Worldshift 20 calls for spirit, compassion and personal responsibility

Can we possibly create the world of which (most of us) dream?
Yes but only if we act quickly. It is up to us now, at this most critical of times in the world’s history, to determine whether we grow or die – “whether the 13.8 billion year experiment that resulted in our lives will end within the next century or two.”

This is the message from the newly created Worldshift 20 Council, composed of “twenty prominent global citizens from diverse cultures and religions worldwide.” They include for example Paul Ray (best known for his research and book on the “Cultural Creatives”, and who incidentally endorsed my own book), Deepak Chopra, Ervin Laszlo, Hazel Henderson, Marylyn Schlitz, etc., and all well known for their work and concern for the sustainability of our present life on earth.

They urgently call for a new philosophy, a new Consciousness and the leadership to go with it, reminding us of Einstein’s perceptive observation all that time ago that the same consciousness that produced the problem cannot get us out of it. The call is for a re-orientation within the public sector, replacing obsolete notions of governance that clearly have not worked (witness the G20 debacle in Copenhagan). They want to foster an understanding that our present crisis is a “whole-system crisis of the human spirit” and that leaders must embrace this notion, alongside the development of overriding compassion for all other beings.

But the leaders of the G20, the Worldshift Declaration points out, did not create the world’s problems – they perpetuate them:

“A lack of gratitude toward the environment, exploitive treatment of animal life, plant life and the world of nature, discrimination against people, cultures, and nations – these kinds of destructive behaviors do not originate solely from the minds of a small group of leaders. They also arise from the consciousness of billions of individual human beings. We must support the efforts of each global citizen, whether in a leadership role or not, to take responsibility for uplifting their consciousness thereby safeguarding the future of our human society and the Earth.”

I cannot do justice to the Worldshift Declaration in such a short post and I would urge all readers who care for the future of this planet – and you must be if you are reading my blogs (!) – to go to their website and study the Declaration, from which I have quoted and drawn the notes above. Also take time to read the individual statements of the council members. And then think: how can I change my own behaviour to help the cause of Worldshift 20? How can I influence those around me in our daily lives of work and play?

I will be returning again and again to the work of Wordshift 20, as I think the ideas it embraces are so fundamentally important to our future survival, the future of the World and Mother Earth herself. The notions they have come up with, of the need for spirit and compassion to infuse our lives, and their recognition of the need for personal responsibility from all the billions of individuals now alive, to make this happen, are central to the theme of my own book. We are entering upon very exciting times. The rewards are enormous if we win – and we cannot afford to lose!

Irrational behavior, Number 5

I have been writing quite a bit lately about our irrational behavior in the face of the many problems we need to solve in the world. The last irrational behavior, on 5 February, referred to the Hi -Tech weapons we continue to develop that are more dangerous than the conflicts they could possibly resolve. Why do we stock-pile these at vast investment of money and resources?
Here is Irrational Behaviour Number 5:

"The problems we face call for the commitment and participation of every able-bodied human being, but we put millions put of work to save the cost of labour." 

 
Nearly 10% of the USA labor force are currently unemployed at a huge social cost. In the UK it's not much better at nearly 8% What alarms me even more is that the number of 15- to 24-year-olds classed as Neet (not in education, employment or training)in the UK is around the one million mark, and one of the worst levels amongst the G7 countries.
What a dreadful waste of resource, and no wonder there are so many youngsters involved in crime, both petty and serious, yobbish behaviour, etc.
As Stephanie Sorrell explains in her latest book Nature as Mirror, we all need aspiration. We all need visions and goals, to aspire to the highest we can reach. Our unlived life has a powerful hold on us and feeling unfulfilled can have devastating effects on mental health. This all links neatly with another Irrational behaviour:
"The problems we face call for long-term solutions, but our criterion of success is the bottom line in annual or semi-annual corporate profit-and-loss statements."
We have let money rule our hearts as well as our heads.

In the early 1900s, the American capitalist of that time, Benjamin Ferdinand, wrote: "Remember that time is money.He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides."

So we "cannot afford" to employ our youngsters, to give them fulfilling and worthwhile jobs, give them some self esteem and a promising future?

