The World Crisis — And What to Do About It

The following sections are included:

• Reviews of Is Science Neurotic?
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Preface
• Contents

The world is in crisis.

One would think that a book with a first sentence like that, written in 2020, has to be about the coronavirus pandemic. In what follows, I will indeed have some things to say about the pandemic. But this book was conceived long before the coronavirus unleashed its deadly attach upon humanity; it is about an older, and far more serious, world crisis. It is a crisis that stares us in the face, and yet in practice is all but ignored. Only token actions are taken in response to it. The many manifestations of the crisis tend to be considered in isolation from one another; they are not understood to be diverse aspects of one gigantic crisis that menaces our future. There is hardly any understanding as to what the nature of the crisis is, and almost none as to the key thing that needs to be done to put a stop to it. A basic message of this book is that many of the very serious global problems that threaten our future have a common origin, a common cause, and require for their resolution, in important ways, common actions. It is only if we see and understand the interconnections between these diverse global problems that we are likely to appreciate the full extent and seriousness of the world crisis that we face — and are, much more importantly, likely to be able to summon up the capacity to solve these problems…

Humanity is confronted by two great problems of learning: learning about the universe, and about ourselves and other forms of life as a part of the universe; and learning how to create a genuinely civilised, enlightened, wise world. We have solved the first great problem of learning, but have not yet solved the second one. That puts us into a situation of extreme danger. All our global problems stem from that source. The world is, as a result, in a state of unprecedented crisis that threatens to get worse and worse, more and more terrifying, as time goes by. Now that we have solved the first great problem of learning, it is a matter of extreme urgency that we discover how to set about solving the second one…

Our world is in deep trouble. And the reason is, as we have seen, that we have solved the first great problem of learning in creating modern science and technology, but we have not solved the second one — the problem of learning how to become civilised. It is that combination of solving the first problem and failing to solve the second one that puts us into a situation of unprecedented danger, and is responsible for almost all the global problems that now threaten our future…

The following sections are included:

• The Enlightenment Blunder
• From Knowledge-Inquiry to Wisdom-Inquiry
• First Argument: Problem-solving Rationality
• Second Argument: Aim-Oriented Rationality
• Questions

There can be no doubt at all that, during the last decades, an enormous amount of immensely valuable work has been done, by scientists and other academics, in acquiring and improving knowledge and understanding of the diverse global problems that we face — the climate crisis, and what I have called the nature crisis (the degradation of the natural world) in particular. We would not know about these crises, and what their causes are, without the science. In addition, much work of great value has been done in developing technology required to tackle the climate crisis, such as the development of inexpensive solar panels, and new methods for storing power. Furthermore, working within science and academia as these exist today, shaped by standard empiricism and knowledge-inquiry, many scientists and other academics have worked hard to create initiatives in the social world that make a contribution towards resolving the crises we face: wind power and sun power have been developed; specific species have been saved from extinction. Others have worked hard to communicate, in an accessible way, to the public what the problems are, and what we need to do about them…

The following sections are included:

• The Problem
• How to Create Wisdom-Inquiry

The world is in crisis. There are many aspects to this crisis that we know about, as we have seen. There may well be other aspects of the crisis that, as yet, we know nothing about — threats to health, the natural world, the world we live in, so far unknown to us, the results of actions that we perform made possible by modern science and technology. In this final chapter I begin with a consideration of what we need to do to deal with what are, perhaps, the two most serious aspects of the world crisis: the climate crisis, and what could be called the nature crisis, the destruction of natural habitats, the tragic loss of wildlife, and devastating mass extinction of species. I then indicate what we need to do to come to grips with other aspects of the world crisis.

The following sections are included:

• References
• Index
• Reviews of Other Books by Nicholas Maxwell