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Evolution or Extinction:
That Is the Question
by Ervin Laszlo
 Had he lived today, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, would affirm
with deeper conviction than ever: To be or not to be is indeed the question. It
is not the skull of an individual human being that Hamlet would ponder, but
this living blue-green planet, the home of humanity. How long will it support
us? Will we destroy its delicate balances, or will we set out to heal the
damage we have already inflicted? Will we manage to evolve as a conscious
social and cultural species -- or will we become extinct like the dinosaurs?
The question is: Evolution or extinction?
A Chinese proverb warns, "If we do not change direction, we are
likely to end up exactly where we are headed." Applied to today's world, this
would be disastrous.
We are not heading in the right direction. Where do we go from here?
No change leads to breakdown. But there is another path we could
take.
We could change direction: with a
timely transformation we could create a peaceful and sustainable world. Will we
create it? Einstein told us that we cannot solve a problem with the same kind
of thinking that produced it. Yet, for the present we are still trying to do
just that. We are fighting terrorism, poverty, criminality, cultural conflict,
climate change, environmental degradation, ill health, even obesity and other
"sicknesses of civilization" with the same means and methods that produced the
problems in the first place -- we are resorting to armies and police forces,
technological fixes, and temporary remedial measures. We have not mustered the
will and the vision to bring about timely transformation.
Is It Too Late?
In the spring of 2006 the British biologist James Lovelock, who
thirty years ago discovered that Earth possesses a planetary control system
that keeps it fit for life (the "Gaia hypothesis"), proclaimed that this
control system has been destroyed and will rapidly bring about conditions that
may prove fatal for humanity. The heating up of the atmosphere through human
activity will create, in Lovelock's words, "a hell of a climate." The average
temperature will rise 14.4 degrees Fahrenheit in temperate regions and 9
degrees in the tropics. "The Earth's physical condition must be seen as
seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as
100,000 years." "I think we have little option," Lovelock concluded in The Revenge
of Gaia, "but to prepare for the worst, and assume that we have
passed the threshold." The threshold he refers to is the point where the
self-maintaining dynamic of the system breaks down and leads irreversibly to
catastrophe.
A number of critical processes
feed on themselves and are out of control. As the Arctic ice melts, the sea
absorbs more warmth, which makes for more melting; as Siberian permafrost
disappears, the methane released from the peat bog below exacerbates the
greenhouse effect and makes for more melting and thus for more methane.
But doomsday arguments miss a
basic point: they do not recognize that not only is nature a dynamic system
capable of rapid transformation but humanity is also. When such a system nears
the point where the existing structures and feedbacks can no longer maintain
its integrity, it becomes ultrasensitive and responds even to the smallest
provocation for change. In this state "butterfly effects" are possible. (These
effects are named after the butterfly-shaped "chaotic attractor" discovered by
meteorologist Edward Lorenz as he attempted to map progressive change in the
global weather. They are popularly identified with the idea that the tiny
stream of air created by the flutter of the wings of a butterfly can amplify
many times over and end by creating a storm on the other side of the planet.)
In today's near-chaotic, unstable, and hence ultrasensitive world such
"butterflies" as the thinking, the values, the ethic, and the consciousness of
a critical mass in society can trigger fundamental transformation.
The Positive Outlook
We are nearing a tipping point,
but the situation is far from hopeless: near the threshold of systems-collapse,
predictions of doomsday have a paradoxical effect. They raise people's level of
awareness, motivate widespread consciousness change, and may end by becoming
self-
falsifying prophecies.
The political situation can turn paradoxical. Well-intentioned
policies create the impression that the situation is in hand and the crisis is
being managed, and thus they do not catalyze the will for fundamental
transformation. A retrograde strategy is more useful in this regard. It
inadvertently but effectively motivates people to insist on radical change; it
catapults ever more people into action.
At the present time retrograde policies are still dominant. In the
last analysis this is not a bad thing. In the more advanced segments of the
population it raises the level of urgency of economic, social, and political
reforms.
The Asian tsunami's carnage of innocent villagers and vacationers in
South and Southeast Asia prompted worldwide acts of solidarity and generosity.
The cataclysm produced by hurricane Katrina made people "find their feet" and
march on Washington to protest the administration's policy of focusing on the
oil war in Iraq to the neglect of preparedness for natural disasters and the
plight of poor people at home. Will humanity wait for a natural or man-made
catastrophe that kills hundreds of thousands or millions to come up with the
will to change? It may then be too late. We must, and still can, head toward a
timely shift in values, vision, and behaviors.
Evolution to a
sustainable civilization, or descent into crisis, chaos, and possibly
extinction: that, as Hamlet would now say, is the question.
The Timely Transformation Scenario: The First Steps
• The idea that individuals and small
groups themselves can be effective agents of transformation toward a more
peaceful and sustainable world captures the imagination of more and more
people. People in different cultures and different walks of life pull together
to confront the threats they face in common.
• The worldwide rise of popular movements for
peace and international cooperation leads to the election of similarly
motivated political figures, lending fresh impetus to projects of economic
cooperation and intercultural solidarity.
• Political and opinion leaders wake up to the
urgent need to come to the aid of the most immediately endangered populations
and create a world-level organization to monitor the threats, provide warning,
and raise the funds to undertake rescue operations.
• Local, national, and global business leaders
decide to adopt a strategy where the pursuit of profit and growth is informed
by the search for corporate social and ecological responsibility.
• An electronic E-Parliament comes online,
linking parliamentarians worldwide and providing a forum for debates on the
best ways to serve the common good.
• Nongovernmental organizations link up through
the Internet and develop shared strategies to restore peace, revitalize
war-torn regions and environments, and ensure an adequate supply of food and
water. They promote socially and ecologically responsible policies in local and
national governments and in business.
The Crystallizing Contours of a Cooperative World
• Money is reassigned from military and defense
budgets to fund practical attempts at conflict resolution and the
implementation of internationally agreed and globally coordinated social and
ecological sustainability projects.
• A worldwide renewable energy program is
created, paving the way toward a third industrial revolution that makes use of
solar and other renewable energy sources to transform the global economy,
provide clean water, and lift marginalized populations out of the vicious
cycles of poverty.
• Agriculture is restored to a place of primary
importance in the world economy, both for producing staple foods and for
growing energy crops and raw materials for communities and industry.
• Business leaders the world over join forces in
creating a voluntarily self-regulating eco-social market economy that ensures
fair access to natural resources as well as industrial goods and economic
activity to all countries and populations.
The Rise of a Sustainable Civilization
• National, continental, and global governance
structures are reformed or newly created, moving states toward participatory
democracy and releasing a surge of creative energy among empowered and
increasingly active populations.
• The consensually created and globally
coordinated eco-social market system begins to function; as a result the
natural resources required for health and well-being become available
throughout the world community.
• International and intercultural mistrust,
ethnic conflict, racial oppression, economic injustice, and gender inequality
give way to a higher level of trust and the shared will to achieve peaceful
relations among states and sustainability in the economy and the environment.
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This article was excerpted from:
 Quantum Shift in the Global Brain: How the New Scientific Reality Can Change Us and Our World by Ervin Laszlo.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Inner Traditions Inc. ©2008. www.innertraditions.com
Info/Order this book.
About the Author
Ervin Laszlo, twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, is editor of the international periodical World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution and Chancellor-Designate of the newly formed GlobalShift
University. He is the founder and president of the international think
tanks the Club of Budapest and the General Evolution Research Group and
the author of over 80 books translated into more than 20 languages.
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