Conference at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 3 December 2016

Text: Iván Vitányi

In the middle of the last century there seemed to be a new unique opportunity opening up for mankind. We felt there is a good chance for us to achieve welfare societies, well-being and democracy at the same time. Society was layered like a pyramid: the higher one climbed into the sphere of opportunities, welfare and power, the less people we found there. Humanity had the chance to choose from various forms of autocracy. Aristotle said about it that we could only step out of this system „when spindles will spin by themselves”.

The most recent events also prove this. The present-day state of the world is a widespread crisis which is unprecedented and does not resemble any of the crises before. In the past centuries, human thought was based on logos, ever since Descartes (Cogito, ergo sum). With this we have achieved what we have, but now the part-logoses clash and collide and replace one another.

At the moment it is only planetary thinking based on holos which can offer us a way out of the ever worsening crisis. This is the very basic concept of Budapest Club too.