L I B R A RY - M A G A Z I N E A R C H I V E

IONS REVIEW - Return to Issue 37 - Table of Contents

NOETIC SCIENCES REVIEW # 37, PAGE 04

SPRING 1996

The Rise of
Integral
Culture
By Paul H. Ray

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of

times.'
So begins Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, set in 1789 in Revolutionary Paris at t

upsurge of modern politics. We could say the same as we begin our own story of whatever is welling
up to replace modernity at the end of the twentieth century. Looking at the decline in incomes for No
Americans, or at the perilous state of the environment around the planet, many of us quite reasonab
feel that this time in our history is one of unparalleled danger. It is not hard to see how a series of
disasters superimposed on each other could lead to a decline in civilization. It is just as easy to find
doom-sayers among today's pundits as it was in 1789. Does that mean we're still looking through
distorting eyeglasses supplied by our own ancien regime-eyeglasses that reflect anachronistic
interests that are not necessarily our own? I think so.

Instead, let's consider an alternative point of view that runs against everything we read in the daily
papers. The alternative is this: The opportunities before us are just as real as the dangers. Our futur

is not an inevitable slide into poverty and despair. But this does not mean celebrating our inevitable
progress into a golden future of endless consumption as described by ad agency flacks. Life is hard
and more upsetting than that.

At the threshold of a "Great Divide" in history such as this, the worst upset may be to know you are a
a watershed where the given world diverges sharply from everything you have known, and have bee
into the unknown. Changes from one kind of civilization to another do not happen often in history: th
invention of agriculture, the rise and fall of conquest states and empires, the coming of industrialism
and urbanism. An earlier generation may have been perfectly justified in discounting any further suc
radical changes. We cannot.

In the next two decades our world will either be dramatically better or dramatically worse. The one
thing that cannot happen is just "more of the same". Most trends of the past are simply not
sustainable. The era of obvious steps to progress is gone, and we face the Great Divide. It really cou
go either way: Our future is not foreordained.

We are at a tipping point in civilization. This means we have to be ready to choose a good path. The
quality of our "image of the future", and the quality of our creative efforts based on it, will determine
which way our future develops over the next generation or two. All that is certain is that the stakes
have been raised.

Three Worldviews

On a centuries-long time scale, we have seen the rise of modern cultural forms; and also, as many
have recently argued, the decline of the Modernist paradigm. The central thesis of my research is th
we are seeing the emergence of a new cultural form, Integral Culture-a new, constructive synthesis
Modernism and its antithesis, Traditionalism-a synthesis which moves beyond both while not rejectin
either. A defining characteristic of Integral Culture is that in synthesizing these other two value syste
it simultaneously legitimizes the Western world's deepest, common past and aims toward a
transformative future. As a result, in its transcendence of the dichotomy of Traditionalism and
Modernism, Integral Culture manifests a distinctive toleration for ambiguity-beyond either/or.

Compared to the rest of society, the bearers of Integral Culture have values that are more idealistic
and spiritual, have more concern for relationships and psychological development, are more
environmentally concerned, and are more open to creating a positive future. According to my
research, this group comprises about 24 percent of the adults in the US, or about 44 million people.
indeed an Integral Culture is emerging, we are experiencing a very unusual time in history-for chang
in the dominant cultural pattern happens only once or twice a millennium.

There are three different streams of cultural meanings and worldviews that lead to what we can
measure at this point in time: Traditional, Modern, and Transmodern. (See Chart Below) Each gives
rise to present-day observations of three different subcultures of values. I have called the bearers of
these subcultures of values Heartlanders, Modernists, and Cultural Creative.

My research findings show that values and worldviews differ systematically by subcultures. In this
article, I argue that these differences depend on the cultural era in which they were formed. Typically
cross-sectional surveys yield data that describe isolated moments in time. However, in a survey abo
culture, the data are measures of a trajectory that reaches back centuries. For example, the results
the "American Lives" survey reveal that today three different worldviews are "out there", whereas jus
a generation ago social researchers could find only two: Traditional and Modern. Because of the
perceptual lag that is common in our public discourse, we still talk publicly as if there were only these
two.

