The Inner Limits of Mankind at 2

THE INNER LIMITS OF MANKIND

HERETICAL REFLECTIONS ON TODAY’S VALUES, CULTURE AND POLITICS

ERVIN LASZLO

One World Publications 1989

PART II

Chapter 2: Personal Limits: The Unrecognized Obsolescence of Modernism

Before we set out to reform the world, we would do well to pause and see if we should reform ourselves.
The inner limits which currently constrain the growth and development of all mankind include limits associated with the way each of us thinks and behaves in both private and public contexts.
Our values, beliefs and actions add up to vast economic, cultural and political trends which determine the pathways mankind selects towards the future.

The modern ethos

Let me begin on a highly personal note by asking a few questions which I have asked myself, and which may appear naïve or common sense but are of fundamental importance and deserve honest answers.
Let me ask, then, of each and every reader, whether or not he or she truly believes:

v That in this world it is each person for himself, with the strongest and the most resourceful earning rightful privileges.

v That an ‘invisible hand’ harmonizes individual and social interests, so that when each does well for himself he also benefits his society.

v That the best way to help the poor and the destitute is for the rich to get still richer, since wealth will inevitably trickle down to benefit the downtrodden and uplift them to decent status (did not Kennedy say, ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’?)

v That science can solve all problems and reveal all that can be known about man and the world.

v That science discovers ‘facts’ and they alone are what counts; values, preferences and aspirations are merely subjective and inconsequential.

v That the way to uncover facts is to specialize, and learn as much about a few things as possible, leaving other specialists to concern themselves with everything else.

v That if something can be designed and produced for a profit, it should also be marketed, for it is bound to make at least some people happier or better off.

v That true efficiency is maximum productivity for each machine, each enterprise, and each human being.

v That we can know all we need to know about people by computing the costs and benefits of their activities and resources, allowing for a few quirks of personality and ethnic background.

v That all men owe primary allegiance to their country, and all countries (except the few remaining colonies) are unconditionally sovereign and independent nation-states.

v That wealth and power of one’s own country must be assured no matter what this means for other peoples, for in this world it is not only each man for himself, but each country for itself.

v That wealth and power decide what is to be, and ideas serve mainly to fill books and make one’s conversation more impressive.

v That our responsibilities end with assuring our own welfare – which happily assures also that of our country – and we should let the next generation fend for itself, as ours had to do.

v That there are almost inexhaustible riches in the earth if we only dare to use our technologies to extract them and put them on the market.

v That there is one system of economic and political organization that is vastly superior to all the rest and that it ought to be adopted by all people in this world in their own best interest.

v That human happiness consists in having the latest, the most powerful and comfortable products, and sumptuous surroundings.

v That having many children speaks well of one’s virility, and of one’s resourcefulness in supporting a large family.

v That nature and the environment can pretty well take care of themselves, despite the shrill cries of alarm from the ‘greens’ and some intellectuals.

v That the real signs of progress are bigger cities with taller buildings, more and bigger factories, larger and more mechanized farms, more and bigger highways, and a greater selection of products in larger and more luxurious shopping centres.

If the reader believes all this, or even most of it, he is a truly modern person, the ideal and perhaps the envy of most of the world’s peoples. And he has become a serious threat to the future of mankind.

When modernism began to spread to the rest of the world, it disrupted social processes and prompted an enormous increase in human population. In 1650 some 470 million people lived traditional and mainly rural lives with local squabbles and penuries.
In 1988 more than 5000 million live in the widest array of social and economic circumstances, and their rivalries, envies and animosities threaten to destroy civilization and the life support systems of our planet.
After five centuries the modern age is now on the way out. Its achievements must be preserved and furthered, but they must be framed in a new social, economic, political, and cultural context, since the traditional values and aims of modernism are beginning to backfire.
We can no more reverse modernism than we can uncook a boiled egg. Modernism has become obsolete because it no longer serves the genuine interests of human beings. Modernism can, however, be surpassed.

