Fritjof Capra is a physicist and best selling author of The Tao of
Physics (1975), The Turning Point: Science, Society and the
Rising Culture (1984), Uncommon Wisdom: Conversations with
Remarkable People (1989), and coauthor with Brother David
Steindl Rast and Thomas Matus of Belonging to the Universe:
Explorations of the Frontiers of Science and Spirituality (1991).
He is currently the director of the Elmwood Institute, an
ecological think tank located in Berkeley, California, that
sponsors educational conferences, lectures, and seminars within
the framework of the new paradigm. We reached him in
Washington, D.C., just prior to the North American release of
the movie Mindwalk, a screen adaptation of The Turning Point.
ABE : Do you see the new paradigm breaking through, or is it still an
underground phenomenon?
FRITJ0F C : I work within an institutional framework that I have created
called the Elmwood Institute, which is an ecological think tank located in
Berkeley, California. I organize conferences and lectures, seminars and
workshops within that framework. And what we have been doing, especially
over the last couple of years, is talk to corporations, and I think this is where
the ecological paradigm is now having one of its most effective impacts.
More and more corporations, especially small and medium size companies,
have recognized that they need to manage their affairs in an ecologically
responsible way, to be aware of the environmental impact of their operations.
So there's a whole school of ecologically conscious management that is
emerging, and we are very much working with those pioneer managers. I
think that's one of the more interesting and important areas where the new
paradigm is emerging.
ABE : In The Turning Point, and also in Mindwalk, there is discussion
about new macroeconomic patterns and how they demand the awareness of
social costs in economic planning. Can you talk about how this inclusion of
social costs actually works in practice for corporations?
FRITJ0F C : Well, what works in practice is that you tackle the principle
stumbling block to sane ecologically and socially responsible work. And that's
the notion of unlimited growth. Economists, businessmen, and politicians
are obsessed by the notion of unrestricted, unlimited economic growth. That
notion of growth is the major driving force behind economic policy making,
both in business and politics, and at the same time, tragically, it's the main
driving force behind the environmental destruction, and also the social
destruction that we can see around us. So, what you need to do is to ask,
"Which enterprises should be allowed to grow and which shouldn't?" And
there the idea of sustainability has come to the fore as the key concept or
criterion. What it means is that a sustainable society is one that can satisfy
its needs without diminishing the chances of survival for future generations,
that is, without diminishing the planet's resources, without destroying our
life support systems.
ABE : Now it's interesting that the term "sustainable growth" or
"sustainable development" has a very different meaning coming out of the
mouths of ecologically conscious people on the one hand, and politicians on
the other. Do you think the politicians actually understand what it means?
FRITJ0F C : Well, some do and some don't. Most of them use the term as
a buzzword and end up distorting it.
ABE : A lot of them sound as if they're just using a new term for old style
growth.
FRITJ0F C : There's a confusion between sustainable and sustained. You
see, sustained growth is growth that goes on and on. Sustainable refers to
the whole system, actually to the whole planet and society.
ABE : In The Turning Point you talk about the "entropy state" of most
economics in connection with the second law of thermodynamics. Do you
have any ideas about how we might resolve that particular difficulty?
FRITJ0F C : This is a difficult question. We need to develop technologies
that exemplify a certain simplicity and a certain elegance, rather than ever
more complication. And so we need to ask, what really are the human needs?
I think it is related to the question of sustainability. Yes, we need to create
technologies and administer these structures that satisfy our needs. But we
also must ask, do we really need cars? Are trains and buses better than cars
to get from here to there? What about walking or cycling? And is it always
necessary to go from one place to another? If we change our housing patterns,
our work patterns, the whole commuter traffic pattern, maybe we wouldn't
need to travel so much. And if we change the patterns of production, maybe
we wouldn't need to ship goods around from one place to the other and
back. So, there is a certain simplicity which then brings with it a certain
elegance that we need to acquire. And we can look into nature and see how
the technologies of natural systems work, because there we see the simplicity
and elegance very beautifully. That's a difficult task, but certainly one we
need to pursue.
ABE : One of the underlying thoughts here is what you call you quote
Bateson "systemic wisdom."
FRITJ0F C : Yes, and Schumacher also made that point, to move from
complicated to simple systems, which are not necessarily less complex or less
sophisticated, but show that kind of natural elegance you see in the
"systemic wisdom" of nature.
ABE : I guess a lot of corporations are beginning to understand that natural
elegance through the concept of downsizing.
FRITJ0F C : Yes, and decentralizing.
ABE : One of the things that comes through very strong I in our writings
and also in the movie Mindwalk is Gaia ecology. Could you talk about Gaia
ecology in relation to transpersonal ecology?
