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Cultural and
Spiritual Creatives
What are Cultural Creatives?
Cultural creatives were first described in 1995 in the book
Cultural Creatives. They are described as a distinct population segment of
competent, inner directed activists who choose to live a balanced and artful
life of spiritual, personal and social growth as well as a lifestyle of health
and sustainability. They live this way to insure:
- their personal wellbeing,
- the sustainability of a civil society and the planet, and
- the quality of life for future generations.
Cultural creatives strive to live most of, but not necessary all, the values
listed below:
A.) Personal Development: There is an instinctual need for cultural
creatives to make the most of their unique abilities in the areas of spirit,
mind, body, self-actualization and self-expression. They actively want to
improve their cognitive and physical performance and create lifestyles designed
to extend health and prolong life.
They seek meaningful work and are likely to be involved in lifelong learning.
They are commonly interested in things such as spiritual workshops, yoga,
fitness, stress management, etc. For cultural creatives it is not the organized
religion that they may have been born into, but their inner spirituality that
holds a central importance to them. Spirituality is of such importance that they
could easily be described as
spiritual creatives.
b.) Healthy Relationships, Healthy Living: Cultural creatives are
interested in helping other people, and developing and maintaining
relationships. They value authenticity, feel a closeness to (at least some)
other people, appreciate life in general, have a self-created system of
morality and, they usually judge others objectively rather than with
prejudices. As part of their healthy living lifestyle, they value healthy aging
and use natural and organic products, natural personal care products and
nutritional supplements.
c.) Alternative and Traditional Healthcare: Cultural creatives are
interested in preventative and proactive health, wellness solutions, holistic
disease prevention, complementary medicine and alternative practices such as
acupuncture, homeopathy, naturopathy, etc.
d.) Sustainable Economies: Cultural creatives feel interconnected to all
of life. They usually are individuals who have solved most of their basic
survival challenges (food, shelter, clothing, energy etc.) by adjusting their
lifestyle through having their finances and spending under control or, creating
abundance or, through both. They generally dislike the modern culture’s emphasis
on getting and spending, wealth and luxury goods, material success and on
"making it.” Freed from basic survival issues, they live at the next stage of
existence that deals with quality of being issues rather than with survival
issues. The preceding paragraph makes cultural creatives natural supporters of
environmental management, resource-efficient products, green industrial and
building goods, renewable energy, socially responsible investing and alternative
or fuel efficient, low-pollution transportation.
e.) Ecological Lifestyles: For the cultural creative, bigger or more is
not usually or always better. They are willing to pay more taxes or pay more for
consumer goods to protect the environment or to insure fair trade wages. They
are interested in ecological home and office products, organic/recycled fiber
products, environmentally friendly appliances, eco-tourism and
adventure/learning/eco-travel.
f.) Social justice: Cultural creatives are activists who tend to be
global in perspective and learning and, somewhat optimistic. They want to be
involved in creating a new and better way of life. They are the activists who
volunteer for good causes and they are found at the overlap of all the
consciousness movements as well as the various social, civil, gay, gender
equality and peace movements in our societies.
They are interested in solving problems; often the problems of others. What
makes them unusually successful at solving problems is that they are highly
creative, both practical and idealistic, they embrace the facts and realities of
the world including themselves (rather than denying or avoiding them) and, they
are spontaneous with ideas and actions.
Unhappy with both the left and the right politically, they do not generally
consider themselves solidly on either side, but they will take practical
solutions and positions from either side or anywhere else that works. They are
abundantly pragmatic and will act to deal with hard facts on the ground to avert
future crisis.
You will find them interested in social justice areas like rebuilding our
neighborhoods and communities, caring about women’s issues and wanting to spend
more on children's education and well-being. They are likely to be actively
involved in improving representative democracy as well as corporate
responsibility and
ethics so that the real needs of all citizens are met by both
government and business.
g.) Natural Systems and Technology Integration: Cultural creatives
believe in the integration of using natural systems first, but in concert and
where appropriate with life affirming technology and science. They are skilled
networkers and are more comfortable than most integrating new technology and
science into their daily lives.
They want to know their options and maximize their choices. In their
lifestyle choices they strive to balance
rationality (facts) and intuition
(feelings) for the best of both worlds. They are postmodern and do not believe
the basic idea of modernism, which is that “individual creative expression
should conform to the realities of technology.” Instead they believe that
“individual creativity should make every day life more emotionally acceptable.”
They are integrative in that they are multi-disciplinary. They are willing to
use the best wisdom and best processes from any natural, technological or
scientific source and blend them together for effective and practical problem
solving. They are idealistic and imaginative without illusions. They seek and
use long view solutions, but again still are practical in dealing with what
really needs to be done in the here and now.
Cultural creatives are called cultural creatives because they are so highly
creative about living their own values in spite of distracting or opposing value
pressures from the larger culture in which they live. If necessary, they will
create completely new types of mini-cultures that will support their consciously
chosen lifestyles.
To make their creative and moral decisions cultural creatives use an expanded
collection of postmodern and post-postmodern
values and principles. These postmodern values and principles not only
include and synthesize the life affirming values of the previous pre-modern,
traditional and modern evolutionary periods, but they also in some cases
transcend them.
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Additional Values and Activities for Sub
groups within the Cultural Creative Population
The global population of cultural creatives is so large that there are different
sub groups within the cultural creative population. Some of the additional
values found within one or more of the various cultural creative sub groups are
that cultural creatives:
1.) are able to both embrace and work with paradoxes.
2.) are creating entirely new forms of spirituality better suited to the
realities and challenges of the post, and post-postmodern world because they
have found the spiritualities created in either the pre-modern, traditional or
modern eras inadequate.
3.) want to live appropriately AND they believe that appropriate living also
means having a life filled with
art, beauty, joy and even fun! The sub group within
the cultural creative movement believes that they do not have to live like monks
with vows of poverty to live appropriately. Cultural creatives are now inventing
the new products and services that will have the six attributes of products
easily acceptable to the consumers of the future (functionally appropriate, cost
efficient, environmentally sustainable, socially just, beautiful and/or
artistic
and fun or enjoyable to use for the purchaser.)
4.) are maturing and evolving beyond some of the inherent pathologies of the
postmodern world itself such as: the narcissism of me generation, the culture
of victim hood, martyrdom and joylessness, extreme postmodernism in academia, resistiveness to anything resembling ranking or hierarchy, excessive relativism
resulting in loss of appropriate boundaries, loss of
morality and aimlessness,
extreme pluralism resulting in loss of discernment, undo honoring of primitive
attitudes or processes, over-romanticism of the pre-modern past in ecological
decision making, political correctness, extreme material denial and sacrifice
making life void of beauty, art and enjoyment and, indulgently long attempts at
consensus leading nowhere. The new cultural creatives of the 2000’s have matured
from the “Woo Woo”, anything goes of the 1960’s New Age movement towards
accepting the broader realization that some appropriate judgments and boundaries
are both healthy and necessary.
In the book
Spiral Dynamics the cultural creative sub groups are described in three
waves of development. Spiral Dynamics calls these waves or levels green, yellow
and turquoise. (To learn more about these three waves of cultural creative
development we recommend that you first go
here.
Start by putting your mouse on the “Where to Begin” link at the top right of the
page. It will automatically begin a mouse roll over ‘show new text’ feature on
the left of this Waves of Integral Development graphic. Then do the same mouse
over on the turquoise wave link, the yellow wave link and the green wave link
back on the right side to help see new text descriptions. These will help you
have a better understanding of the new values of evolving cultural creative
subgroups.)
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Cultural Creative Demographics
In the United States alone there are now an estimated 63 million cultural
creatives. They could become half of the American population in ten to fifteen
years.
There are more cultural creatives in Europe, about 80 to 90 million, which is
about 30 to 35% of every Western European country. In all Asian countries
including Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia there may be another 60
million. In Africa, the Middle East and South America there may be another 10
million.
It is estimated that the cultural creatives population has been growing at half
of a percent per year for the last 40 years and this population will grow much
faster as people become more educated and aware of how many cultural creatives
there already are in society.
It seems that the more highly educated, modern and postmodern a population is
--- the more cultural creatives appear in that population. In some ways cultural
creatives can be seen as representative of another step in our social
evolutionary development in that they live for the most part at a edges of the
postmodern or post-postmodern world.
Income wise Cultural Creatives are slightly upscale averaging about $46,000 a
year in US dollars. Cultural creatives represent and come in all psychological
types such as inward/outer, thinking/feeling, enlightened/regressive,
smart/dumb, etc.
They value livelong education and thirty percent are college graduates in Europe
and about twenty four percent in the US. They have a wide range of income,
education, occupation being everything from working class to wealthy. They are
close to national profiles on region (in the US 5% more on each coast,)
ethnicity, religion, age and race, but sixty percent are women. Women also
appear to be the opinion leaders of this cultural change force by a two to one
ratio. This would help explain many of the women’s issues valued by cultural
creatives.
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The Cultural Creative Paradox
Up until recently, the almost 250 million cultural creatives had the collective
illusion that they’re individually alone. They feel alone because they never see
their own face in the media.
Modernist media serves as the gate-keepers of the official modernist culture
of larger society. They naturally belittle or keep out everything that doesn’t
fit their modernist value view of reality.
There is amazing social innovation and improvement being created by cultural
creatives, but the modernist media does not cover it. It is not exciting and has
no controversy. It’s not good for business and advertising and its political
implications are unclear. Consequently, the modernist media is non-representing
the good of what’s actually going on relating to cultural creatives almost all
the time.
The paradox is that cultural creatives have been doing an amazing amount of
great social and cultural innovation for years, but most people have never heard
about it. This modernist media blackout has been slowing the social improvement
process and creating more social pessimism than is warranted. Luckily, many
cultural creatives have finally begun to see through the media blackout and
realized the power and past successes of 250 million inner directed activists
working in concert to improve the world. If you would like to meet some other
cultural creatives from around the world
click here.