This new perspective on worldviews, values and subcultures is not just an analytical distinction: Whe
our culture is today is very much a function of where it has been. This is shown in the chart above,
which suggests that the dominant imagery of each current worldview in this survey was formed in a
fairly recent historical period in the US.
However, each of these three worldviews reflects a stream of meanings and cultural concerns that
predates the dates shown.

The roots of today's Traditional stream can be traced to Medieval Europe, through traditional
Catholics and Protestants reacting to the rise of secular Modernism after the Enlightenment,
up to the anti-democratic Right that persists today. In more recent times in the US,
Traditionalism can be traced also to rural and nativist (racist, anti-foreign) movements from
which nineteenth century fundamentalism arose in reaction to Modernism in its North Americ
form. Today's Heartlanders believe in a nostalgic image of return to small town, religious
America, corresponding to the period 1890 to 1930. It is a mythical image, vociferously held
all that, and defines what they believe are the good old "traditional" American ways.

The beginning of Modernism dates from around 500 years ago in Europe at the end of the
Renaissance, and continued to spread beyond Europe to its colonies throughout the period.
While Modernism may in part be seen as an overthrow of authoritarian political and religious
controls, it has important roots in the urban merchant classes and in other creators of the
modern economy, in the rise of the modern state and armies, and in the rise of scientists,
technologists, and intellectuals. The imagery and worldview of today's North American
Modernism of post-1920s is already late-Modernism, with nineteenth century roots in
European intellectualism and in US urbanism and industrialism. Conservatives tend to idealiz
the 1920s or 1950s version, while liberals-to-moderates tend to a set of idealized 1950s and
1960s images, and are more open to new ideas.

The roots of today's Transmodernism appear to be in part in the esoteric spiritual movement
that grew out of the Renaissance and continue to today in the rise of new religions, and also

the transcendental movement of the early to mid-nineteenth century with Emerson and the
Transcendentalists. They are also found worldwide in the writings of various intellectuals of t
mid-twentieth century, in the New Age movement, in the humanistic psychology and
transpersonal psychology movements, in the ecology movement, and in the women's
movement, which all date from the 1960s on. All find major elements of the Modern worldvie
unacceptable, with a growing loss of faith in it. This worldview is "leading edge and subject to
change", and incorporates the personal into the social and political: They reinvented
themselves, so why could society not be reinvented too?

The report, from which this article is adapted, argues that members of this new subculture ar
the bearers of a new worldview that may be characterized as "Transmodern"-offering hope th
we are seeing the emergence of a successor to Modernism. I am calling this successor
"Integral Culture".

What the Survey Shows

Today, bearers of the culture of Traditionalism, the Heartlanders, are 29 percent of the population, or
56 million adults. Bearers of Modernism are 47 percent of the population, or 88 million adults. And
Cultural Creatives comprise 24 percent of the adult population, or 44 million.
Cultural Creatives (CCs) are called that because they are coming up with most new ideas in US
culture, operating on the leading edge of cultural change. They tend to be middle to upper-middle
class. A few more CCs are on the West Coast than elsewhere, but they are in all regions of the
country. The overall male-female ratio is 40:60, or 50 percent more women than men.

CCs have two wings: Core Cultural Creatives and Green Cultural Creatives. Core CCs (10.6 percen
or 20 million) have both person-centered and green values: seriously concerned with psychology,
spiritual life, self-actualization, self-expression; like the foreign and exotic (are xenophiles); enjoy
mastering new ideas; are socially concerned; advocate "women's issues"; and are strong advocates
ecological sustainability. They tend to be "leading edge" thinkers and creators. They tend to be uppe
middle class, and their male-female ratio is 33:67, twice as many women as men. Green CCs (13
percent, or 24 million) have values centered on the environment and social concerns from a secular
view, with average interest in spirituality, psychology, or person-centered values. They appear to tak
their cues from the Core CCs and tend to be middle class.

The CCs subculture represents the appearance of new values and worldviews that were rare before
World War II and were scarcely noticeable even a generation ago. That new subculture includes
people who perceive all too clearly the systemic problems of today, all the way from the local level to
the national and to the planetary. It also includes people who have higher standards for spirituality,
personal development, authenticity, relationships, and toleration for the views of other people than th
members of either Traditional or Modern cultures. Faced with those other two cultural forms, the CC
response is also a withdrawal of belief in the old forms. But unlike the alienated Moderns, the CCs a
well on their way to creating something new.

It is not merely that we see a new population appearing. In addition to its transcendence of old
antithetical values and beliefs, we also see that this new subculture is busily constructing a new
approach to the world. It is synthesizing a new set of concepts for viewing the world: an ecological a
spiritual worldview; a whole new literature of social concerns; a new problematique for the planet in
place of the old set of problems that Modernism set out to solve; a new set of psychological
development techniques; a return in spiritual practices and understandings to the perennial
psychology and philosophy; and an elevation of the feminine to a new place in recent human history
In short, it is a good beginning for a new cultural era.

Cultural Creatives are a very large pool of people-44 million-bigger than any comparable group seen

at the birth of any previous societal renaissance. The empirical data of my "American Lives" survey
show that the appearance of the Cultural Creatives since the 1970s heralds a transition to
Transmodernism and what may well be the birth of the new and distinctive social force that I am
calling Integral Culture. But, to emphasize a point made earlier, the realization of Integral Culture is b
no means foreordained. Like all cultures, an emerging new culture (whether Integral Culture or some
other major social force) is a response to the problems of the day.

All cultures exist to solve the problems that people perceive. Modernism did solve some of the
problems it confronted, but it is no longer an appropriate response to the nature and complexity of th
problematique facing today's society. Much of the old problematique persists, and, in fact, many of th
"solutions" of Modernism have contributed to the new problematique. Something different is needed
now, something which we may hope will be along the lines of the values of Integral Culture.

Can we do it? I believe we can for a number of reasons. For instance, the requisite population base
(of Cultural Creatives) is in place; global communications and transportation systems are in place an
developing rapidly; advances in the "new sciences" of quantum physics, holistic biology, and
complexity theory (with their discoveries of nonlocality, ecological interdependence, and
self-organizing systems) are already dismantling the old Modernist paradigm; in addition, a host of
new developments in humanistic-transpersonal psychology, eco-sciences, and feminism, as well as
burgeoning psychospiritual consciousness revolution, are all broad social movements contributing to
Transmodern culture and a new kind of world. The transformation is happening right in front of our
eyes, right now in the last decade of the twentieth century. In short, all the ingredients required to
make a truly Integral Culture are already with us.
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The End of Modernism

Increasingly, the solutions offered by
Modernism seem to trail
ever-graver problems in their wake.
One way of conceptualizing the "Great Divide" is that we are coming to
the end of the Modern era. Modernism is less likely to collapse than to
change to forms previous generations wouldn't recognize. These
changes will almost certainly include:
1) The end or drastic change of many familiar ways of living: both the
civility and the dangers of big city urban life; the assembly-line-driven
heavy-industry workplaces; the large-scale bureaucratic workplaces
(both business and government); and the powerful, patriotic nationstates, as we have tried to live and work in them.
2) The end or complete reworking of a world of ideas and interpretations:
for instance, those eyeglasses supplied by Modernism called scientism,
positivism, philosophical materialism, romanticism, and secular
humanism as our minds have peered through them.
3) The end or drastic bringing to responsibility of whole systems of
political and economic exchange: socialism, communism, and capitalism.
4) The end or stylistic transformation of many forms of visual art, music,

literature and architecture that were shaped by the modernist

mentality.-PHR
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The Legacy of Modernism

As Integral Culture comes upon the world scene, it will succeed precisely to the extent that it solves
the problems of a whole planet that is starting to be "one world" for the very first time. Many of the
problems it solves will be inherited from Modernism, either as still-unsolved, or as produced by earlie
attempts to solve problems as seen by people of an earlier era. Modernism can be seen as an
impressive set of cultural inventions that have been focused on solving what were the generic set of
human problems for most of human history, but which have been particularly important since the
Renaissance, over the last 500 years. These classic problems of humanity include:
diminishing toil;
distributing plenty;
reducing plagues and illnesses;
housing and feeding an exploding population;
creating effective and productive organizations;
building a more universalist morality;
coming to terms with increasing social complexity.

