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Transition from logos toholos: The challenge ofcivilizational changeErvin Laszlo aa Villa Franatoni, Montescudaio, 56040, Pisa,ItalyVersion of record first published: 04 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Ervin Laszlo (2000): Transition from logos to holos: Thechallenge of civilizational change, World Futures: The Journal of GlobalEducation, 55:1, 1-13

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Transition from Logos to Holos:The Challenge of Civilizational Change

ERVIN LASZLO

Villa Franatoni, 56040 Montescudaio (Pisa), Italy

(Received August 4, 1999; accepted August 10, 1999)

We live at a crucial juncture in the sociocultural evolution of humanity: thetransition from one civilization to the next. Such "great transitions" occuras technologies that range from the chisel and the hoe in previous epochs,to the jet turbine and global communications in our own age, change theexisting pattern of relations and destabilize the established structures andinstitutions of society. They call for adaptations in legal and political orga-nization, educational systems, public morals, and socially sanctioned behav-iors. "Soft" factors such as worldviews, values, and ethics are needed toenculture the kind of goals and behaviors that are suitable to life under thechanged conditions. As we now transit from a civilization hallmarked bythe culture of Logos to a civilization that must a forteriori be characterizedby a planetary culture denoted by the term Holos, the evolution of a moreembracing and spiritual consciousness has become the basic requirementand supreme challenge of our times.

KEYWORDS: logos, holos, civilizational change, culture, spirituality,consciousness

For most of the multi-million-year history of our species, human-ity has lived in one or another form of communal organization withone or another set of relations to the environment. Both the soci-etal and the natural relations have changed in the course of time,sometimes in a radical fashion. Our forebears lived in Paleolithicstone-age societies, and evolved into Neolithic pastoralist and agri-culturist societies, which in turn transformed into the great archaicempires. Then, in the Occident, the Graeco-Roman world arose,followed by the world of medieval princedoms and fiefdoms, andlater by the world of industrial nation-states. Currently human

World Futures, 2000, Vol. 55, pp. 1-13 © 2000 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association) N.VReprints available directly from the publisher Published by license underPhotocopying permitted by license only the Harwood Academic Publishers imprint,

part of The Gordon and Breach Publishing Group.Printed in Malaysia.

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societies are transiting into a highly interacting post-industrialsystem, global in dimension and reach.

This is a crucial juncture in history: a shift from one civilizationto the next. Such a "great transition" is not unprecedented: therewere others before this. But the current transition is faster, and itsdangers both deeper and wider than in any previous period in theannals of history. A better understanding of how it unfolds hasbecome imperative: only a correct understanding of its dynamicscan provide a reliable basis for purposive action, to avert its dangersand seize its opportunities.

THE PATTERN OF CIVILIZATIONAL TRANSITIONS

Civilizational transitions usually occur as several factors conspireto destabilize the existing relations of humans to each other, and totheir natural environment. This is generally the result of innova-tion: new ways that people structure their social and ecological rela-tions. Technologies ranging from the chisel and the hoe in previousepochs, to the jet turbine and global communications in our ownage, change the existing pattern of relations and destabilize theestablished orders. They call for adaptations in legal and politicalorganization, educational systems, public morals, and socially sanc-tioned behaviors. A modification of the dominant culture thenfollows.

The sequence of factors that triggers a civilizational transition isgenerally the following:

* Innovations in "hard" technologies (tools, machines, opera-tional systems);

=» Higher level of resource production;=> Growth of population entailing greater societal complexity and

increased impact on the environment;=> Innovations in "soft" technologies (social and political organi-

zation, economic systems); and=* Changes in the dominant culture (spirituality, values, ethics,

worldviews).

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TRANSITION FROM LOGOS TO HOLOS 3

This sequence highlights a crucial but often neglected factor:that the "soft" aspects of innovations occur with a lag with respectto the "hard" aspects. Would the "soft" aspects (social organizationand culture) be but simple consequences of the changes triggeredby innovations in the "hard" aspects of tools and operational sys-tems, this lag would not be of particular significance. But the roleof the soft aspects is far more important than that: they providethe basis for enculturing people and societies at the next stage ofcivilizational change.