(all these Irrational Behaviors are being taken from the essay by Ervin Laszlo on “The World’s Health Problem: an Integral Diagnosis” in A New Renaissance – Transforming Science, Spirit and Society. I keep referring back to this book as it is such an important initiative from the Scientific and Medical Network. I have posted a review for this book on Amazon).

A New Renaissance: Transforming Science, Spirit and Society

Irrational behavior, Hi-Tech weapons, empathy and entropy

I have been writing quite a bit lately about our irrational behavior in the face of the many problems we need to solve in the world. The last irrational behavior, on 1 February, referred to the questionable ethical and health implications of the way we breed animals for food.
Here is another one:
"Hi -Tech weapons that are more dangerous than the conflicts they could possibly resolve are being developed and stock-piled, at vast investment of money and resources."

I was reminded of this particular item when I heard this week that of the $1.5 billion of annual aid from the USA to Egypt, $1.3 billion is for supporting military operations.
Now you can find plenty from a Google search to explain the rationale behind this aid, and this revolves pretty much around Egypt and its military playing an important role in the stability of the middle east generally. OK. And the Egyptian military certainly seem to be playing an important and thus far peaceable role in the current extraordinary events in Egypt itself. Again, OK.

But looked at totally dispassionately what a nonsense it all is. Again I think of Rifkin's new book, The Empathic Civilization, reviewed here a couple of days ago. Is it but a pipe dream that one day we shall have a global and totally empathic civilization? Or will entropy win and we self destruct?

We are wired for empathy. When are we going to realize that we have to do all in our power to nurture and develop that empathy throughout the human race, from the cradle onwards?

(all these Irrational Behaviors are being taken from the essay by Ervin Laszlo on “The World’s Health Problem: an Integral Diagnosis” in A New Renaissance – Transforming Science, Spirit and Society. I keep referring back to this book as it is such an important initiative from the Scientific and Medical Network. I have posted a review for this book on Amazon).

compassion and empathy and irrational behaviors

On 28th January I wrote of our Irrational Behaviors, following the theme of the essay by Ervin Laszlo on “The World’s Health Problem: an Integral Diagnosis” in A New Renaissance – Transforming Science, Spirit and Society. Our Irrational Behavior Number One is that "Millions are suffering from overeating and obesity and a thousand million go hungry."Where, I asked, was our compassion for our fellow humankind? Where is our empathy? Then on 30 January I moved on to Laszlo's Irrational Behavior number 2, triggered by Davos: why do we remain preoccupied with making money and holding on to privileges when our wellbeing and possibly our survival hangs in the balance? Again, where is our compassion? Where is our empathy?

Here is another of Laszlo's irrational behaviors - Number 3 - and this is at rock bottom in the compassionate stakes:

"Vast herds of livestock, consisting in part of intelligent and sensitive animals, are brought into the world for the sole purpose of slaughtering them, a procedure that, apart from its questionable ethical and health implications, is wasting an enormous amount of resources (it takes 5,124 gallons of water and 16 pounds of grain and soy to produce one pound of beef, and not much less to produce a pound of pork)."
Now I know the precise figures are open to debate, but the principle is unaltered. Vegetarians tread more lightly in this world.
Add to this the awful cruelty still involved in so much of our animal husbandry, fish farming and fishing from boats, and I am incredibly surprised that there are not many more vegetarians.

Here is some information taken from the Compassion in World Farming site. "...established in 1967 by British dairy farmer Peter Roberts. Peter and his wife Anna had become increasingly concerned with the animal welfare issues connected to the new systems of intensive farming that began to take hold in the 1960s.

Unfortunately, at the time, Peter couldn't convince any of the major animal welfare societies to campaign against factory farming, so he decided to do it himself and Compassion in World Farming was born.

Originally run from the Roberts' family house, Compassion in World Farming has grown into an organisation with offices in Ireland, France and Holland and representatives in seven more countries, including South Africa and Oceania."

And there is an equivalent in the United States,The Humane Society, which has on its website videos of animal cruelty in factory farming that I found too shocking to watch. It is shameful if we have built a society with so little compassion that these videos do not persuade people to change their eating habits and campaign for better conditions for all farm animals.

So give some vegetarian dishes a try. You may be pleasantly surprised just how easy it is to avoid meat or fish in a few meals each week. And restaurants, be more imaginative in your dishes for vegetarians. There is a lot more to our diet than pastas and risottos. I don't like either!