This dominant agenda was inherited from the ancient world, and even the early modern world.
Modernism has solved these problems, often brilliantly. The United States has often led those
solutions, and it has often celebrated that fact. But many of these victories were at the expense of th
traditional ways of life and of the peoples who still believed in them and clung to them. The Third
World is in despair not only because their own cultures have not solved those ancient problems, but
because they are also at risk from our solutions. Increasingly, the solutions offered by Modernism
seem

to trail ever-graver problems in their wake for the modern West as well. Hence, part of the present-d
delegitimation of Modernism is that it no longer delivers what it promised, or that it also delivers a ho
of problems that may in the long run outweigh the short-term benefits. Consider the following:

In the name of creating plenty and defending it, modern corporations, governments, and
militaries have used ever more powerful technologies to magnify their search for wealth and
power, and for more ignoble purposes. This might have been ecologically tolerable so long a
greedy and power-obsessed organizations were not too effective. But whoever reads this
article knows the planet is in dire peril on a hundred fronts, and there is no point in belaborin
here. The point is that many people are now making the connection between the modern wa
of life and this peril.

In the name of making viable civil societies, and reducing the kinds of ethnic feuds and
religious wars that have infested the last millennium up to Bosnia and Rwanda today,
Modernism has created the expectation that there will be more than one valid kind of religiou
belief and more than one kind of lifestyle and worldview. This rejects ideas central to
Traditionalism outright, as bigoted and/or superstitious. By introducing shades of gray into
what was previously perceived as black or white beliefs about culture and religion, Modernis
also makes them all relative: None can successfully claim to be the only way any more. This

a key to the appearance of fundamentalism and cultural conservatism, a reactionary rejectio

of modern relativism and complexity.

The secularism of Modernism rejects all traditional worldviews and their truths as false, or at
best unproven. But it is not merely that there are sore losers to a debate about cosmology an
the natural world. The impressive successes of science and technology in explaining the
world, and in changing it, lead to an ever-changing standard of truth, and a further tendency
"think apart", to destructively analyze all holistic ideas and deconstruct all competing
worldviews. But then the Modern worldview feels incoherent and disorienting, for most peopl
require a foundation in unchanging truths about humanity, nature, the universe and god(s).
Today both Traditional and Transmodern people regard this noisy, incoherent, fragmentation
as a central failing of Modernism.
The fragmentation of analysis is paralleled by the fragmentation of market economies,
fragmentation of communities, fragmentation of families, and the fragmentation of the
programming of mass media. In fragmentation, many people find anomie and despair.

Modernism has created a number of institutional and organizational forms that have no
effective competitors, and are crowding out old forms such as the small farm, neighborhood,
community and family. These new forms include bureaucracy, the nation-state, corporations,
research universities, factories, mass transportation, institutions of science, mass market
systems, hugely dispersed urban fields, the perpetual reinvention of technologies, and the
massive and diverse installation of electronic "smart chips" in everything to make an
information society that may be networked to a point of universal and impersonal connectivit
never seen before. Since humanity has evolved from pre-civilized times with those old
personalized and particularistic forms of the farm, neighborhood and family, many
commentators believe we are in deep trouble from all this. Their argument is that we are "ha
wired" for other ways of life.

The moral consensus of Modernist society has been unraveling for some time. For most Nor
Americans of my parents' generation there had been a standard bourgeois moral consensus
on what was right and good, and then some time after World War II it seemed to fall apart.
Many Moderns and Traditionals agree substantially about what is wrong. Many of them also
agree, in principle, on the solution, though they have not the slightest idea how to implement
Both the bad consequences and their inability to "see" what is new demonstrate the
exhaustion of Modernism as a cultural system.
The standard individualistic model of climbing a career ladder, plus consumer status display
and strong differentiation by social class and lifestyle, defines winners and losers in modern
life.

