorists and those who incite, fund and train terrorists believe that the leaders of the great powers they threaten are criminals, enemies of a just society.
• Each side feels justified in killing the other. The result is an escalation of hate that produces more terrorism, not less. When a society is sick, the more terrorists one kills, the more people turn terrorist.
• Making war for oil or for Allah is not the cause of the sickness of the world but its dramatic symptom and tragic consequence. The cause is old thinking – wrong thinking.
• Another example of old thinking is the so-called war on poverty, which is fought mainly through financial measures. The negative developments of the past decades are said to be due to a lack of adequate development aid.
• The rich nations have given aid at an average level of about 0.2% of their gross national product (GNP), although they had formally agreed to 0.7% of GNP.
• The current United-Nations-endorsed project called the Millennium Development Goals-based Poverty Reduction Strategy (MDG-based strategy) asks for only 0.5% in aid.
• This would generate $150 billion a year over a period of 20 years. Economist Jeffrey Sachs, special advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the principal author of the strategy, maintains that this could wipe out the extreme poverty now affecting 1.1 billion people by the year 2015.
• Sachs presents the MDG-based strategy as an economic and political “global compact,” but on a closer look it becomes clear that it involves far more than politics and economics.
• Achieving the goals of the strategy calls for the world to pull together in a unified and coordinated manner, not just to give money, but collectively to fight disease, promote good science and widespread education, provide critical infrastructure, and act in unison in helping the poorest of the poor.
• Collective action on all these levels, Sachs says, is needed to underpin economic success. Success in the fight against terrorism, as in the war on poverty, calls not just for better security or more money but for new thinking: change in the very texture of the civilization that governs today’s world.
• The situation is much the same when cities and states fight criminality. They attempt to do so through bigger police forces, more jails, and more rigorous sentences, rather than eliminating the conditions that breed criminality: big city slums, joblessness, and the sense of futility and hopelessness that infects the minds of many people, especially young people.
• The case is not fundamentally different with regard to fighting environmental degradation: These problems are produced by profit-hungry, ecologically irresponsible practices, and they are fought by profit-hungry practices that claim to be ecologically responsible – the latter differ only from the former in making a profit from cleaning up the mess rather than creating it.
• Winning this particular “fight” also calls for new thinking: recognizing that making a profit and achieving growth are not the sole criteria of success in business: social and environmental responsibility are just as important and are just as much a part of the business of business.
• The mainstream of contemporary society disregards Einstein’s warning. It is trying to solve the problems generated by the mindset of industrial civilization with the same materialistic, manipulative, and self-centered rationality that characterizes that mindset.
• A change in the thinking that characterizes the fundamental texture of a civilization is not an unprecedented occurrence; it has come about in various epochs in history.
• In the past, there was time for new thinking to evolve. The rhythm of change was relatively slow; a mindset adapted to the changed conditions had several generations to come about. This is no longer the case. The critical period for new thinking is now compressed into a single lifetime.
• In the next few years, new thinking and new action will be crucial; without them, our globalized systems could break down in chaos. A breakdown, however, is our destiny only if we fail to seize the opportunity to chose a better path.
• While a global breakdown is already on the radar screen, achieving a global breakthrough remains entirely possible. Seizing this alternative calls for the kind of thinking that could give birth to a new civilization.
• This book is dedicated to outlining what that breakthrough is and how we can use it to create a better future for ourselves and our children.

 

Chapter 2: The Birthing of a New World

• New thinking starts with greater insight into the transformation that ushers in a new world in place of the old. But for new thinking to be effective, we should have some idea of what it involves. Just what kind of a process is the birthing of a new world?
• Global Trends 2015: A Dialogue about the Future with Nongovernmental Experts, published in 2000 identifies 7 key drivers: demographics; natural resources and environment; science and technology; the global economy and globalization; national and international governance; future conflict; and the role of the United States.
• The way these trends unfold under the impact of their drivers can produce four different futures: a future of inclusive globalization; another future of pernicious globalization; a future of regional competition; or a postpolar world.
• The main deciders are the effects of globalization – positive or negative – and the level and management of the world’s potential for interstate and interregional conflict.
• Under the optimistic scenario, the world of 2015 is much like today’s world, except that the rich are richer and the poor poorer. The global economy continues to grow, although its path is rocky and marked by financial volatility and a widening economic divide.
• Economic growth may be undone by: a sustained financial crisis; a prolonged disruption of energy supplies; violent political upheavals; an international terrorist coalition; changing weather patterns; a global epidemic on the scale of HIV/AIDS; the antiglobalization movement becoming a threat to Western governmental and corporate interests; the emergence of a geostrategic alliance – possibly of Russia, China, and India – aimed at counterbalancing the United States and Western influence; collapse of the alliance between the US and Europe; creation of a counterforce organization that undermines the power of the IMF and the WTO and thus the ability of the US to exercise global economic leadership.
• The National Intelligence Council is still producing linear extrapolations on what the future will be like. According to another report published in early 2005, Mapping the Global Future, and based on consultations with 1,000 futurists around the globe, the world in 2020 will not be very different from today.
• Such reports highlight the limits of trend-based forecasting. To know what happens when a trend breaks down calls for deeper insight. Such knowledge is provided by modern systems theory, especially the branch popularly known as chaos theory.
• Because of the unsustainability of many aspects of today’s world, the dynamics of development is not the linear dynamics of classical extrapolation but the nonlinear chaos dynamics of complex-system evolution.