The Economy - Where is our compassion? Where is our Empathy?

On 28th January I wrote of our Irrational Behaviors, following the theme of the essay by Ervin Laszlo on “The World’s Health Problem: an Integral Diagnosis” in A New Renaissance – Transforming Science, Spirit and Society. Our Irrational Behavior Number One is that "Millions are suffering from overeating and obesity and a thousand million go hungry."Where, I asked, was our compassion for our fellow humankind? Where is our empathy?

Now I want to move on to Laszlo's Irrational Behavior number 2.

"The wellbeing and possibly the very survival of humanity are in question, but most of us remain occupied or preoccupied with making money and holding on to our privileges."

I love this Greenpeace banner:

When the last tree is cut, the last river poisoned, and the last fish dead, we will discover that we can't eat money...

And here is a thought from Satish Kumar from his classic article “Spiritual Imperative,” in Resurgence 2005.

"This notion of spiritless existence can be described as materialism. All is matter; land, forests, food, water, labour, literature and art are commodities to be bought and sold in the marketplace - the world market, the stockmarket, the so-called free market… Business without spirit, trade without compassion, industry without ecology, finance without fairness, economics without equity can only bring the breakdown of society and destruction of the natural world. Only when spirit and business work together can humanity find coherent purpose."

And here is one of my least favorite quotes:

‘What...[is wealth]…to you?’ the headline asked. ‘It’s being able to tell the world to get lost.’ This was from a series of bank advertisements run some while ago on the management of wealth, and it appeared in the popular glossy weekend media. To accompany this particular advert. there was a picture of a lone and pretty girl cantering away on a lovely white stallion into the beautiful and totally unblemished distance.

How can any single one of us afford to turn our back on the world in this way in any sense. How can any of us ride away to an unblemished horizon while so many basic human rights are not available to so many? That surely diminishes us as human beings. But someone, indeed a team of people, wrote that advertisement.

Where is our compassion? Where is our empathy?

But I see a glimmer of hope in what is coming out of Davos, the little mountain village in Switzerland where once a year corporate CEOs, heads of state, and leaders of nonprofit organizations from around the globe gather to reflect upon the state of the world at the “World Economic Forum." Reporting from Davos, Jim Wallis in an article at the Sojourners site Values from Davos, tells us that whilst in previous years he has struggled to bring the subject of moral values within the economy into the mainstream of discussions, now we are in economic crisis, the values conversations suddenly seem far more relevant. In 2009, he tells us,“there were 17 sessions with the word “values” in the title.” Now new buzz topics are “human flourishing” and “the common good.” And business executives have been telling him that they feel alone in their soul-searching for values, and business ethics professors at some of the country’s leading business schools tell him that their courses are over-subscribed, yet they still feel marginal to the curriculum.
But behaviors created this crisis, and unless values talk leads to changed behaviors, it won’t mean very much, he says. This is so much music to my ears - my own thesis really.
Wallis now finds himself the chair of a new Global Agenda Council on Values, its task to shape what the World Economic Forum is calling the “Moral Economy Dialogue.” This is intended to develop serious tools for personal, organizational, corporate, and national values assessments that focus on changing behaviors.

I quote Wallis: "This is all good news to Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of Davos who, as a young Swiss economist many years ago, wrote about the need for business to not only take into account the interests of shareholders, but also of the many other stakeholders — including employees, consumers, the poor, the environment, and future generations…That Davos would take these issues very seriously…is good news…But the headline in yesterday’s International Herald Tribune — “The Super-Rich Pull Ever Farther Ahead” — indicated we still have a long way to go. Many of those super-rich are at Davos, and I indicated yesterday that the only people whose lives seem to have got back to “normal” since the financial crisis began are those whose behaviors caused it in the first place. They are back to record profits, while a seminar I attended yesterday showed how dramatic and devastating unemployment still is around the globe — especially for young people.”

Yes there is hope. But we need two things urgently. We need to develop and feel our empathy for our fellow humanity, in everything we do, at all levels. And we need to address what is a basically flawed economy. I will come back to both these needs in future blogs. This is a big subject, but one we cannot ignore any longer.

Abundant food or parched earth? Where is our empathy? Where is our compassion?