It is often taken for granted that the only way to be is US Modernist because of its contributio
to capitalism. Hence it helps define a worldview built on winning in life, which dominates the
attention of middle to upper class Moderns in America.

At the same time, massive layoffs in the name of "downsizing", "right-sizing", and other
euphemisms are scaring US workers into silence about working conditions in the hope of
holding a job. Steady jobs and ladders of career success as we have known them may be
disappearing. Furthermore, many futurists say the ability of multinationals to hire labor, or to
buy parts of products, anywhere in the world may create a single worldwide unskilled workin
class, made miserable under these conditions. Hence, there are other Moderns who are
alienated from the culture of winning, because it is now obvious they will always lose at that
game. This is true both of the working class exposed to worldwide competition, and to middle
class "sliders". Many are caught between the Modern and Traditional worlds, more comfortab
with customary lifeways, but not believing in tradition. Most cannot yet "see" the values of the
Cultural Creatives. Yet they have nowhere else to go, and seem to reject most positive value
Many may be low-hanging fruit, just ripe for demagogues to pluck.

Our greatest error could be to take seriously the pessimistic temper of our times, and to give in to th
fear and cynicism that pervade the media. For then we will come to believe something truly

catastrophic: "Things are bad and getting worse, and nothing can be done about it."

There is an alternative point of view. As sociologist Fred Polak showed in his study of 1,500 years of
1

European history, The Image of the Future, if a whole culture holds a very pessimistic image of the
future, that image will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The actual predictions about decline don't have to
be right or to come true: The pathological behaviors released may be quite sufficient to bring about
decline. It's a disease of belief. And the contrary is also true. When a culture holds positive images o
the future, they may not be right, but investment in new opportunities, and willingness to build a goo
society, are sufficient to make a decent way of life, if not the best of all worlds.

-SKIP SIDEBAR 2-

Values of Cultural Creatives

The distinctive values, commitments and beliefs of the Cultural
Creatives-the most conspicuous representatives of the emerging Integral
Culture-may be summarized as follows:

Ecological sustainability, beyond

environmentalism: If you can name an aspect of
ecology and sustainability, they are emphatically for it,
and are leading the way. Cultural Creatives
demonstrate awareness of a large range of issues,
including wanting to rebuild neighborhoods and
communities, ecological sustainability and limits to
growth, seeing nature as sacred, wanting to stop
corporate polluters, being anti-big-business, wanting
voluntary simplicity, being willing to pay to clean up the
environment and to stop global warming.
Globalism: Two of the top values for Cultural
Creatives are xenophilism (love of travel to foreign
places, of foreigners and the exotic) and ecological
sustainability, which strongly includes concern for the
planetary ecology and stewardship, and population
problems.
Feminism, women's issues, relationships,
family: The fact that Cultural Creatives are 60 percent
women is a major key to understanding this
subculture. Much of the focus on women's issues in
politics comes from them-including concerns about
violence and abuse of women and children, desire to
rebuild neighborhoods and community, desire to
improve caring relationships, and concerns about
family (though they are no more family-oriented than
most North Americans, it is near the top in their list of

values).
Altruism, self-actualization, alternative health
care, spirituality and spiritual psychology: This is a
complex of highly interrelated beliefs and values
centered on the inner life. In reality, this is a new sense
of the sacred that incorporates personal growth
psychology and the spiritual and service to others as
all one orientation. It also includes a stronger trend
toward holistic health and alternative health care as
part of this complex.
Well-developed social conscience and social
optimism: Contrary to some social critics, an
emphasis on the personal does not exclude the
political or social conscience, though individuals may
focus on them in sequence. Cultural Creatives are
engaged in the world just as much as in personal and
spiritual issues. Rebuilding and healing society is
related to healing ourselves, physically and spiritually.
With that goes a guarded social optimism.
-PHR
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Transition to Transmodernism

Modernism has failed, and prescient thinkers have seen it coming for some time-for example, social
2

historians such as Pitirim Sorokin in The Crisis of Our Age, Fred Polak in The Image of the Future,
3

Harrison Brown in The Challenge of Man's Future, and, later, Lester Brown in the Worldwatch
Institute's annual reports. Some theorists approached the issue more positively, as when Willis
Harman referred to our crisis of belief as a transition from one worldview to another in Global Mind
4

Change.

