The Greatest Danger With New Advances in Artificial Intelligence —And Understanding Where the Necessary Antidote Starts

The recent dramatic appearance of large language A.I models has further awakened conversations about the dangers as well as the benefits that accompany the contributions of artificial intelligence. The potential benefits are considerable, and I don’t wish to minimize them. … Read More

Why Future Human Well-Being Will Require a Leap In Understanding—And How It Can Be Achieved

In previous posts, I’ve argued that we today confront a Crisis of Purpose. I’ve described how we need a new kind of guiding narrative and new ways of thinking if our future is to be bright. I’ve also proposed that … Read More

The Critical Importance of Positive Images for the Future — and How the Concept of Cultural Maturity Provides a Provocative and Practical Candidate

[I have committed to writing a short article each month the applies Creative Systems Theory and the concept of Cultural Maturity to some essential question.] Cynicism today is rampant. Few people hold positive expectations when it comes to the future. … Read More

A Systems Thinking Response to the Science Versus Religion Debate

The Creative Systems Theory concept of Cultural Maturity describes how our times are demanding—and as potential making possible—an essential new chapter in the human story. One characteristic of culturally mature understanding is that it helps us think more systemically about … Read More

Three Circumstances That Could Test Democracy to the Core—and the Long-Term Implications

Three circumstances that people in the U.S. could confront in the years immediately ahead could well challenge the viability of democratic governance as we know it. Recognizing them can help us engage them with the foresight needed if they are … Read More

Getting Beyond Polarization #2—Climate Change As Teacher

I feel deep concern about how, with issues of every sort, people today are dividing almost immediately into polar camps. The concern ultimately relates to something of much greater significance than just the unpleasantness of discord. Polarization is getting in … Read More

Afghanistan, Billionaires in Space, and the Opioid Crisis—Front Page News Reflections 9/21

Often I write articles that apply culturally mature perspective and the ideas of Creative Systems Theory to then current front-page news topics. Culturally mature perspective’s primary contribution lies with the big picture, with bringing a long-term, systemic vantage to understanding. … Read More

How Understanding Why We See Such Extreme Polarization Today Is Key To Getting Beyond It

I gave my most recent book Perspective and Guidance for a Time of Deep Discord the subtitle: “Why We See Such Extreme Social and Political Polarization and What We Can Do About it.”  Today conflict between ideological factions has become … Read More

How Today’s Extreme Social and Political Polarization Has Less to do with What We Think, Than How We Think—and the Essential Implications

Over the course of the pandemic year, I launched into writing what I thought would be my culminating book, an overarching, magnum opus work on Creative Systems Theory. But as I neared the book’s completion, a dynamic that is coming … Read More

What Twenty Years in Afghanistan Can Teach Us About the Importance of Evolutionary Perspective

I’ve written extensively through the years about the price both academics and policy makers pay for failing to understand culture in evolutionary terms (and often being specifically averse to doing so). I gave this observation particular emphasis in the years … Read More

Announcing Four Major New Books

posted in: Top Post | 0

The pandemic years have provided the solitude needed to engage a handful of important writing projects. I finished up an overarching summary work on the ideas of Creative Systems Theory, (Creative Systems Theory: A Comprehensive Theory of Purpose, Change, and Interrelationship … Read More

The Trap of the “Angry Victim”: How Social Change Advocates Can Be Their Own Worst Enemies

In a previous article I wrote about how the ultimately all-too-similar populist beliefs of the Right and the Left today put us at real risk. (See A Very Disturbing, and Dangerous, Situation—Political Polarization and Populism Run Amok.) A red flag … Read More

How Social Media Algorithms Not Only Undermine Truth, They Make Social Polarization Almost Inevitable—With No Bad Actors Needed

In my recent book, Rethinking How We Think: Integrative Meta-perspective and the Cognitive “Growing Up” on Which Our Future Depends, I went into detail about the dangers of device addiction and what can be done to address this concern. Today … Read More

The Next Ten Years: Righting the Ship? Chaos and Absurdity? Or Engaging a Needed New, More Mature Chapter in How We Understand and Act?

