The Turning Point: Science, Society and the Rising Culture

The Turning Point: Science, Society and the Rising Culture
By
Fritjof Capra

http://www.fritjofcapra.net

“After a time of decay comes the turning point.” I Ching

Capra is one of those original thinkers connecting the world of science and spirituality dots. In The Turning Point he drives home why our current Cartesian, Newtonian and reductionist paradigms which are the basis of the United States, military-industrial-academic complex has lead us to a state of profound, world-wide, and multi-dimensional crisis. This time we could be facing the very real threat of extinction.

These intellectual elite have created the ‘mainstream academic view’ which has lead to rampant inflation, massive unemployment, and a gross misdistribution of income and wealth, along with the never-ending escalation costs of war and empire.

The author explains why high inflation, unemployment, energy crisis, health care crisis, pollution, environmental disasters, a rising wave of violence and crime are all connected to a crisis of perception. This all leads us to try to understand our world with an outdated mechanistic view and apply it to a reality that we can not understand.

“What we need, then, is a new ‘paradigm’- a new vision of reality, a fundamental change in our thoughts, perceptions and values. The beginnings of this change, of the shift from mechanistic to holistic conception of reality, are already visible in all fields.”

Capra’s goal is how to create the framework that would allow all the separate movements and similar intentions to interrelate their aims, or attention. He wants to focus their attention on their new paradigm of intentions. This could lead to a transformative change and be a turning point for the whole planet.

“This new vision includes the emerging systems view of life, mind, consciousness, and evolution: the corresponding holistic approach to health and healing, the integration of Western and Eastern approaches to psychology and psychotherapy; a new conceptual framework for economics and technology; and an ecological and feminist perspective which is spiritual in its ultimate nature and will lead to profound changes.”

I agree with Capra that what is at stake is the survival of our civilization. We need a cultural, as well as a scientific revolution.