Consequently, as a growing common effort, and on behalf of the larger culture, leading edge thinker
in the West are generating a large variety of potential successor ideas, imagery and rationales to
replace the "Modernism" we have known for the last several centuries. The beginning of the
Transmodern is a time of messy, contradictory confusions of ideas and images. Rather than bemoan
the messiness, we need to acknowledge that in the face of what is genuinely new this may be a goo
thing, because it leads to unfolding and expression of many creative possibilities that might otherwis
never be seen.

Interestingly enough, the vision of "Integral Culture" as a positive way of transcending Modernism ha
been around for more than 50 years, first given voice by the great Russian-American sociologist
2

Pitirim Sorokin in The Crisis of Our Age. I use the word "transcending" deliberately, to suggest
incorporating what has occurred in the past, and its antitheses as well, to make a new, richer

synthesis. Three major thinkers each embraced the same broad concept with analogous spiritual
ideas in the same period (1930s and 1940s), apparently independently of one another: Sri Aurobind
5

in A Practical Guide to Integral Yoga and The Life Divine, Sorokin, who wrote about Idealist (later
6

Integral) culture in his Social and Cultural Dynamics, and Jean Gebser, who developed a model of
7

integral structures of consciousness in The Ever-Present Origin. Sorokin, at least, later became
aware of Aurobindo's work, and greatly admired it.

Numerous contemporary writers also return to those same basic themes without necessarily being
conscious of their predecessors. This is not just a matter of independent reinvention, but rather is an
example of the ongoing effects of what Gebser called "the ever-present origin" and of the persistent
stream of the perennial philosophy. For it is a spiritualization of Modernity that most enlivens and
fertilizes a postmodern synthesis, rather than a sterile postmodernism. In effect, many of these write
draw from the same well of inspiration, hinting, intimating, and even predicting the "fall of Modernism
and the rise of a new culture.
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Lifestyle Preferences of Cultural

Creatives
Cultural Creatives (CCs) are, typically,
middle to upper-middle class people with a lot of spending power, but
much of US business ignores them, so they have developed a number of
ways to get what they want anyway. Here are some sweeping
generalizations, from many highly targeted studies:

Readers and radio listeners, not TV watchers:

CCs buy more books and magazines, listen to more
radio, including classical music and NPR, and watch
less television, than any other groups. They are both
literate and discriminating, and dislike most of what is
on TV.
Arts and culture: CCs are prodigious consumers
and producers of culture. They are more likely to be
involved in the arts, are more likely to write books and
articles, and to go to meetings and workshops about
books they have read.
Stories, whole process, and systems: CCs
appreciate good stories, and demand systems views
of the "whole process" of whatever they are reading,
from cereal boxes to product descriptions to magazine
articles. They want to know where a product came
from, how it was made, who made it, and what will
happen to it when they are done with it. They also
want symbols that go deep, and actively resent
advertising and children's TV more than most
Americans.

Careful consumers: CCs are the kind of people

who buy and use Consumer Reports on most
consumer durables goods: appliances, cars, consumer
electronics. For the most part, they are the careful,
well-informed shoppers who do not buy on impulse,
and read up on a purchase first. They are practically
the only consumers who regularly read the labels as
they're supposed to.
A different kind of car, please: CCs are far more
likely to want safety and fuel economy in a mid-price
car. If they could also get an ecologically sound, high
mileage, recyclable car, they'd snap it up. |
Technology moderates: CCs are less likely to be
innovators, and more likely to be early adopters, of
technological products.
Soft innovation: However, CCs do tend to be
innovators and opinion leaders for some knowledgeintensive products, including magazines, fine foods,
wines, and boutique beers.The foodies: A high
proportion of CCs are "foodies": people who like to talk
about food (before and after), experiment with new
kinds of food, cook food with friends, eat out a lot, do
gourmet and ethnic cooking, try natural foods and
health foods, etc.
Desire for authenticity: CCs invented the term
"authenticity" as consumers understand it, leading the
rebellion against things that are "plastic", fake,
imitation, poorly made, throwaway, cliche style, and
high fashion. If they buy something in a traditional
style they want it authentically traditional, with a story.
This also includes a desire for authenticity and human
contact in the service sector.
A different kind of new house, please: CCs tend
to buy fewer new houses than most people of their
income level, finding that they are not designed with
them in mind. So they buy resale houses and fix them
up the way they want. They abhor the status display
home that shows a lot to the street, strongly preferring
to be hidden from the street by fences, trees and
shrubbery. All that militates against buying the kinds of