FRITJ0F C : I think the philosophical thought that ties those areas
together is that of deep ecology. When you take ecological awareness at its
deepest level, you become aware of the fundamental interconnectedness and
interdependence of all phenomena. You become aware that we are embedded
in larger systems and in the cyclical processes of nature, as individuals and
as societies. This sense of being embedded, of belonging, then becomes a
sense of the spiritual. And then you belong, as Gary Snyder says, to the
earth's household, and that's the best translation I know of the Greek word
oikos from which the word ecology comes. Brother David Steindl Rast
develops this thought in the book Belonging to the Universe which we
created together. When you belong to the earth's household, you belong to a
community, therefore you behave in a certain way, and that becomes the
basis of an ecological ethic. Then you ask yourself, to develop this ecological
ethic as a society, what is the basis? I just said that when you belong to a
community you behave in a certain way. But this cannot be derived in a
scientific or logical manner. This is a psychologically motivated impulse,
and the psychological motivation of belonging is a transpersonal motivation.
That's how I understand the term " transpersonal you go beyond the
individual person and you connect the individual person, namely yourself,
with the whole.
ABE : The character Sonya (played by Liv Ullman) in Mindwalk, in
response to someone's question, says, "Yes, ultimately, whether we like it or
not, we're all part of one inseparable web of relationships
FRITJ0F C : The film was created and directed by my brother. For me
the film is one more tool in an educational campaign that the world now so
urgently needs, to promote this shift of thinking and of values. The
character Sonya obviously represents me in terms of ideas, and she gives
voice to these ideas that were explored in The Turning Point.
ABE : The movie points at certain spiritual concepts such as karma, and
the idea of being individually responsible to this new sense of community.
The idea of karma can be understood in an esoteric, mystical way. But how
does that concept become real now in this new sense?
FRITJ0F C : An ecological interpretation of karma would be that the
universe is nonlinearly interconnected. So whatever you put out eventually
will come back, because all ecological processes are cyclical. We're all
embedded in these cycles. So when you throw something away, there is no
"away" you can throw it to. It's all part of a cycle which will come back.
And if that something which you throw away is toxic, it will come back to
haunt you, or it will come back to haunt your children in future generations.
That, to me, is the idea of karma.
ABE : Can we hope now, because of the change in the power structure in the
United Nations, that we might be able to move away from the imperialistic
model and towards something that's more holistic?
FRITJ0F C : Well, that's certainly the hope, but how long this will take I
have no idea. The United Nations has a very important role to play because
we don't want a world government. The world has become much smaller,
much more interconnected. But we don't want a world government. We want
a coordinating body, a body that coordinates individual, national, and regional
development. And that's the role that the U.N. should play. I think what we
need is decentralization and cultural pluralism, to have different cultures in
different parts of the world being autonomous, but to have them coordinate
their efforts. The most serious problems we are facing today are global
problems. No country alone, for example, can hope to solve the problem of
global warming, or ozone depletion.
ABE : Could you talk a little bit about what the movie is about?
FRITJ0F C : Mindwalk is a dialogue involving three people. We don't talk
about spirituality directly, because in my experience it's much better to
imply it and to live it, rather than to talk about it endlessly. The place where
this dialogue unfolds is a holy place, Mont Saint Michel, which is a Christian
sacred site, and was a Druidic sacred site before that. It's filmed in such a way
that the wholeness and holiness, the sanity and beauty of the place, shine
through in every part of the film. And that was our way to include spirituality.
ABE : So you were working with a symbolic model there?
FRITJ0F C : Yes, very much so. See, the film is a dialogue and it
addresses the conscious mind through the dialogue. But at each stage the
ideas in the dialogue are associated with metaphors, very powerful visual
metaphors. And so the subconscious is addressed through the metaphors and
through the scenery. The whole of Mont Saint Michel is the central metaphor
of the film. And so we address the conscious mind and the subconscious at
the same time.
ABE : I see. Part of what is being dealt with there is the idea that physicists
don't have a language or a way of exploring these ideas. Does the film provide
that kind of language, a basis from which people can discuss these things?
FRITJ0F C : Yes, it does so in a language that is even simpler than the
one I use in my books. And that, of course, was a big challenge. Many people
who saw the film told us that for the first time they had understood what
matter is made of, and what the essence of the new science of matter is. So
I'm very excited by that.
ABE: Here you are defying the whole Hollywood movie concept. The one
thing a scriptwriter is not allowed to do is create "talking heads,"
FRITJ0F C : This was my brother's basic idea, to have the dialogue be
the basic structure, the center of the film, and then to string these visual
metaphors along the dialogue. He sometimes says it's an antifilm, because
it's so much against the Hollywood recipe. I also work a lot with dialogue in
the book Belonging to the Universe, and also at the Elmwood Institute where
we sponsor a lot of public dialogues. Because what we need is to explore
ideas. I always think of dialoguing as walking around an idea together,
looking at it from different sides. And when you have an audience, they can
really experience the thinking process.
ABE : This whole idea goes back, doesn't 't to ancient Greece, where the
dialogos meant people speaking the "Word" in a sacred sense.
