November, 2000
www.inlightimes.com

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.

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.

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.)