new homes that builders are prone to put out there for
the upper-middle class. They also like authentic styling
in homes-whatever fits into its proper place on the land
is good. They want access to nature, walking and
biking paths, ecological preservation, historic
preservation, and to live in master planned
communities that show a way to re-create community.
Personalization of the home: Interior decoration
for CCs is typically eclectic, with a lot of original art on
the walls and crafts pieces around the house. Many
Core CCs seem to think a house is not properly
furnished without a lot of books. The same house that
vanishes from the street should be personalized so
that status displays happen inside the house, not
outside, though it is not blatant: It is display of
personal good taste and a creative sense of style.
Experiential consumers: Core CCs are the
prototypical consumers of the experience industry,
which tries to sell you a more intense/enlightening
/enlivening experience rather than a thing:
psychotherapy, weekend workshops, spiritual
gatherings, personal growth experiences, vacationsas-self-discovery, vacations-at-health-spas, etc. The
providers of these services have to be CCs too, or
they can't do it authentically (the kiss of death), and so
one sometimes gets the impression that everyone is
taking in everyone else's wash-or workshop.
The leading edge of vacation travel: CCs define
the leading edge of vacation travel that is exotic,
adventuresome-without-(too much)-danger,
educational, experiential, authentic, altruistic and/or
spiritual. They don't do package tours, fancy resorts,
or cruises, and resent having to take the kids to
Disneyland.
Holistic everything: CCs are the prototypical
innovators in, and consumers of, personal growth
psychotherapy, alternative health care and natural
foods. What ties these together is a belief in holistic
health: body-mind-spirit are to be unified. They are
forever sorting out the weird from the innovative. They
may include a high proportion of people whom some
physicians describe as "the worried well": those who

monitor every twitch and pain and bowel movement, in

a minutely detailed attention to the body, which may be
why they spend more on alternative health care and
regular health care even though most are fairly
healthy. They may live longer, because they do at least
some kinds of preventive medicine-in contrast to the
Modernist executive pattern of treating the body like a
machine that you feed, exercise, and vitaminize, and
otherwise ignore until it breaks down.
-PHR
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Cultural Revitalization

But the change to Integral Culture (if or when it happens) will not mean a complete and radical ruptu
with previous social modalities. The cultures of large civilizations don't disappear, they change to ne
forms. Clearly, Modernist institutions-currently embodied in our Western network of cities, jobs,
workplaces, markets, businesses, universities and governments-will not simply disappear overnight
a massive systems collapse. Rather, in the Transmodern world they will change to forms our parents
wouldn't have recognized. While we may grieve for the loss of the familiar, we may also thrill to the
new: the prospect of an Integral Culture.

Essentially, being "Transmodern" means being for something. The possibility of a new culture center
on reintegration of what has been fragmented by Modernism: self-integration and authenticity;
integration with community and connection with others around the globe, not just at home; connectio
with nature and learning to integrate ecology and economy; and a synthesis of diverse views and
traditions, including philosophies of East and West. Thus, Integral Culture.