Over the last few weeks I have written about the essay by Ervin Laszlo on “The World’s Health Problem: an Integral Diagnosis” in A New Renaissance – Transforming Science, Spirit and Society. Laszlo concludes: “the world is (1) socially, economically and ecologically unsustainable, (2) saddled with irrational behaviours and (3) governed by obsolete beliefs and aspirations.”

I have covered the four obsolete beliefs in previous recent blogs: that we think the planet is inexhaustible, that we believe that “nature is a mechanism,” that life is a struggle where only the fittest survive, and that Adam Smith's free market will distribute the benefits of economic activity.

Now I want to move on to Laszlo's list of Irrational Behaviors.

Number One: "Millions are suffering from overeating and obesity and a thousand million go hungry."

We have an obesity epidemic in the developed western world. Indeed obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the USA. An estimated 65% of U.S. adults, aged 20 years and older, and 15% of children and adolescents are overweight or obese. Around 34% of adults are obese. That amounts to c. 59 million people! The figures elsewhere are not much better. In 2006 24% of the adult English population were obese, and in children up to 15 years of age the figure was 16%. And both figures are increasing. We can all see it all around us.

The truth is that we have forgotten how to live simply and sustainably with totally unselfish regard for those around us. We have lost the ability to generously share, to ensure that everyone in the same household has had their fill before going ourselves for second helpings.

We have abundant food. Others have only cracked parched earth.

Where is our empathy? Where is our compassion?

We need to find more and better ways to adapt to sustainable living in a world where we can be sure that our good fortune is shared, where everyone has their basic human needs met, where hunger becomes history.

8 reasons why the earth needs healing

Someone on another blog site wrote to me thus:

"I'm not a doomsdayer and believe when the earth was created, it had all we would need to inhabit it for as long as needed. That doesn't mean we shouldn't be responsible in caring for it. God's creations are so beautiful, and we all have the errand to help those within our sphere of influence. "

The problem is that we have not been responsible. Here are 8 reasons to start with as to why action is urgent and vital:

Combined wealth of world’s billionaires equals the income of half the world’s population – 3 billion poor people, living on less than $2.5 per day.

The American places twice the environmental load of the Swede on the planet, 280 times that of the Haitian.

Human consumption is nearing, and in some cases has already surpassed, planetary maxima. Oil, fish, and lumbar production have already peaked. 40% of world coral reefs have vanished.

The amount of land that can sustainably respond to human requirements, our “earth share”, of every man woman and child on the planet is 4.2 acres. Average world usage is now 8.9 acres per person.

World population is now 7 billion against 5 billion 22 years ago.

Water and Land resources are continually being diminished. Both will become big problems – along with food shortages.

A thousand million go hungry and 6 million children die annually of starvation whilst 155 million are overweight.

The economy is in crisis.

And so on: thanks to Ervin Laszlo in A New Renaissance for this summary.

And there is no problem? There most certainly is!

We really cannot close our eyes to this – we have to consider not only today but also what we leave to children and grandchildren.

Obsolete Beliefs numbers 3 and 4

Over the last few weeks I have written about the essay by Ervin Laszlo on “The World’s Health Problem: an Integral Diagnosis” in A New Renaissance – Transforming Science, Spirit and Society. Laszlo concludes: “the world is (1) socially, economically and ecologically unsustainable, (2) saddled with irrational behaviours and (3) governed by obsolete beliefs and aspirations.”

I have covered the first two obsolete beliefs in previous blogs: that we think the planet is inexhaustible, and that we believe that “nature is a mechanism.”

Here is Obsolete Belief number 3: Life is a struggle where only the fittest survive.
“The (mal) adaptation of Darwin’s theory of natural selection to society,” Laszlo writes, “produces a growing gap between rich and poor, and concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a small group of smart but often unscrupulous managers and speculators.”
And here is his Obsolete Belief number 4, which is closely linked to number 3: The Market Distributes Benefits.” Affluent people tend to hold on to the belief that the free market, governed by what Adam Smith called the “invisible hand,” distributes the benefits of economic activity…the poverty and marginalization of nearly half of the world’s population,” he writes, “is eloquent testimony to the fact that this tenet doesn’t work in the context of today’s power- and wealth-distorted global markets.”

