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NOETIC SCIENCES REVIEW # 37, PAGE 04SPRING 1996

The Rise ofIntegralCulture

By Paul H. Ray

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

So begins Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, set in 1789 in Revolutionary Paris at theupsurge of modern politics. We could say the same as we begin our own story of whatever is wellingup to replace modernity at the end of the twentieth century. Looking at the decline in incomes for NorthAmericans, or at the perilous state of the environment around the planet, many of us quite reasonablyfeel that this time in our history is one of unparalleled danger. It is not hard to see how a series ofdisasters superimposed on each other could lead to a decline in civilization. It is just as easy to finddoom-sayers among today's pundits as it was in 1789. Does that mean we're still looking throughdistorting eyeglasses supplied by our own ancien regime-eyeglasses that reflect anachronisticinterests 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 dailypapers. The alternative is this: The opportunities before us are just as real as the dangers. Our futureis not an inevitable slide into poverty and despair. But this does not mean celebrating our inevitableprogress into a golden future of endless consumption as described by ad agency flacks. Life is harderand 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 ata watershed where the given world diverges sharply from everything you have known, and have been,into the unknown. Changes from one kind of civilization to another do not happen often in history: theinvention of agriculture, the rise and fall of conquest states and empires, the coming of industrialismand urbanism. An earlier generation may have been perfectly justified in discounting any further suchradical changes. We cannot.

In the next two decades our world will either be dramatically better or dramatically worse. The onething that cannot happen is just "more of the same". Most trends of the past are simply notsustainable. The era of obvious steps to progress is gone, and we face the Great Divide. It really couldgo 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. Thequality of our "image of the future", and the quality of our creative efforts based on it, will determinewhich way our future develops over the next generation or two. All that is certain is that the stakeshave been raised.

Three WorldviewsOn a centuries-long time scale, we have seen the rise of modern cultural forms; and also, as manyhave recently argued, the decline of the Modernist paradigm. The central thesis of my research is thatwe are seeing the emergence of a new cultural form, Integral Culture-a new, constructive synthesis ofModernism and its antithesis, Traditionalism-a synthesis which moves beyond both while not rejectingeither. A defining characteristic of Integral Culture is that in synthesizing these other two value systemsit simultaneously legitimizes the Western world's deepest, common past and aims toward atransformative future. As a result, in its transcendence of the dichotomy of Traditionalism andModernism, 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 idealisticand spiritual, have more concern for relationships and psychological development, are moreenvironmentally concerned, and are more open to creating a positive future. According to myresearch, this group comprises about 24 percent of the adults in the US, or about 44 million people. Ifindeed an Integral Culture is emerging, we are experiencing a very unusual time in history-for changein 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 canmeasure at this point in time: Traditional, Modern, and Transmodern. (See Chart Below) Each givesrise to present-day observations of three different subcultures of values. I have called the bearers ofthese subcultures of values Heartlanders, Modernists, and Cultural Creative.

My research findings show that values and worldviews differ systematically by subcultures. In thisarticle, 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 aboutculture, the data are measures of a trajectory that reaches back centuries. For example, the results ofthe "American Lives" survey reveal that today three different worldviews are "out there", whereas justa generation ago social researchers could find only two: Traditional and Modern. Because of theperceptual lag that is common in our public discourse, we still talk publicly as if there were only thesetwo.

This new perspective on worldviews, values and subcultures is not just an analytical distinction: Whereour 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 afairly recent historical period in the US.

However, each of these three worldviews reflects a stream of meanings and cultural concerns thatpredates the dates shown.

The roots of today's Traditional stream can be traced to Medieval Europe, through traditionalCatholics 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 fromwhich nineteenth century fundamentalism arose in reaction to Modernism in its North Americanform. Today's Heartlanders believe in a nostalgic image of return to small town, religiousAmerica, corresponding to the period 1890 to 1930. It is a mythical image, vociferously held forall 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 theRenaissance, 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 religiouscontrols, it has important roots in the urban merchant classes and in other creators of themodern 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 AmericanModernism of post-1920s is already late-Modernism, with nineteenth century roots inEuropean intellectualism and in US urbanism and industrialism. Conservatives tend to idealizethe 1920s or 1950s version, while liberals-to-moderates tend to a set of idealized 1950s and1960s images, and are more open to new ideas.

