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Why This Book
The Great Paradox of Our Time
Ours is arguably the best of times. Summary review of the current state of the world indicates, among so many blessings:
- The highest standard of living the world has ever known.
- Record variety of goods and services.
- Eradication of hitherto incurable diseases.
- Unprecedented levels of material well-being.
- Healthier lives; longer life spans.
- Jet travel.
- Computers; the Internet; mobile phones and tablets.
- Real-time communication across the globe.
- Virtual reality.
- Artificial intelligence.
- And, of course, a vast array of scientific breakthroughs.
But, how could "the most brilliant civilization in human history" entail so many crises:
- Ecological crisis.
- Economic crisis.
- Education crisis.
- Energy crisis.
- Financial crisis.
- Food crisis.
- Health crisis.
- Political crisis.
- Poverty crisis.
- Refugees crisis.
- Religious crisis.
- Social crisis.
- More.
How could "the highest standard of living the world has ever known" leave practically everybody deeply unhappy: anxious, worried, scared and, in many cases, despairing of the future?
Rhetorically: "Why is it that the better things are, the unhappier people are becoming?"
The Human Predicament: Its Everyday Manifestations
Vital Conversations for Global Recovery and Regeneration
1. Homo Creativus: Humankind, As Nature Made Us
Conventional explanations of the sorry state of the world attribute our difficulties largely to human inadequacies — to "innate depravity" or to assumed “human propensity to evil.”
Over time, based on assumptions of human inadequacies, various person-focused, person-centered solution strategies have been proposed and tried. They include: correction; counseling; deterrence; incarceration; indoctrination; internment; motivation; punishment; rehabilitation; reward; therapy; and others.
The limited success and, in many cases, counterproductivity of conventional punitive, correctional, and remedial approaches call into question the underlying assumption of those approaches — human inadequacies.
Analysis and synthesis of the insights that are brought together in Creativity: Revealing the Truth about Human Nature suggest that the world is facing a metaphysical crisis but, inadvertently, tackling the symptoms of that problem.
Metaphysical crisis, as the term is used here, is fundamental misconceptions of human nature, the institutions and ways of life that we have built on those misconceptions, and their (sometimes) tragic psychological, social, economic, political, and ecological consequences.
Stated simply:
- Many of the life-threatening difficulties the world is experiencing are the result of attempting to build human civilization on a view of human nature which is seriously mistaken or, at best, inadequate.
To the extent that fundamental misconceptions of human nature is valid, if we are to successfully resolve the dreadful situation the world is in and to achieve a viable and sustainable planetary future, the logical and necessary starting point is to set right the way we think about ourselves and the purpose of our life.
Setting right the way we define ourselves and the purpose of our life is, quite simply, a (paradigmatic) shift in thinking from the generally accepted economic conception of human nature to humankind as nature made us.
Specifically:
- From:
Homo Economicus — The economist's model of humans. - To:
Homo Creativus — Humankind, as nature made us.
- From:
The view of human beings as: rational calculating; individualistic; self-interested; competitive; adversarial; materialistic; consumption-driven. - To:
The view of human beings as: subjective; valuing; emotional; compassionate; altruistic; potential-actualizing; purpose-driven; community-seeking.
- From:
Wealth accumulation, material possession, economic consumption, power, and status, as the goal of life and the ultimate measures of success. - To:
Awareness, development, and engagement of one's highest potentialities in meaningful and beneficial functions as the goal of life and the true measure of success — with economic consumption and material well-being as the means to that end.
Homo Creativus, the truth about human nature, is one side of the global recovery coin. The other side, of course, is thoroughgoing reorganization of society, the economy, politics, and governance so that everyone is able to realize his or her potential — able to recognize, to develop, and to engage one's natural abilities in meaningful and worthwhile functions.
VITAL REMINDERS:
First:
- To become what one is capable of being is the true goal of life — the authentic and most satisfying state of being and, by all indications, the only way to be genuinely successful, to find meaning in one’s life, and to feel good about oneself.