Diminishing returns

This age is a global one marked by new conditions and the corresponding need for new values. But most of mankind fails to see that it is upon us.
The one-fourth which lives in the developed world is proud to be modern, and the three-fourths that inhabit the developing countries wish to become modern.
Yet to the perceptive observer it is becoming each day more obvious that, for the values of modernism, the epoch of diminishing returns has arrived.
During the present and coming period of reduced and highly selective growth, disparities will mean gains for some but losses for others. Wealth instead of trickling down, remains neatly absorbed above.
In the latter half of the century it has become painfully clear that we do not know how to provide jobs, meaningful and functional education, keep people alive with dignity in old age, contain aggression and selfishness, and cure short-sightedness.
Specialization has led to a loss of context and perspective when deciding on fundamental purposes and dealing with complex relations of human beings to one another and to nature.
Specialists know more and more about less and less and are of little help when it comes to solving problems of which the dimensions exceed the limits of their tunnel vision.
Obeying the ‘technological imperative’ (which says that if something can be done it ought to be done) is economically questionable, socially risky and environmentally dangerous, since economic growth curves are now flattening, markets are becoming saturated, energies and resources increasing in cost, and the environment is no longer absorbing the heavy pollution loads.
Equating efficiency with maximum productivity leaves 500 million of the world’s labour force unemployed (a number that is projected to grow to 900 million by the end of the century).
It has become obvious to many people (if not to economists) that man is not one-dimensionally rational but complex and multifaceted in all his thinking and behaviour, and treating him as if he was some robot-like homo economicus produces grievous miscalculations.
If throughout history two-dimensional territories marked off ‘what is ours’ from ‘what is yours’, and the frontiers could be pushed back and forth through equally two dimensional fighting on land and sea, blind obedience to this territorial imperative could prove suicidal to all parties in an age of interdependence and three-dimensional instantaneous warfare (surface, submarine and space).
If during past centuries some European nations could promote their own growth in wealth and power at the expense of the exploited people of colonized lands without immediate and visible untoward consequences for themselves, and if such narrowly self-centred national policies still paid off in mid-century, backed by an overwhelming degree of economic, technological and military supremacy, in our present age of economic interdependence and globally extended and precarious balance of power, ambitions to increase national wealth and power at the expense of the weakening and impoverishment of other nations becomes ultimately self-defeating.
A continued disregard of the power of ideas such as national independence, social justice, democracy, private vs. public ownership, class struggle and human rights is unrealistic and dangerous; such ideas have now become more effective in propelling change and commanding allegiance than pecuniary rewards and the threat of punishment – the carrot of wealth and the whip of power.
If our generation had to learn to run this world without the benefit of long-range planning by our parents, that does not justify our letting the next generation cope as best it can with whatever we bequeath it, for our own powers are incomparably vaster than those of our ancestors.
If we were fortunate enough to inherit a planet in reasonably good shape it was because our forefathers, unlike us, did not have the means to deplete and despoil it.
If we should now shrug and say après moi le deluge, we could indeed make this planet as uninhabitable by humans as if it were flooded.
We could have fuels, metals and minerals enough for centuries if all nations were willing to pool their capital, to declare planetary sovereignty over all resources, to solve environmental problems, and to use ‘soft’ and renewable energies to power the technologies.
It is clear that the principle that ‘whoever has the means has the right’ can only lead to greater inequities and more violent competition for scarcer and still higher-priced resources.
If the accumulation of material possessions appeared as the apex of desirability during the first flush of success in the post-war age of economic miracles, it is now becoming increasingly burdensome to middle classes struggling under conditions of reduced growth.
If but 20 years ago none but a handful of ecologists could have conceived of entire oceans being polluted by dumping, of topsoils being reduced, washed or blown away by unsound conservation, of the entire planet’s atmosphere heating up as in a hot house with the air over big cities becoming so polluted that it is dangerous to breathe, of tropical rain forests being so diminished by human encroachments that they could disappear by the end of the century, and of entire large bodies of water becoming dead or almost dead, today many of these things have come to pass, others have appeared as genuine threats, and further blindness to these processes leads to dangerously unhealthy conditions and environments.
Returns on investments in modernism are diminishing, and many of its once-touted benefits are turning into burdens. But how long will it be before the bulk of mankind realizes this and evolves more appropriate goals and values?

