WHAT PSYCHOLOGY IS CALLED TO DO IN THE COMING DECADES

This essay of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is contemplating about the role of human species in the universe, and comes to the conclusion that humans, blessed (or cursed) with a powerful mind and consciousness, should be committed to the future, should feel responsible for the sustainability of our evolution and development. Besides developing a realistic notion of ourselves (not only greed and sex, but cooperation, altruism and spirituality are also specific to us), and we need to find alternative forms of responding to the imperatives of genes, instincts, and traditional conditioning. The only way of our survival is to find new, meaningful sources of passion and joy, and make sure that they at the same time support ecological health, diversity, social justice, as well as for the complexity of consciousness, and offer us a meaningful alternative of competitive consumption and materialism.