While we enjoy material riches, real poverty is indeed rife and 923 million people across the world are hungry. In addition, almost 16,000 children die every day from hunger-related causes. That’s one child every five seconds. Yes, one child dies from hunger every five seconds.
The injustices of the rich/poor divide bring discontent and envy, particularly with the globalization of information. Poverty brings disease and lack of education, which itself perpetuates that poverty. Lack of resources also increases vulnerability to natural disasters that in the developed nations we are broadly speaking better able to handle. Inadequate and poor quality housing exacerbates the impact of floods, hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes. Although we often call such disasters ‘Acts of God’ there is evidence that some of these ‘natural’ disasters are linked to man’s own interference with the planet. There is widespread homelessness, and a devastating AIDS/HIV crisis. I have seen various estimates of the number of children who will be orphaned by AIDS in Africa by 2010, ranging from 20 million to 50 million. Even the lower figure is appalling.

These statistics are an affront to our humanity. We need to do all we can to lift the most disadvantaged in our world out of poverty. This is a matter of justice and it is a matter of human compassion.
In 1976 an economics professor Dr Muhammad Yunus conducted an experiment. He gave the equivalent of $26 to each of 42 workers. From this they all bought materials, spent a day weaving chairs or making pots and were able to sell their wares and repay the loans. Thus was born the concept of microcredit.
Microcredit refers to small loans of less than a few hundred dollars, with no collateral, at nil or no more than commercial interest rates, made to help the poorest of the poor in the third world to start up small enterprises. This enables them to spread their productive capacity and gain some measure of independence and a better standard of living. For Yunus’ subsequent work with Grameen Bank, which was founded to foster this use of microcredit, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to them both in equal shares, for ‘their efforts to create economic and social development from below’, while improving the lives of millions of people in Yunus’ native Bangladesh.
Every person we help out of poverty, and towards independence, contributes towards making the world a better place for us all.
We cannot all be in the front line, at the sharp end of humanitarian relief efforts. But we can all make a contribution, however small, to reputable aid agencies to help and support them in their work.
I have a Cooperative Community card. Every time I shop at the Co-op, one penny is taken from me for every £1 I spend, and given to local deserving charities. What a fine and painless way of helping the community where we live, helping to make it a better place for us all.

The picture, by the way, is from the cover of Creation in Crisis; Christian Perspectives on Sustainability that I have reviewed previously.

Obsolete Belief 2

A couple of days ago I wrote about the essay by Ervin Laszlo on “The World’s Health Problem: an Integral Diagnosis” in A New Renaissance – Transforming Science, Spirit and Society. Laszlo concludes: “the world is (1) socially, economically and ecologically unsustainable, (2) saddled with irrational behaviours and (3) governed by obsolete beliefs and aspirations.”

Our first obsolete belief is that we think the planet is inexhaustible. And here is Laszlo’s obsolete belief number 2.

We believe that “nature is a mechanism.”
As a result we think that “we can engineer nature” like we would engineer a building or a bridge. This of course is destroying the planet’s natural balances and causing the extinction of species at an alarming rate.

Why does it take so long for us to see the errors of our ways? In 1997 Hugh Montefiore wrote a little paperback about the environmental issues of the day, called A Time to Change. He wrote that responsible estimates of species extinctions were then running at up to 100,000 a year, at which rate within a century half the earth’s species will have disappeared, at the hands of mankind. We cannot afford to destroy species in this way. We are part of a complex network of living beings, all interdependent in many and various ways. Even one species extinction can profoundly affect other life forms and change the face of the planet irrevocably. And the converse is also true – the introduction of species into an area without understanding the ecology of that area can be equally catastrophic.

As the naturalist Francis Rose once observed, ‘nature is very complex. When you start to interfere by thoughtless introduction of alien species, you do so at your own peril.’ He might as well have added – “and when you make a species extinct.” Francis Rose was a celebrated and authoritative field botanist and naturalist, researcher, teacher and author, with a lifelong passion for plant ecology and conservation. He died in 2006 and The Francis Rose Reserve named in his memory at Wakehurst Place, Sussex, comprises a collection of mosses, lichens, liverworts and filmy ferns in a natural valley setting.