A major part of my task as cultural psychiatrist and futurist is to alert people to circumstances where how we respond and the perspectives we bring could have major consequences—to serve as something of an early warning system. It is … Read More

Lessons From the Pandemic #4 — Confronting “The Myth of the Individual”

  [The short version: In this time of pandemic, we are being asked, indeed required, to at once more fully appreciate how we are “all in this together” and to respect our freedoms and unique needs as individuals. Historically we’ve … Read More

Political and Social Polarization and the Coronavirus Pandemic—A Real Danger We Can Do Something About

[This piece was written not just as a post for readers of this blog, but also for distribution to a wider audience.] As a cultural psychiatrist and futurist, I endeavor to bring big-picture perspective to major social challenges. Last night … Read More

Announcing an Important and Timely New Book: “Rethinking How We Think”

posted in: Top Post | 0

I’ve just released a new book that blog readers should find of particular interest. Titled Rethinking How We Think: Integrative Meta-Perspective and the Cognitive “Growing Up”On Which Our Future Depends, it applies a more cognitive science approach than previous books … Read More

Confusing Patriarchy: How “Patriarchy” has Two Wholly Different Meanings With Radically Different Implications (A Cultural Maturity Thought Experiment)

The word “patriarchy” today is often thrown around as if both its meaning and it implications are obvious. In fact the word has multiple meanings, and depending on which meaning we choose, the implications could not be more different. With … Read More

How Guidance for the Future of Gender and Love Reduces To a Single, Simple Recognition (A Cultural Maturity Thought Experiment)

In my most recent book, On the Evolution of Intimacy, I start with a provocative observation. I propose that one possible result of the #MeToo movement and the like could be better communication between men and women and greater mutual … Read More

How the #MeToo Movement Can Be Only a Start—and the Radical Implications For Both Men and Women (a Cultural Maturity “Thought Exercise”)

Since the release of my most recent book On the Future of Intimacy: A Brief Exploration Into the Past, Present, and Future of Gender and Love, numerous people have asked me about the relationship between the #MeToo movement and the … Read More

The Surprising Key to Rethinking Gender—It Has Never Been What We Thought It Was (A Cultural Maturity “Thought Exercise”)

In a recent post, I observed that modern age Romeo-and-Juliet–style romantic love is not only not some ideal and end point in love’s evolution, in fact it is not even what we have assumed it to be about. Rather than … Read More

How Changes Reshaping Love are Much More Fundamental Than We Realize—and Much More Fundamental Than Before We Could Have Realized (A Cultural Maturity “Thought Exercise”)

My new book On the Evolution of Intimacy: A Brief Exploration of the Past, Present, and Future of Gender and Love begins with a topic that could not be more radical and significant in its implications. Our times are requiring … Read More

Rethinking Wealth and Progress—And Its Essential Relationship to Today’s Crisis of Purpose (A Cultural Maturity “Thought Exercise”)

[This new section in the Cultural Maturity blog briefly introduces a key theme or claim from one of my recent Creative Systems Theory–related works presented so as to provoke reflection. This post draws most specifically on Hope and the Future: … Read More

Announcing an Important New Book: On the Evolution of Intimacy—A brief Exploration Into the Past, Present, and Future of Gender and Love

posted in: Top Post | 0

From the book’s back cover—“In no aspect of life today do we confront more rapid and easily confusing change than in the worlds of gender and intimacy. Men and women equally are left without clear guideposts for their choices. In … Read More

No, David Brooks, the Task is to Go Forward, Not Back—Just Not Toward a Reactive and Naive Populism, Rather Toward a More “Grown Up” Kind of Understanding That We are Only Now Beginning to Grasp.

posted in: Reviews | 0

David Brooks is one of the writers in the political sphere that I most respect. In a recent piece, he made a dramatic observation that I think could very well be accurate and prescient. But his observation left us hanging. … Read More

1 2 3 4 5