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

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

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

What the Survey ShowsToday, bearers of the culture of Traditionalism, the Heartlanders, are 29 percent of the population, or56 million adults. Bearers of Modernism are 47 percent of the population, or 88 million adults. AndCultural 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 USculture, operating on the leading edge of cultural change. They tend to be middle to upper-middleclass. A few more CCs are on the West Coast than elsewhere, but they are in all regions of thecountry. 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 percent,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); enjoymastering new ideas; are socially concerned; advocate "women's issues"; and are strong advocates ofecological sustainability. They tend to be "leading edge" thinkers and creators. They tend to be upper-middle class, and their male-female ratio is 33:67, twice as many women as men. Green CCs (13percent, or 24 million) have values centered on the environment and social concerns from a secularview, with average interest in spirituality, psychology, or person-centered values. They appear to taketheir 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 beforeWorld War II and were scarcely noticeable even a generation ago. That new subculture includespeople who perceive all too clearly the systemic problems of today, all the way from the local level tothe 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 themembers of either Traditional or Modern cultures. Faced with those other two cultural forms, the CCs'response is also a withdrawal of belief in the old forms. But unlike the alienated Moderns, the CCs arewell on their way to creating something new.

It is not merely that we see a new population appearing. In addition to its transcendence of oldantithetical values and beliefs, we also see that this new subculture is busily constructing a newapproach to the world. It is synthesizing a new set of concepts for viewing the world: an ecological andspiritual worldview; a whole new literature of social concerns; a new problematique for the planet inplace of the old set of problems that Modernism set out to solve; a new set of psychologicaldevelopment techniques; a return in spiritual practices and understandings to the perennialpsychology 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" surveyshow that the appearance of the Cultural Creatives since the 1970s heralds a transition toTransmodernism and what may well be the birth of the new and distinctive social force that I amcalling Integral Culture. But, to emphasize a point made earlier, the realization of Integral Culture is byno means foreordained. Like all cultures, an emerging new culture (whether Integral Culture or someother 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 theproblems it confronted, but it is no longer an appropriate response to the nature and complexity of theproblematique facing today's society. Much of the old problematique persists, and, in fact, many of the"solutions" of Modernism have contributed to the new problematique. Something different is needednow, 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 anddeveloping rapidly; advances in the "new sciences" of quantum physics, holistic biology, andcomplexity theory (with their discoveries of nonlocality, ecological interdependence, andself-organizing systems) are already dismantling the old Modernist paradigm; in addition, a host ofnew developments in humanistic-transpersonal psychology, eco-sciences, and feminism, as well as aburgeoning psychospiritual consciousness revolution, are all broad social movements contributing to aTransmodern culture and a new kind of world. The transformation is happening right in front of oureyes, right now in the last decade of the twentieth century. In short, all the ingredients required tomake a truly Integral Culture are already with us.

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The End of ModernismIncreasingly, the solutions offered by

Modernism seem to trailever-graver problems in their wake.

One way of conceptualizing the "Great Divide" is that we are coming tothe end of the Modern era. Modernism is less likely to collapse than tochange to forms previous generations wouldn't recognize. Thesechanges will almost certainly include:

1) The end or drastic change of many familiar ways of living: both thecivility and the dangers of big city urban life; the assembly-line-drivenheavy-industry workplaces; the large-scale bureaucratic workplaces(both business and government); and the powerful, patriotic nation-states, 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 secularhumanism as our minds have peered through them.