So why, Laszlo asks, do we still behave so irrationally? Why do we continue to ignore the finely balanced and complex nature of our ecosystems and think we can ride rough shod through the natural environment with blatant disregard for the effects of our behaviour? Why indeed?

Einstein once said that we cannot solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created our malady. Or in other words we cannot heal our planet and ourselves with the same kind of thinking that brought us to this current malady. So what is needed?

In my youth at school in the early 1960s I had a passionate interest in ecology. I studied it diligently as part of my botanical school exams and later at University. But it was only as I walked through the great National Parks of Yosemite or California’s Giant Redwoods, hiked the UK’s Yorkshire and Derbyshire Dales or tramped the Burren in Eire, and saw all the plants and creatures in their natural habitats, that I came to discover and feel a spiritual attachment to such a wonderful and varied world, and a great respect for its complexities. And that is what we need to feel again – we need to rediscover that spiritual connection with nature, to nurture an understanding that we are part of an intricate balance of life forms, part of the richness and wealth of the cosmos.

Prince Charles in his book Harmony is telling us just this. A New Renaissance: Transforming Science, Spirit and Society is telling us this. Many books are beginning to appear around this theme. When will we listen to what they all have to say?

Obsolete Beliefs and Aspirations

A month ago on this blog (23 November 2010) I posted a review of A New Renaissance – Transforming Science, Spirit and Society. This is a collection of 25 essays from acknowledged experts in their fields in response to a challenge from the Scientific and Medical Network to consider ways forward out of the socio-economic and ecological global crisis we find ourselves in.

The scene is set in the first chapter, written by Ervin Laszlo on The World’s Health Problem: an Integral Diagnosis. In his analysis, Laszlo concludes: “the world is (1) socially, economically and ecologically unsustainable, (2) saddled with irrational behaviours and (3) governed by obsolete beliefs and aspirations.” And over the next few weeks I want to consider one by one these irrational behavioural patterns and obsolete beliefs and aspirations, which he lists, before looking at possible solutions.

So here is the first obsolete belief: we think the Planet is inexhaustible, and this has guided our actions quite thoughtlessly for too long. We have carried on mining and extracting our fossil fuels without thinking that these have been laid down in the earth over hundreds of millions of years, and will take the same time scale to replenish. And we continue to fill our landfill sites to the brim with our waste, much of it toxic. We havn’t thought for a moment that the space available for rubbish is finite, or considered what happens as these massive rubbish piles degrade.

In his wonderful book Harmony, HRH Prince Charles tells us that “according to UN figures, the US alone buries 222 million tons of household waste a year” with China catching up with 148 million tons. The biggest immediate problem of these massive piles of waste is that they produce greenhouse gases that trap the earth’s heat and contribute significantly to the global warming and its effects that we now witness around us.

An early awareness of our violence against the natural environment probably came with James Lovelock’s invention in 1957 of the Electron Capture Detector, a device used for measuring chemical compounds in atmosphere and matter. This enabled the discovery of residual pesticides in the food we eat, the evidence for which Rachel Carson exposed to a general public in her book Silent Spring in 1963. In this she brought together the available research at that time on toxicology, ecology and epidemiology. She sought to put the world on alert as to the dangers ahead for humanity that she foresaw if we continued to use chemicals indiscriminately in our homes. She warned of the dangers of using such chemicals for agricultural and horticultural purposes, if we did not understand the possible long-term harm they may cause. She saw that the resultant build up of these substances in our food chain could be catastrophic to wild life environments and our own health. Most importantly, the book shattered our assumptions until then that the environment had an infinite capacity to absorb pollutants and maintain its own stability. Although much of what Carson wrote is now out of date, it shook our assumptions about chemicals, made us aware of chemical pollution for the first time, and kick started the ecological movement into action.

So why, Laszlo asks, do we behave so irrationally still? Why do we continue to run our global economy on polluting and finite fossil fuels when we have the technology to harvest energy from sun, wind, tide, geothermics and plants? Why indeed?
Einstein once said that we cannot solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created our malady. Or in other words we cannot heal our planet and ourselves with the same kind of thinking that brought us to this current malady.
Laszlo tells us that we need a new kind of consciousness. Not only that, but there are signs around us that this is now emerging, a different kind of perception, of awareness, particularly in young people; a consciousness of connectedness and belonging, of oneness with nature. The evolution of this consciousness, Laszlo tells us, "is a precondition of healing our seriously damaged but not incurably sick planet."
I will look into this in more detail over the coming weeks as I consider some of the other irrational behavioural patterns and obsolete beliefs and aspirations listed by Laszlo that threaten our future.

