Humankind Advancing, Vol.7, No.2 April 1996

D. Paul Schafer, Director
World Culture Project

With the discovery of demonstrable reasons for quelling our material desires, our generation has inadvertantly stumbled upon a concrete rejustification of morality. This surprising discovery is not engendered by increased religious devotion, but rather by a better comprehension of the relationship between humans and nature. Ironically, it is not religion but science which now decrees that we cannot do as we please.

Jerzy A. Wojciechowski
Professor of Philosophy

Our enemies are not necessarily other individuals, nations, or civilizations, but are those phenomena which threaten the welfare and survival of humankind...consequently, what matters is not our identity as citizens of a particular nation, but our identity as members of the common planet and of a unique fellowship called humankind.

Oscar Arias
Former President of Costa Rica
and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

If an unseen intelligent being from somewhere else in the galaxy were to visit the planet, perhaps the most incomprehensible phenomenon it would observe would be that the planet's apparently wise and competent dominant beings are totally ignorant of the life support system they are condemned to live within. They are also blissfully unaware that their uncontrolled reproductive capacity is growing to the extent that it is rapidly destroying the system, while they fight among themselves to preserve their freedom to do so.

Digby J. McLaren
The Global Change Program of Canada

We no longer seek ultimate nature of reality within the smallest physical elements, nor in their innermost essence. Instead, the search is directed to focus primarily on the patterning of the elements, on their differential spacing and timing and the progressing compounding of patterns of patterns, and their evolving nature and complexity.

As a consequence, the former stark, strictly physical, value-empty, and mindless cosmos previously upheld by science becomes infused now with cognitive and subjective qualities, values, and rich emergent macrophenomena of all kinds. What science stands for, what it upholds, its reality tenets and worldview, are all radically revised. More important, perhaps, this revised and strengthened paradigm of science upholds a set of value-belief guidelines and a new moral outlook that, if implemented worldwide in a new world order, would go far to correct current self-destruct trends in a humane, noncatastrophic manner.

R.W. Sperry
Neuroscientist and Nobel Laureate

The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential (Munich, K.G. Saur Verlag, 1994; 3 vls [ca.3,000 pages]) is the nearest approximation to a view from outer space on the interrelated problems on our planet and their possible solutions. It shows evidence of vicious cycles, in which the end problem of a chain aggravates its beginning, so that focus on only one problem in these chains leads to failure. Needed are strategies to reverse and break these cycles. But also serendipitous cycles exist in which each problem alleviates the next. For more information please contact the Union of International Associations, Secretariat General: Rue Washington 40 -- 1050 Bruxelles (Belgique), or Development Alternatives International Canada, B.P.40, Victoria, P.Q. Canada H3Z 2V4.

Abstract: The future of humanity on this planet is not assured: we have reached a critical juncture in our history. Persistence in classical modes of thinking and acting will lead to growing problems and mounting crises; a new way of thinking is needed, joined with a new ethics and a new ethos. This presupposes a fundamental change in the way we perceive ourselves and our environment -- a shift in the dominant consciousness of our time. The evolution of a "planetary consciousness" has become an objective precondition of approaching the future with confidence as well as responsibility. The Club of Budapest has been founded to promote this evolution through the insight and creativity of the artists, writers, spiritual leaders and young people who are its members and affiliates.

The critical juncture we have reached is not unprecedented insofar it augurs fundamental change; it is unprecedented, however, inasmuch as it indicates change of truly planetary dimensions. Human societies have changed all along their long and eventful history: they are complex systems that maintain themselves in an environment that is itself changing. A society, like a human individual or any complex organism, can survive only if its internal and external environments are dynamically balanced. This calls for constant sensitivity to changes in the milieu. As conditions change, society's institutions, structures, and processes are subjected to new constraints and provided with fresh opportunities. If society fails to respond to the emerging dangers and opportunities, or if it reacts with a significant time-lag, its institutions become obsolete and its practices outdated -- the social organism as a whole is exposed to stress. The way it copes with the societies that surround it, and with the natural world that is its larger environment, becomes less functional and more prone to crises and surprises.