3) The end or drastic bringing to responsibility of whole systems ofpolitical 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 modernistmentality.-PHR

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The Legacy of ModernismAs Integral Culture comes upon the world scene, it will succeed precisely to the extent that it solvesthe problems of a whole planet that is starting to be "one world" for the very first time. Many of theproblems it solves will be inherited from Modernism, either as still-unsolved, or as produced by earlierattempts to solve problems as seen by people of an earlier era. Modernism can be seen as animpressive set of cultural inventions that have been focused on solving what were the generic set ofhuman problems for most of human history, but which have been particularly important since theRenaissance, 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 thosesolutions, and it has often celebrated that fact. But many of these victories were at the expense of thetraditional ways of life and of the peoples who still believed in them and clung to them. The ThirdWorld is in despair not only because their own cultures have not solved those ancient problems, butbecause they are also at risk from our solutions. Increasingly, the solutions offered by Modernismseem

to trail ever-graver problems in their wake for the modern West as well. Hence, part of the present-daydelegitimation of Modernism is that it no longer delivers what it promised, or that it also delivers a hostof 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, andmilitaries have used ever more powerful technologies to magnify their search for wealth andpower, and for more ignoble purposes. This might have been ecologically tolerable so long asgreedy and power-obsessed organizations were not too effective. But whoever reads thisarticle knows the planet is in dire peril on a hundred fronts, and there is no point in belaboring ithere. The point is that many people are now making the connection between the modern wayof life and this peril.

In the name of making viable civil societies, and reducing the kinds of ethnic feuds andreligious 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 religiousbelief and more than one kind of lifestyle and worldview. This rejects ideas central toTraditionalism outright, as bigoted and/or superstitious. By introducing shades of gray intowhat was previously perceived as black or white beliefs about culture and religion, Modernismalso makes them all relative: None can successfully claim to be the only way any more. This is

a key to the appearance of fundamentalism and cultural conservatism, a reactionary rejectionof modern relativism and complexity.

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

Modernism has created a number of institutional and organizational forms that have noeffective 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 marketsystems, hugely dispersed urban fields, the perpetual reinvention of technologies, and themassive and diverse installation of electronic "smart chips" in everything to make aninformation society that may be networked to a point of universal and impersonal connectivitynever seen before. Since humanity has evolved from pre-civilized times with those oldpersonalized and particularistic forms of the farm, neighborhood and family, manycommentators believe we are in deep trouble from all this. Their argument is that we are "hard-wired" for other ways of life.

The moral consensus of Modernist society has been unraveling for some time. For most NorthAmericans of my parents' generation there had been a standard bourgeois moral consensuson 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 alsoagree, in principle, on the solution, though they have not the slightest idea how to implement it.Both the bad consequences and their inability to "see" what is new demonstrate theexhaustion of Modernism as a cultural system.

The standard individualistic model of climbing a career ladder, plus consumer status displayand strong differentiation by social class and lifestyle, defines winners and losers in modernlife.

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

At the same time, massive layoffs in the name of "downsizing", "right-sizing", and othereuphemisms are scaring US workers into silence about working conditions in the hope ofholding a job. Steady jobs and ladders of career success as we have known them may bedisappearing. Furthermore, many futurists say the ability of multinationals to hire labor, or tobuy parts of products, anywhere in the world may create a single worldwide unskilled workingclass, made miserable under these conditions. Hence, there are other Moderns who arealienated from the culture of winning, because it is now obvious they will always lose at thatgame. This is true both of the working class exposed to worldwide competition, and to middleclass "sliders". Many are caught between the Modern and Traditional worlds, more comfortablewith customary lifeways, but not believing in tradition. Most cannot yet "see" the values of theCultural Creatives. Yet they have nowhere else to go, and seem to reject most positive values.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 thefear 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

European history, The Image of the Future,1 if a whole culture holds a very pessimistic image of thefuture, that image will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The actual predictions about decline don't have tobe right or to come true: The pathological behaviors released may be quite sufficient to bring aboutdecline. It's a disease of belief. And the contrary is also true. When a culture holds positive images ofthe future, they may not be right, but investment in new opportunities, and willingness to build a goodsociety, are sufficient to make a decent way of life, if not the best of all worlds.

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Values of Cultural CreativesThe distinctive values, commitments and beliefs of the CulturalCreatives-the most conspicuous representatives of the emerging IntegralCulture-may be summarized as follows:

Ecological sustainability, beyondenvironmentalism: If you can name an aspect ofecology and sustainability, they are emphatically for it,and are leading the way. Cultural Creativesdemonstrate awareness of a large range of issues,including wanting to rebuild neighborhoods andcommunities, ecological sustainability and limits togrowth, seeing nature as sacred, wanting to stopcorporate polluters, being anti-big-business, wantingvoluntary simplicity, being willing to pay to clean up theenvironment and to stop global warming.

Globalism: Two of the top values for CulturalCreatives are xenophilism (love of travel to foreignplaces, of foreigners and the exotic) and ecologicalsustainability, which strongly includes concern for theplanetary ecology and stewardship, and populationproblems.

Feminism, women's issues, relationships,family: The fact that Cultural Creatives are 60 percentwomen is a major key to understanding thissubculture. Much of the focus on women's issues inpolitics comes from them-including concerns aboutviolence and abuse of women and children, desire torebuild neighborhoods and community, desire toimprove caring relationships, and concerns aboutfamily (though they are no more family-oriented thanmost North Americans, it is near the top in their list of

values).

Altruism, self-actualization, alternative healthcare, spirituality and spiritual psychology: This is acomplex of highly interrelated beliefs and valuescentered on the inner life. In reality, this is a new senseof the sacred that incorporates personal growthpsychology and the spiritual and service to others asall one orientation. It also includes a stronger trendtoward holistic health and alternative health care aspart of this complex.

Well-developed social conscience and socialoptimism: Contrary to some social critics, anemphasis on the personal does not exclude thepolitical or social conscience, though individuals mayfocus on them in sequence. Cultural Creatives areengaged in the world just as much as in personal andspiritual issues. Rebuilding and healing society isrelated to healing ourselves, physically and spiritually.With that goes a guarded social optimism.

-PHR

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Transition to TransmodernismModernism has failed, and prescient thinkers have seen it coming for some time-for example, social

historians such as Pitirim Sorokin in The Crisis of Our Age,2 Fred Polak in The Image of the Future,1

Harrison Brown in The Challenge of Man's Future,3 and, later, Lester Brown in the WorldwatchInstitute's annual reports. Some theorists approached the issue more positively, as when WillisHarman referred to our crisis of belief as a transition from one worldview to another in Global Mind

Change.4

Consequently, as a growing common effort, and on behalf of the larger culture, leading edge thinkersin the West are generating a large variety of potential successor ideas, imagery and rationales toreplace the "Modernism" we have known for the last several centuries. The beginning of theTransmodern is a time of messy, contradictory confusions of ideas and images. Rather than bemoanthe messiness, we need to acknowledge that in the face of what is genuinely new this may be a goodthing, because it leads to unfolding and expression of many creative possibilities that might otherwisenever be seen.

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

Pitirim Sorokin in The Crisis of Our Age.2 I use the word "transcending" deliberately, to suggestincorporating 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 spiritualideas in the same period (1930s and 1940s), apparently independently of one another: Sri Aurobindo

in A Practical Guide to Integral Yoga and The Life Divine,5 Sorokin, who wrote about Idealist (later

Integral) culture in his Social and Cultural Dynamics,6 and Jean Gebser, who developed a model of

integral structures of consciousness in The Ever-Present Origin.7 Sorokin, at least, later becameaware of Aurobindo's work, and greatly admired it.

Numerous contemporary writers also return to those same basic themes without necessarily beingconscious of their predecessors. This is not just a matter of independent reinvention, but rather is anexample of the ongoing effects of what Gebser called "the ever-present origin" and of the persistentstream of the perennial philosophy. For it is a spiritualization of Modernity that most enlivens andfertilizes a postmodern synthesis, rather than a sterile postmodernism. In effect, many of these writersdraw 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 CulturalCreatives

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

Readers and radio listeners, not TV watchers:CCs buy more books and magazines, listen to moreradio, including classical music and NPR, and watchless television, than any other groups. They are bothliterate and discriminating, and dislike most of what ison TV.

