FAQ

The Cultural Maturity link at the top of any page provides a short overview description of the concept of Cultural Maturity. You might wish to read it first and then return to the FAQ section if you are not familiar with the basic concept.

FAQ: A Brief Cultural Maturity Question and Answer Summary

 
This section of the library briefly addresses questions commonly asked by people new to the concept of Culturally Maturity. Some are questions people who have never heard of the concept may ask. Others are questions that commonly come up once people start working with the notion.

What is Cultural Maturity?

The concept of Cultural Maturity is an overarching frame for understanding changes reordering today’s world and making good future human choices.

Why do we need such a notion?

The concept of Cultural Maturity offers big-picture perspective for understanding our times and the tasks ahead that gets beyond culturally-specific beliefs and competing ideologies. We live in a time in which culturally-specific guideposts for how we should think and behave are serving us less and less well, and in which familiar cultural stories are not providing the guidance the future will require. The concept of cultural maturity presents an overarching story able to provide both practical guidance and, essential to the experience of hope, a compelling picture of human possibility.

How does understanding of the concept of Cultural Maturity help us?

Most immediately, it provides that big-picture guiding story—one that is simple as a basic concept yet highly sophisticated when understood deeply. It also helps us bring important detail to our thinking about the future. It identifies the characteristics that effective thinking, relating and acting in times ahead must have. It also provides a way to view our various culturally-specific beliefs, competing ideologies, and ideas about the future from a larger, overarching vantage. This helps reconcile opposing viewpoints. It also helps us appreciate limitations in our viewpoints and separate wheat from chaff in the ideas we bring to addressing future challenges.

Can you briefly summarize its thesis?

Put most simply, it proposes that our times are challenging us to a specific kind of “growing up” as a species. The concept is more nuanced and demanding than the simple phrase growing up might suggest. But that is essentially what it is about. Cultural Maturity involves moving beyond a parental relationship to cultural belief—surrendering past protective absolutes—and taking a new level of responsibility both for our actions and the truths we apply. It is also about the more demanding and complex—but also more rich and full—kinds of understanding and relating that doing so begins to make possible.

What evidence do we have that its thesis is right?

Several different kinds. Some is empirical. If we list the most critical challenges ahead for the species, we find that each requires the greater maturity of perspective the concept of Cultural Maturity describes to be effectively addressed—or really adequately understood. There is also how the most defining advances of the last century, across spheres of inquiry, have most all reflected at least first steps in the conceptual shifts the concept of Cultural Maturity predicts. At this level of evidence, we can think of Cultural Maturity as at least a good general metaphor for thinking about needed changes in how we think.

Additional levels of evidence are more theoretical. We find that the societal changes the concept of Cultural Maturity describes find quite precise parallels in the changes that reorder values and perception when taking on second-half-of-life developmental challenges—a recognition which offers that we might apply that notion of “growing up” not just as a handy metaphor but more directly as analogy. Creative Systems Theory, a comprehensive framework for understanding change and interrelationship in human systems developed by the author and colleagues of the last thirty years goes further. It describe how these changes are consistent with the those that reorder experience with the second half of any human formative process.

Do I need to understand Creative Systems Theory to make use of the concept of Cultural Maturity?

No. As simple metaphor or analogy, the Cultural Maturity works fine as a stand-alone concept. The concept of Cultural Maturity is a formal Creative Systems Theory notion. But there is no need to either understand or agree with the theory’s idea to make powerful use of it.

There are ways CST adds to the more basic concept. It helps make understandable why Cultural Maturity’s challenges and changes should be what we are seeing and for understanding exactly what they ask of us. And while all the more nuanced aspects of the concept—and very often the devil is in the details—follow directly from Cultural Maturity as a concept (CST is not required), CST provides simple language for making many of the important distinctions. It can also provide great help when applying the concept of Cultural Maturity by helping us think about systems at a level of detail that the concept of Cultural Maturity by itself does not provide.

CST is also significant with regard to the concept of Cultural Maturity because it models one successful effort at Culturally Mature theory (and one that can be applied in highly nuanced ways to a wide variety of questions). But the concept of Cultural Maturity, when understood deeply, requires no support from Creative Systems Theory.

The notion that our times require us to question and get beyond past culturally-specific beliefs sounds a lot like the post-modern argument. Is Culturally Maturity just different language for the same observation?

No, it fundamentally challenges—or at least fundamentally extends and stretches—the post-modern thesis. It proposes that post-modernism’s confronting of established truths—and essentialist truth more generally—represents an important first step. But the post-modern critique leaves unanswered just why we should be seeing what we see. It also fails to give us much of anything to replace what it quite accurately takes away. The concept of Cultural Maturity gets quite specifically at why we should see the changes we do and argues that the challenge ultimately is not just the surrendering of past sureties, but the ability to think, relate, and act in some fundamentally new—and newly demanding—ways.

You speak of Cultural Maturity as a simple notion, but it doesn’t sound simple to me? Is it or isn’t it?

