Moon Paradox
Human Creative Potential and the Paradox of American Dreaming
This week’s Human Potential Summit in my current hometown of Denver, Colorado, got me thinking. Bringing together employers, educators, innovators, startups, investors, nonprofits, foundations, government representatives, and policymakers to build a better future, the summit aimed to shape the future of work and learning. A room full of thinkers and doers surely has the future potential to "build a movement," as the summit's website goal puts it.
But, as a Culture Futurist®, the question in my mind this week has been less about the future and more about ancestral past and infinite present. Within this group of gathered professionals, what past geographies, cultures, technologies, and languages fused to shape the human creative potential of THIS crowd, attending THIS summit?
What was the Wonder Economy potential of the gathering itself, and how would we know we had maximized it?
Sankofa is a Twi word from Ghana that means "to go back and get it." It is a concept that encourages learning from the past to inform the future and reaching back to move forward. In this spirit, I offer my thoughts on how we might unlock the human creative potential of American innovation.
All Systems Go
The lady who owned the little country store in Puncheon Creek—a speck of Earth in the rural mountains of Southeastern Kentucky's Breathitt County—was nervous on November 3, 1969. Her first grandchild, the eighth generation born there, would soon arrive.
On television that night, at 9:30 p.m., while I was still wet and crying from just being born, President Richard Nixon addressed the nation to announce his plans to end American involvement in the Vietnam War. Three weeks later, he signed the first "draft lottery" into law to determine which young men would be picked first for military service in Vietnam. In America, things can change quickly.
Inside those three weeks, Sesame Street aired its first episode introducing the world to Kermit the Frog and Big Bird.
In Texas, future cannabis enthusiast and Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey entered the world. Alright, alright, alright.
In New York, the National Organization for Women (NOW) drew more than 500 feminists to establish common ground between the radical and moderate wings of the women's rights movement.
Across the nation, in San Francisco, Native American activists organized a gathering at Alcatraz Island, where they read a proclamation reclaiming the former federal prison site "by right of discovery."
Above us all in the sky, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tested the first supersonic drone aircraft on a secret reconnaissance mission over China.
And, somewhere in Cape Canaveral, Florida, someone sent artist Forrest Myers a telegram that read: "YOU'RE ON. A.O.K. ALL SYSTEMS GO."
While we don't know for certain who sent the telegram, we do know that it was confirming that the Moon Museum was aboard Apollo 12. This small ceramic wafer, less than one inch in size, was the brainchild of artist Forrest Myers and featured miniature drawings by six prominent artists of the day. When NASA refused to officially sanction the project, Myers did what good artists do: he found a creative solution. While our nation was embroiled in political, technological, and cultural upheaval, a simple act of creative defiance broke free of Earth's atmosphere to touch the light of the moon.
As much as things have changed in America since I was born, things still feel very familiar. Culture, identity, media, and technology are still fusing to accelerate at the pace of change. Everything we thought we knew about ourselves just a few short years ago, again seems to be turning— a cool wet seed turning in hot, scorched earth, not yet able to break through the dirt to touch the light.
Moon Paradox and America's Ideals
Swirling moments of cultural, political, and technological change always result in tricky paradoxes. America's moon landings in 1969 encapsulate one of them: a celestial body so constant and present in the lives of all humans—yet always unreachable—was now within reach. And yet, all these years later, the moon remains a symbol that straddles the line between the every day and the extraordinary. That paradox—the tension between familiarity and mystery—reflects how we think about America's ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This tension—between what is familiar and what remains beyond reach—aptly describes how America often grapples with its core ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These ideals are ingrained in our national consciousness, visible in our discourse, and celebrated in our culture, yet they remain elusive and out of reach for many.
The American Dream
The "American Dream" is a familiar concept embedded in our culture—the promise that anyone can succeed through hard work. Yet, for many, it remains an unfulfilled aspiration, especially in the face of systemic inequalities in education, income, and opportunity.
Innovation and Inequality in Technology
America leads the world in technological innovation, from artificial intelligence to biotechnology. These breakthroughs are visible everywhere, offering glimpses of a future where problems could be solved more efficiently and human potential expanded. However, the benefits of these advancements are not equally distributed. The technological revolution promises greater liberty and economic advancement, yet it often exacerbates inequality. Like the moon, technological progress shines as a beacon of possibility. Still, it remains inaccessible to many due to the widening gap between those without access to cutting-edge tools.
Freedom of Expression in the Arts
In the arts, America celebrates freedom of expression as a fundamental right. Artists can express themselves, push boundaries, and provoke thought. However, true freedom of expression is often constrained by market forces, political polarization, or censorship. While the right to create is visible and enshrined, the ability to do so without consequence or compromise can feel out of reach—mirroring the moon's visible but untouchable presence.
Entrepreneurship and the Pursuit of Happiness
The business world celebrates entrepreneurship as a path to self-made success, reinforcing the ideal of liberty through economic freedom. Yet many entrepreneurs struggle with barriers like access to funding, regulatory challenges, or market competition. Research suggests that the mental well-being of our nation’s entrepreneurs seems to be a free fall. Like the moon, entrepreneurship is a symbol of possibility, but for many, the success they seek remains out of reach due to systemic obstacles.
