Maximum Cultural Development (MCD): is a unifying framework and methodology comprised of a coherent system of sets and subsets. Progressive system(s) of thought, values, ethics, social principles, imperatives, language and action that when understood and adopted, fully supports and sustains the development, establishment, maintenance and refinement of critical thought, effective communication, problem-solving and ethical reasoning. It is a system with strict emphasis on healthy principles of human development and interaction that promote an environment acutely attuned to the historical, sociological, cultural and the economic contexts of knowledge, theory and action...

Maximum Cultural Development is not ethnocentrism.

In short, Maximum Cultural Development is an applied, as well as pure Social Science that comprehensively addresses, and facilitates the elimination of social problems, in addition to analyzing them. It expresses its results and effects through dynamic, progressive social movements that change conditions, events and the course of life in positive, life-sustaining directions.

This article will delineate Maximum Cultural Development, its origin, useful definitions, differentiation from related concepts or theory, applications, and its relevance to human evolution in the 21st Century and beyond.

History

The importance of a framework, methodology, or model to ensure that a proven process is applied to practice is an accepted principle within the sciences. As a practice, however, there has been no dominant model within, or applied to progressive social change and reformation. MCD was further developed and refined by Marcus Tremble after 30+ years of international research and analysis of social change and reformation with influence from the book by: Madhubuti, H. R. (1991) Black Men: Single, obsolete, dangerous? the Afrikan American Family in transition. Chicago: Third World Press.

Madhubuti, at that time, provided the most descriptive and appropriate wrapper for the framework and methodology under development by (Tremble) in the aforementioned book (pages 8-9). Madhubuti provided the relevant contextual application that Tremble had been driven by and thus substantiated further development, establishment, maintenance and refinement of the concept as Madhubuti commanded of the reader. In 2006, an overview of MCD was published on Wikipedia (the alleged free encyclopedia), and it was later rejected after nearly a year for being Original Research when it was found to be linked and attributed to African American Culture.

MCD draws from, and is based on research from a diverse group of disciplines and practices:

• Psychology
• Cultural Anthropology
• Human Resource Management
• Information Engineering
• Instructional System Design and Development
• Knowledge Management
• Organizational Development
• Philosophy
• Political Science
• Socio-economics
• Sociology

Maximum Cultural Development rises from the observation that what human beings do and what they refrain from doing is, in part, a consequence of being socialized in one way, as opposed to another. People have social heredity as well as biological heredity. Members of the human species are trained in the family and in their education, formal and informal, to behave in ways that are conventional and fixed by tradition. Volumes of research have indicated that culture is learned. Human beings never react simply to a stimulus. The response of human beings is always a response to the stimulus and to the total situation as it is arbitrarily defined and interpreted in terms of the various conventions that are observed by members of a particular culture. The manner and mode of response has a special cultural aspect.

Definitions:

With the goal of creating an objective resource, the following supportive definitions of culture are provided for clarity. It should be noted that even the most elaborate inventory of the parts and traits of a culture cannot adequately characterize it. Cultures have organization as well as content. Emphasis on some features as opposed others and the total interrelation of the isolable parts has much to do with the distinctive properties of a culture. While most students of humanity agree upon the indispensable importance of the concept of culture, no single definition has yet won universal acceptance, and it is clear that none are completely clear-cut. Many definitions have been submitted by scholars from many countries, from all fields of social and biological science and the humanities and in aggregate form the foundational basis for this article. Those herein are contemporary since this is the focus of the topic.

1. Culture: is the complex system of meaning and behavior that defines the way of life for a given group or society. It includes beliefs, values, knowledge, art, morals, laws, habits, language, and dress. Culture includes ways of thinking as well as patterns of behavior. Observing culture involves studying what people think, how they interact, and the objects they make and use.
2. The second emphasizes culture as a comprehensive totality and enumerates aspects of culture content. Franz Boas: “Culture embraces all the manifestations of social habits of a community, the reactions of the individual as affected by the habits of the group in which he/she lives, and the products of human activities as determined by these habits.”
3. The third is built on the feature of social inheritance. Ralph Linton: “As a general term, culture means the total social heredity of man-kind, while as a specific term, a culture means particular strain of social heredity.”
4. The fourth emphasizes culture as a way of life, a design for living. Paul Sears: “The way in which the people in any group do things, make and use tools, get along with one another and with other groups, the words they use and the way they use them to express thoughts, and the thoughts they think...”
5. The fifth is psychological in the sense that processes such as adjustment, learning, and habit are single out. Culture as a problem-solving device is stressed. Ralph Piddington: “The culture of a people may be defined as the sum total of the material and intellectual equipment whereby they satisfy their biological and social needs and adapt themselves to their environment.”
6. The sixth identifies as central the patterning or organization of culture, and its systemic quality. John Gillin: “Culture consists of patterned and functionally interrelated customs common to specifiable human beings composing specifiable social groups or categories.”
7. The seventh and final definition used here focuses on culture as an accumulated product of group life. Kimball Young: “A precipitate of man’s social life.”

Synthesis

Maximum Cultural Development is a natural synthesis of the above groups, yet differentiates itself as a proactive cultural continuum, consisting of all the commonly identified elements and characteristics of culture with the additional key attribute: The explicit cultural imperative to: "Develop, Establish, Maintain and Refine".
Additionally, MCD is self-guiding and self-contained, independent of any charismatic leader or authority. It expresses and addresses healthy principles of human development at the behavioral and other levels. The principle of (Self-improvement, as a basis for Community Development) is one of its constituent elements.

Summary (short)

Maximum Cultural Development plays a leading role today as the process of realigning culture into a new, transformative source of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation that challenges the categories, methods, and conclusions of contemporary mainstream thought. It stands as a dynamic cultural and philosophical process that critically evaluates the understandings of the past and enables new visions of the future, joining them in a public philosophical conversation focused on expanding minds, hearts, and changing the world.

It encompasses and emphasizes principles and standards of conduct and evaluation which identify the aspirations of a person or people. These principles define the highest goals of human possibility. The principles of a person or people are not meant to imprison them with guilt and prohibition, but to illuminate and provide the means for navigating the pathways of progress. Principles are meant to show the way up, no mater how far down one might seem to be. They also sustain us.

They are guidelines and the blueprint for our humanity. A person or people without such principles can only react, as leaves blown by the winds of circumstance. MCD is bigger and more powerful than self-concept (another of its constituent elements) because it is the unifying methodology and framework that identifies and guides us towards the best that we can be, and not merely an indication of who we are.
Its principles, procedures, practices and imperatives serve as the causative basis for progressive social change and reformation, and draw us ever onward and upward; ultimately towards the perfection of our humanity.

See also

• Attitude
• Cultural system
• Development
• Knowledge leadership
• Maximum
• Process
• Social Change
• Social consciousness
• Social Dynamics
• Social interaction
• Social movement
• Social organisation
• System