Dr Ervin Laszlo: Our future could well depend on Global Woman

Dr Ervin Laszlo

Our future could well depend on Global Woman

Phenomenal Women are women who are urgently needed to create a viable, sustainable, and flourishing world for the human species. The reason for this claim can be briefly stated.
We are on the threshold of a new era in the adventurous history of the human species on this planet. We have colonised almost all liveable spaces and are tapping almost all readily available natural resources. Further improvements in these areas are limited, except for the possibilities of tapping solar and vacuum energies. The requirement now is not the access and accumulation of more physical resources, but the proper, human and humane use of those resources.

Humanity is a complex organism, made up of other complex organisms. It is a global system composed of living human beings. Such systems are inherently unstable: They need to maintain themselves in the condition known to physicists as a state far from thermal and chemical equilibrium. This is only possible if all the elements are constantly in communication with all the other elements, and together are dedicated to maintaining the whole system. In order to achieve this condition, there must be a fine balance between diversity and unity in the system. A balance between the number and the nature of the elements that form the system, and their mutually constitutive relations. In plain language, the system must have the right diversity coupled with the right unity.

Now place this insight into the context of the human condition today. We have reached the maximum readily available physically accessible resources, including the spaces and territories that harbor those resources. We have not reached, however, the necessary integration – the unity – for the effective use of these resources. We have overextended our powers in one direction, and underextended them in the other. We are too complex, too diversified and too little integrated. We are poorly, inadequately unified. We need to correct this imbalance if we are to set forth the adventure of human life and civilization on this planet.

We need to correct this imbalance if we are to set forth the adventure of human life and civilization on this planet.

How does this relate to the role of women? What does it imply in regard to that role? The answer is, to recognize the urgent need to bring into play the basic and effective capabilities of women to shape our world. We need to insert feminine values and capabilities to balance masculine values and capabilities. The former are underexploited, and the latter are overused. But what are these urgently needed feminine capabilities? They are those that women have always brought to the human world: The capability to create family, and community, with effective solidarity based on empathy. The masculine capabilities for exploring, conquering, and gathering need to be balanced by the feminine capabilities of community- building. Today we do not have a global community; we only have a global system of diverse, competing and often conflicting elements in urgent need of being built into a community.
To make it plain, we need phenomenal women – like those celebrated in this book. This does not mean just women in leadership roles. A leadership role in today’s world selects for masculine capabilities: Aggressiveness, oriented toward “winning” – toward conquest. When women fill such roles, they espouse masculine capabilities: they are then female bodies with male powers. Phenomenal women are truly women: Individuals who bring the power not of conquest but of community to this world.
The idea of “Global Woman” is, for me, the idea of a true woman whose values and capabilities create a true community of life on this planet, overcoming the jumble of competing, self- concerned interests. All of us, men and women, can be grateful to Mirela Sula and her Global Woman enterprise for bringing forward such phenomenal global women. Our future could well depend on the success of this enterprise.
Ervin Laszlo September 2017

Who is Dr Ervin Laszlo

ERVIN LASZLO, Doctorat d’Etat Sorbonne (1970) is Director of the Laszlo Institute of New Paradigm Research (Italy), Founder and President of The Club of Budapest, Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, Member of the Hungarian Academy of Science, the International Academy of Philosophy of Science, Senator of the International Medici Academy, and Editor of the international periodical World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research. He is the recipient of the Goi Peace Prize (2002), the International Mandir of Peace Prize (2005), the Conacreis Holistic Culture Prize (2009), the Ethics Prize of Milano (2014) and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 and 2005. Laszlo has Honorary PhD’s from the United States, Canada, Finland, and Hungary and is the author or co-author of fifty-four books translated into twenty-four languages.

Philosopher, scientist, humanist, dedicated to the global transformation we need for a sustainable and flourishing life on the planet, and to gaining a better understanding of who we are: beings, it appears, with a mortal body and an immortal consciousness.