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by Charles M. Johnston (Author)
Necessary Wisdom presents an invitation by one of today's most far-reaching thinkers to explore the new creativity and maturity that future challenges will increasingly demand. The profound challenges that define our time--changes in love and family, the gifts and curses of a global world, inescapable threats to the environment--require not just fresh policies, but whole new ways of understanding.
Necessary Wisdom draws on one of the simplest ways to get at what makes such new understanding new: such thinking successfully "bridges" polarities. It draws an encompassing circle around the either/ors of conventional thought-political left and political right, might and body, masculine and feminine, alley and enemy, or matter and energy. Besides applying the concept of bridging to issues such as those above, it draws on Creative Systems Theory to help tease apart how our thinking can stop short of the needed conceptual maturity. Creative Systems Theory identifies three kinds of polar traps, what it calls Unity Fallacies, Separation Fallacies, and Compromise Fallacies. Each issue-focused chapters ends with a listing of ways we can fall for each of these kinds of fallacies in attempting to address those particular concerns.Author Biography
Charles M. Johnston, MD is a psychiatrist and futurist. He is best know as the originator of Creative Systems Theory, a comprehensive framework for understanding change and interrelationship in human systems, and for directing the Institute for Creative Development, a Seattle-based non-partisan 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. The concept of Cultural Maturity, a key notion within Creative Systems Theory, addresses how we best understand the times we live in and make choices that support a healthy human future. He blogs at www.CulturalMaturityBlog.net. The early years of Dr. Johnston's efforts, from 1975 through 1985, focused on developing and introducing the ideas of Creative Systems Theory. His book The Creative Imperative was the primary product of that first phase in his work. From 1985 through 2000, Dr Johnston turned to teaching and to further developing the ideas of Creative Systems Theory with colleagues at the Seattle-based Institute for Creative Development. Necessary Wisdom: Meeting the Challenge of a New Cultural Maturity was written as a more popular audience book on the concept of Cultural Maturity during that time. Two shorter works, The Power of Diversity: An Introduction to the Creative Systems Theory Personality Typology and Pattern and Reality, A Brief Introduction to Creative Systems Theory were written as Institute training resources and later made available in book form. From 2000 to 2012, Dr Johnston's work focused on further developing the concept Cultural Maturity and the ideas of Creative Systems Theory and documenting them in written form for different audiences. The first book in this series, Hope and the Future: An Introduction to the Concept of Cultural Maturity, is intended for a general audience wanting to better understand the tasks humanity now faces. Cultural Maturity: A Guidebook for the Future is a lengthier work intended for those interested in developing the sophisticated decision-making abilities that leadership in times ahead will require in all parts of our lives. Quick and Dirty Answers to the biggest of Questions: Creative Systems Theory Explains What It is All About (Really) is intended for people who enjoy the audacity of "theory of everything" reflection.