There are ways it is simple. It is a single brushstroke notion that we can apply to all sorts of very different questions. And, it represents something more basic and interesting than concept in some abstract philosophical sense—it doesn’t require extensive intellectual understanding. In the end, it is about the ability to hold experience with a more mature fullness, to get our arms around and tolerate a less certain, but ultimate more complete, kind of reality. All of Cultural Maturity’s conclusions follow from what the world look’s like from that more “grown up” place.

But simple does not mean easy. At the very least, culturally mature perspective requires surrendering assumptions (often favorite ones) and stepping into new territory. And it requires stretching our understanding sufficiently that we can tolerate the more nuanced and complex world the culturally mature perspective reveals. Without that stretch, not only does Cultural Maturity’s more sophisticated vantage not make sense, it is hard even to just appreciate why it might be needed.

You propose that culturally mature perspective requires us to think about social questions more systemically, and use as an example the need to get beyond both liberal and conservative political assumptions. But you say centrist, compromise solutions get us no closer. I’m not sure I fully get what remains?

Culturally mature perspective challenges us to think more systemically, and in a particular sense. One of the best ways to understand the result is the recognition that such understanding “bridges” all sorts of familiar assumptions, draws a circle around conclusions that we tend to think of polar. In the social realm, political left and political right make an important example. Our current disgust with partisan pettiness reflects this need for more mature perspective. It is important to appreciate that, in the end, simple compromise—splitting the difference gets us no closer to a mature systemic view. We need to be able to address and make sense of a larger, more dynamic and creative picture.

Note that this observation challenges not just politics as usual, but also usual notions of journalism. We’ve thought that “balanced” reporting was enough. Cultural Maturity argues that we can’t stop there if news is to be about identifying the questions that today most matter and addressing them in ways that will produce useful answers.

The concept of Cultural Maturity describes how thinking in polar terms worked very well for the tasks of times past—indeed was critical to addressing them. This was the case whatever the polarity we focus on—besides Left versus Right, also us versus them more generally, mind versus body, masculine versus feminine, or matter versus energy. The concept of Cultural Maturity also describes how continuing to think in polar terms in the future will more and more leave unable not just to answer critical questions, but unable to ask them in useful ways.

I get your argument for an additional option. But trying to think about it makes my head swim. A simple definition would be helpful.

It is appropriate that it might initially make your head swim. We are talking not just about new policies and new ideas, but new, more mature ways of holding experience. Culturally mature conclusions challenge familiar beliefs. And we aren’t used to all they require of us.

One particular way they stretch us has to do with what they require that we draw on in ourselves. Rarely does can the intellect alone get us there. The new more systemic questions require that we bring multiple aspects knowing—more of our own systemic complexity—to bear in addressing them.

We can come at this recognition lots of ways. One simple approach: most all the new questions are not just questions of how to do things, but questions of value. For example, we have to better appreciate how having amazing new technologies and knowing how to use them wisely are not at all the same things. The intellect alone is great for questions that just require knowledge. Wise decision-making requires a more complex kind of engagement.

Creative Systems Theory calls the kind of perspective that produces this more complete kind of engagement Integrative Meta-perspective. The kind of the systemic thinking it produces is different from the more mechanical gears-and-pulleys systems thinking of good engineering. This appreciation for the importance of bringing more of ourselves to bear helps get at the difference. Rationality alone is quire adequate for describing systems understanding of the mechanical sort. We need the whole of intelligence, applied in a new conscious and integrated way, if we wish to apply the new more dynamic and alive kind of systemic understanding future questions will increasing require.

This more embracing kind of systemic perspective necessarily leaves without definition in the usual rationally-conceived sense. And at the same time it points toward a needed fuller sort of definition.

You talk about the importance of more Whole Person/Whole Systems relationships. But you also talk of potential traps in that kind of language. Can you tease this apart?

Humanistic, idealist, and philosophically romantic beliefs use the language of wholeness in a way that in the end is just an identification with the feeling side of experience. We also commonly encounter a naïve sort of holism that confuses spiritual oneness with living complexity. Each of these is as fundamentally different from mature systemic perspective as a more mechanical gears-and-pulleys engineering picture. None is systemic in the dynamically encompassing sense Culturally Mature conception requires.

You emphasize the importance of better appreciating limits. Yet at the same time you say Cultural Maturity is about thinking more expansively. This seems like a contradiction.

Culturally Maturity is very much about a new relationship to limits—of all sorts. It is about better appreciating planetary limits. It is about new respect for limits inherent to the dynamics of relationship—whether between lovers or nations. It is also about limits to any way of thinking that stops short of fully mature systemic perspective to effectively frame or answer our times defining questions.

At the same time culturally mature perspective emphasizes that a maturely conceived relationship to limits makes us more not less. For example, with regard to environmental limits it affirms that a new ethic of sustainability will be essential. At the same time it asserts that a mature understanding of sustainability is not (and cannot be) about doing with less. It must be about an ultimately fuller, and more fulfilling, understanding of more.

Is Cultural Maturity just another way of talking about the transformations of the Information Age?

