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The
Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World,
New York: Harmony Books, October, 2000
by Paul H. Ray, Ph.D. and Sherry
Ruth Anderson, Ph.D.
Does the religious right have a hammerlock
on values in America? Is the new American dream really about getting and
spending, and being the first zillionaire on the block? At the turn of
the millennium, fifty million ordinary Americans emphatically disagree.
They are the Cultural Creatives - the leading edge
creators of a new culture in America.
In this landmark book, sociologist Paul H. Ray
and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson draw upon
13 years of survey research studies on over 100,000 Americans, plus over
100 focus groups and dozens of depth interviews. They tell who the Cultural
Creatives are, and the fascinating story of their emergence over
the last generation, using vivid examples and engaging personal stories
to describe the values and lifestyles that make this subculture distinctive.
The Cultural Creatives care deeply about ecology
and saving the planet, about relationships, peace, social justice, and
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 than other Americans.
However, because they've been so invisible in American life, Cultural
Creatives themselves are astonished to find out how many share
both their values and their way of life. Once they realize their numbers,
their impact on American life promises to be enormous, shaping a new agenda
for the twenty-first century.
Paul Ray and Sherry Anderson
tell how people departed from Modern or Traditional cultures to weave
new ways of life. Three Americas are struggling to define what the country
should be: Traditionals, Moderns and Cultural Creatives.
The authors show how each one emerged historically, and how the
Cultural Creatives in particular grew out of the social movements
of the Sixties right up to Seattle's WTO demonstrations, and from the
consciousness movements in spirituality, psychology and alternative health.
They conclude that all the different kinds of movements are converging
now, with the Cultural Creatives at the core.
What makes the appearance of the Cultural Creatives
especially timely today is that our civilization is in the midst of an
epochal change, caught between globalization, accelerating technologies
and a deteriorating planetary 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.
There are many ways to order the book (ISBN 0-609-60467-8)
Order directly from Amazon.com or another online bookstore.
Or you can find the book locally using the Neighborhood Bookstore Locator.