This is what is happening to the majority of contemporary societies. The environment in which they operate -- both the physical, chemical, and bio-ecological, and the international economic, social and political environment -- is in rapid change. Social institutions, structures and practices fail to keep pace. As a result many societies are in danger

of becoming as maladaptive as the dinosaurs.² Since dinosaurs had few natural predators, their slow nervous system did not prevent them from surviving as a species for millions of years. But human societies are not in a similarly secure situation. The changing environment of the late 20th century harbors many dangers; a fast information conveying and processing system has become essential for human survival and development. Such a system exists: it is the globe-girdling information and telecommunication system. But that system is not employed for effective communication regarding matters of vital interest to far-flung populations. The messages that pass through its globalized information channels convey the short-term interests and immediate priorities of a small minority. Consequently, despite the technologies of global communication, the great majority of societies are poorly informed of the conditions that affect their future. Not surprisingly, reaction times tend to be long and responses sluggish.

In this situation it is not enough to produce prescriptions and blueprints, to specify targets and to advocate objectives, essential though these tasks may be in themselves. As long as the main body of society fails to receive clear and urgent signals relating to its changed environment, the best thought-out plans and projects remain but paper tigers, good for triggering speeches, debates, and declarations and little else. This condition endangers not only the sluggish societies but even those who would be ready to respond with more alacrity -- with all societies becoming interdependent, lagging perceptions and faulty judgments in one have negative consequences in all others.

There are many indications that lagging perceptions and faulty judgments persist in today's societies. Hundreds of millions are without work; a thousand million or more are exploited by poor wages; three thousand million are forced into growing poverty. The gap between rich and poor nations, and between rich and poor people within nations, is enormous and is still growing. Though the world community is relieved of the spectre of superpower confrontation and is threatened by ecological collapse, the world's governments still spend a thousand billion dollars a year on arms and the military and only a tiny fraction of this sum on maintaining a livable environment.

The militarization problem, the developmental problem, the ecological problem, the population problem, and the many problems of energy and raw materials will not be overcome merely by reducing the number of already useless nuclear warheads, nor by signing politically softened treaties on world trade, global warming, biological diversity, and sustainable development. More is required today than piecemeal action and short-term problem solving. The "dinosaur syndrome" itself must be rectified. To do so it is not enough to keep producing further action blueprints and strategies, for in the absence of adequately clear and urgent signals they will not fare any better than those of the recent past. It is not sufficient for experts and leaders to know what goes on, and on occasion even to know what can be done about it. What is needed is for all people to perceive the problems in their complex totality; to grasp them not only with their reason and intellect, but with all the faculties of their insightful and intuitive mind. (Emphasis added.) People must be empowered to see the changing world for themselves, and to respond to what they see.

To live with each other, and not against each other, to live in a way that does not rob others to live as well; to care what is happening to the poor and the powerless as well as to nature; all this calls for more than knowing the facts and the figures -- it calls for sensing them, feeling them with the depth of one's being. It calls for more highly evolved consciousness. If broad strata of the public would fail to upgrade their consciousness, chances for peace and well-being would reduce to the point of insignificance.

Though the evolution of human consciousness is a key issue in human survival and development, in the near term it faces considerable difficulties. In most parts of the world the real potential of human consciousness is sadly underdeveloped. The way children are raised depresses their faculties for learning and creativity; the way young people experience the struggle for material survival results in frustration and resentment. In adults this leads to a variety of compensatory, addictive, and compulsive behavior. The result is the persistence of social and political oppression, economic warfare, cultural intolerance, crime, and disregard for the environment. Eliminating social and economic ills and frustrations calls for considerable socio-economic development, and that is not possible without better education, information, and communication. These, however, are blocked by the absence of socio-economic development, so that a vicious cycle is produced: underdevelopment creates frustration, and frustration, giving rise to defective behaviors, blocks development. Yet, unless people's spirit and consciousness evolves to the planetary dimension, the processes that stress the globalized society/nature system will intensify and create a shock wave that could jeopardize the entire transition toward a peaceful and cooperative global society. This would be a setback for humanity and a danger for everyone. Evolving human spirit and consciousness is the first vital cause shared by the whole of the human community.

If we are to survive into the next century with an acceptable degree of equity and well-being for all, the kind of thinking, feeling and acting that is still dominant today will have to be replaced by more adapted modes. Current attempts to respond to global problems with effective solutions are still formulated with an obsolete kind of rationality. This rationality enables people to talk about problems and about change and to calculate its costs and benefits, but it does not create the ethos and the motivation that would prompt them to act. For effective and timely action we cannot rely solely on the rationalistic directives of politicians, calculations of economists, and warnings of ecologists, no matter how well founded they may be. We must also reach for the deepest wellsprings of human motivation: wellsprings that have already nurtured the creativity of artists, writers, and men and women of the spirit.

