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Do you dislike all the emphasis in modern culture on success and “making it” on getting and spending, on wealth and luxury goods? Do you care deeply about the destruction of the environment and would pay higher taxes or prices to clean it up and stop global warming? Are you unhappy with both left and right in politics and want to find a new way that does not simply steer a middle course?

The Cultural Creatives care deeply about ecology and saving the planet, about relationships, peace, and social justice, about self-actualization, spirituality, and self-expression. Surprisingly, they are both inner-directed and socially concerned; they’re activists, volunteers, and contributors to good causes more often than other Americans. But because they’ve been so invisible, they are astonished to find out how many others share both their values and their way of life. Once they realize their numbers, their impact on America promises to be enormous, shaping a new agenda for the 21^st century.

What makes the appearance of the Cultural Creatives especially timely is that our civilization is in the midst of an epochal change, caught between globalization, accelerating technologies, and a deteriorating planet ecology. A creative minority can have enormous leverage to carry us into a new renaissance instead of a disastrous fall. The book ends with a number of maps for the remarkable journey that our civilization is embarked upon: initiations, evolutionary models, scenarios, and the elements of a new mythos for our time. The Cultural Creatives offers a more hopeful future and prepares us all for a transition to a new, saner, and wiser culture.

Preface by Ray and Anderson www.culturalcreatives.org

We didn’t imagine how much the Cultural Creatives’ story would begin to take shape once the personal stories were added to the large-scale studies and focus group results. We believe that their self-awareness as a culture will help us all, help our civilization to develop the fresh solutions that we need so urgently now.
We hope that the evidence and the stories presented here will support the Cultural Creatives to grow into the promise they carry, not just for themselves but for the sake of all of us, and for the seventh generation.

Are you a cultural creative?

Check the boxes of statements you agree with. If you agree with 10 or more, you probably are one – and a higher score increases the odds. You are likely to be a Cultural Creative if you:
Love nature and are deeply concerned about its destruction.
Are strongly aware of the problems of the whole planet (global warming, destruction of rain forests, overpopulation, lack of ecological sustainability, exploitation of people in poorer countries) and want to see more action on them, such as limiting economic growth.
Would pay more taxes or pay more for consumer goods if you knew the money would go to clean up the environment and to stop global warming.
Give a lot of importance to developing and maintaining your relationships.
Give a lot of importance to helping other people and bringing out their unique gifts.
Volunteer for one or more good causes.
Care intensely about both psychological and spiritual development.
See spirituality or religion as important in your life but are also concerned about the role of the Religion Right in politics.
Want more equality for women at work, and more women leaders in business and politics.
Are concerned about violence and the abuse of women and children around the world.
Want our politics and government spending to put more emphasis on children’s education and well-being, on rebuilding our neighborhoods and communities, and on creating an ecologically sustainable future.
Are unhappy with both the left and the right in politics and want to find a new way that is not in the mushy middle.
Tend to be rather optimistic about the future and distrust the cynical and pessimistic view that is given by the media.
Want to be involved in creating a new and better way of life in our country.
Are concerned about what the big corporations are doing in the name of making more profits: downsizing, creating environmental problems, and exploiting poorer countries.
Have your finances and spending under control and are not concerned about overspending.
Dislike all the emphasis in modern culture on success and ‘making it,’ on getting and spending, on wealth and luxury goods.
Like people and places that are exotic and foreign, and like experiencing and learning about other ways of life.

