Adaptive Intelligence is a dramatic reappraisal and reframing of the concept of human intelligence. In a sweeping analysis, Robert J. Sternberg argues that we are using a fatally-flawed, outdated conception of intelligence; one which may promote technological advancement, but which has also accelerated climate change, pollution, the use of weaponry, and inequality. Instead of focusing on the narrow academic skills measured by standardized tests, societies should teach and assess adaptive intelligence, defined as the use of collective talent in service of the common good. This book describes why the outdated notion of intelligence persists, what adaptive intelligence is, and how it could lead humankind on a more positive path.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/adaptive-intelligence/3A004EE4E80B7B38EA6853FD59904093
Anything by Sternberg is worth reading, in my experience.
The above quote about the book gets at an insight that’s profound in its implications (probably more than we can possibly imagine), is relatively easy to summarize, but is among the hardest problems to solve: the human created world reflects human consciousness.
People lacking in wisdom will create a world that seems stupid and self-defeating and anti-human.
Low levels of creativity will create a routinized and dreary place.
Low levels of compassion and empathy will result in a world that’s harsh, merciless and painful.
Low levels of literacy mean that all human problems will be reproduced again and again.
Low levels of critical thinking result in a world of superstition, credulity, and constant self-defeating behavior. High levels (properly defined) would presumably result in a world in which decision making in general would be more tightly constrained to self and collective interest.
Low levels of historical literacy contribute to, among other things, an inability to objectify and possibly transcend the dysfunctional patterns of our existence.
Etc.
All of these and many more simple propositions about the nature of consciousness and the inferences for the world we can draw from it, belie great complexity.
Maybe the most obvious overall problem in terms of viewing the progressive transformation of the world through the transformation of the mind, and vice versa, is that mind and world exist in highly complex interrelationship. And, for anyone approaching this high-level, complex, systems problem, there are likely a range of competing theoretical approaches (environmental vs. developmental, e.g.) for understanding it, and there isn’t necessarily any agreement on the who, what, how and why’s of the human subject, the world, and their change.
But, you don’t have to have all of that figured out to realize that focused upgrades in human consciousness, like Sternberg’s theory of adaptive intelligence, are possible and that they’ll have positive consequences.
Among the most important vocations for progressives, it seems to me, are educational visionaries. Sternberg should be on their study list.