A New Rennaisance; Transforming Science, Spirit and Society

E. F. Schumacher once said: “man is far too clever to be able to survive without wisdom.” And we now need that wisdom in large measure.

Someone said to me today: "the trouble is, (a phrase I dislike as much as "the problem is") there are so many books on this climate change stuff and other problems of our age, but nothing ever gets done."

That is simply not true, but there is always room to do more.

I went recently in London to a day conference at the University of London, the occasion being the launch of A New Renaissance; Transforming Science, Spirit and Society. This book was born out of a vision by the Scientific Medical Network of the urgent need for action to address the now deeply rooted and dangerous ecological, political and spiritual crisis in which we find ourselves.
Members of the Network were invited to submit essays on aspects of the crisis, which would discuss the causes of, and/or the paths beyond, the current crisis, to create an important repository of wisdom.

The predominant aim was to underpin a programme of action, to help the Network to “move boldly from theory to practice,” with progressive solutions, not only within the Network itself but by working with other like minded organisations and within the wider global community.

What we have now in this excellent volume is a compilation of 25 of the best essays, many of them from some of the world’s leading thinkers, bringing the latest scientific discoveries and philosophical ideas alongside ancient spiritual wisdoms.
The book is divided into four sections, under the headings; Worldviews in Transition, Consciousness and Mind in Science and Medicine, Spirituality and New Understandings of the Sacred, and finally Global and Local Transformation: Governance, Economics and Education (and also including, importantly, a chapter on the role of music and the arts in a possible future). This final part is most important, examining as it does some possible reforms in politics, economics and education, to help "bring forth a society that can sustain the flourishing of human beings in the twenty first century."

The scene is set in the first chapter (by Ervin Laszlo) by diagnosing the world’s own health problems –unsustainable living, irrational behaviours and obsolete beliefs and aspirations. But crisis brings opportunities for transformation, in enlightened politics, a more socially aware business ethic, and personal responsibility. And underlying all of this is the need for a greater spiritual awareness, a shift of our dominant consciousness towards a connectedness with each other and with the natural world, a new understanding of humans as psychic beings. This is a theme that occurs again and again in many of the essays; that rediscovery of our souls, or the spirit in matter, or a sense of the sacred, or changes in human consciousness in some way, will be essential for finding a more meaningful and spirit filled world and for healing our planet. And this new understanding of reality must acknowledge the inadequacy of reductionist materialism and the mechanistic scientific worldview.

Readers will not agree with everything here. Boundaries are being pushed to limits of thought and understanding, but there are common threads of purpose, and urgency. There are practical ideas in plenty, and there are messages of hope from some authors, whilst others seem more doubtful that we still have time for change or indeed about the nature of the crisis itself.

I enjoyed reading all these essays immensely. Some are more technical than others, some the reader will find controversial. But all have their own profoundly important message from the authors’ own hearts. They combine a rich pattern of diverse thinking, knowledge, wisdom and proposed solutions and together they form a valuable resource for healing this wounded earth.

However, all this effort will have been in vain unless the book promotes positive healing actions. As humans we have freedom of choice and the benefits of hindsight and foresight and if we want to we can put this to a healing purpose. And this, we are reminded, will variously require courage, confidence and determination to move ideas forward, changes in education, changes in mindset, hearts and minds, and a sense of personal responsibility. Some believe that change must start from small groups, within community, a bottoms- up approach, and that we have to change our beliefs and attitudes before we can change our values and behaviour. Others stress the need for careful and respectful dialogue to establish a shared wisdom, for a unifying vision of our purpose on this planet and a call for global unity in diversity.
I could go on – there is so much wisdom in these pages. But to go into detail on any specific chapter would surely offend, albeit unintentionally, those I have left out.

As humans we yearn to be happy, at peace, part of a global family. This book is an important step in that direction if we heed its wisdom and advice.

(This article, with a few small changes, repeats the review I have posted on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk).