Adapted from Quick and Dirty Answers to the Biggest of Questions
The most precise language for talking about where Cultural Maturity’s cognitive changes take us draws on the concept of systems. Systems thinking emphasizes the importance of considering all the pieces involved in a process; that connections are as important as differences; and how, when what we are considering is in fact a system, the whole ends up being greater than the sum of its parts.
We can use systems language to help us better frame most any modern-day challenge—from the most personal to the most encompassing. Personal moral decision-making in a world without cultural guideposts requires a new ability to take all the multiple factors involved in responsible action into account. Maintaining a healthy planet requires better recognizing the planet’s biological and physical complexities, and also better appreciating how human decisions of every sort have direct ecological implications. Whatever the challenge, today, we must learn to better acknowledge the multiplicity of ingredients that come into play.
The importance of thinking systemically has become increasingly acknowledged over the last century and, with this, systems ideas have been used in ways that have benefited us greatly. But it is essential to recognize that when it comes to the kind of understanding future challenges will more and more require, systems thinking as conventionally conceived can’t help us as much as we might hope. Indeed it can lead us far astray.
Most systemic thinking confronts a critical obstacle when it comes to the tasks ahead. Until very recently, our systemic models, even for ourselves, were mechanical models. Conventional systems ideas appreciate intricacies and interconnections, but the assumptions are most often those of a machine world. Even when the system of interest is a human body or an ecosystem teeming with organisms, the language remains that of a good engineer—hydraulics and forces, gears and pulleys. It fails to take into account the “living” nature of its subject. Systemic understanding that can effectively serve us in times ahead must be if a more dynamic sort.
A more specific quandary embedded in this “life” conundrum helps us make more complete sense of the challenge that confronts systemic thinking—and that ultimately confronts any effort at culturally mature conception: how do we think about difference if our ideas are to honor the fact that we are alive? Creative Systems Theory calls this more specific quandary the Dilemma of Differentiation. The simple fact that culturally mature truth requires that we make distinctions puts us immediately in a pickle. Differentiation, the ability to say “this as opposed to that,” is ultimately what makes thinking work. But usual ways of addressing difference leave us short of the required dynamism. The Dilemma of Differentiation alerts us to the multiple ways in which systemic thinking can go astray. It also highlights the particular significance of a creative frame.
When it comes to addressing difference, we tend to fall for one of two opposite kinds of traps. Both kinds of traps threaten advocates of systemic thought. (Systemic understanding is unusual for the diverse—even opposite—worldviews that it can be used to justify.) The most obvious kind of trap is the one I just noted. A person depicts difference in traditional “parts” terms—that is, in an atomistic, mechanistic manner. Such systemic formulations can be highly detailed, but no matter how subtle and sensitive our delineations, when we put the parts together, we end up back in a machine world.
Less common is an opposite, yet just as deadly, kind of trap. Many popular writers who use systems language—particularly writers of a more humanist or spiritual bent—largely ignore parts and focus only on relationships. A frequent result is ideas that reduce to little more than elaborate ways of saying “all is one.” Recognizing connectedness can be comforting—and it identifies a truth just as important and accurate as the “all is many” claims of atomistic or mechanistic belief. But slighting the significance of parts makes for impoverished conception at best. Worse, it makes for misleading conception. Real relationship (connectedness in the systemic sense this inquiry has interest in)—whether personal or conceptual—require difference. Certainly life requires it.
A defining characteristic of culturally mature thought is that it effectively addresses the Dilemma of Differentiation. We see hints of this result in the way culturally mature perspective “bridges” conceptual polarities. We tend to associate polarity with opposed beliefs—such as the convictions of the political left set in contrast to those of the political right, or scientific assumptions juxtaposed with conclusions of a religious sort. But a more fundamental kind of polarity underlies all such more specific polar relationships. This most basic of juxtapositions contrasts separateness/multiplicity on one hand and connectedness/oneness on the other. Bridging of this ultimate polarity is implied whenever any more specific bridging comes into play. Thus any notion that draws a circle around traditional conceptual polarities—and really does so—will take us beyond the limited viewpoints of both mechanistic and unitary formulations.
Creative perspective offers a way to get beyond the Dilemma of Differentiation. Creative understanding, whatever our concern, allows us to make highly detailed distinctions and have our identification of difference increase, rather than diminish, our appreciation for our dynamic “living” natures. The developmental/evolutionary approach CST takes to understand cultural change illustrates this essential achievement when creative perspective is applied to difference over time. As far as difference and connectedness, we can see that creative stages are, without contradiction, at once discrete and aspects of larger generative entireties. We find a related “third option” beyond mechanistic difference and the unitary in all creatively framed formulations.
A creative frame is not the only way to reconcile the Dilemma of Differentiation, but arguably it has particular significance. With regard to ourselves, at least, it may provide something quite precise. The challenge of culturally mature systemic perspective lies with thinking in ways that reflect not just that we are alive, but alive in the particular ways that make us human. If what most makes us human is the audacity of our toolmaking—creative—capacities, then a creative frame should have particular utility and precision when the concern is ourselves.
Can we extend this observation further? Do we appropriately think of biological life and existence as a whole as ultimately creative? In a sense, perhaps (this is a future topic). But such conclusions leave us very close to common conceptual traps. Certainly we must take care that we don’t simply project our time’s new cognitive mechanisms as Enlightenment perspective did in assuming a mechanical universe. It is better that we say simply that whatever strategy we apply, it has to accomplish similar ends to what we see with a creative frame.