Second:
- The belief that feelings — emotions, love, altruism, kindness, trust, compassion, cooperation — can be taken out of life, suppressed, or repressed utterly misrepresents what it really means to be human; and may be the root cause of many of the psychological problems that are ruining the lives of countless millions of people around the world.
- It might not be an exaggeration to suggest that the global epidemic of meaninglessness and rising rates of depression, anxiety, suicides, violence, and other mental health challenges are symptoms of the (existential) pain, the anguish — even outrage — of being born Homo Creativus but raised Homo Economicus.
Third:
- No standard of living, however high, and no amount of prosperity, however equitably distributed, can justify the incalculable damage that is being done to the ecosystem, as well as to human psyche and human dignity, by the seriously flawed assumption that human life is driven by money, possession, power, and consumption. Continuing to hold on to that assumption can only hasten the much-dreaded catastrophic planetary demise.
Fourth and Finally:
- Considering the magnitude and complexity of the crises the world is facing and their ominous implications for our planetary future, setting right the way we define ourselves and the purpose of our life would seem to be the central project of our time — the "historical mission" of this generation!
2. The Great Waste: Seven Billion Locked Treasure Chests
Seven billion "locked treasure chests" are a terrible waste the world can no longer afford, ignore, or condone!
The obvious referent here is the vast majority of people who live and die without ever realizing why they lived at all. Everyday illustrations of this colossal waste include:
- Billions of geniuses who never achieve their potential — billions of richly endowed men and women who live and die unrecognized either by themselves or by society.
- Successive human civilizations, including our own, that selectively recognize, selectively develop, selectively celebrate, and selectively reward certain human abilities; and, perhaps inadvertently, ignore an infinite array of human potentialities and possibilities. As a result, an inestimable number of human abilities that, as yet, are not recognized, not developed, and not productively engaged. Still other human capabilities that are artificially constrained by ignorance and circumstances, pitifully underdeveloped, grossly underutilized.
- Most people who never find their authentic life’s purpose — the vast majority of us who live and die without ever knowing who we really are and why we lived at all.
- "Ordinary" men and women who don't seem to believe that they have the potential to positively affect the world — to make significant contributions to society and the planet.
- So many cultures, societies, institutions, and organizations where it is not safe to be original or different. Consequently, masses of people who are virtually stripped of their natural aptitude for imagination and creativity, and who therefore function on minimal capacities for excellence.
- The dominance of tradition and entrenched views and values in many institutions and organizations, where established knowledge is cherished to the exclusion of creativity — where new ideas are suspect, and seldom get a hearing.
- Incalculable number of great ideas that simply perish with no record — trampled by ignorance, fear, cruelty, or jealousy; stifled by psychological and socio-cultural pressures both within the individual and his or her society; starved to death by "benign neglect" or by lack of resources, encouragement, and support.
- Erroneous but generally accepted belief that creativity is a matter for the arts and music — a belief that tends to discourage people who work in other areas and disciplines from developing and engaging their natural abilities, since they do not believe that they are creative.
- The unfortunate division of humanity into the creative few and the "uncreative" many — distinctions like "genius," "creative individuals,' "honor students," "best and brightest," "gifted and talented," etc. that set a few individuals apart, while discouraging the vast majority from ever discovering or ever realizing their own personal genius and creativity.
- The rise of individualism and economic self-interest. Correspondingly, growing disdain for the notion that the primary purpose of human life is to create — to bring about something original and beneficial that serves the greater good.
- Finally, the tangled web of life-threatening and mutually reinforcing global crises. Resultantly, "a world where no one knows what to expect next."
3. Global Creativity Crisis: World's Underlying Problem
The precarious state of the world is all to obvious. A terrible combination of mutually reinforcing crises threatens our very survival and the planetary future, unless appropriate solutions are found — and within sufficient time.
In near-total despair of the future, leading global observers variously portray our predicament as:
- "evolution or extinction"
- "change our ways or perish"
- "species maturation or collective suicide"
- And so on.
Erich Fromm's gloomy but all too prescient observation succinctly summarizes the global dread and growing despair. Fromm's words:
- "This time, mankind is at one crossroad where the wrong step could be the last step."