Values for a global age

Whether motivated by morality or self-interest, mankind must shift its values and goals now that it has propelled itself into a globally interdependent, crowded, and technology-dependent world.
Today it is the modernism that we are so enamoured of that poses the greatest challenge to social and cultural adaptability.
Many great thinkers today see our civilization as materially and spiritually on the wrong course. They seek for a spiritual change through education and religion leading to a reawakening of our sense of common human compassion.
Our moral awareness has clearly not kept up with our material progress in recent centuries.
The issue is not whether mankind could transcend modernism – there is no real reason why it could not – but whether it will, given the short time at its disposal.
Values appropriate to the global age and the new world view can already be delineated, rooted in some of the following insights:

v The survivor is the one who is most symbiotic with his fellow man and environment, and not the one who is out to gain immediate selfish ends to the detriment of his milieu.

v There is no invisible hand harmonizing individual and collective interests but due to the interdependence and shared destiny of all the world’s peoples, there is a ‘hand’ (still invisible to all but a few) that ensures the coincidence of all long-term interests

v The way to help the poor and underprivileged is to systematically and consciously create better conditions for their life, better opportunities for their advancement, and a more significant level of their participation in economic, social, and political processes.

v The perennial wisdom of the great religions, artists and humanists is needed to complement the technical expertise of the sciences.

v We need to complement specialists, who know more and more about less and less, with generalists who know just enough about almost everything to guide us through the many forks and crossroads along our way.

v Technology should be the servant, not the master of humanity, and assessed for economic, human, social and environmental benefit before introduction.

v True efficiency should be equated with production of socially useful goods and services by employing in meaningful ways as much of the available work force as possible (even if this reduces profits and returns in the short term).

v We should promote the full development and diversity of personalities, notwithstanding the greater difficulty in the prediction and control of behaviour.

v Exclusive and blind allegiance to ‘my country, right or wrong’ is as selfish and shortsighted as exclusive and blind allegiance to ones person. Hence allegiances should extend in concentric spheres of relationship ranging from the immediate family to the family of all peoples and cultures.

v Citizens should promote the best interests of their country as one member among many of an interdependent international community.

v Ideas play a vital catalytic role in our world, and lie at the origin of technological innovations and social and cultural advances so sorely needed to speed up mankind’s adjustment to its new age.

v We must calculate the probable costs and benefits of our actions to the next generation, lest we unthinkingly rob them of a liveable environment and the fundamental and morally inalienable rights of all generations.

v Natural resources and energy sources need to be selectively used and technologies carefully assessed for long-term benefits and possible side-effects.

v We must find for each society a specific, socially and culturally adapted mixture of free market forces and collective long-range planning mechanisms to provide the benefits of prosperity with freedom and diversity.

v The right to have children is joined with responsibility to provide a life of full and equal opportunity in which their total contribution to society can outweigh the load put on its resources and life-support systems

v Happiness does not reside in final attainment but in progressive seeking; not uniquely in material possessions but also in personal creativity, fairness and honesty, love and friendship, solidarity within a community, in finding harmony with nature, and in having the good conscience that one has done all one can, not only for self but for one’s society and for all mankind.

v The mark of real progress are cities fit to live in, a healthy environment, provision of goods and services that are genuinely needed to relieve suffering and promote well-being, and lifestyles and modes of production involving minimal waste and maximum resource efficiency.

v The masculine qualities such as war, aggression and greed should be balanced with feminine qualities of gentleness, care and service.

v Planet Earth is home to a blend of life forms that is rare if not unique in the universe and preservation of its integrity is mankind’s privilege and irrenouncable responsibility

These are among the many new insights in which the values of the next age must be rooted.