Arts and culture: CCs are prodigious consumersand producers of culture. They are more likely to beinvolved in the arts, are more likely to write books andarticles, and to go to meetings and workshops aboutbooks they have read.

Stories, whole process, and systems: CCsappreciate good stories, and demand systems viewsof the "whole process" of whatever they are reading,from cereal boxes to product descriptions to magazinearticles. They want to know where a product camefrom, how it was made, who made it, and what willhappen to it when they are done with it. They alsowant symbols that go deep, and actively resentadvertising and children's TV more than mostAmericans.

Careful consumers: CCs are the kind of peoplewho buy and use Consumer Reports on mostconsumer durables goods: appliances, cars, consumerelectronics. 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 practicallythe only consumers who regularly read the labels asthey're supposed to.

A different kind of car, please: CCs are far morelikely to want safety and fuel economy in a mid-pricecar. If they could also get an ecologically sound, highmileage, recyclable car, they'd snap it up. |

Technology moderates: CCs are less likely to beinnovators, and more likely to be early adopters, oftechnological products.

Soft innovation: However, CCs do tend to beinnovators and opinion leaders for some knowledge-intensive products, including magazines, fine foods,wines, and boutique beers.The foodies: A highproportion of CCs are "foodies": people who like to talkabout food (before and after), experiment with newkinds of food, cook food with friends, eat out a lot, dogourmet and ethnic cooking, try natural foods andhealth foods, etc.

Desire for authenticity: CCs invented the term"authenticity" as consumers understand it, leading therebellion against things that are "plastic", fake,imitation, poorly made, throwaway, cliche style, andhigh fashion. If they buy something in a traditionalstyle they want it authentically traditional, with a story.This also includes a desire for authenticity and humancontact in the service sector.

A different kind of new house, please: CCs tendto buy fewer new houses than most people of theirincome level, finding that they are not designed withthem in mind. So they buy resale houses and fix themup the way they want. They abhor the status displayhome that shows a lot to the street, strongly preferringto be hidden from the street by fences, trees andshrubbery. All that militates against buying the kinds of

new homes that builders are prone to put out there forthe upper-middle class. They also like authentic stylingin homes-whatever fits into its proper place on the landis good. They want access to nature, walking andbiking paths, ecological preservation, historicpreservation, and to live in master plannedcommunities that show a way to re-create community.

Personalization of the home: Interior decorationfor CCs is typically eclectic, with a lot of original art onthe walls and crafts pieces around the house. ManyCore CCs seem to think a house is not properlyfurnished without a lot of books. The same house thatvanishes from the street should be personalized sothat status displays happen inside the house, notoutside, though it is not blatant: It is display ofpersonal good taste and a creative sense of style.

Experiential consumers: Core CCs are theprototypical consumers of the experience industry,which tries to sell you a more intense/enlightening/enlivening experience rather than a thing:psychotherapy, weekend workshops, spiritualgatherings, personal growth experiences, vacations-as-self-discovery, vacations-at-health-spas, etc. Theproviders of these services have to be CCs too, orthey can't do it authentically (the kiss of death), and soone sometimes gets the impression that everyone istaking in everyone else's wash-or workshop.

The leading edge of vacation travel: CCs definethe leading edge of vacation travel that is exotic,adventuresome-without-(too much)-danger,educational, experiential, authentic, altruistic and/orspiritual. They don't do package tours, fancy resorts,or cruises, and resent having to take the kids toDisneyland.

Holistic everything: CCs are the prototypicalinnovators in, and consumers of, personal growthpsychotherapy, alternative health care and naturalfoods. What ties these together is a belief in holistichealth: body-mind-spirit are to be unified. They areforever sorting out the weird from the innovative. Theymay include a high proportion of people whom somephysicians describe as "the worried well": those who

monitor every twitch and pain and bowel movement, ina minutely detailed attention to the body, which may bewhy they spend more on alternative health care andregular health care even though most are fairlyhealthy. They may live longer, because they do at leastsome kinds of preventive medicine-in contrast to theModernist executive pattern of treating the body like amachine that you feed, exercise, and vitaminize, andotherwise ignore until it breaks down.