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How Cultural Creatives will Effect the Future
The numbers of cultural creatives are increasing steadily. They are now a
growing global force of activism helping creating significant new social,
economic, political, scientific and spiritual evolutionary changes to the larger
cultures in which they live. This is in part because they are at the cutting
edge and overlap of all the consciousness and social movements of our societies.
Many cultural creatives believe that they are co-creators of the beginning of a
global second enlightenment for all of humankind. This
second enlightenment can become another Golden Age of civil society, a real
resurgence of voluntary organizations, social movements and spiritual and
educational concerns.
The cultural creatives of today are more likely than not, to be involved in new
cultural and global movements like the
Integral movement or the
Evolutionary Spirituality and
Personal Spirituality movements. The appearance of increasing numbers of
postmodern cultural creatives may even be the natural, evolutionary countering
to the many earlier evolutionary pathologies of fundamentalism, traditionalism
and modernism. That the postmodern and post-postmodern cultural creatives
will eventually outnumber both the traditional and modern segments of the
population and they will become the dominant global culture is probably an
evolutionary inevitability.
How the Cultural Creatives may have come into Being
The US has been involved in a gigantic social learning and consciousness
development process over the last 40 years. Many other first world countries
around the world have mirrored and expanded that process. That social learning
and consciousness process has brought people into a deeper connection with
what’s real, and new social movements have been born as a result of the deeper
grasp of reality.
These new social movements have led to vast numbers of people re-interpreting
how they see themselves, the world and their place in it. In the process people
have been led from one movement into successive movements, into a deeper
confrontation with their inner life and the quality of being in their lives.
This interaction between individuals and new social or consciousness movements
has created a spiral of mutual transformation where one’s new or expanded inner
life seeks to create congruity (social improvement) in one’s outer life and thus
the growing social activism for a better world.
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What are Spiritual
Creatives?
Spiritual Creatives are spiritual seekers, cultural creatives, spiritual
explorers, pioneers, futurists or adventurers and
artists of all types who come
from many religious backgrounds, who value their personal spiritual freedom and
autonomy and, the adventure of the creative journey of developing their unique
spirituality into its completeness.
They are also spiritually courageous individuals who may feel one or more of the
following:
1. They want to customize or re-energize their religion by picking and choosing
ideas and practices from the best wisdom of the world's greatest religions and
spiritual traditions --- often without any particular attachment to doctrine.
For some this process merely adds on to their original religion. For others
while this process includes their original religion, it also transcends it and
becomes a revitalizing new synthesis of both their original religion and other
spiritual sources.
2. They sense that the direct spiritual experience of the Ever Present Origin of
all reality in the form of
God
and/or the
Buddha
is the core essence of all religion as well as religion’s single most powerful
resource and tool for personal transformation. Consequently, it is logical,
spiritually
enlightened self-interest to seek out the most useful and effective
spiritual wisdom concerning the expansion of one’s direct spiritual
experience of God and/or the Buddha no matter what religion or other source that
spiritual wisdom may have come from.
3. They sense that direct spiritual experience of God and/or the Buddha as the
original core essence of religion is always freely and directly available to
anyone anywhere at any time.
4. They sense that the main goal of all religions is basically the same
(expanding direct spiritual experiences of God and/or the Buddha) and, only the
paths to getting there are different.
5. They sense that one religion or one religious perspective alone might not
have all the answers or, that all current religions might be partial or
complementary views of the infinite wholeness and unfathomable mysteries, which
will forever surround the infiniteness of God and/or the Buddha. Consequently
they seek to integrate the partial or complementary views to gain a more
complete spiritual perspective.
6. They want to discover their own personal spirituality and/or their direct
relationship with God and/or the Buddha rather than be told by others or
traditional religious authorities what it should be or look like.
7. They sense that the deep personal spiritual transformation that comes from
the direct spiritual experience of God and/or the Buddha also happens to be the
most effective source for social and global healing and transformation.
8. They may be involved with the new conscious or spiritual movements that are
just emerging and converging in what is just starting to be called a global
second enlightenment. Some of these movements are the
Integral and Spiral consciousness movements, the
evolutionary spirituality
and
process theology movements (which are attempting to re-integrate science and
religion) and the new eastern or western practical mysticism/monastic movements.
In one way or another all of these spiritualized movements are evolving and
galvanizing a new type and level of effective collective
spiritualized activism
to meet the critical global challenges facing humankind over the next 20 years
while not losing the importance of supporting direct spiritual experience and
individual spiritual growth.
9. They sense that
art and the idea of each individual as an artist (which has been separated
out from many of today’s religions) is an important part of their spirituality.
They see not just the process of creating art as a spiritual meditation and
worship they also see it as a powerful tool for spiritual healing.
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Internal Tools:
Extra External Tools:
-
Cultural Creatives - Based on the
book, "The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People are Changing the
World", Meetup with other local Cultural Creatives to network and get more
involved in positive social change.
-
Peace - Meetup with other local
peace-minded people to talk about nonviolent means to resolve differences.
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