 

The dynamics of transformation: A brief excursion into chaos theory

• We are living in the opening phases of a period of social and ecological instability – at a crucial decision-window.
• Our world is supersensitive, so that even small fluctuations produce large scale effects – the ‘butterfly effect’.
• Small and seemingly powerless actions and initiatives can tip the system in one direction or another. This process is neither predetermined nor random, but can be purposely steered.
• As consumers and clients, as taxpayers and voters, and as public opinion holders we can create the kinds of fluctuations – the actions and initiatives – that will tip the coming chaos point toward peace and sustainability.
• If we are aware of this power in our hands, and if we have the will and the wisdom to make use of it, we become masters of our destiny.

 

Chaos dynamics in society

• The transformation of society is not a chance-ridden haphazard process; chaos and systems theory disclose that it follows a recognizable pattern.
• Typically the transformation manifests in four major phases.

1. The Trigger Phase, 1800-1960. Innovations in ‘hard’ technologies bring about greater efficiency in the manipulation of nature for human ends.

2. The Accumulation Phase, 1960 to the present. Hard technology innovations change social and environmental relations and bring about higher levels of resource production, faster growth of population, increasing societal complexity, and increasing impact on the social and the natural environment.

3. The Window of Decision, 2005-2012. Radically changed conditions place in question established values, worldviews, ethics, and aspirations. Society enters a period of ferment. The flexibility and creativity of the people create that subtle but all-important ‘fluctuation’ that decides which of the available paths of development society will hereafter take.

4. The Chaos Point, 2012. The processes initiated at the dawn of the 19^th century and accelerating since the 1960s build inevitably toward a decision-window and then toward a critical threshold of no return: the chaos point. Now a simple rule holds: We cannot stand still, we cannot go back, we must keep moving. There are alternative ways we can move forward. There is a path to breakdown, as well as a path to a new world.

• In remarkable – and perhaps not entirely fortuitous agreement with the date predicted by the Mayan civilization, the Chaos Point is likely to be reached on or around the year 2012. The Mayan calendar indicates that the ‘Age of Jaguar,’ the 13^th baktun, or long period of 144,000 days, will come to an end with the 5^th and final sun on December 22, 2012. That date, according to the Mayan system, will mark the ‘gateway’ to a new epoch of planetary development, with a radically different kind of consciousness.
• The year 2012 is indeed likely to be a gateway to a different world, but whether to a better world or to a disastrous one is yet to be decided. At that point, alternative paths open to us:

(a)   The Breakdown Path: Devolution to Disaster

Rigidity and lack of foresight lead to stresses that the established institutions can no longer contain. Conflict and violence assume global proportions, and anarchy follows in their wake.

or

(b)   The Breakthrough Path: Evolution to a New Civilization

A new way of thinking with more adapted values and more evolved consciousness mobilizes people’s will and catalyses a fresh surge of creativity. People and institutions master the stresses that arose in the wake of the preceding generation’s unreflective fascination with technology and untrammelled pursuit of wealth and power. By the year 2025, a new era dawns for humanity.

• The insight we get from this four-phase transformation dynamic is simple and straightforward. In society, fundamental change is triggered by technological innovations that destabilize the established structures and institutions. More adapted structures and institutions await the surfacing of a more adapted mindset in the bulk of the population. Thus in the transformation of our world, technological innovation is the trigger. The decider, however, is not more technology, but the rise of new thinking – new values, perceptions, and priorities – in a critical mass of the people who make up the bulk of society.

 

Chapter 3: The Drivers of Chaos