TRANSITIONS FROM MYTHOS TO LOGOS

In the course of history, the values, ethics, and worldviews thatappeared in the wake of the changed social and environmental rela-tions of a larger population had generally supported and reinforcedthe societal order that emerged at the successive stages of sociocul-tural development. Thus stone-age societies were stabilized in theirenvironment by a dominant culture we may characterize as "Mythos."Yet, upon the impact of new technologies for adapting fertile soils,domesticating plants, and husbanding animals, after a reign ofhundreds of thousands of years Mythos gave way to the civiliza-tional mold of "Theos." With the rise of the Greek city-states and ofthe Roman Empire, Theos, in turn, yielded to a kind of civilizationwe may call "Logos." Logos, with its Christian and later secular-industrial variants, remained the dominant mold of Western civi-lization until our own epoch.

Now, at the dawn of the Third Millennium, Logos is no longercapable of ordering the mushrooming complexity of globallyextended technological societies, even though the technologicalinnovations that threaten it are its own products. Western civiliza-tion is confronted with yet another transition: beyond Logos, toa civilizational mold that is yet to be born. However, it is clearthat if it is to give rise to a sustainable civilization, it must embraceand order the already globalized relations of the human commu-nity. In view of this requirement, "Holos" is an appropriate termto denote the next viable stage in the civilizational evolution ofhumanity.1

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THE CIVILIZATION OF MYTHOS

Mythos refers to the dominant culture of Paleolithic andNeolithic societies; types of societal organization that took up morethan 99 percent of the history of sapiens.

The "hard" technologies that hallmarked life in lithic societieswere simple but effective. They involved, successively, the utilizationof objects improvised as tools or as weapons; the purposive fashion-ing of tools; and the standardization of tools (such as hand axes)according to tradition. To the technologies of tool-making camethose for making and controlling fire, adapting and building shel-ters, and burying the dead. Much later, only about ten thousandyears before our time, other technologies emerged: for cultivatingplants, domesticating animals, and weaving and pottery-making,often with decorative motives. At the dawn of the Neolithic agethese technological innovations enabled nomadic hunters-gatherersto settle into stable agrarian communities. They originated in theLevant and spread from there into Asia and Europe.

Neolithic peoples had a wealth of zoological and botanical knowl-edge: this was required for the successful cultivation of plants andhusbanding of animals. But their purvue did not stop at the limitsof the everyday world but encompassed the forces and the spiritsthat were thought to infuse all of nature. The Neolithic worldviewwas embracing in its dimensions, and animistic and spiritualistic innature. Spirit was not separated from matter, the real world fromthe dream world. The forces of nature were also the forces of thespirits embodied in objects, plants, animals and people. The entireworld had a sacred dimension. Forces outside and above humansacted in and on the world, impacting on nature as well as on humancommunities. Lithic people viewed themselves as belonging to adynamic universe, with seen and unseen forces and entities. Timeand space were part of the natural orders. The present time wasassociated with local space, and the future was seen as a continuousrecurrence of the rhythms experienced in the present. The seasonswere known to follow each other, but there were no new seasons; alltimes have been already experienced.

Animism was joined with totemism—the belief that an object,animal, or plant serves as emblem of a family or clan and its

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TRANSITION FROM LOGOS TO HOLOS 5

ancestry—as well as with rites and magic. The latter were sociallyadopted techniques for tapping the higher forces of the cosmos tohelp humans achieve desired ends.

The tribal communities organized by embracing lithic worldviewshad a high level of integration. The individual was an essentialpart of the clan or tribe, which in turn was embedded in nature andgoverned by cosmic forces. Nature and humans did not exist inseparation, much less in opposition. Humans had empathy with allthat they encountered.

