Overview
The Cultural Creatives illuminates an emerging, pervasive movement whose new worldview is deeply affecting not only their own lives but our larger society as well. As documented in media outlets from Time to Utne Reader, this movement's time is now.A Future Shock and Megatrends for the 21st century, 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. This group, too small to measure before the 1960s, is now 50 million strong—a quarter of the adults in the United States. They are called the Cultural Creatives because they are creating new social inventions, worldviews, and ways of life. Their values are environmentally concerned, altruistic, idealistic, and spiritual, focused on relationships and psychological development, emphasizing the worth of the feminine, and longing to create a positive future.
Based on a decade of original research from more than 100,000 respondents, on hundreds of focus groups, and dozens of in-depth interviews, this landmark book tracks the emergence of the Cultural Creatives population. Form wide-ranging cultural perspectives and deeply personal stories, we learn how this group has grown out of the 20 kinds of social movements that have appeared over the past several decades. At a time of epochal shift in modern civilization, they have now reached the critical mass that can transform American and global society in significant and beneficial ways. Their inspiring new social inventions are already exerting an influence on many aspects of American society, including health, business, all of thesocial movements, psychology, and spirituality.
All that the Cultural Creatives lack is self-awareness as a culture. Because they have not guessed how large their numbers are, they have seen themselves as scattered and isolated, They do not yet know the promise they hold as a cohesive new force for change in the new century. The Cultural Creatives is the first to hold up a mirror to this new population. By opening our eyes to a group that is bringing a fundamental transformation in values and behavior to American life, The Cultural Creatives promises to be one of the defining books of the coming decade.
About the Authors:
Paul H. Ray, Ph.D., is executive vice president of American LIVES, Inc., a market research and opinion polling firm specializing in the lifestyles and values of Americans. He has headed more than 100 major research and consulting projects, and has been published numerous times in the Noetic Sciences Review and American Demographics.
Sherry Ruth Anderson, Ph.D., is a psychologist in private practive. She is coauthor of The Feminine Face of God. They live in Marin County, California.