http://www.culturalcreatives.org/

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

1. Why do you call them the Cultural Creatives? Because they are literally creating a new culture. Innovation by innovation they are shaping a new American culture for the 21st century.

2. Aren't they all just... New Age? No the New Agers are only a tiny postage stamp on the corner of this envelope-about 5% of population compared to 26%, and half of the New Agers aren't Cultural Creatives either. Most Cultural Creatives are very mainstream and would be offended if you called them New Age. They're very grounded and practical people.

Baby Boomers? No they're all ages: 18-70. This is not about generational differences.

Liberals? No there are fewer liberals than conservatives, and fewer of either than people who don't see themselves as either left or right. This is about a new kind of politics.

Californians? No they're from all parts of the country, and they're quite mainstream Americans.

Upper Middle Class? No, they're all income levels from working class to very affluent.

Whites? No, they're all ethnic groups as well.

Self indulgent, hot tub Yuppies? No. The emergence of the Cultural Creatives is not about yuppies and self-indulgence, it's about the people who care, and who are taking steps to make it practical and real.

3. Why are the Cultural Creatives important: why should I (or my readers/audience) care?

The sheer size of the CC population at 50 million people is already affecting the way Americans do business and politics. They're making new kinds of businesses and nonprofits, and they're also driving the demand for: · ecologically sustainable products and services, and concern for the whole planet. · to insist on authenticity, personally, at work, in business & politics. · bringing women's issues into public life. · doing the news differently, to see the big picture, and first person stories, and good news too. · bringing spirituality into American life.

If people don't know about the Cultural Creatives they may be left behind, wondering where all the changes are coming from. After all, any time one in four Americans are changing their minds in fundamental ways, it's worth paying attention to, because it's going to change your life too.

What the Cultural Creatives value and the kind of new solutions they're creating, give us reason for optimism about the future.

There are more Cultural Creatives than voted for Clinton in the last election. If they get it together, they can win.

Cultural Creatives are redefining what success means, away from success at work and making a lot of money, toward a more soulful life focused on personal fulfillment, social conscience, creating a better future for everyone on the planet.

A new industry is appearing: Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability, and it's $230 Billion in the U.S. this year, and $540 Billion worldwide. And the Cultural Creatives are their entire market.

4. If they're so important how come I haven't seen them before? a) Actually you have seen them: They're the huge populations who support all the new social movements from the Sixties right up to the present day: Civil rights, peace, environment, women's, jobs and social justice, gay lib, alternative health care, new spiritualities, new psychotherapies, etc.

b) If you look at values, you'll see them. But most of the surveys you hear about study only opinions that are very transitory, while values are slow changing and very deep. Values are much deeper than the demographic categories most surveys use. And that's why most surveys don't show what we've found.

c) The Cultural Creatives have been invisible to public view: How can 50 million people be invisible? 1) The national media don't cover the things they care about, or distort them. So, if you form all your impressions from the mass media, you'll never guess that they're there, because the media are really intolerant of world views other than their own. 2) The Cultural Creatives don't talk about what they value in public or at work. In part this is because they draw their conclusions that their values aren't shared by very many people, and they don't want to be embarrassed, put down, or harm their career prospects. 3) Most Cultural Creatives got to where they are in life almost alone. You probably didn't arrive at the values you've got now with your whole high school graduating class.

5. So what are all these creative solutions you're talking about, and why do you think that can make a difference? How can the Cultural Creatives make a difference with all that big money sloshing around? We're at a tipping point in history, a time when a creative minority can get the leverage to really make a difference. Part of the reason is that these activists and schoolteachers, and artists, and spiritual people, and scientists are following the normal American pattern for success. They are turning their grass roots social movements and their projects and ideas into new institutions.

Many of the most respectable institutions of today started as controversial grass roots movements. Citizen involvement turns into a huge variety of civic associations like: lobbying groups, political parties, unions, civic clubs, think tanks, institutes, foundations, charities, unions, clinics, and churches. This is what we Americans do, and we're better at it than almost any other country in the world. And that's what's happening now with the Cultural Creatives.

6. Well, what kinds of things are they doing? In between the pure profit making business and the begging-for-money charity there's a whole rainbow spectrum of new kinds of organizations and social experiments.

