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. Posts take a couple of forms. There are brief posts easily adapted for a variety of media. (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. 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 to Creative Systems Theory as a whole.)
The topics chosen for “For the Media” pieces highlight particularly well how Modern Age institutions and ways of thinking can’t be the ideals and end points we tend to assume them to be. They also directly address how a new, more mature chapter in our human story is necessary—and happening. Each post emphasizes how today’s new challenges stretch who we are in fundamental ways. Each also helps bring clarity to the fact that what is being asked of us is, in the end, common sense—simply a maturity of common sense that before now we could not have effectively grasped. “For the Media” posts commonly take on issues that are significant in and of themselves, but that are pertinent also because they serve as essential evidence that a next chapter in culture’s story has become essential—and should continue to be so well into the future.
Feel free to link to these posts (with appropriate attribution) or to contact Dr. Johnston (at ICDPressinfo@gmail.com ) if you would like to discuss adapting material for a particular context or for development of a more detailed piece. If you find these introductory pieces useful and provocative, you are encouraged to explore the main Cultural Maturity blog, visit other Institute for Creative Development educational sites, or read Dr. Johnston’s books.
The long-form article that follows this one more formally introduces the concept of Cultural Maturity. It makes a solid place to start for understanding this critical notion that can initially be a stretch to get one’s mind around. I wrote … Read More
I approach addressing the future differently than most futurists. The larger portion of people whose work addresses what may lie ahead focus on technological advancement, or perhaps on obstacles that might present themselves in our efforts to advance. The kind … Read More
Creative Systems Theory presents a comprehensive framework for understanding purpose, change, and interrelationship in human systems. It is radically significant both for the practical usefulness of its ideas and for the fact that it represents the kind of conceptual perspective … Read More
Cultural Maturity is much more than a metaphor for what the future asks of us. It reflects critical changes not just in what we think, but how we think, a necessary—and developmentally predicted—cognitive reordering. Creative Systems Theory calls the new … Read More
The moral dimension today presents a startling—and easily unsettling— circumstance. Effectively addressing moral challenges is requiring new human capacities, capacities that before now we could not have fully understood, much less applied. In part this is because we confront new … Read More
The best argument for the concept of Cultural Maturity’s importance is the most basic: not only our future well-being, but perhaps our survival, will depend on changes it describes. As far as survival-related consequences, the most immediate concerns whether we … Read More
The title I’ve used for this piece might seem overly dramatic. But I will argue that it is not. I will also argue that changes happening in the world of love can help us understanding equally dramatic changes taking place … Read More
It is important to appreciate how much leadership today is changing. The picture is not all reassuring. Trust in leadership of all sorts today is less than it was at the height of anti-authoritarian rhetoric in the 1960s. Respected … Read More
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
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
This post is taken from an article written as part of a series for the World Future Society. It is more theoretical than most in the series. Like it or not, to grasp ideas that follow from Creative Systems Theory—such … Read More
How do we best understand the future? We can miss the fact that simply attempting to do so is a radical enterprise—something both new and suddenly essential. We’ve all had classes on history, on the past. But very few of … Read More
The Cultural Maturity blog (www.culturalmaturityblog.net) is a contribution of the Institute for Creative Development, a Seattle-based, non-profit, non-partisan, think tank and center for advanced leadership training. Its purpose is to support the sophistication of understanding and decision-making needed long-term if … Read More
In his new book, Cultural Maturity: A Guidebook for the Future, psychiatrist and futurist Charles Johnston argues that the climate change “debate” is over. The reason is not the preponderance of scientific evidence. Rather, it is simple systemic risk assessment. … Read More
Trust in leadership of all sorts today is less than it was at the height of anti-authoritarian rhetoric in the 1960s. We could easily assume—and people have argued—that this modern lack of confidence in leadership reflects something gone terribly wrong—broad … Read More
The place where today we witness the most striking lack of inspired leadership is also where we might appropriately most hope it would thrive: in the halls of government. Confidence in governmental leadership today is embarrassingly and frighteningly low. U.S. … Read More
As a psychiatrist whose life’s work has focused on addressing major cultural issues, I’ve listened carefully to people’s attempts to make sense of recent terrorist attacks in Europe and the United States. While the best of thinking has addressed important … Read More
There is no more important question when it comes to the future than whether we can keep from blowing ourselves up. Given today’s ready availability of weapons of mass destruction and how often conflict dominates the evening news, it can … Read More
Thirty years ago, psychiatrist and futurist Charles M. Johnston wrote an article titled, “A New Meaning for Love.” It described how love, in our time, is changing in fundamental ways. Although Dr. Johnston has written numerous books and articles since, … Read More
Never in the history of the species has looking directly at death been an option. It would have stretched us beyond what we could tolerate. Psychiatrist and futurist Charles M. Johnston argues that a new maturity in in our relationship … Read More