massive poverty and hunger, reduction of biodiversity, degradation of the world’s atmosphere, etc. By the year 2012, he maintains we will be stuck with the consequences of the way we are living and treating the planet right now.
Luckily, Laszlo reassures that these trends do not have to be our destiny and that we still have time to make the adjustments needed for us, and our children, to live happy lives on a happy planet. However, it is time for a new mindset. As Einstein put it, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” We cannot stay in the consciousness of more, bigger and better - whether business, wealth, poverty, criminality, terrorism, or environmental degradation. Just as we cannot rid the world of terrorism by using the same hate and violence that terrorism itself represents, we cannot preserve the planet we live on and our own humanity with habits of consumerism, greed and inefficiency.
In The Chaos Point, Laszlo takes the reader down two possible roads: The breakdown scenario and the breakthrough scenario. He shows us what we have to look forward to if we keep going at it the way we are now, and the brighter future available with a few shifts in attitudes and actions. “Ours is an era of decision,” writes Lazlo, “a window of unprecedented freedom to decide our destiny. As consumers and clients, as taxpayers and voters, and as public opinion holders we can create the kinds of fluctuations – the actions and initiatives- that will tip the coming chaos point toward peace and sustainability.”
One of the main issues he says need attention is the unsustainability of affluent consumption. “The richest 20% earn 90 times the income of the poorest 20%, consume 11 times as much energy, eat 11 times as much meat, have 49 times the number of telephones, and own 145 times the number of cars. … On an annual basis, Americans, worried about obesity, spend 30 times more trying to slim down than the UN’s entire budget for famine relief.”
The book details current developments in the global financial system, established social structures, and humanities’ unsustainable draw-down on Earth’s ecological bank account.
But The Chaos Point is not all doom and gloom. Laszlo supplies us with a beautiful image of a new civilization, and gives us the tools to use to build this new holistic world.
He emphasizes the way we perceive what is going on around us, and the values and priorities we place on these perceptions, as major factors in determining the direction we are headed. In other words, don’t sit back and decide that you can do nothing about the way the world is, or think you are too small and powerless to make real change occur.
The chaos point does not have to be a time of fear. Change is good, change is inevitable and some changes need to take place. By putting conscious thought into our decisions about how we live day to day, we can create a world that heretofore we only imagined.
So bring on the chaos! And long live the breakthrough scenario! page 1 2 3 4
