Dec '00 / Jan 2001
A
Gift Given, A Gift Received: Water
to Iraq
By Edilith Eckart
Election Analysis Progressive
Directions?
By Bill Thomson
Modernizing Our Electoral Rules
&
Practices
By Rob Richie
Democracy 101
By Blair Bobier
Clean Money: Campaign Finance
Reform
By John Moyers
Book Review: The Cultural Creatives
Paul H. Ray & Sherry Ruth
Anderson Reviewed by
Peter Montague
Remembrance: Robert Theobald
By Bob Stilger
Transforming Our Dreaming
By Josˇ Stevens
Democracy and the Airwaves
By Suzi Aufderheide
StarLink: More Bad News for Biotech
by Ronnie Cummins
The US Is Warned "Wake Up
To Global Warming Threat"
By Environmental News Service
U.S. Position Threatens to
Derail Climate Change Negotiations
By Cat Lazaroff
Martin Luther King, Jr: Global and
Social Shaman
By Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.
Sexual Union, Inside and Out
By Peter Moore
A Pagan Speak to Jesus
By John Darling
Cosmic Calendar
By Salina Rain
The
Cultural Creatives
Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson
New York: Harmony Books, 2000
ISBN 0-609-60467-8
www.culturalcreatives.org
Reviewed by Peter Montague
A brand new book titled The Cultural Creatives offers important insights into
U.S. culture and how we might organize to change our future. It offers entirely
original, new perspectives that could help the environmental and social justice
movements find new paths, sidestepping the troubles that have stymied them
in recent years. Listen up.
The Cultural Creatives was written by Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson who
have spent more than a decade doing survey research to discover the values
that we in the U.S. hold dear. ("Values are the best single predictor
of real behavior," they say.) They find that, based on fundamental values,
U.S. citizens can now be classified into three major groups: Moderns, Traditionals,
and Cultural Creatives. We all recognize Moderns and Traditionals, but most
people don't know that the Cultural Creatives exist. Even the Cultural Creatives
themselves are not aware of their huge numbers -- 50 million strong, according
to Ray and Anderson. Here lie the seeds of a cultural revolution-one that
is already well along.
The Moderns
The Moderns are the dominant subculture of our time. They make the rules we
all live by-they control the civil service, the military, the courts, and
the media. Some of them operate the multinational corporations. Their ideology
is laid out for us every day, in detail, in the NEW YORK TIMES and the WALL
STREET JOURNAL, in the other major papers, and on TV. The Moderns' belief
in a technological economy is reshaping the face of the globe. The Moderns
tend to dismiss other cultures and other ways of life as somehow inferior.
In sum, "The simplest way to understand today's Moderns is to see that
they are the people who accept the commercialized urban-industrial world as
the obvious right way to live. They're not looking for alternatives,"
say Ray and Anderson. To Moderns, growth is not only good, it is essential.
What's most important to moderns is:
- Making lots of money
- Climbing the ladder of success with measurable steps toward one's goal
- Having lots of choices (as a consumer, or voter or on the job)
- Being on top of the latest trends, styles and innovations
- Supporting economic and technological progress at the national level
- Rejecting the values and concerns of native people, rural people, Traditionals, New Agers, and religious mystics.
Moderns represent
48% of the U.S. citizenry (93 million adults) and, in 1995, they had a median
family income of $42,500.
The Traditionals
Traditionals represent 24.5% of U.S. citizens (48 million adults). "Many
Traditionals are not white bread Republicans but elderly New Deal Democrats,
Reagan Democrats, and old-time union people as well as social conservatives
in politics...." Traditionals tend to believe (among other things) that:
- Patriarchs should again dominate family life
- Feminism is a swearword
- Men need to keep their traditional roles and women need to keep theirs
- Family, church, and community are where you belong
- Customary and familiar ways of life should be maintained
- It's important to regulate sex-pornography, teen sex, extramarital sex-and abortion
- Men should be proud to serve in the military
- All the guidance you need for your life can be found in the Bible
- Preserving civil liberties is less important than restricting immoral behavior
- Freedom to carry arms is essential
- Foreigners are not welcome.
Many Traditionals
are pro-environment and anti-big business. They are outraged at the destruction
of the world they remember, both natural areas and small-town life. Traditionals
tend to be older, poorer, and less educated than others in the U.S. At the
end of World War II, Traditionals were 50% of the population, but today they
are 25%, and their numbers are shrinking as older Traditionals die and are
not being replaced by younger ones.
The Cultural Creatives
What Ray and Anderson discovered during a decade of research is that the Moderns
and Traditionals have now been joined by a third subculture within the U.S.,
50 million strong (26% of all adults) -- a population the size of France,
and growing. Ray and Anderson have labeled them "Cultural Creatives."
Here is a list of 18 characteristics; if you have 10 or more of them, you're
probably a cultural creative:
-Love nature and are deeply concerned about its destruction
-Are strongly aware of the problems of the whole planet and want to see action to curb them, such as limiting economic growth
-Would pay more taxes or higher prices if you knew the money would go to clean up the environment and stop global warming
-Give a lot of importance to developing and maintaining relationships
-Place great importance on helping other people
-Volunteer for one or more good causes
-Care intensely about psychological or spiritual development
-See spirituality and religion as important in your own life but are also concerned about the role of the religious Right in politics
-Want more equality for women at work and want more women leaders in business and politics
-Are concerned about violence and the abuse of women and children everywhere on Earth
-Want politics and government to emphasize children's education and well being, the rebuilding of neighborhoods and communities, and creation of an ecologically sustainable future
-Are unhappy with both left and right in politics and want a new way that is not the mushy middle
-Tend to be optimistic about the future and distrust the cynical and pessimistic view offered by the media
-Want to be involved in creating a new and better way of life in our country
-Are concerned about what big corporations are doing in the name of profit: exploiting poor countries, harming the environment, downsizing
-Have your finances and spending under control and are not concerned about overspending
-Dislike the modern emphasis on success, on "making it," on wealth and luxury goods
-Like people and places that are exotic and foreign, and enjoy experiencing and learning about other ways of life.
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