Five Minds for the Future

Howard Gardner, the person that wrote about multiple intelligences, has a short article in a business journal about what he is calling, Five Minds for the Future.

He says we all need to develop these five minds in order to be successful in the future. They are: the disciplined mind, the synthesizing mind, the creating mind, the respectful mind and the ethical mind.

Here’s the quote from his article:

The disciplined mind has mastered at least one way of thinking — a distinctive mode of cognition that characterizes a specific scholarly discipline, craft, or profession. Much research conforms that it takes up to ten years to master a discipline. The disciplined mind also knows how to work steadily over time to improve skill and understanding — in the vernacular, it is highly disciplined. Without at least one discipline under his belt, the individual is destined to march to someone else’s tune.

The synthesizing mind takes information from disparate sources, understands and evaluates that information objectively, and puts it together in ways that make sense to the synthesizer and also to other persons. Valuable in the past, the capacity to synthesize becomes ever more crucial as information continues to mount at dizzying rates.

Building on discipline and synthesis, the creating mind breaks new ground. It puts forth new ideas, poses unfamiliar questions, conjures up fresh ways of thinking, arrives at unexpected answers. Ultimately, these creations must find acceptance among knowledgeable consumers. By virtue of its anchoring in territory that is not yet rule-governed, the creating mind seeks to remain at least one step ahead of even the most sophisticated computers and robots.

Recognizing that nowadays one can no longer remain within one’s shell or on one’s home territory, the respectful mind notes and welcomes differences between human individuals and between human groups, tries to understand these “others,” and seeks to work effectively with them. In a world where we are all interlinked, intolerance or disrespect is no longer a viable option.

Proceeding on a level more abstract than the respectful mind, the ethical mind ponders the nature of one’s work and the needs and deserves of the society in which one lives. This mind conceptualizes how workers can serve purposes beyond self-interest and how citizens can work unselfishly to improve the lot of all. The ethical mind then acts on the basis of these analyses.

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