FRITJ0F C : And in particular the dialogue format has been used
repeatedly in the history of Western culture at turning points or crucial
junctures, such as the Socratic dialogues at the dawn of philosophy, or the
Galilean dialogue after which Mindwalk is actually patterned. Galileo wrote
his famous book about the Copernican system as a fictitious dialogue
involving three people. And so dialogue has been used again and again to
explore new ideas in the history of science and philosophy.
The way Galileo set it up is that one person represents the new paradigm.
His historic book is called Dialogue Between the Two Principle World
Systems, which are the Aristotelian/Ptolomeic on the one hand, the old
paradigm, and the Copernican/Galilean as the new paradigm. So one of
those Renaissance speakers in Galileo's book represents the author's ideas,
the new paradigm; the other one represents the Aristotelian, old paradigm
ideas; and the third one is a neutral bystander who hosts the whole event.
When my brother wrote the story for the film, he transposed this into our
time. So there is the physicist, Liv Ullman, representing my ideas, and there's
a conservative politician representing the old paradigm because we wanted
this film to have a political impact. And the third person, the host, is a poet,
and he's very eccentric, because we work a lot with humor and eccentricity,
to avoid the feeling of a lecture. The really new and radical thing about this
recreation of the Galilean dialogue is that the new paradigm is presented by
a woman. And that's our feminist statement in the film.
ABE : That's really a deep signature for our time, with the reemergence of
the goddesses. Coming back to your book Belonging to the Universe with
Brother David Steindl Rast, what led you to create a book with him?
FRITJ0F C : He is a Benedictine monk, Austrian born like myself, living
at Big Sur in California in a monastery. The way it happened was that in
1985 we had an Elmwood symposium, which was our first invitational
symposium. We had founded the institute just a few months earlier, and we
invited the country's leading new paradigm thinkers to ask critical questions
about new paradigm thinking. We wanted to define our baseline, to see
where we start from, scientifically and philosophically. Brother David was in
that group. At that symposium I presented five criteria for the new paradigm
in science, and then he and a colleague, another monk at the monastery, a
little bit tongue in cheek, presented five parallel criteria for the paradigm
shift in theology. And we found it so interesting that we started exploring
this in conversations and finally began to tape the conversations, which
eventually evolved into the book. Everything is spoken and transcribed. We
didn't write anything. The book is the Western equivalent of the Tao of Physics,
because it compares the new thinking in science with Christian theology.
ABE : What's the main thesis of that? How do those things compare?
FRITJ0F C : The main thesis is that both science and theology are based
on human experience, and that the ecological paradigm, which is now
emerging in science, is based on the human experience of a sense of
belonging. That's why we chose the title Belonging to the Universe. And this
is also the very essence of religious experience, which is then interpreted and
analyzed by theology. So, what we do is we relate the statements of science
and theology to this basic human experience of belonging, and we
reinterpret, or rather Brother David does, the basic concepts of Christian
theology from that ecological point of view. You could say it's an ecologizing
of Christianity.
ABE : How would that compare to what Matthew Fox is doing?
FRITJ0F C : I think it's pretty close.
ABE : Does it go deeper?
FRITJ0F C : Well, it has science in it. And so, because it's a dialogue, we
constantly shift back and forth from science to theology. I would say that it's
also more socially and politically oriented. We talk about the political
implications of this ecological way of seeing the world.
ABE : Can you bring those five criteria to mind?
FRITJ0F C : Each one is a shift from the old way of thinking to the new.
The first is the shift from the parts to the whole. The second is the shift from
structure to process. The third is the shift from the notion of an objective
science to what I call an epistemic science, a science in which epistemology,
the process of knowledge, plays a central role. You cannot talk about reality
without talking about how you know reality. The fourth criterion is a shift
away from the metaphor of architecture in relation to knowledge, as when
we say "the basic building blocks of matter," etc., and a shift towards the
network as a central metaphor. And the fifth is the shift from truth to
approximation the notion that we cannot know the truth rationally, ever.
We can only approximate it.
ABE : And what was your Benedictine monk's response to that?
FRITJ0F C : Well it was pretty much the same criteria applied to
Revelations and the various concepts in theology. This list is actually at the
beginning of the book. That's how we start off our dialogue.
ABE : So, from his point of view, then, as a Christian, he's obviously living
in this new paradigm. Does Brother David have anything to say about how
Christianity really works in this new paradigm?
FRITJ0F C : Yes. We started out talking about religious experience and
the interpretation of religious experience in theology the notion of God and
the notion of sin, all these basic concepts and ideas. And we talked about
paradigms and paradigm shifts. And I asked him, "What is specific about the
Christian paradigm? What is specific about Christianity?" And he said and
this to me is one of the most beautiful parts of the book he said, "The
specific role of redemption in the Christian sense, and the specific teaching of
Jesus Christ, is a transition from alienation to community." Sin is alienation,
and Christianity has to be understood in terms of community. So when we
say in science "ecological," he says "ecumenical." He draws that parallel.
ABE : That's elegant and profound.