Take a yoga center for example: is it a business, a spiritual place, an education center, a health and exercise place, or a way of life? The answer is Yes to all the above. We're crossing categories all the time.

We interviewed a sculptor named Vijali Hamilton who travels around the world creating something she calls the World Wheel. In each community she creates an environmental sculpture and she does community building. She asks the people to go deep into who they are and how they connect to the rest of the world, and from their answers they create a piece of theatre, and music, and a community ritual. Is this art, community building, entertainment, spirituality, ecology? Again, Yes, to all the above.

6. Why have the social and consciousness movements made such a difference? Or, I don't see how all those movements from the Sixties could make such a difference today - that stuff is forty years old, it's history. Or, Why do you relate the Cultural Creatives to all those movements?

The reason why this makes such a difference is that all these movements have been doing something new in history. They have been trying to change our minds about what is important and how the world works.

There's a lot more to the movements than just the people on the ramparts, or just the obvious meditators on their cushions, there's also a huge culturally circle around those active people who are reframing how we see the world every day. You have to see what a whole movement is: there's the most active people at the center, but around them like a target, there's a huge population of less involved people who give the money, read the literature, keep track of what's happening, and really believe in it. There may be a few thousand activists, and hundreds of thousands giving money, but tens of millions who are changing their minds and their lives.

We have evidence that a typical CC cares intensely about, and is often involved in, half a dozen of these new social and consciousness movements, while the rest of the country care about none, or maybe one or two. When you're involved in several movements who do reframing, it changes your whole world view. That's where the Cultural Creatives came from. And thatÕs where a lot of our new direction is coming from.

What's more, there's an enormous overlap of all the movements, and the Cultural Creatives are right at the center of all of it. They are the common constituency of all the movements.

It's exactly the opposite of what many pundits have claimed: it really isn't true that if you're dealing with your own personal growth you've dropped out of social life. Or if you're an activist, you don't have time for an inner life. In reality, the more people are involved in ecology issues the more they are involved in spirituality and personal growth on the one hand, and social justice issues on the other hand.

7. Why does all of this make such a difference? Or, Isn't it all just politics? So what? What difference could all this make?

What makes Cultural Creatives different than most Americans is that when you're involved in several movements you've been exposed to their reframing a lot of times, because that's what these movements do.

Reframing is a big deal. It lets us look at our old problems from a new angle of vision. And it gives a new way of explaining them, and a new way to state our moral concerns. For example: What was Martin Luther King, Jr. saying, "The Blacks gotta get theirs?" No, he said, It's about freedom, and justice, and what the Constitution means, and who are we as a people? What did Rachel Carson say, Keep pollution out of your back yard? No, she said that this is about the death of Nature. What did Betty Friedan say, The women need more pay? No, she said This is about who we are as human beings. What did the alternative health care movement say, Chiropractors gotta get insurance coverage? No, they said, This is about real health and wellness, not just medical care for catastrophic illnesses.

The Cultural Creatives are the ones who have been really paying attention, applying those reframings in their own lives.

Reframing means you start to question the unspoken assumptions of the social codes all around you. It's not okay to let big business destroy the environment. It's not okay to have nuclear power. It's not okay to let the foreign policy elite send our young people off to wars without involving the citizens. It's not okay to put down, or harm, people who are different than you are. And so on.

If you are exposed to half a dozen big reframes, two things happen: the content changes your whole world view, and you get comfortable with the process of questioning the unspoken assumptions of the old culture. That's where the Cultural Creatives came from.And that's where a lot of our new direction is coming from.

All those people who have questioned the unspoken assumptions had to rely on their own direct experience. How else could you take off the old culture's eyeglasses? This has an incredible potential potential for opening up creativity in our lives. It gives us some comfort in going into the unknown. And that is where our whole society is going anyway at this time in history.

This is a part of the personal life changes that so many Cultural Creatives have gone through. So often they said to us that they had to live more authentic lives after opening up questions they really cared about, and having to live through the experiences they've had. The Black Freedom Movement called it "walking your talk" and this need for authenticity was picked up by every social and consciousness movement since then.

This emphasis on authenticity is at the center of who the Cultural Creatives are today, and is one of the key values they've brought into American life.