FROM THE EDITOR – You will notice that the top post announces the four most recently released books. Each is of major importance. The most recent, Intelligence’s Creative Multiplicity: And Its Critical Role In the Future of Understanding examines cognition’s underlying structures. Insight: Creative Systems Theory’s Radical New Picture of Human Possibility addresses what is specifically new and significant in the ideas of Creative Systems Theory. Creative Systems Theory: A Comprehensive Theory of Purpose, Change, and Interrelationship in Human Systems brings together 45 years of committed work in one encompassing volume. It is part memoir and part a summary of the best of Creative Systems Theory–related thinking. Perspective and Guidance For a Time of Discord addresses one of our time’s most critical concerns. I think you will find each well worth your time and attention.
We also now have a YouTube channel. Called “Ask the Cultural Psychiatrist,” it includes short videos that introduce culturally matter perspective and invites conversation. It can be found at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6KsQ1Gti32r-Gpxg5qD2YQ
Some further additions. The “New Book ‘thought exercises'” section provides quick glimpses of provocative questions addressed in various of my books. 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 with links to more in-depth material). And for those who appreciate an audio format, you will find a link to our podcast.
As far as keeping in touch, if you click on the “Join Our List” button, you will receive monthly articles from myself along with alerts about new books as they are written. Clicking on the RSS feed button will have information about the six most recent posts sent to your RSS reader.
All the best — Charles Johnston
- Announcing Four Major New Books
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 In Human Systems—With Particular Pertinence to Understanding the Times We Live In and the Tasks Ahead for the Species). It feels very gratifying to have it complete. I also wrote a shorter volume on one of our time’s most troubling concerns, today’s extreme degree of social and political polarization (Perspective and Guidance for a Time of Deep Discord). I completed a book that highlights what is specifically new and of major importance in the ideas of Creative Systems Theory (Insight: Creative Systems Theory’s Radical New Picture ...
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FRONT PAGE NEWS
- Intelligence’s Creative Multiplicity—A Recognition Key to the Future of Understanding
Creative Systems Theory takes us beyond the mechanistic assumptions of Modern Age thought and allows ...
- 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 ...
- Religion is Failing Us and Atheism is Rather Silly —So What Do We Do With That?
When today we ponder the future of religion, we find ourselves in a quandary that ...
- Transitional Absurdity? Yes/No? It Could Be This century’s Most Important Question.
As I reflect on our times and our future human well-being, I keep coming back ...
- 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 ...
REVIEWS
- 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.
David Brooks is one of the writers in the political sphere that I most respect. ...
- 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 ...
THE BIG PICTURE
- A Radical Rethinking of Conscious Awareness
Respected thinkers have lately been putting forward more dynamic explanations for the workings of conscious ...
- 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 Creative Systems Theory Not Only Rewrites History, It Predicts It
The development of Creative Systems Theory has had a pivotal place my life since I ...
- 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 ...
CULTURAL IMMATURITY
- 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 ...
- 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 ...
- 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
- 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)
- 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)
- “Come On” Stephen Hawking: The Quandary of Free Will In an Apparently Deterministic Universe
- The Radical Implications of a New Maturity in Our Relationship With Death — Long Form
NEW BOOK “THOUGHT EXERCISES”
- A Systems Thinking Response to the Science Versus Religion Debate
- Getting Beyond Polarization #4—The Abortion Dilemma
- Getting Beyond Polarization #3—The Health Care Delivery Crisis
- Getting Beyond Polarization #2—Climate Change As Teacher
- Getting Beyond Polarization #1—Confronting the Roots of War
- The Dilemma of Advertising—When a Time’s Preeminent Art Form Undermines Truth
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 BOOKS FROM ICD PRESS
Click book covers to enlarge their images:
Intelligence’s Creative Multiplicity: And Its Critical Role in the Future of Understanding addresses one of our time’s most essential insights if we are to think with the sophistication our future demands. Intelligence has multiple aspects each of which is critical to understanding ourselves and to addressing the important questions before us as a species.
Insight: Creative Systems Theory’s Radical New Picture of Human Possibility – Insight: Creative Systems Theory’s Radical New Picture of Human Possibility highlights what is unique and critically important in the thinking of Creative Systems Theory and the concept of Cultural Maturity.
Perspective and Guidance for a Time of Deep Discord addresses the dangers that come with today’s extreme social and political polarization and what is needed going forward.
Creative Systems Theory: A Comprehensive Theory of Purpose, Change, and Interrelationship in Humans Systems offers a detailed examination of Creative Systems Theory and it implications for how we need to think and act in times ahead,.
Rethinking How We Think: Integrative Meta-perspective and the Cognitive “Growing up” On Which Our Future Depends brings a cognitive science lens to today’s essential tasks. It addresses how any kind of future we would want to live in will require not just fresh ideas, but an essential kind of cognitive reordering—a necessary “growing up” in how we understand. It also looks at how, when we are ready for them, needed new ways of thinking can feel like common sense. Rethinking How We Think is an exploration of the conceptual underpinnings of the future’s needed new common sense.
On the Evolution of Intimacy: A Brief Exploration into the Past, Present, and Future of Gender and Love describes an essential new chapter in identity and love, one that in potential takes us beyond the battle of the sexes and brings new depth and maturity to both how we understand ourselves and our capacity for closeness with another. The book examines easily confusing changes today redefining identity and love. By looking at these changes through a historical lens, it offers big-picture perspective for making sense of why we see what we do and what lies ahead.
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:
[email protected]
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.