Not all signs of disequilibrium are negative. Some emerging disruptions are quite beneficial. The rise of postmodern social contexts and families that raise children to have complex minds, adaptive selves, emotional empathy but also critical attitudes toward institutions is a case in point. This context emerged during the 1970s and 1980s (see Hage and Powers 1992). Understanding how this happened allows one to connect a macro/ meso level social evolutionary theory to the micro level by asking how the macro/ meso (structural) level generates more and more people with agency— in other words, creative individuals. PET answers this question by explaining how distinctive kinds of social selves are raised within the same society. Recognizing the existence of multiple social contexts and their specific social selves lays the foundation for hermeneutical understanding and speaks to a number of contemporary issues about the basis of partisan divides and even the rise of extremist parties. However, we want to avoid the simple dichotomies that have plagued sociological thinking and recognize in this instance that there are at least four kinds of social contexts within each country, each of which can be subdivided by region and other characteristics. Within each of these four, the socialization experiences of children come in degrees rather than pure types.

What is creativity? All too often, we restrict our sense of creativity to what artists, scientists, or visionary CEOs accomplish, losing sight of how important and common creativity is in our everyday lives. For me, the creativity thread connecting scientists, artists, and the woman on the street may be found in simple problem- solving and especially adaptation to new situations generated in the third stage of knowledge creation. A problem- solving approach applies equally well to mechanics repairing your car and teachers trying to stop the screaming of some unhappy child. Being creative involves two steps: (1) recognizing a problem or defect, or what will be called a performance gap in the third section of this book (i.e., being reflexive, to use Habermas's [1984a, b] term); and (2) searching for a solution via invention, which is frequently what we think of as creativity, or via learning what others are doing and adapting this behavior to a specific situation. A similar idea is expressed in Carnevale (1991: 110– 13).