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

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

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

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”

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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

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

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

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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.

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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

Understanding the Significance of Cultural Maturity and the Ideas of Creative Systems Theory—Current Perspective

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  (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, … Read More

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 Creative Systems Theory helps us address all manner of “ultimate questions”—big picture concerns that in times past have tended to leave us baffled. In other … Read More

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 take front-page-news issues and address them from a big-picture, systemic perspective—from above the partisan fray. My intent with this series is not to get people … Read More

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 the next year that take front-page-news issues and address them from a big-picture, systemic perspective—from above the partisan fray. My intent with this series is … Read More

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 briefly described a recent recognition that provides insight important to effective culturally mature advocacy. As I’ve finished up my new three book series and begun … Read More

Why Science and Religion Need Not Be At Odds: A Brief Look at How Creative Systems Theory Reconciles this Most Fundamental of Conflicts

[The following reflections are adapted from two of my most recent books: Cultural Maturity: A Guidebook for the Future and Quick and Dirty Answers to the Biggest of Questions.] The concept of Cultural Maturity proposes that the reason many ultimate … Read More

The Future of Morality: Why Moral Decisions in Times Ahead Will Require Skills New to Us as a Species

Addressing future moral challenges will require new human capacities, capacities that before now we could not have fully understood, much less applied. In part this is because we will be confronted by new kinds of moral questions—for example, those that … Read More

Trump, Obama, and Our Modern Crisis of Confidence in Leadership: Making Big-Picture Sense of Unsettling Realities

I have put off commenting about presidential election politics in the U.S. both because the topic already consumes too much air time and because the larger portion of supposed debate has been trivial, and often simply ludicrous. But if what … Read More

Reflections on the Completion of Cultural Maturity: A Guidebook for the Future—Good News and Bad News As We Confront Cultural Maturity’s Challenge

Six months have now passed since the release of the last volume in my new three-book series. Working on the series has taken the larger portion of my creative energy over the past fifteen years. Finishing up has provided time … Read More

The Radical Implications of a New Maturity in Our Relationship With Death — Long Form

One of the most significant new capacities that accompanies Cultural Maturity changes is the ability to engage limits in more sophisticated ways. Of particular importance, we become better able to recognize that some limits are inviolable. Nothing more defined the … Read More

Our Modern Crisis of Purpose—and How Humanity’s Needed “Growing Up” Becomes the Only Option Going Forward ( Long Form)

Modern realities frequently leave people feeling at best confused, at worst cynical and hopeless. In part, this is a reaction to specific concerns—job loss with globalization, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, climate change, and the erosion of familiar moral assumptions to name … Read More

The Crisis of Gun Violence: Mature, Big-Picture Perspective

The kind of big-picture/long-term vantage provided by culturally mature perspective stretches usual understanding in a couple of key ways. First, it commonly requires that we take into account multiple, interwoven causal factors (it challenges simple “silver bullet” solutions). Second, it … Read More

Medicine’s Most Important Question in the Long Term Will Take Most People By Surprise: “What Is a Body?”

When we look to medicine’s future, we tend to think in terms of technological advancements such as exotic transplant surgeries and gene-centered treatments. But in the long term, some very different kinds of concerns become pivotally important. In an earlier … Read More

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