Culture and the Sustainability of the Global System
/ Ervin Laszlo
The values and associated behaviors of the dominant culture of the contemporary world gave rise to a globally extended system that is not sustainable in its present form. If a cataclysmic breakdown is to be averted, the influential culture that shapes today's world must change. Humanity can no longer afford to be dominated by a narrowly materialist and manipulative culture focused on ego-centered, company-centered, or nation-centered short-term benefit, with no regard to the wider system that frames existence on this planet. Consciously moving toward a harmonious system of cooperative societies focused on the shared objective of sustaining the systems of life on the planet is an urgent necessity. To this end a mutation is needed in the cultures of the contemporary world, so as to create the values and aspirations that would bring together today's individually diverse and largely self-centered societies in the shared mission of ensuring the sustainability of the global system of humanity in the framework of the biosphere. The global system is highly diverse today, but it is insufficiently coordinated. Creating a higher level of unity within its diversity is intrinsically feasible: it calls for system-maintaining cooperation among the diverse societies that make up the system.