These examples reflect a tension between visibility and attainability—paradoxically familiar but distant ideals. These tensions don't just shape individual experiences; they reflect broader cultural shifts reshaping how we work, connect, and explore
Loneliness as a Signal of Cultural Change
This paradox of visibility and inaccessibility also resonates with another modern phenomenon: the loneliness epidemic. The loneliness epidemic, as explored in Matthew Shaer's "Why Is the Loneliness Epidemic So Hard to Cure?", is not simply a matter of individual pain or a cultural quirk. It represents a profound response to rapid shifts in how we live, work, and connect, driven by innovations that reorient our expectations of time, distance, and social interaction.
Loneliness is an adaptive response to rapid societal change. As industrialization, urbanization, and digitization reshape our lives, the traditional social bonds that once provided a sense of community and belonging have weakened. Technological innovations have connected us in ways that previous generations could only imagine, yet these connections often lack the depth and emotional proximity humans need to thrive. We are more connected than ever, but many of us feel more isolated.
This disconnection is particularly evident in the workplace, which historically served as a key environment for forming meaningful relationships. As remote work and digital communication platforms become the norm, the organic social interactions that once occurred in physical office spaces have diminished. This erosion of workplace connection has broader implications for business performance and employee well-being. Loneliness and isolation in the workplace create strategic challenges, signaling that our approaches to work and community must evolve to meet the realities of this new era.
Navigating the Paradoxes of Business and Society
Like the moon paradox, loneliness points to the tensions between what we expect and experience. It is not just a symptom of personal discontent but a reflection of how our societal structures have failed to adapt to the changing landscape of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For business leaders, these paradoxes—whether they involve innovation, inequality, freedom, or connection—are not just barriers to success but signals where opportunities for transformation lie.
The key to navigating these paradoxes is to embrace them as spaces of "creative tension" where new questions can be found. Better questions help innovation thrive. But first, we must learn to sit within this tension long enough, discover a language big enough, and find the courage and compassion powerful enough to allow us to see each other as the answers we need. Much like the moon landing required collaboration across the arts, science, and business, today's challenges require a similar convergence of creativity and collaboration.
Consider the paradox of innovation versus inequality. Technology reshapes industries and widens the economic divide, concentrating wealth and opportunity in specific sectors. Businesses that develop solutions focused on democratizing access to technology and creating opportunities for all will lead the next wave of progress.
Or take the paradox of economic growth versus environmental sustainability. The U.S. economy continues to grow, but much of this growth is fueled by practices that are harmful to the environment. Businesses that integrate sustainable practices into their models will capture new consumer segments, particularly as public demand for eco-friendly products rises.
The solution to these paradoxes isn't about choosing one side over the other; it's about embracing the tensions and using them to drive innovation. Just as the moon landing was a product of diverse minds working together toward a common goal, the future of American business will be shaped by how well we can collaborate across disciplines and sectors.
Reimagining Our Response to Grand Challenges
The Apollo moon landing is a powerful reminder of what is possible when a shared sense of purpose and wonder unites us. It wasn't just a technological achievement; it was a cultural triumph born from the collective imagination of artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs. As we face today's grand challenges—climate change, inequality, mental health, and more—the lesson of the moon landing is clear: our success depends on our ability to rediscover America's "Wonder Economy."
The power of wonder isn't just an emotional response—it's a driver of transformational innovation. Wonder pushes us to cognitively explore new possibilities, ask better questions that arise from our hearts, and approach old problems with a collaborative awareness of our mutual vulnerability. This once propelled us to the moon and will allow us to solve today's grand challenges.
To fully develop the human side of technology and future of work, Creativity America is weaving the arts and sciences of creativity into business innovation. For companies to truly benefit from executives' significant investments in emerging technologies, these investments must be paired with pioneering investments to unlock the human creative potential of the American workforce. Just as the Apollo program united diverse arts, science, and business expertise to make the "impossible" inevitable, we have new frontiers today with immense possibilities.
The future of American enterprise lies in our ability to foster environments where artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs can come together to solve problems that no single discipline can tackle alone. We reached the moon once. We can do wonder full things again. This time, the paradox represented by the frontiers of our brains and minds may be our "new moon" to reach.
Why should we invest in bridging the arts and creativity industries with brain science and the future of work? It is not because it is easy but because it is hard. We are Americans, and wonder—the discovery emotion—is in our cultural DNA. Wonder drives creativity. Creativity drives innovation. Innovation drives the future. Reclaim wonder, and we write the future history of a nation that embraces the beautiful complexity of a country whose best days are still ahead.
Theo Edmonds, Culture Futurist® & Founder,Creativity America | Bridging Creative Industries and Brain Science with Future of Work & Wondervation™
©2024 Theo Edmonds | All Rights Reserved. Please credit the author when using any of this content. The views expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of any organization with which the author is affiliated.