The varieties of lithic belief systems were suited to people's waysof life and their social and environmental relations. At thePaleolithic food-gathering and hunting-fishing stage, the maleprinciple dominated, consistently with the survival priorities andneeds of the times. Subsequently, at the agriculturally-based stage offood production, the female principle became dominant, reflectingthe new relations of the herder and farmer to the soil andthe Earth. Telluric fecundity and fertility, sexual symbolism, andmagical-religious rites were remarkably similar among widely sepa-rated peoples. They found analogous expression in the Old Worldof Asia and the Middle East, the same as in the New World of theMeso-Americas.

THE CIVILIZATION OF THEOS

The seemingly infinite endurance of stone-age societies came toan end when the gradual improvement and accumulation of theirtool-based technologies changed and destabilized tribal relations tothe environment.

Neolithic peoples congregated primarily in major river valleys inAfro-Asia and the Americas and, at least in the former, the use oflarge amounts of water through improved irrigation systems gener-ated massive increments of crops. Metals such as copper and bronzecame into use, new methods for measuring the boundaries of landswere discovered, and calendars for reckoning time and writingfor recording and communicating messages were invented. Thisbrought about increases in population, increases in the complexityof social organization, and increases in the load placed by the

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increasingly populous and sophisticated communities on the envi-ronment. In some regions, such as in Sumer, trees were choppeddown, soils overworked and the climate became arid. Yet Neolithiccommunities fanned out, and their villages grew into towns. In timemany of them became incorporated in empires with extendedadministrative structures. A new elite came to inhabit the urbancenters; the tribal circle of lithic communities yielded to the strati-fied pyramid of the formally structured state.

The new ways of life of people, and the new structures of theirsocial organization were mirrored in the transformation of their cul-ture. The Earth Mother was replaced by, or else subordinated to,"sky gods," as fresh emphasis was placed on male dominance, inline with higher socioeconomic stratification. Territorial rightscame to dominate over traditional kinship ties, reflecting increasedconcern with individual and communal property, and a more com-plex division of labor. Celestial orientation replaced the tellurictenor of the lithic epoch; kings claiming divine descent headed thenew polities. The celestial sphere became stratified as well, popu-lated by a pantheon of deities. On the principle "as above, so below,"human life expanded into a network of relations that extendedfrom the deepest layers of living and nonliving nature to the high-est spheres of the heavens .

The worldview of the archaic civilizations of Babylonia, Egypt,India, and China accounted for their origins and justified theirexistence. The beginnings of the world were rooted in the emer-gence of order out of chaos, followed by a 'further distillation oforder in the heavens, mirrored by emerging orders on Earth. Thecosmos was viewed as an organic polity in its own right, possessingboth sovereignty and power, and maintaining order and harmonythroughout the reaches of the universe. Its powers had been createdand were wielded by a supreme being, or else by a hierarchy ofdeities. The reflection of the celestial orders above required a theo-cratic order below, with kingships existing by divine fiat andembodying and legitimizing the exercise of celestially authorizedpower.

Cosmic godship and earthly kingship were united in the intent tomaintain an embracing order where the order below reflected theorder above. Its supreme telos was the maintenance of the essential

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balances of the universe through a social order rooted in cosmicprinciples. These elements, with but local variations, appeared inancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China, the same as inMeso-America.

THE CIVILIZATION OF LOGOS

Even though it was bolstered and underpinned by an elaborateand entrenched culture complete with an enshrined worldview,values, and ethical code, the civilization of Theos was destined todisappear in turn.

The advent of Logos can be traced to the second millennium BC,when Indo-European peoples equipped with an iron technologyswept out of Central Asia in several directions. Some came throughthe Khyber Pass into India, where they put an end to the alreadyenfeebled Indus civilization. Others moved southwest into Persia,and still others penetrated to the Black Sea and Eastern Europe,migrating north along the Volga, or West along the Danube andthe Rhine. Still others settled on the northern littoral of theMediterranean, in the Greek and Italian peninsuals. They gave riseto the Greek city-states and then to the Graeco-Roman civilization.The former extended, under Alexander, to the limits of the thenknown world, while the latter, under the Emperors, stretched fromBritain to the Tigris-Euphrates and the Sahara.

