He contends that much of civilization lacks a narrative, a compelling human story that can propel us forward. The challenges we face require that we think, act and relate in new ways, he says, and the critical questions before us require that we "grow up” as a species in order to deal with these challenges effectively.
Among the critical questions the book tackles are: How do we best ensure a safe human future in a world filled with weapons of mass destruction? How do we address inevitable environmental catastrophes? How do we make love endure in the future with gender roles in flux today? How will we deal with important challenges that require global cooperation, such as terrorism and the need for a stable economic infrastructure? How do we make moral choices, given their growing complexity and the weakening of cultural guideposts? And finally, how do we best determine if our actions result in real human advancement?
Dr. Johnston's book distills 30 years of work by the Institute for Creative Development, a Seattle-based, non-partisan think tank and center for leadership training. It introduces the "creative systems” concept of cultural maturity and provides a compelling guiding story for going forward.
You propose that legitimate “hope for the future” depends on an essential “growing up” as a species. Just what do you mean?
My work comes out of many years directing the Institute for Creative Development, a Seattle-based think tank and center for leadership training. One of most striking conclusions that came out of our work was that we are failing in our times to bring needed maturity to questions of all sorts. We see this with today’s wholly inadequate response to climate change (and other environmental limits), with partisan polarization and pettiness (which can leave people legitimately doubting whether functional government will again be a reality), and perhaps most ultimately important, with how today we lack a concept of advancement (a cultural narrative) that is ultimately compelling and can really work for taking us forward. The Institute’s work focused on making sense of the needed “growing up” on which the future depends--which for lack of a better word we spoke of simply as Cultural Maturity.
My book Hope and the Future provides on introduction to the concept. It addresses how Cultural Maturity’s changes will be essential to any kind of future we would want to live in. It also describes how the potential for Cultural Maturity’s necessary “growing up” as a species is developmentally built into who we are. Possibility is not destiny, but with this recognition, the book becomes a guidebook for what legitimate hope for the future necessarily depends on.
The book’s subtitle is “Confronting Today’s Crisis of Purpose.” What do you mean by a “crisis of purpose?”
The concept of a Crisis of Purpose comes back to question of narrative. I start the book with the story of working with young man who came to me after attempting suicide. I describe a situation that is increasingly common. The reason for his attempt was less personal than fact that he could not see a future that he wanted to live in.
We live in an awkward in between time in which we lack a compelling cultural story. In response, we see an array of cultural “symptoms” that reflect this lack of trust in a meaningful way forward—increasing rates of depression, suicide, gun violence, and addiction (of all sorts, from the opioid crisis to device addiction). The underlying mechanism with all addiction is the same: addicting drugs provide artificial substitutes for real meaning. We become increasingly vulnerable to addiction when our cultural narrative fails to reflect a meaningful story.
Hope and the Future describes how Cultural Maturity’s “growing up” as a species offers an answer to the modern question of narrative. In this way, Cultural Maturity’s changes provides an antidote to today’s Crisis of Purpose.
Author Charles M. Johnston is also a psychiatrist and futurist, and is best known for founding and directing the ICD and is the originator of Creative Systems Theory, a comprehensive framework for understanding purpose and change in human systems. He is the author of 10 books and numerous articles on the future and how we can best prepare to meet it.
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