The results of the Integral Culture Survey suggest that we should "Take heart!" Unknown to most of
us, we're traveling in the midst of an enormous company of allies: a larger population of creative
people, who are the carriers of more positive ideas, values, and trends than any previous renaissanc
period has ever seen. And they can probably be mobilized to act altruistically on behalf of our future

The social fact of an imminent millennium is also significant. While change in date itself cannot caus
anything, belief in it has real consequences. One of the most important is that it may liberate people
try something really new at the societal level. Linking transformation to the year 2000-or 2001-may
depend on potent symbolism which, in psychological terms, would be nothing but magical thinking if
we took it literally. But symbolism counts: It gives people a new viewpoint, and the vision it launches
impels them to do something different.
The lurch to the new is what anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace called cultural revitalization
8

movements. That is what a whole culture does when it is willing to face the fact that the old ways
don't work, and then asks, "What comes next?" As Passionist priest Thomas Berry says, "It's all a
question of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in betwe
stories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer
9

effective. Yet we have not learned the new story." Not only is necessity the mother of invention, but
we will probably make a virtue of the solutions we must invent to cope with it. Yes, something very
different is coming, and yes, we can do something about it.

The cultural revitalization response is to invent a new way of seeing ourselves, and to use old ideas
and technologies in new ways. It is a hopeful and creative period in the life of a culture, usually
following a period of defeat and despair which had resulted not just from misfortune, but precisely
because the old stories no longer worked.

Based on the results of the survey, the 44 million Cultural Creatives now have an opportunity to form
themselves into a cultural revitalization movement, one that seeks to create an Integral Culture. As
already noted, cultural revitalization movements often emphasize that "the old story doesn't work", a
say they will invent a new story. Such movements create new images of "who we are", play with new
symbolism and archetypal imagery, try to invent new ways of life to replace others that don't work, a
are hopeful about the future. In a very real sense, they may contribute to creating that future.

My central thesis is that the new is Transmodernism-or what lies beyond Modernism. This is neither
declinism nor utopianism, but points to important new developments, right here and right now. It can
be a positive development in Western life. My survey shows there is a population of 44 million US
citizens who believe in many of the values of an Integral Culture. This is not a fringe phenomenon, b
part of the mainstream of US life. It is the rise of the Cultural Creatives, the people who are doing we
in the new information economy, and who have more new ideas about what to do and try in US life.
-RETURN TO SIDEBAR 1 "The End of Modernism"-RETURN TO SIDEBAR 2 "Values of Cultural Creatives"-RETURN TO SIDEBAR 3 " Lifestyle Preferences of Cultural Creatives"-

The report from which this article has been adapted is based on the
latest in a long line of such surveys. The full report, "The Integral
Cultural Survey: A Study of Values Subcultures and Use of Alternativ
Health Care in America", was delivered to the Fetzer Institute and the
Institute of Noetic Sciences, October 1995. A survey was mailed to a
representative national sample of the US population by National Fami
Opinion in November and December of 1994, using their panel of
people who had agreed to be available. The data were returned for
analysis in February 1995. The survey includes an oversampling of
Cultural Creatives. Roughly 1,500 respondents were sampled in a
demographically balanced representative national random sample,
with a yield of 1,036 usable questionnaires, for a 69 percent return rat
In addition, another 600 questionnaires were sent to a national sampl
of Cultural Creatives who had been pre-screened from a larger sampl
using a short values-screener questionnaire. This gave a return of 36
more questionnaires.

Paul H. Ray, executive vice-president of American LIVES, Inc., specializes in

research and analysis of values and lifestyles as a cultural phenomenon. Ray, who
holds a PhD in sociology, has been studying the Integral Culture movement for
the last eight years, with dozens of surveys and hundreds of focus groups.

Read other articles from

issue # 37
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References
1. Fred Polak, The Image of The Future (Oceana Publications, 1961).
2. Pitirim Sorokin, The Crisis of Our Age (E. P. Dutton, 1941).

3. Harrison Brown, The Challenge of Man's Future (MacMillan, 1954

4. Willis Harman, Global Mind Change (Warner Books, 1988).
5. Sri Aurobindo, A Practical Guide to Integral Yoga (Sri Aurobindo
Ashram, 1955); The Life Divine (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1970).
6. P. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics (Bedminster Press,
1937-41).
7. Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin (Ohio University Press,
1993).
8. Anthony F. C. Wallace, "Cultural Revitalization Movements", in
American Anthropologist (1961).
9. Thomas Berry, Dream of the Earth (HarperCollins, 1993)

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