Hope and the Future: An Introduction to the Concept of Cultural Maturity

Synopsis

Should we be optimistic as we look to the future? Hope and the Future examines what legitimate hope for the future necessarily depends on. It describes how we face a growing number of human challenges that require that we think, act, and relate in new ways—often fundamentally new ways. And it looks at how addressing those challenges will require not just fresh ideas, but a critical “growing up” as a species—a new Cultural Maturity.

This book is one of three related works written by Charles Johnston in recent years for difference audiences but with similar intent: to help people understand the times we live in and to make sense of what the future will require of us as a species. It is intended for a general audience wanting to better understand tasks humanity now faces.

Hope and the Future introduces the concept of Cultural Maturity and examines how Cultural Maturity’s changes are necessary to a future that is at all healthy, and perhaps even survivable. It also looks at how we are already seeing many of these changes in the world around us and how related changes are more in the cards that we might imagine, It examines how the potential for Cultural Maturity’s changes is developmentally “built into” us. When we are ready for them, they can seem surprisingly straightforward, indeed like common sense. This book is about the “new common sense” on which our future depends.

Because it is short and written for a general audience, of Dr Johnston’s books Hope and the Future is most readily adapted for use as a text.

About the Author

Charles M. Johnston, MD, is a psychiatrist and futurist. He is best known as the originator of Creative Systems Theory, and for directing the Institute for Creative Development, a nonpartisan think tank and center for advanced leadership training. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the future and how we can best prepare to meet it. He blogs at www.CulturalMaturityBlog.net. Other Institute for Creative Development-related websites can be found at www.CreativeSystems.org

Praise for Charles Johnston’s Work

The Creative Imperative

“This book impresses me very much.”

Ilya Prigogine
Nobel Chemist
Author of From Being to Becoming

Necessary Wisdom

“A rare gift. For those of us who sincerely struggle in our individual lives, our relationships, our profession, and our work to create a just world, this is essential reading.”

Alan Guskin
(former) President, Antioch University