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 of Human Possibility). And most recently, I have completed a work that examines cognition’s underlying structures (Intelligence’s Creative Multiplicity: And Its Critical Role In the Future of Understanding.) Below I’ve included descriptions from the back covers of each of the books. I think you will find each of these efforts providing important insight for addressing the essential challenges of our time. Each is now available in both print and e-book formats.
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
“Creative Systems Theory brings big-picture, long-term perspective to understanding who we are and why we think and act in the ways that we do. It is pertinent equally to appreciating the past, teasing apart current cultural challenges, and making sense of what a vital human future will require of us. This is the definitive work on Creative Systems Theory and its implications.
“At a practical level, Creative Systems Theory provides powerful tools for making effective choices in both our personal and our collective lives. More conceptually, it makes a major contribution to the history of ideas. It clarifies how, while modern age institutions, values, and ways of thinking have served us well, they cannot be sufficient for the tasks ahead. And it offers a comprehensive approach to understanding that reflects the more mature and encompassing kind of thinking that will become more and more essential in times ahead.
“This volume brings together fifty years of committed inquiry and practical application. It is part guidebook, part memoir, part compilation, and part an effort to extend Creative Systems Theory’s thinking just as far into the future as is possible.”
Perspective and Guidance for a Time of Deep Discord:
Why We See Such Extreme Social and Political Polarization—and What We Can Do About It
“Social and political polarization has today has become so extreme that conversation about the simplest of issues often becomes close to impossible. And polarized thinking—from both the Right and the Left—is not just putting civil conversation in jeopardy, it is getting in the way of addressing essential questions that our future well-being will depend on. Perspective and Guidance for a Time of Deep Discord agues that what we see is a product not just of what we think but how what we think. It addresses what the greater maturity of understanding needed to get beyond warring ideological purities requires of us. And it looks closely at what such understanding looks like when applied to critical questions where divisiveness too often prevails: war and peace, climate change, health care, immigration, abortion, bigotry, the relationship of science and faith, and conflicting views on the nature of progress.”
Insight:
Creative Systems Theory’s Radical New Picture of Human Possibility
Of all my writings, Insight most unabashedly highlights what is original and of major significance in the thinking of Creative Systems Theory and the concept of Cultural Maturity. From the book’s back cover:
“When we understand them deeply, the ideas of Creative Systems Theory and the concept of Cultural Maturity come to seem like common sense. But this kind of common sense is new—a product of a fundamental leap in how we understand. Many of Creative Systems Theory’s core observations are thus appropriately thought of as radical—indeed, audaciously so. They reflect contributions new to the evolving story of human thought.
“Insight turns to those radical observations and just what makes them new and important. It delves into how the changes that the concept of Cultural Maturity describes will be essential to the future of the species. It examines how a creative frame brings a fundamentally new kind of depth to our understanding of why we believe what we do and the workings of human intelligence. It also looks at how Creative Systems Theory’s systemic vantage lets us successfully address eternal conceptual quandaries, from the nature of free will to the ultimate relationship between the contributions of science and religion—and much more.”
Intelligence’s Creative Multiplicity:
And Its Critical Role In the Future of Understanding
Intelligence’s Creative Multiplicity 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.
From the book’s back cover: “We take appropriate pride in our rationality, but other aspects of our cognitive complexity—the imaginal, the emotional, the intelligence of the body—play equally important roles in our unique toolmaking, meaning-making natures. Creative Systems Theory brings particular attention to the role of intelligence’s multiplicity in what makes us human. And it argues that a greater appreciation for intelligence’s multiple aspects will become more and more critical in times ahead. The theory describes how a more conscious and encompassing relationship to the whole of intelligence is key to the more nuanced and mature—we could say simply wise—kind of decision-making that will be increasingly necessary in all parts of our lives. Intelligence’s Creative Multiplicity offers a deep-dive look into this rich and dynamic new picture of cognition’s workings.”