Touch the Future began over twenty years ago. The vision was to help parents and those who care about children respond in the best possible way to the dramatic changes in the environment we call childhood, changes that exploded after World War II. We did not have the internet then. Social media and mobile phone-computers did not exist. The dangers that television represented are now compounded many times with ‘screen time’ replacing living, breathing relationships. Technology in the early classroom was just creeping in. Levels of autism, emotionally challenged youth and other pathologies were significantly lower but on the rise. Play deprivation was high with adult organized activities replacing free-range spontaneous play. The impact of hospital-technological birth on mother-infant-father attachment continues. Global warming with the threat of mass global extinction, including homo sapiens was a distant dream.

One of the most deeply penetrating insights that emerge from Joe’s vision of imagination is how it manifests as both our individual self-image or ego and the culture we live in. One is a personalized micro view and the other a collective macro view of essentially the same field, each giving rise to the other. The Greek word persona comes to mind, persona being the cultural mask our authentic nature wears. We must conform to culture to belong and therefore survive and by doing so we limit and constrain our true nature and potential. Here rests another pillar in Joe’s overarching framework.

Michael Mendizza