-PHR

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

Essentially, being "Transmodern" means being for something. The possibility of a new culture centerson 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; connectionwith nature and learning to integrate ecology and economy; and a synthesis of diverse views andtraditions, 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 ofus, we're traveling in the midst of an enormous company of allies: a larger population of creativepeople, who are the carriers of more positive ideas, values, and trends than any previous renaissanceperiod 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 causeanything, belief in it has real consequences. One of the most important is that it may liberate people totry something really new at the societal level. Linking transformation to the year 2000-or 2001-maydepend on potent symbolism which, in psychological terms, would be nothing but magical thinking ifwe took it literally. But symbolism counts: It gives people a new viewpoint, and the vision it launchesimpels them to do something different.

The lurch to the new is what anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace called cultural revitalization

movements.8 That is what a whole culture does when it is willing to face the fact that the old waysdon't work, and then asks, "What comes next?" As Passionist priest Thomas Berry says, "It's all aquestion of story. We are in trouble just now because we do not have a good story. We are in betweenstories. The old story, the account of how the world came to be and how we fit into it, is no longer

effective. Yet we have not learned the new story."9 Not only is necessity the mother of invention, butwe will probably make a virtue of the solutions we must invent to cope with it. Yes, something verydifferent 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 ideasand technologies in new ways. It is a hopeful and creative period in the life of a culture, usuallyfollowing a period of defeat and despair which had resulted not just from misfortune, but preciselybecause the old stories no longer worked.

Based on the results of the survey, the 44 million Cultural Creatives now have an opportunity to formthemselves into a cultural revitalization movement, one that seeks to create an Integral Culture. Asalready noted, cultural revitalization movements often emphasize that "the old story doesn't work", andsay they will invent a new story. Such movements create new images of "who we are", play with newsymbolism and archetypal imagery, try to invent new ways of life to replace others that don't work, andare 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 neitherdeclinism nor utopianism, but points to important new developments, right here and right now. It canbe a positive development in Western life. My survey shows there is a population of 44 million UScitizens who believe in many of the values of an Integral Culture. This is not a fringe phenomenon, butpart of the mainstream of US life. It is the rise of the Cultural Creatives, the people who are doing wellin 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 thelatest in a long line of such surveys. The full report, "The Integral

Cultural Survey: A Study of Values Subcultures and Use of AlternativeHealth Care in America", was delivered to the Fetzer Institute and theInstitute of Noetic Sciences, October 1995. A survey was mailed to a

representative national sample of the US population by National FamilyOpinion in November and December of 1994, using their panel of

people who had agreed to be available. The data were returned foranalysis in February 1995. The survey includes an oversampling ofCultural 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 rate.In addition, another 600 questionnaires were sent to a national sampleof Cultural Creatives who had been pre-screened from a larger sampleusing a short values-screener questionnaire. This gave a return of 364

more questionnaires.

Paul H. Ray, executive vice-president of American LIVES, Inc., specializes inresearch and analysis of values and lifestyles as a cultural phenomenon. Ray, whoholds a PhD in sociology, has been studying the Integral Culture movement forthe last eight years, with dozens of surveys and hundreds of focus groups.

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ReferencesFred Polak, The Image of The Future (Oceana Publications, 1961).1.

Pitirim Sorokin, The Crisis of Our Age (E. P. Dutton, 1941).2.

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

Willis Harman, Global Mind Change (Warner Books, 1988).4.

Sri Aurobindo, A Practical Guide to Integral Yoga (Sri AurobindoAshram, 1955); The Life Divine (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1970).

5.

P. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics (Bedminster Press,1937-41).

6.

Jean Gebser, The Ever-Present Origin (Ohio University Press,1993).

7.

Anthony F. C. Wallace, "Cultural Revitalization Movements", inAmerican Anthropologist (1961).

8.

Thomas Berry, Dream of the Earth (HarperCollins, 1993)9.

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