The culture of the classical civilizations matched their socialstructure and the thinking of their people. The Hellenic naturephilosophers replaced mythical concepts with theories based onobservation and elaborated by reasoning. They evolved the "heoricmind," present in Homer and the early epics, into the visionary andthe theoretical mind, culminating in the rational mind epitomizedby Plato and Aristotle. Logos became the central concept: it was atthe heart of philosophy as well as of religion. Together with metron,it provided Western civilization with a foundation upon which it wasto build for nearly two and a half millennia.

Logos, as embodied by classical Graeco-Roman civilization, wasnot a purely quantitative worldview, devoid of qualitative elements.Humans, and to some extent all creatures, had special worth or

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virtue—arête—not accountable in terms of quantitative propertiesalone. The combination of logos and metron with arete constituted aworldview, an ethics, and a system of values that was altogether dif-ferent from the culture of Theos. Man was the measure, and theunfolding of human potentials the goal. This basic notion, withmany sophisticated variants, came to flower in the philosophicalsystems of the Hellenic thinkers and found application in the orga-nization of Greek city-states. Many of its elements were carried overinto Roman civilization, endowed with a pragmatic orientationkeyed to the maintenance of social order through the orderlyexercise of power.

With the conversion of Constantine and the founding of theByzantine empire, Christianity modified the classical culture ofLogos, adding to it a divine source considered its creator, primemover, as well as ultimate judge. Logos came to be embodied in theHoly Trinity and incarnated in man, God's creation. This culture, ofwhich the principal elements were elaborated by the ideas ofAugustine and Thomas Aquinas, dominated medieval Europe untilthe advent of the modern age.

The next shift in Logos was due to the rise of modern scientificthought. Galileo produced a conception of the world in whichmechanical principles accounted for the behavior of bodies onEarth the same as for the movement of the heavens. Newton'smathematical demonstration of the universality of the laws ofmotion confirmed Galileo's insight and provided a basis for anembracing worldview that hallmarked the dawning of the modernage. In this view the universe is a divinely designed clockwork set inmotion by a prime mover and running harmoniously through alleternity. It operates according to strict laws of nature and enablesthe rational mind to know all things past, present and future. God,as Laplace was later to have said to Napoleon, had no place in thissystem: in stark contrast to the preceeding cultures, it was a hypoth-esis for which there was no longer a rational need.

In the 19th century, Darwin's theory of evolution completed—though it did not fully mesh with—the mechanistic worldview ofclassical physics. It accounted for the evolution of life from simpleorigins through the basic mechanism of random mutations exposedto the test of natural selection. But, despite debates as to the nature

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of the reality to which scientific theories referred, and revolutionswithin science throughout the 20th century—by Einstein, Bohr,Freud, and Jung among others—the "scientific worldview" wastriumphant. The undisputed achievements of modern technologyfurnished eloquent proof of its correctness. This view suppressedspirituality and gave birth to an ethic and an ethos that encour-aged, as Francis Bacon advocated, the manipulation of naturefor human ends. This was realistic: classical physics' quantitativeand mechanistic concepts provided a powerful knowledge-base forcreating highly sophisticated technologies. The combination ofa manipulative mind-set with growing technological prowess gavebirth to, and shaped, modern industrial society. Its globe-spanningtechnologies brought unparalleled power and wealth to those whocontrolled them, but created an unparalleled load on the physicaland biological resources of the biosphere.