Human creativity, though our greatest resource, cannot as yet meet the challenge of our times. It is largely disoriented and disorganized. Literature, the arts, and the spiritual fields of faith and reflection pursue separate goals, often at odds with each other. Instead of a cross-fertilization of the rationality and intuition of entire cultures and societies, we have separate subcultures, each centered on its own narrow objectives without regard for the epochal challenge that confronts all of them together. The dominant consciousness of our times is fragmented and our capacity for innovation is reduced. We are hard put to imagine real alternatives to continuing along the well-trodden, but now increasingly perilous, path. 

A more adapted, genuinely planetary consciousness has become necessary today. This is a consciousness of the vital interdependence and essential oneness of humanity, and a precondition of adopting the ethics and the ethos that this entails.

Active Steps Toward Promoting Planetary Consciousness

At the end of 1993 a major step has been taken in regard to actively and purposefully promoting the evolution of planetary consciousness: The Club of Budapest has been founded. The idea for it was not new: it went back to conversations between Aurelio Peccei, founder and first president of the Club of Rome, and Ervin Laszlo, member of the Club of Rome and now president of the Club of Budapest.

In the days and years following the 1978 Tenth Anniversary meeting of The Club of Rome, Peccei and Laszlo met together to discuss the need to involve some of the best known and most creative minds of our times in the ongoing dialogue on what Peccei called the "world problematique." The Club of Rome brought together top-level people, but they came almost exclusively from science, politics, and business. Thus a sister Club appeared indicated, to balance the rationality of front-line thinking in these domains with the intuitive insight that hallmarks creativity in the arts, in literature, and in the spiritual domains. As Laszlo came originally from the arts (having begun his professional career as a concert pianist), Peccei asked him to think about creating an "artists and writers club" to work together with the Club of Rome in the shared human interest.

The opportunity to realize Peccei's dream came in the summer of 1992. As keynote speaker to the third World Congress of Hungarians, Laszlo proposed establishing such a Club in Budapest. The Hungarian authorities responded with enthusiasm and efficiency: the Hungarian Cultural Foundation was born, and it in turn brought to life the Club of Budapest.

Since its Foundation, The Club of Budapest has called on top-level artists, writers, and men and women from the spiritual domains to join forces in the interest of shedding light on the problems and the opportunities that face humanity today and in the foreseeable future. The Club is an international non-profit association made up of Honorary Members (world-renowned personalities in art, literature, and related creative and spiritual fields); Creative Members (individuals of proven artistic, literary and spiritual dedication and creativity); and Supporting and Institutional Members (individuals and organizations who agree with its aims and wish to support the Club through personal, organizational, or financial participation in its activities). They enlist their insights and commitment in the interest of bringing to the widest strata of people tangible examples, goals, behaviours and values that point the way toward a more humane and sustainable future. In addition, the Club's worldwide network of Regional Centers for Planetary Consciousness brings together young people, and those young in heart and spirit, to try out promising new ideas and work collaboratively to put them into practice.

The principle objective of the Club is to launch a dynamic transcultural movement to help people find new answers, shape new attitudes, and set new priorities. Trough the artistic sensitivity and insight of its Members and affiliated young people, it is to create preconditions for cultural and spiritual renewal. With its emphasis on the creative, insightful, and aesthetic aspects of human consciousness, and with its roster of high-level Members and dedicated young people, the Club constitutes a unique resource in the ongoing endeavours of globally conscious persons and organizations to tackle the social, economic and ecological adjustments and transformations that await humanity at the dawn of the 21st century.³

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References: 

¹ see p. 24.

² The analogy is not farfetched: some of these prehistoric reptiles had bodies many meters long, connected by a sluggish nervous system that operated especially slowly at low ambient temperatures. The nerves that connected legs and tails to the distant head are likely to have taken several seconds instead of a few microseconds to convey signals, even if the signals carried information that was critical for the health, survival, and reproduction of the individual animals.

³ Further information on the Club of Budapest, its members, activities, and ways of joining it can be had by contacting: The Secretariat, The Club of Budapest, Szentháromság-tér 6, H-1014 Budapest (Hungary).Tel/Fax +36-1-175-1885.