There are links. But Cultural Maturity’s picture is more encompassing and warns that thinking in information Age terms hold traps for the unwary. Cultural Maturity argues that very few of the important concerns before us can be resolved solely by technological means. It also challenges the common assumption that invention is the ultimate driver of cultural change. It argues that just as much culture’s development shapes what we are able to invent and how we use what we invent. Miss the more systemic picture and we can end up pursuing ends that we ultimately would not at all want.

Cultural Maturity sounds like a lot of “new paradigm” thinking. Is that basically what you are talking about?

Except for the most advanced of such thinking, we again find fundamental and critical differences. The larger portion of “new paradigm” ideas are in fact just new versions of time-worn humanistic/idealist/romantic or spiritual/mystical notions. They reduce to that naive sort of holism that confuses emotional or spiritual connectedness with living complexity.

Could we say Cultural Maturity is about being more interdisciplinary in our perspective and more relativistic in how we think?

Certainly Cultural Maturity affirms the importance of multidisciplinary inquiry. It argues that most all the important questions of our time require it. One of the reasons the academic world often providing much less leadership than we might prefer when it comes to the future is how impenetrable the walls between disciplines can be. (Another reason is the common assumption in academia that rational understanding is sufficient.)

Culturally mature truth is relativistic in the sense that it is contextual. It recognizes that a great multiplicity of factors that come into play with any question that matters. But it is explicitly not relativistic in the “different strokes for different folks” anything-goes sense. It is about bringing great discernment to critical concerns, not less.

The concept seems more psychological than most ways of thinking about cultural tasks. I guess that makes sense being that you are a psychiatrist. But I wonder whether that helps or hinders?

I suppose it could do either. Ultimately the concept of Cultural Maturity concerns the “psyche of culture,” who we are collectively and the particular challenges that today face the collective endeavor. But there is also a more personal psychological aspect. Cultural Maturity is not just about various ways of looking at the future. It is also about how the diverse ways we hold experience effect how we see the future (and also the present and the past). CST addresses this in great detail. But the simple concept of Cultural Maturity is also in the end less about just what is than how at different times and places we predictably interpret what is.

Cultural mature perspective is obviously pertinent to understanding human systems. What about the non-human, to understanding the inanimate, nature, the divine?

It is certainly pertinent to understanding how and why we have understood the inanimate, nature, and he divine in the odd and often contradictory ways we have through the course of the human story. It can also assist us in going further. For example, it assists us in formulating ways of thinking that attempt the reconcile the historically conflicting realities of science and religion (CST offers one approach) and in teasing apart attempts to do so that at least begin to succeed from those fall for conceptual traps. It also invites even more encompassing big-picture “whole ball of wax” reflections and provides tools for separating approaches that hold promise from those that can’t ultimately serve us.

Could you say more about how the concept of Cultural Maturity provides hope for the future?

The question of hope of critical. If there is a core crisis in our time it is a crisis of purpose. This is a crisis of purpose both in the sense of what in the future is to define purpose—what kind of story in fact will most give our actions meaning—and in terms of whether we can be hopeful as we look ahead. With regard to the first sense, the concept of Cultural Maturity articulates a compelling story the realization of which brings an important kind of achievement and reward to the human endeavor. With regard to the second, the concept of Cultural Maturity at least offers that a realistic and substantive guiding story exists—that there is a reason to go on. More it offers that making the possibilities that story offers manifest need not be some idealist hope or something of our far off future. At least the potential for the kind of thinking, relating, and acting the future will require is in important ways “build into us.” (Cultural Maturity is a “developmental” notion.) And I look to the defining advances of the last hundred years reveals that we are already a good distance on our way (even if we have not had overarching perspective for understanding just what we were up to.)

The Blog Library

The remaining sections in the blog Library each in different ways help fill out Cultural Maturity’s changes and why we see them:

The Overview section presents as extended overview and the concept of Cultural Maturity.

The Defining Themes section examines the kinds of change Cultural Maturity produces. On first blush, today’s new questions can seem wholly distinct, and any attempt to address them all in one place ill-conceived. But while the specifics of today’s new challenges could often not be more different, we find fundamental similarities in what these concerns ask of us. Put in the context of Cultural Maturity, we can think of these common themes as key “developmental tasks.” Appreciating these similarities provides guidance for confronting the challenge ahead and also supports the conclusion that change of an encompassing sort is afoot.

The Compare and Contrast section turns to how Cultural Maturity differs from other views of the future. Cultural Maturity involves distinctions that may at first seem subtle, but which have make-or-break significance. Here we look at five common interpretive perspectives people use when looking at the future: “We’ve Arrived” scenarios, “We’ve Gone Astray” scenarios, “Post-Modern/Constructivist” scenarios, “Post Industrial/Information Age” scenarios, and Transformational/New Paradigm” scenarios. The concept of Cultural Maturity sees in each a piece of the truth and also fatal shortcomings.

The Domains section addresses how the concept of Cultural Maturity applies to particular concerns, both specific topics (such as morality or leadership) and broader domains of culture (such as government or art).

The Theory Topics section addresses concepts that may be pertinent to blog posts. Most draw on the thinking of Creative Systems Theory, but some apply more generally to culturally mature perspective.