Customer Reviews

WorldShift 2012: Making Green Business, New Politics, and Higher Consciousness Work Together

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Author Ervin Laszlo has certainly made great contributions to the fields of systems philosophy, conscious evolution, and socio-political evolution. With 69 books to his name, 400 articles, and a long list of appointments, honors, and luminary associates, his credibility seems beyond question. In 1993 he formed a who's-who think tank called Club of Budapest to "center attention on the evolution of human values and consciousness as the crucial factors in changing course...in the direction of humanism, ethics, and global sustainability."

In Worldshift 2012 Laszlo makes the case once again that it is only by changing our consciousness will we turn planetary breakdown into sustainable breakthrough, and the author this time points our focus for this shift toward business and politics. I'm completely on board with his evolutionary vision, but disappointed in this slim volume (less than 100 pages) subtitled, "Making Green Business, New Politics and Higher Consciousness Work Together." Part One summarizes of the state of the world, ecologically, politically and socially, Part two addresses objectives, and Part Three is a telling of the "new consciousness myth." In other words, Laszlo uses a familiar change model format: where are we now, what do we want, how do we reframe our experience (get there from here), and how it will be when we have the change we desire (imagining what we want as if it has already occurred).

In this sense then, this is subconsciously a useful book. But the content doesn't deliver anything particularly new or captivating. Certainly, Worldshift reminds us of the mounting statistics about ecological and social breakdown, which is always a wake-up call, and the thought experiment "reporting" by two young people from the year 2032 commenting on the new planetary ethics and consciousness is somewhat intriguing--and a story that needs to be told. Still, most of the "solutions" or actions offered in Worldshift are little more than well-worn gestures painted with broad brushstrokes, and sprinkled with quotes from notables.

To be honest, the forewords by Deepak Chopra and Mikhail Gorbachev are more compelling for this reviewer than what follows. Perhaps being in the business of reading multitudes of new consciousness books I have become saturated with new consciousness ideas; perhaps the concepts presented here have been written about so much more comprehensively and compellingly (by Laszlo himself, among many others) that I have high expectations: perhaps this isn't one of Laszlo's better efforts.

Thought the ideas are lofty, the packaging is poor. The book reads like a shopping list.

For anyone who cares about the world we are all live in, this book is a wake up call. Our thinking, doing and living have been limited to the surrounding we're in. The more of us could be mindful, could think for and care for others, the better environment we could live in. Together we could shift the world's mindset to a better direction for our next generations.....

Nothing is more important right now than seeing the projected view of our planet's future and what we can possibly do to influence that trajectory. If you can get through the facts, which are depressing and seemingly not reversable, you will be lifted on the possibilities of change through action. "The darkness around us is deep" is the message, but we all know the light can dispel darkness. In this case, the light is education--an education we all must attend to if we are to save this planet for our children's children.