Dr. Ervin Laszlo is a member of the Club of Rome, the Founder and Director of the Club of Budapest, Director of Planetary Citizens, Director of the Forum for Evolutionary Studies, Editor of the World Futures Journal and Book Series on General Evolution, and a prolific writer on system's theory and global concerns.

Discussion of

But the same species is afflicted by what Swimme and Berry call "a deep cultural pathology," which leads to bargaining over "issues of life and survival for monetary gain or some commercial advantage for a few individuals or a corporate enterprise." (p.251)

Why should we care? Why do the authors spend years of their life and all their genius to awaken in us concern for our unique and magnificent Earth? Does not the history of the universe prove that after every devastation more marvellous and more competent creatures arose from the ashes? Why not destroy ourselves and most of our biosphere, confident that evolution will take care of further emergence and create new surprises, unimpeded by the crimes and follies of our immature thinking. That is, in fact, what some biologists recommend (see Margulis and Dolan). Swimme and Berry instead, whose understanding of the universe involves a larger perspective, explain (on p.98) that every devastation might have been permanent -- and with a far larger probability. "One can imagine catastrophic failure," they say, "perhaps failure was the result on a billion planets. If so, such centers of activity [arising life] would have simply disintegrated. The pale air and sea would have remained brown for a time, and then become transparent. The volcanoes would have continued for another few billion years. The windswept continents would have continued to collide and break up, collide and break up."

"Only microbes," Margulis and Dolan explain, "produce food from nitrogen in the atmosphere (N₂ fixation), generate methane under oxygen-poor conditions (thus returning carbon to the air), and produce dimethyl sulfide, necessary to bring sulfur from the ocean (where it is plentiful, to the land, where it is in short supply and needed to make protein). Only bacteria, inside or outside of plant cells, fix CO₂ into usable organic compounds for food and energy. Microbes and plants influence the albedo (reflectivity of light) through cloud formation far more than do animals. On land especially the action of microbes is augmented by environmental maintenance of plants. Trees and herbs make food and air. Fungi and bacteria clean and maintain moisture....What these organisms do is far more important, from a planetary perspective, than what humans do." (P.192)

Countering arguments that changes in the atmosphere have occurred before, and that they have contributed to a far richer, more interesting, and more diverse biosphere, the authors say that possible new creations might not necessarily be those we would prefer. It is interesting to learn that Lovelock arrived at his Gaia-hypothesis (the belief that the earth is one living organism) through a request of NASA to help seek life on Mars. Contrasting our atmosphere on earth with that of Mars led to his insight how essential lower life is for the conditions that make advanced life possible. "If we lose our habitat, the system of life and its environment on Earth, Gaia will go on. But humankind will no longer be part of it" (Lovelock, 1991).*

To fully grasp our dependence upon the integrity of nature, the authors strongly recommend interdisciplinary studies. "Evolutionary theory in the absence of knowledge of meteorology, chemistry, and geology is inadequate" (p.197).

Dr. Margulis' answers to three questions by the books' editors, following the article, show a profoundly pessimistic outlook. "That any influence, religious, scientific, or cultural, will reduce our propensity for coupling, procreating, and expanding the Homo sapiens' sphere of influence we judge doubtful. Thus it is all too easy to anticipate continued clashes of tribalism and self-righteous screeches of petty nationalism punctuated by rape and murder as part of the forthcoming human species' demise on a finite earth" (pp.203/204).

Discussion of

From these we learn that merely a small change in the physical constants would have resulted in an uninhabitable universe, and that the vastness of the universe (15 billion light years) and its age makes humankind insignificant in comparison. -- It took 15 billion years alone for heavy elements to appear within stars; and only their dispersal created new stars with planets, on which finally life had a chance to evolve, including consciousness at the very end of life's evolution. -- What, then, makes this last-minute incidence outstanding?

Barbour (referring to Teilhard de Chardin's explanations) says that "we should not measure significance by size and duration, but by such criteria as complexity and consciousness." He adds that "the greatest complexity has apparently been achieved in the middle range of size, not at atomic dimensions or galactic dimensions.

There are one hundred trillion synapses in the human brain; the number of possible ways of connecting them is greater than the number of atoms in the universe. There is a higher level of organization and a greater richness of experience in a human being than in a thousand lifeless galaxies.*

It is human beings, after all, that reach out to understand that cosmic immensity" (pp.398). (*Emphasis added.)

