Just Published! Creativity: Revealing the Truth about Human Nature

BLACKSBURG, Va. - Aug. 1, 2013 - PRLog -- Beware continuing to solve the wrong problems! Beware continuing to squander the Earth’s dwindling resources on the symptoms rather than the root problem, the effects rather than their underlying cause.

Contrary to popular belief, the global predicament is not “economic crisis,” “social crisis,” “political crisis,” or “environmental crisis,” per se. It is not separate crises, either. And it is not due to the so-called human propensity to evil. As such, it is not likely going to be resolved within the framework of accepted understandings.

The long history of failed global development suggests that we might have been solving the wrong problems, the symptoms rather than the root crisis. The rapidly deteriorating human condition, despite all the time, efforts and resources that have been committed to its improvement, is clue that the crisis the world is facing might be something different from what we think it is.

A body of data nobody knew, and nobody thought it existed uncovers our true but lost essence as humans and, serendipitously, identifies the real but unnoticed and unsuspected crisis the world is facing.  

The data, a compendium of wit and practical wisdom on human nature,are culled from the writings of some of the deepest thinkers in psychology, education, biology, medicine, sociology, business, political science, metaphysics, and the humanities. These insights are arranged alphabetically and numbered. Alphabetical arrangement makes it possible to read the book from practically any page, to the same effect.  Numbering makes it easy to identify, highlight, and locate particular insights that speak to the reader personally.

Analysis of the insights reveals our quintessentially creative, but historically overlooked and substantially atrophied essence as humans.Homo Creativus, the term for this essence, implies that humans are, essentially, potential-actualizing beings, driven primarily to develop and to engage one’s unique abilities in significant, meaningful, and beneficial actions (with economic consumption and material well-being as the means to that end).

Analysis of the insights also identifies the fundamental but, as yet, unsuspected and unnoticed crisis the world is facing: “Global Creativity Crisis.” This is the inability of the vast majority of people to recognize, inability to develop, and inability to contribute their particular abilities in significant and beneficial social and ecological actions. One outcome of this massive psycho-spiritual deprivation is the growing sense of personal and group futility and, resultantly, the spreading epidemic of meaninglessness of which very many psychological, social, economic, and political problems are the symptoms.

If, therefore, we seriously hope to resolve the chaos the world is facing and to achieve the viable and sustainable global future everybody wants to see, what is needed is a social-economic-political system in which all the Earth’s seven billion inhabitants are able to develop and to engage their unique abilities in important and beneficial activities and, thus, to experience their lives as having meaning and significance. Necessarily, too, we will need to evolve goals for mankind and Planet Earth that people perceive as giving purpose and direction to their own lives and, therefore, as worthy of the commitment of their time and their creative energies.

This compendium of insights on human nature provides the logical and necessary starting point for that crucial and urgently needed species self-rediscovery. These insights are brought together for three related reasons:

First, so that we may return to the proper understanding of our essentially creative nature.

Second, so that we may free ourselves from obsolete self-perceptions that no longer serve us well; continued adherence to which could spell disaster for mankind and for Planet Earth.

Third, so that we may conform our policies and decisions (education, business, governance, care-giving, parenting, etc.) to our true nature and, thus, ensure their success and their continued relevance.

Those, precisely, are the aims of Creativity: Revealing the Truth about Human Nature – a compendiumof wit and wisdom with potential implications for the way we see ourselves, organize society, and conduct affairs.