FROM THE EDITOR – You will notice a link to a new contribution from the Institute: The “Looking to the Future” Podcast. People have been requesting that we offer something in an audio format and we are excited to be able to do so. We hope you enjoy. Also, the new “For the Media” section is now pretty filled out. It includes long-form articles as well as short pieces suitable for stand-alone use (presented without links to more in-depth material).
As far as being alerted about new content, clicking on the RSS feed button sends information about the six most recent posts to your RSS reader. If you would like to receive periodic updates on new posts and Institute activities just sign up on the blog list on this page.
Because of new book projects in the works, I will be doing new blog posts and podcasts less often in the months ahead (probably about one every four months). Writing projects include: A second edition of Hope and the Future (now with a new subtitle: Confronting Our Today’s Crisis of Purpose) that has recently been released (See www.HopeandtheFuture.com). To be released in the spring, a new book titled On the Evolution of Intimacy: A Brief Exploration Into the Past, Present, and Future of Gender and Love. A book that brings a cognitive psychology lens to the concept of Cultural Maturity titled, Rethinking How We Think: Integrative Meta-Perspective and the Cognitive “Growing Up” On Which Our Future Depends that I will be working on over the next year. And an overarching work that will likely take me a couple of additional years, titled Creative Systems Theory: a Comprehensive Theory of Purpose, Change, and Interrelationship in Human Systems.
There is an offer you might wish to take advantage of. Because we think the general audience book Hope and the Future: Confronting Today’s Crisis of Purpose makes such an important contribution, ICD Press is making available complementary pdf or e-book copies. (See www.hopeandthefuture.com to download whichever format you prefer.) It is also possible to get print copies in quantity at our cost if you intend to use the book for teaching purposes. (Contact the press at ICDPressinfo@gmail.com to make arrangements.)
All the best — Charles Johnston
- Understanding the Significance of Cultural Maturity and the Ideas of Creative Systems Theory—Current Perspective
(This is a lengthy piece. But it is particularly important for the perspective it provides.) I formally introduced the concept of Cultural Maturity and the basic ideas of Creative Systems Theory over forty years ago. In the years since, I and colleagues have worked to fill out these notions and train leaders in their application. The larger portion of my most recent work has focused on making these notions accessible to a broader audience. These efforts have included three new books—Hope and the Future, Culture Maturity, and Quick and Dirty Answers to the Biggest of Questions—along with a series of five educational websites and the Cultural Maturity Blog. These further efforts have added new clarity, depth, and detail to work that had already made a major contribution. ...
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FRONT PAGE NEWS
- Three Ways Artificial Intelligence Could Be the End of Us — And What Will Be Required For This Not to Be Our Fate
[I’ve touched on the gifts and curses nature of AI In several previous articles. Here ...
- Culturally Mature Perspective and the Climate Change Debate: How Asking the Wrong Question Results in Actions That Are, in Effect, Suicidal (an Update)
[In response to today’s extreme social/political polarization, I’ll be doing a series of articles that ...
- Bringing Big-Picture Perspective to the Often Pain-filled Confusions of the Immigration Debate
[In response to today’s extreme social/political polarization, I’ll be writing a series of articles over ...
- Health Care Reform as Political Crazy-Maker
[In response to today’s extreme social/political polarization, I’ll be writing a series of articles over ...
- The U.S. Presidential Election: Reflections From the Perspective of Cultural Maturity
Colleagues have asked if I would write something in response to Donald Trump’s Presidential election ...
REVIEWS
- Harari, Gazzaniga, Lent—Future-related Comparisons
It is not that often these days that I encounter future-related books that I read ...
- “Come On” Stephen Hawking: The Quandary of Free Will In an Apparently Deterministic Universe
Physicist Stephen Hawking introduces his recent series on public television, Genius, with the claim that ...
- Movie Reviews—A Few Films to Celebrate
The great majority of movies fail to make any kind of culturally mature contribution. But ...
- Tanya Tagaq—Canadian Inuit Throat Singer—BBC Interview
This interview with a quite remarkable young woman is pertinent here because it illustrates culturally ...
- Grading Barack Obama
I’m often asked what I think of Barack Obama’s leadership—how well I think he is ...
THE BIG PICTURE
- Science and Religion—Toward a Larger Picture (and How Creative Systems Theory Gets Us Very Close)
In my recent book Quick and Dirty Answers to the Biggest of Questions, I describe ...
- The “Big Band Theory”–Creative Systems Theory Takes On Existence As a Whole
In my book Quick and Dirty Answers to the Biggest of Questions, I describe how ...
- Rethinking Identity: How the Myth of the Individual Provides Essential Evidence for Cultural Maturity’s Needed “Growing Up” As a Species (and the Critical Importance of a More Complete Picture of Identity Going Forward)
There are few more important human questions than that of identity—just what it means to ...
- Perspective for a Time of Deep Discord: Why We See Things So Differently (and Why Just Trying To Talk About It Is So Often Not Helpful)
In these times of extreme social/political polarization it can be unsettling—indeed frightening—just how differently people ...
- Looking Out Twenty to Fifty Years: An Extended View Helps Put Cultural Maturity’s Challenge in Perspective
In an earlier post that looked at the concept of Cultural Maturity’s big-picture significance, I ...