Barbour agrees with, and explains in more detail, the fundamental interdependence of cosmic dust, life, and the conscious human mind; but this does not make humanity insignificant. Our species is not "only one of" an immense number of species, but "the most advanced form of life of which we know." -- In spite of his vast knowledge of science, his religious background prevents Barbour, however, from agreeing with other scientists (Monod, Gould, etc.) that all this creative activity could have occurred by chance alone, and without design by a superior intelligence. "Natural laws and chance may equally be instruments of God's intentions," he says. "There can be purpose without an exact predetermined plan....Within a theistic framework it is not surprising that there is intelligent life on earth; we can see here the work of a purposeful creator" (pp.398/399).

Please contact Professor Loyal D. Rue (co-ordinator), Luther College, 700 College Drive, Decorah, Iowa, 52101, U.S.A. Tel. (319) 387-1138, FAX (319) 387-2158.

The assembly of this very practical handbook, which lists 154 individuals and organizations promoting frugality, is the work of the authors of Your Money or Your Life (Dominguez and Robin). This book, a bestseller, is based on the ideal of having, and working for, only what is most valuable for you; it teaches how to find true joy independently of peer pressure or advertisements. The directory introduces the reader to a circle of likeminded friends, to reduce peer pressure -- and to spread the message that a burden can be lifted from our Earth while a burden is being lifted from your life.

The Hagerman Valley News Roundup is one of innumerable small efforts to return to self-sufficiency. Many of these efforts are launched into orbit with high ideals, but soon deflate and collapse, because they are too far removed from reality. The Hagerman Valley venture is more practical and thus likely to last. It pays for itself by including advertisements of local small business persons among its announcements of bird festivals, St. Patrick's run/walks, local writer's profiles, Christmas bird counts, senior center activities, information on gardening, National Park service, and much more. -- Anyone interested in fostering community spirit, please contact: Evelyn & Ron Summers (208) 837-6304. 1121A East, 2900 South, ID 83332.

The World University Roundtable, created in 1947, led in 1967 to the founding of the World University (Desert Sanctuary Campus, P.O.Box 2470, Benson, AZ 85602, U.S.A). A core curriculum teaches the values of world citizenship and prepares self-motivated persons of any age for significant careers in world service occupations. -- The purpose of the university is to inspire all people of good will to "place their humanity above their nationality, to elevate their faith above their creed, and to reconcile the many diverse cultural and ideological beliefs into a synthesis of understanding, capable of laying foundations for a world order under world law.

Dr. Brian Swimme wrote to me, when I asked about this omission, that he and Father Berry take love and compassion to be identical with the idea of communion, and that they took it for granted that every reader of the book would do the same.

To me, that answer is not satisfactory. A careful, thoughtful reader feels that both authors are permeated with love and compassion, that they are carried away by these emotions which throw a magical glow over every event in the story. But without the human element provided by the account, that glow would be absent. The bare facts alone demonstrate heartless, senseless, cold and wasteful destruction, repeated incessantly for billions of years. -- Only after a time span unimaginable for us, humane sentiments arose and made it possible to experience the universe story in all its wonder and beauty.

Communion alone cannot be the answer. How can we share the sentiments of the lamb and the lion with equal fervour? How can we share those of the murderer and its victim? How do we know whether nature's methods to achieve harmony among its products (which include killing, starvation, and epidemics) are not preferable to more humane methods of birth control, such as invented by modern science? How do we decide whether it is better to reach for the stars or to return to the innocence of paradise?

The Universe Story, if read carefully and with attention to the facts alone, teaches us that there never was a paradise, neither during our pre-human past, nor within early societies. Paradise is a dream and an aspiration toward which to strive is the highest human endeavor, even though we know we will never be able to reach it. But we are sure we will go astray if communion without value judgment becomes our ultimate aim. Love and compassion must become sacred directing signals -- together with the foresight that would prevent their passing away again from the universe.

I wish to thank Dr. Ervin Laszlo for the submission of his manuscript "The Evolution of Planetary Consciousness," Mrs. Norma Sperry for sending me Cosmic Beginnings and Human Ends, and Dr. Brian Swimme for sending me his wonderful Universe Story.

Correction: My attention has been drawn to a typing mistake in Humankind Advancing, 6(4), p.16. Dr. R.W.Sperry passed away in 1994 (not 1974). My sincere apologies.