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Reconnecting with the Club of Rome

Posted on April 29, 2012October 11, 2018 by kenbausch

Agoras received an invitation from Roberto Peccei, son of Aurelio Peccei, to attend the 40th anniversary celebration of the publication of The Limits to Growth at a special Club of Rome session at the Smithsonian.  We sent a small delegation.  Roberto extended this invitation during a cordial conversation in which Aleco and Roberto traded stories about Aurelio.  Afterward Aleco said that he kept flashing back to discussions with Aurelio because Roberto sounded just like his father.

Aurelio Peccei (founder of the Club of Rome) enlisted Hasan Ozbekhan and Aleco Christakis to apply a systems approach to the impending world meta-problem, or problematique.  Hasan and Aleco presented their work, The Predicament of Mankind, to the inaugural meeting of the Club of Rome in 1970.  The Club rejected this proposal in favor of an MIT proposal that lead to the 1972 publication of The Limits to Growth.  For more on this history, see Chapter One of A Democratic Approach.

The message from the stage dealt with the fragile global situation.  Discussions of issues of sustainability, resilience, and conservation have been making their way to younger and younger audiences in our classrooms. The social challenges associated with transformational change have been elevated in the hierarchy of scholarly research.  For all that, little progress has been made on the ground to overcome major sustainability problems.  The onstage discussions carried an undercurrent of hopeful uncertainty.

Beyond the banners of the speakers’ platform, a dynamic community that has been wrestling with transformational change is increasingly discovering itself.  From differing backgrounds and fields of study, people had gathered to join scholarship with the pragmatics of community campaigns.  The Club feels porous – for while individual members of the Club clearly hold strong and potentially strongly disagreeing views, the mix of some 300 participants included citizens and social activists whose distinct campaigns are equally worthy of high praise.

From the viewpoint of the Institute for 21st Century Agoras, the Club of Rome is seeking to be inclusive with respect to perspectives on the way that we might go about living together responsibly on our planet.  The undercurrent feels deep and massive.  And this gives us hope.

 

4 thoughts on “Reconnecting with the Club of Rome”

  1. dialogicdesign says:
    April 29, 2012 at 1:33 pm

    Ken, as I look at the Club of Rome website I see that they include Mesarovic Mankind at the Turning Point as the 1974 “Second Report to the Club of Rome” http://www.clubofrome.org/?p=1168 . I do not see the Problematique any more. I had it bookmarked to the old site, and they removed it from their history. I think one of our Board should help them restore that history.

  2. jmcdonald says:
    April 30, 2012 at 10:20 am

    Dear Ken,

    My warmest congratulations of your launching of this blog. I joined the board of USA-COR in 1985, and until recently, was chairman of the board. I am a strong backer of the Club of Rome and a friend of Mr. Peccei.

    With warm regards,

    Ambassador John W. McDonald (ret.)
    Chairman and CEO
    Institute for Multi-Track Diplomacy
    (703) 528-3863
    http://www.imtd.org

  3. tomflanagan says:
    May 2, 2012 at 3:38 pm

    Ken, I was struck by the frequency with which participants at the event spoke of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Even without being present on the stage, their voice was alive within the audience.

    Tom

  4. tomflanagan says:
    May 15, 2012 at 12:50 pm

    Ken, You might find Tony Judge’s view evocative.

    http://www.laetusinpraesens.org/docs10s/onto2052.php
    Engendering 2052 through Re-imagining the Present

    Review of 2052: a Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years as presented to the Club of Rome

Comments are closed.

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Founded in 2002 by Aleco Christakis and Kenneth Bausch, the Institute for 21st Century Agoras is a globally networked non-profit organization dedicated to the democratic transformation of society and culture.

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