Inner Traditions, 1594773289, 144 pp., 2009
Mr. Laszlo successfully illustrates the great potentials sleeping in humanity, the potential triumphs and catastrophes both. His contention that the problems facing humanity are largely systemic and require equally systemic solutions seems unarguable, he is a scientist after all and he makes an excellent case for the ideological roots of our current dilemmas.
The author in co-operation with an impressive number of intellectuals and scientists then proceed to put a relatively novel spin on the old New Age formula of enlightening oneself through the adoption of new moral or ethical codes and structures by suggesting that instead it’s about what you’re willing to forget. I feel the shift in focus from what needs to be added to what is simply, demonstrably true as the precursor to some ambiguous new age enlightenment, is a development worthy of copious amounts of commendation.
That being said, I also felt that Mr. Laszlo (and Mr. Gorbachev and Sanyo Chairman Tomoyo Nonaka, etc.) were somewhat isolated from the realities of the social pressures they sought to remedy. Perhaps developments like the breakdown of nuclear families, the increase of teenage sexual awareness and widespread civil disobedience aren’t actually symptoms of systemic failure but examples of the genesis Mr. Laszlo is attempting to describe. Therein lay the weakness of all ideological remedies, ideologies differ one person to the next.
All in all, many useful and occasionally scary facts, illuminations of areas of potentially explosive growth and an interesting and thought-provoking read.