In the closing years of the 20th century the processes inspired byLogos became the principal causes of the destabilization of the civi-lization based on it. Energy- and resource-intensive technologieschanged the relations of people to each other as well as to natureand produced conditions that Logos-based civilizations can nolonger master. In the industrialized world growing gaps arosebetween rich and poor, urban and rural populations; while in thedeveloping world the revolution of rising expectations failed due tounbridled competition and the explosion of the population. Now,at the turn of the Millennium, some four billion people in the"developing" world aspire to live as they believe people in the"developed" world do, yet the natural systems of the planet are notlikely to be able to support six billion living at the material standardcurrently enjoyed by two billion. As a result the social fabric isexposed to mounting stress, with growing vulnerability in the politi-cal and economic sphere and volatility in the financial arena.

PROSPECTS FOR THE CIVILIZATION OF HOLOS

If the 21st century world is to achieve a measure of stability andendurance, a civilizational transformation capable of conveying theworldviews, the values, the ethics, and the behavior patterns suited

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for life in a globalized system is needed. Its contours are alreadyemerging. Its perennial sources are the deepest intuitions of thegreat religions, the revolutionary insights of the new sciences, andthe emerging values of the youth and alternative cultures. Thelatter two elements arise on the margins of Logos-based civilization:the former on the margins of mainstream science, and the latter onthe margins of mainstream society. They merit serious attention.

The dominant culture of the 20th century did not assimilate thescientific world picture that is now emerging at its close.2 For themost part, people still believe the universe is a soulless mechanism,life but a random accident, and the features of living species resultfrom a succession of accidental events in the history of biologicalevolution. This makes the distinctive features of human individualsa product of a fortuitous combination of their genes.

This view is mistaken, its implications misleading. The popularideas of Newton and Darwin, the basic sources for today's dominantviews of life and universe, have been overtaken by new discoveries.The new physics and the new biology lay the foundations of anentirely different concept of the world. In light of recent findingsthe cosmos resembles a living organism more than it does a deadrock. Space and time are united as its dynamic matrix; matter isvanishing as a fundamental feature of reality, retreating beforeenergy; and continuous fields are replacing discrete particles asfoundations of an energy-bathed universe. Life is a web of evolvingrelations, interfacing and integrating its myriad elements. The bios-phere is born within the womb of the universe, and mind andconsciousness are born in the womb of the biosphere. Humans arepart of the biosphere and resonate with the web of life on theplanet.

In a remarkable but perhaps not accidental confluence, theemerging cultures also evolve an integrated view of the human andthe natural worlds, and relocate the human being in the embrace ofnature. The "integral culture" that emerges in many parts of theworld inspires a new spirituality. It connects people, harmonizesefforts, and discovers higher common ground beyond social, politi-cal, racial, and cultural differences. Its basic elements are personallyexperienced spirituality, a deeper ecological awareness, and moresustainable life-values.3

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The shift at the growing edge of science and the growing marginsof society is as deep as any that accompanied previous great transi-tions. It holds out the promise that the emerging civilization ofHolos will recover the human dimension lost by Logos and inte-grate it in a higher, more embracing spirituality-laced rationality,conducive to life and wellbeing in a complex, information-imbuedand vulnerable global setting.

CONCLUSIONS

We live in the midst of the latest of history's civilizational transi-tions. Innovations in the new technologies lead to higher levels ofresource production, catalyzing societal complexity, environmentalimpact, and population growth. Innovations in social and politicalorganization and economic systems should follow, together withchanges in the dominant values, ethics, and worldviews. But these"soft" factors are not yet sufficiently developed. As a result the cur-rent transition is chaotic, its outcome uncertain.

How to accelerate the development of the soft social and culturalunderbelly of the hard core of technological innovations that con-vulse contemporary societies? Producing further plans and projectsis not enough: in the absence of the political will of the leadershipthey remain on the level of rhetoric, paper tigers without power orbite. Political will, however, is not likely to be mustered until there isa fundamental readiness on the part of mainstream society toembrace the required measures. This calls for a culture capable ofmotivating adaptive changes in lifestyles, professional ambitions,political preferences, and human relations to the environment.These are deep-seated changes, presupposing a shift from themind-set of Logos to that of Holos.

