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

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

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

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

If the Democrats Had Wanted to Open the Door to a Trump Reelection, They Couldn’t Have Done a Better Job—The Recent Presidential Debates and Today’s Needed “Growing Up” in How We Understand

As someone who has devoted much of his life to training leaders, I found the initial Democratic presidential debates disappointing. Given the profound inadequacy of Donald Trump, the 2020 elections should be the easiest in history to win. But the … Read More

Three Ways Artificial Intelligence Could Be the End of Us — And What Will Be Required For This Not to Be Our Fate

[I’ve touched on the gifts and curses nature of AI In several previous articles. Here I more specifically detail the dangers and more directly tie needed actions to culturally mature understanding.]   Machine learning should provide great benefits in times … 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

Seven Questions On Which Our Future Depends—Perspective From a Different Kind of Futurist

I approach the future differently than most people whose work addresses what may lie ahead. Most futurists focus on new technologies, or possibly on obstacles that might present themselves in our efforts at technological advancement. I see the questions on … Read More

Making the World Great Again: Bringing Big-Picture Perspective to the 2016 American Presidential Election and the Critical Tasks of Leadership Going Forward.

[I’ve left this post on the site inspire of the fact that it might seem outdated at this point. But it remains pertinent to the tasks of leadership and and is prescient with regards to events that have taken place … Read More

Rethinking Pay Inequality—And other Surprising (and Often Controversial) Implications of Better Understanding the Archetypally Feminine

Early in my writing, I took an important distinction for granted—that between gender and archetypall-masculine or archetypally-feminine qualities. I assumed that the difference between these two kinds of concepts would be obvious. I now recognize that for many people this … 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

The Radical Implications of a New Maturity in Our Relationship to Death

A new, more mature relationship to limits represents one of Cultural Maturity’s defining characteristics. In my writings, I’ve given special attention to one particularly ultimate example: our human relationship to death. Never in the history of the species has looking … 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

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