Ervin Laszlo

What we can All do to be Part of the Solution and not of the Problem

We live in times of unprecedented challenge: the challenge of meeting the increasing unsustainability of the world as created and operating in the span of the last fifty years, with the likewise unprecedented opportunity to create a different, more sustainable, peaceful, and equitable world. The possibilities for renewing the operating structures and principles of our economic, political and social systems exist; there are physical and social technologies available and waiting to be activated. The greatest need is the lack of political will to undertake the changes. Ultimately, this lacuna must be filled by new socio-cultural movements within society; furthered and responded to, by responsible political and business leadership. The requirement is to come up with responsible thinking and acting before the window in time closes - as long as major thresholds of irreversibility in social and ecological processes are not yet breached. This presentation offers some practical guidelines in this regard for the attention of business leaders.

Ervin Laszlo has a PhD from the Sorbonne and is the recipient of four honorary PhD’s, the Japan Peace Prize (Goi Prize) and other distinctions. Formerly Professor of Philosophy, Systems Science, and Futures Studies in various universities in the US, Europe, and the Far East, Laszlo is the author or co-author of forty-five books translated into as many as twenty languages, and the editor of another twenty-nine volumes including a four-volume encyclopaedia. He is Founder and President of The Club of Budapest, Founder and Director of the General Evolution Research Group, President of the Private University for Economics and Ethics, Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, Member of the International Academy of Philosophy of Science, Senator of the International Medici Academy, and Editor of the international periodical World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution. Laszlo has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 and was renominated in 2005.