In history, civilizational change has generally resulted from fun-damentally altered ways of life, and then it took many generationsto unfold. More rapid change has also occurred, but usually underthe impact of external influences, such as foreign migrations orarmed conquests. Evidently, these are neither practicable nor desir-able today. Change must come from the inside, and it must unfoldfast enough to enculture a new globally interdependent civilization,

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stabilizing the runaway processes initiated at the end of the 20thcentury.

Social and environmental relations are already shifting, impact-ing on the lifeways of contemporary people. But the change cat-alyzed by these shifts in the dominant civilization, though it isoccurring, is not occurring fast enough. The mind-set of Logos,while increasingly questioned, still holds sway. This is a recipefor instability and disaster. The soft factors of social, political andeconomic organization need to come in line with the hard factorsof technologically induced change in man-man and man-naturerelations.

People's worldviews, values, and ethics need to change anddevelop, so as to catalyze change in the world around them. AsGandhi said, people themselves must be the change they wish to seein the world. To change oneself means changing the consciousnessthrough which one views oneself, others, nature, and the universe atlarge. Mythos created a mythical consciousness; Theos a theisticconsciousness. Logos in turn brought us the logical consciousness ofWestern rationality stripped, in the modern age, of its subjectiveand theistic elements. Another change has now become imperative.The age that dawns on us requires a holistic consciousness, capableof stabilizing our emerging social and ecological relations throughevolved societal structures and public behaviors. This is the con-sciousness the Club of Budapest calls "planetary consciousness."

The Club of Budapest is dedicated to facilitating the evolution ofplanetary consciousness through parallel activities in the sphere ofscience, art, and the spiritual domain. Its "Manifesto on the Spiritof Planetary Consciousness" signed by the Dalai Lama, PeterUstinov, Yehudi Menuhin, and other members, offers a rationale:

Eliminating social and economic ills and frustrations calls for consid-erable socioeconomic development, and that is not possible withoutbetter education, information, and communication. These, however,are blocked by the absence of socioeconomic development, so that avicious cycle is produced: underdevelopment creates frustration, andfrustration, giving rise to defective behaviors, blocks development.This cycle must be broken at its point of greatest flexibility, and thatis the development of the spirit and consciousness of human beings.Achieving this objective does not preempt the need for socioeconomic

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development with all its financial and technical resources, but callsfor a parallel mission in the spiritual field. Unless people's spirit andconsciousness evolves to the planetary dimension, the processes thatstress the globalized society/nature system will intensify and create ashockwave that could jeopardize the entire evolution toward a peace-ful and cooperative global society. This would be a setback forhumanity and a danger for everyone. Nurturing the evolution ofhuman spirit and consciousness is the first vital cause shared by thewhole of the human family.4

"Planetary consciousness," the Manifesto notes, "is the knowingas well as the feeling of the vital interdependence and essential one-ness of humankind, and the conscious adoption of the ethics andthe ethos that this entails."

The evolution of planetary consciousness is the supreme chal-lenge. The opening decades of the Third Millennium will eitherwitness the rise of planetary consciousness, or they will confront thespecter of spreading social destabilization, ecological degradation,and the breakdown of the currently dominant civilization.

Notes

1. I am grateful to Alastair M. Taylor, co-author of Civilizations: Past and Present forthese terms, and some of the elements of the worldviews which they symbolize.

2. See the author's The Whispering Pond: A Personal Guide to the Emerging Vision ofScience, Shaftesbury and Rockport, 1996; and Third Millennium: The Challenge andthe Vision, London, Gaia Books, 1997.

3. See Third Millennium, op. cit., and Duane Elgin, Global Consciousness Change:Indicators of an Emerging Paradigm, Millennium Project, San Anselmo, CA, 1997.

4. The Manifesto on the Spirit of Planetary Consciousness. Reproduced in ThirdMillennium, op. cit.D

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