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The Hot New Tribe Shaping
the 21st Century by Jill H. Lawrence A new day is dawning… really and truly. Such an event is not just supposition nor is it derived from inspiration. It’s a fact, and Paul H. Ray, Ph.D., has proven it thanks to his exhaustive study of 100,000 adult Americans conducted over a 13-year period. According to Ray, the new day has been dawning since 1960, thanks to the advent of the Cultural Creatives. And YOU are probably a Cultural Creative too, judging by the fact that you’re reading this magazine.
According to Ray’s
findings, half a century ago, only two subcultures existed in the U.S.
In fact, they still exist today. The difference is today the Cultural
Creatives are added to the mix. The Moderns are the dominant culture
in America, and made up 48% of the population in 1999. This is the
group that believes the commercialized urban-industrial world is the
obvious right way to live. They’re not looking for alternatives.
They adapt to the world by assuming rather than reasoning. The other subculture group
is the Traditionals. They made up 24.5% of the population in 1999.
This is a complex group of conservatives with shared values and
familiar customs, rich with the details of life, according to Ray.
This subculture is not about politics. It’s about beliefs, ways of
life, and personal identity. Prior to 1960, it was an either/or situation between Moderns and Traditionals; city or country, hip or square, modern and materialistic versus socially conservative and pious. They have existed together uncomfortably since our nation was founded. But, according to Ray and Anderson in their new book, The Cultural Creatives, “At the threshold of the twenty-first century, the Cultural Creatives represent a third alternative. Its roots lie in the two earlier cultures, but its branches reach well beyond them. Their new world of meaning offers the opportunity to heal the wounds of the culture wars.”
Half
of the Cultural Creatives, or “the Core Group,” are extremely
concerned about their inner lives, social activism, ecology, personal
growth, and spirituality. A huge 91% consider “helping other
people” to be very or extremely important, and a whopping 89%
believe that “every person has a unique gift to offer.” Eighty-two
percent want to develop more self-awareness, and 58% see discovering
new things about yourself as very or extremely important. The other
half of this subculture, the Green Cultural Creatives, are also driven
by values centered on the environment, social issues, and
relationships. However, this half is more secular, extroverted, and
tend to be less active than the Core Group. But all Cultural Creatives
want “holistic everything” with a focus on the unification of
body, mind, and spirit. As you well know, it
wasn’t always that way. When I was a freshman at Northwestern
University in 1960, the year this whole worldview shift began, I went
home for Thanksgiving. It was a horrifying trip because my little
sister told me that Mom had been talking to her dead mother on the
ouija board. “Ye gads!” I railed, “I go away to school for two
little months and my family goes mad!” Immediately I decided to
investigate so I could “straighten them out,” and bring everyone
back to sanity. But in the course of the investigation, I became even
more entranced with the possibility of life after death and
communication than they had been. Suddenly I was deeply involved in a
spiritual quest. Naturally, I wanted to
talk about my new intense interest with my friends at NU. I rapidly
discovered they weren’t as quick as I was to open their closed
minds. And although my friends loved me and were wonderful people,
they could not resist frequent opportunities to make fun of my new
interest in spirituality and the mysteries of the universe. It didn’t take me long
to recognize this topic just wasn’t one I could talk about to any of
my friends so I shut up. I didn’t change my interest, but I never
spoke of it again for many years. You could have been my best friend
and not have known that my overwhelming avocation was the study of
spirituality and personal growth. As it turns out, only 5%
of the population were making values-driven, momentous changes in 1960
compared to 26% today. No wonder I couldn’t find any like-minded
compatriots in 1960. Today is quite a different story. Even though I felt very
alone for 25 years, it turns out I wasn’t! There were millions and
millions of others who were experiencing the exact same thing I was!
They, too, went “underground” to continue their studies and the
development of their values. It was only in the
mid-80’s that I began talking about my interests and developing a
coterie of friends who shared the same values. And little by little
Cultural Creatives dipped their toe in the waters to see what kind of
reaction they’d get. The water got warmer and warmer over the years. But even today, many of us
are unaware that there are 49,999,000 other adult Americans who share
our worldview. As Ray and his wife, Sherry
Ruth Anderson, Ph.D., say in the introduction of their new
book, The Cultural Creatives - How 50 Million People Are Changing the
World, it is as if a country the size of France suddenly sprouted up
in the middle of the USA. This “new country” populated by Cultural
Creatives is just as big and rich in culture as France is. Over the
last 40 years, it has silently taken shape. It has formed…“almost
invisibly, as if flown in under radar in the dark of night…all
across the country…” The growth of this
subculture has been enormously rapid. In only four decades, 26% of
American adults (50 million strong) have accomplished a comprehensive
shift in their worldview, values, and way of life. Like an iceberg,
only the tip was visible. But thanks to Ray, (and the Fetzer Institute
and the Institute of Noetic Sciences who funded the study) the breadth
and depth of this subculture is now revealed. Surprisingly, there is no
geographic concentration of Cultural Creatives. They are sprinkled
pretty uniformly in every nook and cranny of the U.S. Perhaps a few
more have landed in Austin, Boulder, and San Francisco, but it’s not
statistically significant enough to disturb the geographic
universality of the subculture’s location. In fact, there is only one
demographic that applies to the Cultural Creatives and that is 60% are
women. Other than that, the demographics of the Cultural Creatives
mirror the demographics of the country, by and large. Of the 50
million people who make up this subculture, 70% of them want to make a
difference and get involved. The rate of volunteerism is higher and
the incidence of volunteering is greater among Cultural Creatives than
in the general population. These 50 million folks are
not only bringing with them values that are heartening, but they have
economic clout as well. Seemingly disparate industries such as water
filters, composters, meditation tapes, holistic health care, and
organic food are brought together
under the banner of the Cultural Creatives. “That industry,” Ray
reports, “in the U.S. was $230 billion last year and that’s not
peanuts! Worldwide, it’s $500 billion. Most of the industries in
that group are growing on the average of 10-20% a year. We’re
talking about serious, serious growth.”
