1982CapraFtheTurningPoint

Edition: 1st Flamingo (First published in the USA by Simon & Schuster 1982 and Great Britain by Wildwood House 1982)

"Modern economics, strictly speaking, is little over three hundred years old. It was founded in the seventeenth century by Sir William Petty, professor of anatomy at Oxford and of music at London, as well as physician to the army of Oliver Cromwell." (Capra 1983: 204)

Sir William Petty authored the "labour theory of value", which was adopted by Adam Smith, Ricardo and Karl Marx. (Capra 1983: 205)

John Locke "came up with the idea that prices were also determined objectively, by demand and supply." (Capra 1983: 206)

A difference between these two price mechanisms is the value of ideas, which the labour theory did not consider. Child mentioned that Locke acknowledged the increase of the value of land because of "reason". Locke's thoughts seem to have thus incorporated the value of ideas.

"There is, in fact, a critical level of well-being which has been shown to lead to a rapid reduction in birth rate and an approach to a balanced population." (Capra 1983: 227)

"An important aspect of the necessary revision of our value system will be the redefinition of 'work.'[1] ... The modern industrial worker no longer feels responsible for his work nor takes pride in it. The result is products that show less and less craft, artistic quality, or taste." (Capra 1983: 244-245)

"Experience has shown repeatedly that patients who are told that they have only six months to live will, indeed, not live longer. Statements of this kind have a powerful impact on the patient's mind/body system - they seem to act almost as a magic spell - and should therefore never be made. In the past, psychosomatic self-healing has always been associated with faith in some treatment - a drug, the power of a healer, perhaps a miracle. In a future approach to health and healing, based on the new holistic paradigm, it should be possible to acknowledge the individual's potential for self-healing directly, with no need for any conceptual crutches, and to develop psychological techniques that will facilitate the healing process." (Capra 1983: 363) The same statement can be made about 'chronic' diagnoses.

"The dangers of such cultural conditioning are well illustrated by a recent experiment in which eight volunteers gained admission to various American mental institutions by saying that they had been hearing voices. These pseudopatients found themselves irrevocably labeled as schizophrenics in spite of their subsequent normal behaviour. Ironically, many of the other inmates soon recognized that the pseudopatients were normal, but the hospital personnel were unable to acknowledge their normal behavior once they had been diagnosed as psychotic. (Capra 1983: 420-421)

To perceive reality exclusively in the transpersonal mode is incompatible with adequate functioning and survival in the everyday world. To experience an incoherent mixture of both modes of perception without being able to integrate them is psychotic. But to be limited to the Cartesian mode of perception alone is also madness; it is the madness of our dominant culture." (Capra 1983: 421)

".. the deep ecology movement recognizes that ecological balance will require profound changes in our perception of the role of human beings in the planetary ecosystem. In short, it will require a new philosophical and religious basis... Indeed, the idea of the individual being linked to the cosmos is expressed in the Latin root of the world religion, religare ('to bind strongly'), as well as in the Sanskrit yoga, which means union. (Capra 1983: 458)

Capra has some valid arguments but his subjectivity drove him to an imbalanced other side. He for example wrote that ideas about a "Goddess" should replace ideas about "God" (Capra 1983: 463).

[1] Capra referred to "Roberson, James. 1979. The Sane Alternative, pp. 88 ff. St. Paul, Minn.: River Basin Publishing Company. (Telford: J. Roberston, 1978.)" and "Roszak, Theodore. 1978. Person/Planet, pp. 205 ff. New York: Doubleday/Anchor. (London: Gollancz, 1979.)"