CULTURAL IMMATURITY
- Techno-Brilliance, Techno-Stupidity, and the Dangers of Techno-Utopian Craziness—Needed Perspective if Our Future is to be Anything We Can Celebrate
My contribution as a futurist focuses on the future’s human dimension. The technological is part ...
- Transitional Absurdity: Contemporary Craziness and Its Antidote (Or How the Ludicrous Can Co-Exist With Hope)
Creative Systems Theory brings very big-picture, long-term perspective to the human condition. It addresses understanding ...
- What Cultural Maturity is Not #1: Techno-Utopian Delusions
In my recent book, Cultural Maturity: A Guidebook for the Future, I divide the most ...
- What Cultural Maturity is Not #2: Postmodern Pseudo-Significance
In my recent book, Cultural Maturity: A Guidebook for the Future, I divide the most ...
- What Cultural Maturity is Not #3: Confusing Spiritual Ideology With the Future’s Needed “Growing Up”
In my recent book, Cultural Maturity: A Guidebook for the Future, I divide the most ...
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ABOUT THE BLOG
Cultural Maturity—A Blog for the Future brings mature, big-picture perspective to the important questions of our time. It is a contribution of the Institute for Creative Development, a Seattle-based, non-profit, non-partisan, think tank and center for advanced leadership training. It is designed to support the sophistication of understanding and decision-making needed if we are to have a vital and creative human future.
The Cultural Maturity Blog is different from most content on the web in essential ways. It can be thought of as a “news blog.” But most conventional news becomes old news in a few days. A first way the site is different is that content is included only if it will likely be as or more significant five, ten, or even twenty years from now as it is today. A second way it is different helps clarify the first. The Institute’s work centers around the …
FAVORITE POSTS
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GENERAL QUESTIONS & COMMENTS
- From Rick Jackson on Climate Change and Culture’s Big Picture
- Several people have inquired about the recent leaks of classified information and how I see the issues involved. Here is how I responded to one such person:
- Sarah Stanwood poses a “perhaps inappropriate” question about the most recent presidential election
- Tom Able asks about implications for understanding what we should expect from the “Arab Spring”
- Dan Senour asks about the application of the concept of Cultural Maturity to the future of Israel
- Teacher Harry Coverston questions teacher’s role in student cynicism
FOR THE MEDIA
This series of posts is intended for use by the media: radio/TV, newspapers/magazines, bloggers and other media sources. It is also appropriate for individuals who might want material in a more easily shared format. Material is most often presented without links to more in-depth theoretical material and adapted so it can effectively stand alone without requiring the reader to have previous knowledge of culturally mature perspective.
Posts take a couple of forms. There are brief posts easily adapted for a variety of media. (I will often include these briefer posts in both a blog format [first-person] and an article format [third-person].) There are also long-form pieces. These extended pieces can be readily adapted for lengthier articles. They can also be used as introductory material for people new to these ideas. (They include overarching pieces that bring big-picture perspective to the concept of Cultural Maturity and the Creative Systems Theory as a whole.)
“LOOKING TO THE FUTURE” PODCASTS
The “Looking to the Future” Podcast series is now up and available. It includes podcasts that address current hot-button social issues from a culturally mature perspective (from above the partisan fray), a series originally done for the World Future Society that introduces the Concept of Cultural Maturity, and well as more in-depth conceptual pieces. Visit the podcast website.
FEATURED BOOK TITLES FROM ICD PRESS
I have now completed work on a new three book series (a ten year effort). Each book has similar intent—to help us make sense of the times in which we live and make sense of what the future will require of us—but has a slightly different focus and is written for a different audience.
Hope and the Future: Confronting Today’s Crisis of Purpose (ICD Press, 160 pages) Hope and the Future presents a brief but provocative examination of what hope for the future necessarily depends on. It introduces the concept of Cultural Maturity by examining critical questions and challenges today confronting us as a species. It describes how effectively addressing many of these new questions and challenges will require new human skills and capacities—new ways of thinking, relating, and acting.
Cultural Maturity—A Guidebook for the Future (With An Introduction to the Ideas of Creative Systems Theory) is a lengthier effort (640 pages) intended for those seriously interested in developing the new capacities that leadership in times ahead will require in all parts of our lives. It closely examines the changes that the concept of Cultural Maturity predicts and addresses how these changes are already beginning to alter our human landscape. And it introduces Creative Systems Theory as an important example of culturally mature conception.
Quick and Dirty Answers to the Biggest of Questions describes how the new kinds of understanding we need today not only helps us address modern day challenges, they also bring a new maturity and creativity to the more ultimate sorts of questions. It is intended for people who find particular fascination in overarching theory.
See the ICD Press page for further details and ordering information
Current & Ongoing Online Think Tanks
Our intent, long term, is to have ongoing think tanks (interactive global conversations) that attempt to address key issues from a culturally mature perspective be an important part of this blog. If you have interest in a particular topic and think you would like to be a future think tank participant, contact us at:
info@creativesystems.org
Additional ICD Learning Opportunities
Charles Johnston is available on a limited basis for trainings, think tank participation and facilitation, and speaking. He should be contacted directly for information about availability and for making arrangements. Learn more
Comments and Guest Contributor Policies
We welcome questions and comments from our readers. Contributions for the Questions and Comments section are drawn both from communications made directly to the editor and from responses to blog posts. Information about additional future ways to take part can be found in the “participate” section.
Links to the Cultural Maturity Blog’s Library
Use the links below to access different areas of the Cultural Maturity Blog Library.