The Inquiry, a BBC podcast, warns that:
- We are not heading for another mass extinction; we are already in one — and the rate is accelerating.
Dire and deeply troubling!
What is even more troubling, however, is the growing ineffectiveness of traditional approaches to apprehend the seemingly many and life-threatening crises. Hence the twin questions:
- Are the modern crises and the global predicament unsolved because they are impossible, or too difficult, to solve?
- Or, might it be that we've been tackling the wrong problems?
Contrary to popular belief, the modern crises and the global predicament are not “economic,” “social,” “political,” or “environmental” crises, per se. Our difficulties are not separate crises, either. And they are not due to widely assumed “human depravity” or “human propensity to evil.”
Analysis and synthesis of the insights that are brought together in Creativity: Revealing the Truth about Human Nature identify our underlying, but unnoticed and unsuspected predicament — Global Creativity Crisis:
- This is the inability of the vast majority of people to realize their innate potentialities — inability to discover, to develop, and to engage one's natural abilities in significant and beneficial functions — and, resultantly, a global epidemic of meaninglessness of which many psychological, social, economic, political, and ecological crises are the symptoms, or facets.
To the extent that Global Creativity Crisis is valid, if we are to successfully resolve the dreadful situation the world is in, and to achieve the viable and sustainable global future that everyone wishes to see, the logical and necessary starting point is to correct the prevailing misconceptions of human nature that, evidently, are at the root of many (probably, most) of our difficulties.
4. Higher-Order Human Needs that Clamor for Fulfillment
The book for our time, Creativity: Revealing the Truth about Human Nature calls attention to higher-order human needs that, ever more stridently, clamor for fulfillment. The more obvious of these are:
- Spontaneous awakening of people, worldwide, to their inherent worth as humans; and, correspondingly, the right to actualize — to develop and meaningfully engage — one's natural abilities.
- Growing cross-cultural, cross-gender, cross-generational sensitivity to higher-order human needs: identity. Meaning. Authenticity. Purpose.
- Growing sense of one's uniqueness — with a special work to do, role to fulfill, duties/functions to perform, purposes/missions to accomplish, and contributions to make for the common good.
5. Logical and Necessary Starting Point for Global Recovery
Contrary to the usual view, the chaos and life-threatening difficulties the world is facing are not separate crises. Analysis and synthesis of the insights that are brought together in Creativity: Revealing the Truth about Human Nature suggest that the modern crises and the global predicament are, fundamentally, a Creativity Crisis:
- This is the inability of the vast majority of people to reach their full potential — inability to recognize, to develop, and to engage one's natural abilities in meaningful and beneficial functions. Resultantly, widespread sense of futility (meaninglessness), of which many (probably most) psychological, social, economic, political, and ecological crises are the symptoms.
To the extent that this conclusion — Creativity Crisis — is valid, the logical and necessary starting point for planetary recovery and regeneration is to set right the way we define ourselves and the purpose of our life.
Call to Action
If we can assume that people are quintessentially creative and primarily driven to fulfill their potential, and that failure to nurture that attribute can result in its decline and atrophy, can result in the stifling of one's growth and development need, and can even result in undesirable behaviors, then most of the difficulties the world is experiencing stand explained.
Analysis and synthesis of the insights that are brought together in Creativity: Revealing the Truth about Human Nature confirm the foregoing assumption and underscore three vital actions for nurturing and developing psychologically healthy and socially responsible human beings:
One:
Significantly more attention to creativity and inner development of people — including, in particular, ethical, moral, social, and ecological responsibility — with economic consumption and material well-being as the means to those ends.
Two:
Goals for mankind and Planet Earth that everyone sees as universally beneficial to both humans and nature and, therefore, worthy of the commitment of their time, talents, and creative energies.
Three:
Social-economic-political systems in which all the Earth's (currently) seven billion inhabitants are able to develop and to contribute their natural abilities and, thus, to experience their lives as having meaning and significance — to genuinely feel good about themselves.
There, briefly, are the reasons for Creativity: Revealing the Truth about Human Nature, as well as the book's implications for worldwide actions.
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