DISCOURSES

Cultural Creatives

The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People are Changing the World is a new book by Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson. Based on a decade of original research Ray, a sociologist, and Ruth, a psychologist, have written about an emerging, pervasive movement whose new worldview is deeply affecting not only individual lives but our larger society as well.

The Cultural Creatives is the first book to describe a new American subculture that has been growing over the last 40 years and quietly revolutionizing American life. Cultural Creatives care deeply about ecology and saving the planet, about relationships, peace, social justice, and about self actualization, spirituality and self-expression. They are both inner-directed and socially concerned.

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.

excerpts from the book: "When we say that a quarter of Americans have taken on a whole new worldview, we are pointing to a major development in our civilization. Changing a worldview literally means changing what you think is real."

"The evidence says that we are entering a period that will require transformation and fundamental structural changes in how we live and work, how we think about ourselves, and how we conduct our politics, economics, and technologies. If we can go through those changes well, or well enough, humanity will be able live on this planet without destroying the environment, and our children's children will have a future worth living."

"Cultural Creatives are at the leading edge of some of the most interesting developments in American culture. When they look at modern life with their distinct perspective, they see an antique system that is noisily, chaotically shaking itself to pieces. They want a cultural 'new deal', a chance to remake their lives and our institutions around deeper values. By doing so, they may be developing a culture that will sustain us and our children's children over the long term."