The Club of Zagreb

The Club of Zagreb continues the intentions of The Club of Rome in a completely new way

Here is a first, rough draft, to be corrected.

The Club of Zagreb (CoZ) is not a reproduction of The Club of Rome (CoR), on the contrary: We learn from the CoR experience, build on some of the key insights and traces their members produced; and we avoid some (can we say that from today's perspective?) wrong turns. Here are some of the differences: 
  • CoR focused on studying the future prospects of mankind, and averting people of risks. CoZ will do systemic interventions that obviously and radically improve the future prospects of makind, through projects that are good business and escellent academic work, and which cultivate the spirit of playful responsibility, creativity and daring.
  • CoR talked to the people in power. But those people draw their power from existing structures! CoZ empowers young (in spirit, or in career situation) people to 'play their career game' in a game-changing way (by co-creating better systems—and blossoming in their careers through 'first-mover advantages'). The CoZ mission is "to empower the young (in spirit) people to co-create the kind of world they will want to live in."
  • The interesting question, of course, is how exactly to do this. The CoZ is motivated by the fact that there is an obvious strategy—elaborated in The Game-Changing Game. Interestingly, much of this strategy was obvious to some of CoR key people already in 1968 when CoR was initiated, as indicated next.
  • Erich Jantsch's key insight presented at his 1968 meeting keynote "global system lacks feedback therefore control" ignited not great flow of activity (as King expected) but great confusion. And yet it pointed at a direction to follow: Systemic thinking; and systemic change.
  • Hasan Özbekhan, Erich Jantsch and Alexander Christakis were responsible for conceptualizing the original prospectus of the Club of Rome titled "The Predicament of Mankind" Their proposal to empower grass-roots change through dialog again seemed 'confusing.' A more 'scientific' stream won in 1970 (the simulation study leading to Limits to Growth); already in 1970 Özbekhan resigned from CoR.
  • Jantsch's insightful 1969 MIT report about the future of the university was an intelligent man's reasoning about what needed to happen for the things to turn out right. Two things improve the prospects today: Awareness of risks (risk society) and (most importantly)—the IT. What Jantsch was proposing then is today not an idealistic undertaking but good business! And a way in which what has been revered as 'progress' can continue. This line of development (socio-technical system design) will be a core focus of CoZ.
  • There is however more than one: Twelve hours before he would pass away, in 1984, Peccei dictated to his secretary: "Human development is the most important goal" (his message to the world expounded in "Human Quality"). How could a culture that cultivates human quality realistically emerge? Perhaps Erwin Laszlo had a useful hunch when he (as a CoR member) suggested to Peccei that spirituality was lacking in his scheme, and then ended up creating (on Peccei's suggestion) The Club of Budapest? And yet consider this interesting detail (developed in Vision Quest)—that nobody really seems to have undertaken what should have been the most natural strategy to further those ends—the work with the demonstratably and distinctly limited and limiting 'foundations for truth and worldview' or 'foundations for sensemaking', which (as Werner Heisenberg observed—see Reflection 6  in the Academic Research / Science node) shaped (reduced?) our present culture and worldview. How about just creating a solid foundation, by repairing the faults that were diagnosed by leading scientists a half-century ago? So that our culture as a whole, including ethics, religion, 'human development'... may continue to evolve?
 
See this note about Hasan Özbekhan, click the Toward a General Theory of Planning link.

See the interview with Peccei (Scroll down to 0036) at the World Futures Conference Caracas 1983. 

The Club olf Zagreb is scheduled to have its first / inaugural meeting at The Europe House Zagreb, Jurisiceva 1,  Thursday, Sept. 27 or Friday, Sept. 28th, 2012. 

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