We’re
also talking about a population that tends to shun television and
gather most of its information from the printed word or radio.
Cultural Creatives buy two times the number of books as anyone else
and watch half as much television. And the Cultural Creatives are
voracious information gatherers. “It’s a population that wants
more and better information all the time. The heaviest consumers of
information in American society are the Cultural Creatives.” Ray
emphasizes. Not surprisingly, thanks
to their values-driven lifestyles, a high proportion of Cultural
Creatives have a lot more education and occupational prestige than
they do income. “They sacrifice income in order to do what they want
to do,” Ray explains. “And there’s a corollary there. They
don’t blow their money. They’re careful shoppers. They’re the
folks who read Consumer Report before they buy something.” According to Ray, Cultural
Creatives are looking for a new way of life. They are actively looking
and that’s why they read so much. They are taking in information and
seeing how it fits or doesn’t fit with their values. Although most Cultural
Creatives are deeply concerned about the environment, they don’t
fall into any handy political definition. Forty-five percent say
neither left nor right suits them. The next biggest group is a higher
percent of people who call themselves political conservatives rather
than political liberals. Isn’t that interesting? They all share the
same values and the same worldview. When I asked conservatives why
they are Cultural Creatives they say, “I’m against big government
programs because I don’t think they work.” Thirty percent of
corporate executives are Cultural Creatives, but most feel they are
totally alone because by and large, Americans don’t talk about
values at work. “If you get into the habit of never showing your
values,” Ray explains, “then the assumption is that you don’t
have any!” The Cultural Creatives are
longing to hear what’s really important in life, but they’re not
getting it in any of the mainstream media, according to Ray.
“Therefore, that’s a niche needing to be expanded into,” he
offers. He infers that the mainstream media seem to think that
you’re weird and strange if you’re interested in personal growth
and the environment. uthenticity
is the highest business value for the 50 million Cultural Creatives,
according to the man who discovered them. “These folks have
introduced authenticity to the marketplace and have been doing so for
the lasts 40 years, and this is a really crucial piece. The definition
of authenticity is ‘what’s in here and what’s out there is the
same.’ What’s inside my business and me and what I show the world
and my face, is the same thing. It’s obvious who I am and what I’m
up to.” Authenticity is ultimately what is going to work. Community is another
common interest with Cultural Creatives wanting the kind of community
that allows each person to be fully an individual but to be in
relationship to other people in community. According to Ray, there is
no inherent conflict at all about having a business, making money,
influencing other people, taking care of your self and your loved
ones, being part of the larger society. “In fact”, he says,
“that’s what’s required of us in order to grow up to have a more
integral culture where all the parts work.” The Cultural Creatives are a co-herent subculture. However, they are missing self-awareness as a whole people! They, (you and me), do not know that they have the potential to shape the life of twenty-first century America, and once they do discover their common values, will they work together to implement them. The stakes are high for all of us, according to Ray and Anderson. You and I are not alone! There is a tribe of millions of cultural relatives with the same values and worldview and life priorities as us! You can just hear the dramatic strains of the New World Symphony swell as the reality of a new day dawns. Sun’s up! You ARE part of the great current of change sweeping the nation. Breathe it in and let your light shine! Jill Lawrence is the host of Jill & Friends, a radio show that features Angels to Zen conversations. The show is live six days a week with luminaries like Sylvia Browne, Louise Hay, Deepak Chopra and James Redfield as well as next door neighbors sharing what it’s like to be spiritual beings having a human experience. Tune in every Monday through Friday 5-6 pm ET: Saturdays 7-9 pm ET on the internet at www.wisdomradio.com or on C-band satellite-GE(W)1-12, subcarrier 7.1 and soon on Sirius Satellite Radio in your car.) |
If
you are a Cultural Creative, you’ve got lots of company. In fact, 50
million adults in the United States, according to Ray, are happily
joined together by a new set of values that bode well for the future
of the planet and humanity. In fact, the Cultural Creatives are a
tremendously optimistic bunch! And now they are identified and highly
recognizable.