PART ONE: INTRODUCING THE CULTURAL CREATIVES

Imagine a country the size of France suddenly sprouting in the middle of the United States. It is immensely rich in culture, with new ways of life, values, and world-views. It has its own heroes and its own vision for the future.
Now imagine something different. There is a new country, just as big and just as rich in culture, but no one sees it. This new country is decidedly American. It is showing up wherever you’d least expect it. This new country and its people are the subject of this book.
Since the 1960s, 26% of the adults in the United States – 50 million people – have made a comprehensive shift in their worldview, values, and way of life – their culture in short.
These creative, optimistic millions are at the leading edge of several kinds of cultural change, deeply affecting not only their own lives but our larger societies as well. We call them Cultural Creatives because, innovation by innovation, they are shaping a new kind of American culture for the 21^st century.
When we say that a quarter of all Americans have taken on a whole new world view, we are pointing to a major development in our civilization. Changing a worldview literally means changing what you think is real.
Some closely related changes contribute to and follow from changes in worldview: changes in values, your fundamental life priorities; changes in lifestyle, the way you spend your time and money; changes in livelihood, how you make that money in the first place.
On the time scale of civilizations where major developments are measured in centuries, it is shockingly quick. And it’s not only the speed of this emergence that is stunning. Its extent is catching even the most alert observers by surprise.
Officials of the European Union, hearing of the numbers of Cultural Creatives in the United States, launched a related survey in each of their 15 countries in September 1997. To their amazement, the evidence suggested that there are at least as many Cultural Creatives across Europe as we reported in the United States.
They are the drivers of the demand that we go beyond environmental regulation to real ecological sustainability, to change our entire way of life accordingly.
They demand authenticity – at home, in the stores, at work, and in politics. They insist on seeing the big picture in news stories and ads. This is already influencing the marketplace and public life.
Because Cultural Creatives are not yet aware of themselves as a collective body, they do not recognize how powerful their voices could be. This book aims to sharpen our collective awareness with an in-depth look into who the Cultural Creatives are and what their emergence means for them and for all of us.
Whether you are a Cultural Creative or share an office or a home, or whether you simply want to create new projects or do business with Cultural Creatives, you’ll discover what differences their presence will make in your life.

Chapter 1: Who Are the Cultural Creatives?

Values are the best single predictor of real behavior. Because our research has focused on Americans’ values since 1980, we’ve been able to discover the emergence of a remarkably large – and so far hidden – subculture. Where do Cultural Creatives put their priorities once they’ve taken care of the basics of making a living and looking out for their loved ones?
They prefer to learn new information and get involved in ways that feel most authentic to them. They are especially sensitive to what they regard as slick, meaningless hype in advertising. The kind of action that especially appeals to them is what Margaret Mead called ‘whole process,’ where they can be part of creating something from the beginning, middle, end, and through to the new beginning.
They would agree with Jean Houston, one of the early Cultural Creatives, that “the world is too complex for linear thinking now. To be smart in the global village means thinking with your stomach, thinking rhythmically, thinking organically, thinking in terms of yourself as an interwoven piece of nature.”
Ray Anderson, CEO of the largest commercial carpet firm in the world was to give an environmental vision for his company. “All I knew was comply, comply, comply.” And that often means being as bad as the law allows. After reading Paul Harken’s The Ecology of Commerce he knew they were headed way beyond compliance – not merely recycling waste but returning to the Earth more than they took out. Ray and his associates are reimagining and redesigning everything they do, including the way they do business. They invested $25 million in waste reduction and saved $122 million. Ray hopes to see his company become completely sustainable within 20 years, taking nothing from the Earth and doing no harm to the biosphere.
The second order of business was helping others have the same kind of success by giving more than 100 speeches a year around the world. He’s interested in creating the next industrial revolution. “Business is the largest, wealthiest, most pervasive institution on earth and its responsible for most of the damage to the environment. Unless we become part of the solution, it’s over, and our great-grandchildren won’t have a world to live in.”
Creating a hypercar means making the car of the future with today’s aerospace technologies. Here’s the strategy: use either hydrogen fuel cells for electric power, or a gasoline-electric hybrid engine; use flywheels to store energy when it brakes and use that for acceleration; cut the weight in half by using carbon fibre materials; and make the surface slick for ultralow drag. 110 to 190 miles per gallon. Air pollution next to nothing. The same technology is good for cars, trains, buses and powered bicycles. And its developers at the Rocky Mountain Institute did the unthinkable. They gave away the entire intellectual property to whoever could develop it, because they were interested in saving the planet, not in making money.
What politicians often refer to as ‘women’s issues’ are a key to understanding Cultural Creatives. They see women’s ways of knowing as valid: feeling empathy and sympathy for others, taking the viewpoint of the one who speaks, seeing personal experiences and first-person stories as important ways of learning, and embracing an ethic of caring. In all of the Cultural Creatives’ concerns women are leading the way.
When we spoke with Tracy Gary in 1997 she had helped create 90 foundations. “I really want democracy to work, but one of the missing links was the voice of women. It’s not about money. It’s about values. Each time I am with a group of people who come forward to envision a different kind of society, who take time to feel and pray and consider the long-term purpose of what we’re doing, there is a kind of resonance, a tonality that shows up viscerally. It tells me that doing this work is a blessing or grace. It says, you’re in the right place. Roll up your sleeves and go deeper.”

