Response to Fritjof Capra’s The Turning Point

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Response to Fritjof Capra’s The Turning Point

Summary of Capra’s Book

-----------------------

Published March 1982.

Context: Reagan and Thatcher/high interest rates/rise of the “me”

generation/crime and drug waves making big news/no one had a PC.

Iran Releases 52 Hostages (taken during Carter’s presidency)

President Shot In Chest, Brady Suffers Head Wound

John Hinkley Charged With Attempted Assassination of President Reagan

Israel Bombs Iraqi Nuclear Reactor

Reagan Fires Striking Air Controllers

Pope Paul II is wounded in assassination attempt

First test tube baby is born

Outrageous interest rates causing people to walk away from their homes

Fritjof Capra opens with the statement that the world is in crisis. We

may actually be facing the possibility of the extinction of the human

race. Many interrelated crises in the environment, social

relationships, economics, energy, politics, and technology need to be

viewed from a holistic viewpoint. They need to be treated as

interdependent phenomena.

He refers to Arnold Toynbee saying that, “After civilizations have

reached a peak of vitality, they tend to lose their cultural steam and

decline” (Capra 28). He argues, by citing Sorokin, that we are on the

cusp of a great transition. If you look at the trends evident in human

history, everything is lining up for another upheaval, and this will

be a big one, because the rate of change in our world is speeding up.

It is particularly tied to the end of the Cartesian worldview, the

decline of patriarchy, and the use and depletion of fossil fuel

reserves.

Capra goes to some length to say that the Chine...

... middle of paper ...

...he step Capra suggests is the answer, and in others it

is repeating mistakes already made nearly a thousand years ago. What

is the answer? I think that if it was possible to know that, than we

would not be in this mess. I also think that the problem is human

nature, and that cannot be changed. The strong destroy the weak the

world over. The only variation is how that strength is defined.

In short, Capra is a man of his times. The general atmosphere in the

late 70s and early 80s was that of massive change, a rebirth of

conservatism, the birth of the “me” generation. Change breeds fear and

Capra’s book seems to me to be a “there-there it’s gonna be okay” and

a pat on the back rather than a scientific solution to what ails the

world.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Capra, Fritjof. 1982. “The Turning Point.” New York: Bantam Books.

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