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The
Cultural Creatives
Dear
Team:
I had a nice retreat at Olema and also had a very interesting
talk with the top brass at the Institute of Noetic Sciences
this week. It seems that a silent revolution has been brewing
in America for the last generation or so. Silent in the sense
that this social development I'm going to discuss briefly has
been below the radar of the national media here. So what I'm
now going to introduce to all of you is the new social concept
of the Cultural Creatives.
Since the 1960's up to now, a certain segment of the American
population has embraced a set of values that encorporates serious
ecological and planetary perspectives, emphasis on relationships,
women's issues, commitment to spirituality and psychological
development, disaffection with large modern institutions and
also with left and right politics and growing rejection of materialism
and status display. This new group was only 6% in numbers in
the 1960's and now has reached the 26% water-mark. This is a
leap of in a single generation. You could say this group comprises
the Baby Boomers and New Agers that Harvest of Gems aims at
with great force, but this group seems to encompass much more
than these two groups. To a certain degree it also encompasses
some of the children of the Baby Boomers aswell.
What the Cultural Creatives seem to want is not just enviornmental
regulation, but REAL ecological sustainability. Also real authenticity
is now demanded from them at home, stores, work, and politics.
Cultural Creatives also want the BIG PICTURE thing in news stories
and advertising. The Cultural Creatives are still not fully
aware of themselves as a collective body and a new growing political
force in America.But for better or worse Harvest of Gems was
probably written for this group.
The
other two 25% groups in America are the religious fundamentalists,
both the old and new right. Plus the secular " humanists
" or secular materialists who basically run the country.
They are sometimes called " liberals " but basically
this group controls most of academia, all the multinational
corporations, and the huge military establishment in America.
The religious fundamentalists fear psychic phenomena as the
work of the devil and most secularists don't believe in it at
all. They are products of the modern scientific age. The age
before quantum mechanics. The secularists mostly do not see
any sentiency in matter. Thus big and global industrial development
is seen as the end all and be all of everything of this powerful
group.
The EU in 1997, did a research paper on whether Cultural Creatives
existed in Europe and discovered that they do indeed exist,
but it is not clear whether they existed in the same equivalent
numbers as in America. I invite all of you to write to me or
to the group about this critical cultural issue as it has big
reprucussions for the marketing of Harvest in your countries.
Most of the American media and publishing industry is secular
materialist. It does not cater to the Cultural Creatives. I
suspect that this is the same in both Eurasia and also South
America.
It would be very interesting to see whether this kind of social
division existed in China, Japan, Russia and Eastern Europe.
My own experience in Israel and Mexico tells me this story.
In the 1970's Israel had a religious fundementalist minority
which has grown in numbers now. But the bulk of the Israeli
population was secular materialist both then and now. This division
also remains today and the antagonism between these two groups
is growing. Perhaps, now there is a tiny cultural creative minority
in Israel, but Dov might be in a better position to verify this
than me.
Mexico is still mostly a third world country and a big bulk
of the peasant population believes in spirits, but it is not
the same kind of new born belief as in Europe and America. It's
very old. The Americanized Mexican middle class is small in
its culturally creative component and has is mostly secular
materialist or religious. But not like the rigid fundementalist
and materialist types found in America. Perhaps the Mexican
social spread exists like this in China aswell but with an even
smaller religious component. This is just a speculation on my
part.
To be frank with you the Harvest of Gems saga with its mild
form of renunciation probably would freak out most Cultural
Creatives in America. Not to mention all the religious fundis
and materialists aswell. Yet without some kind of real renunciation
no true spiritual insights are really possible. The Yopi is
an American phenomena to be sure and it will probably both speak
aswell as shock some American cultural creatives, but it is
not really a radical form of renunciation like a Hassidic master
in Russia in the 18th century or a saintly Indian sadhu of yesterday
or today in the Himalayas. No. But I must tell you all now,
that even the mild form of renunciation I took in the 1990's
had great psychological benefits and was a source of great miraculous
wonder for me even as it was seen as a threat by most of my
fellow Americans culturally creative and otherwise.
I
invite you all to CHIME in.....
Michael
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