Changing a worldview

Your world view is the content of everything you believe is real – God, the economy, technology, the planet, how things work, how you should work and play, your relationship with your beloved – and everything you value.
Worldview changes don’t happen often; most of us change our worldview only once in a lifetime, if we do it at all, because it changes virtually everything in our consciousness.
When you make this shift, you change your sense of who you are and who you are related to, what you are willing to see and how you interpret it, your priorities for action and for the way you want to live. If your worldview changes, it changes everything.
Cultural Creatives step away from the mainstream assumptions and values of modern culture to piece together a life they passionately care about. It’s a slow and awkward process.
In the midst of a society with compartmentalized values, they are doing what they can to weave a coherent and integrated life. They don’t claim to have all the answers. Picking and choosing what matters to them, each one is trying to create a new synthesis of value and meaning.
Movements begin when people refuse to live divided lives. Many go through major life transitions as they look for ways to live the values they have come to believe in.
We did not intend to pick out extraordinary exemplars – just ordinary people who were living their values, not just talking about them. Still, most of the stories you’ll read about here are not ‘ordinary’.

Chapter 2: Becoming a Cultural Creative

Cultural Creatives have sailed beyond the familiar horizon. You may see Chicago police clubbing protesters who look a lot like you. Maybe for the first time in your life, you cannot bear to sit back and just watch. The departure may be the first time you see the whole Earth from space.
Futurist Willis Harman was one of the earliest Cultural Creatives. He divides his life between the early period when he was sleepwalking and what happened next. The decisive moment was a two-week retreat among the northern California redwoods on ethics and life principles when a speaker revealed that he thought there was something to psychic phenomena and the power of prayer. “I felt that someone with his education ought to know that science had disproved those hypotheses long ago.”
For the next four decades, Willis Harman tried to find out about those aspects. He embarked on a second career as a researcher and futurist at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), helping government and business do strategic planning on a very wide range of practical policy issues. He came to understand that we are living through a period of fundamental transformation.
At the age of 60 he began his third career by accepting the invitation of astronaut Edgar Mitchell to found an institute to expand the knowledge and potentials of the mind for the well-being of the planet. Willis became the first president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences with the purpose to explore all the levels of body, mind, and soul.
It took him so long to reach this point in his life because he was a slow learner. In the 1950s there was no cultural support for exploring the wealth within us. Few answers seemed available, and few trustworthy guides knew what to do or how to do what Abraham Maslow called ‘the further realms of human nature.’ It would take about 20 years before a critical mass would emerge that could support a wholly new era of social learning, experimentation, and change.
At some point in their lives, most Cultural Creatives let go of what once felt sure and safe and comfortable and venture onto a new life path. Obstructions rise up to meet them, especially the social codes that everyone knows but nobody talks about. You have no idea how many unspoken rules there are until you start stumbling over them. And because you don’t know how many others are creating new life paths too, you don’t realize that your new choices are shared by a whole subculture of others.
With the rise of scientific and technological worldviews, and with the movement of people to cities to participate in the market economy, life paths diverged more and more from what people valued. We almost all practice idolatry in the modern world because the God we’re worshipping in church on Sunday is not the one we believe in our hearts.
You have to know what it is to be true to your inner self, your soul and throw the other trappings out the door. If you follow the yellow brick road to success, you will end up with the good life: the diploma, the job, the house, the cars, the promotion or the stock option, the children, their education and their accomplishments. But this road is not so much a life path as a career path. The guideposts to success are really signs to the market place.
When you wake up to the fact that the path you are following is not the one you believe in your heart, you’ve taken the first step to becoming a Cultural Creative.

Chapter 3: The Three Americas

PART TWO: A CREATION STORY

PART THREE: MAPS FOR THE JOURNEY

Front cover

Preface by Ray and Anderson www.culturalcreatives.org

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