The New Political Compass by Paul Ray The New Political Compass by Paul Ray
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Left versus Right doesn't work any more
A century ago, Left vs. Right meant progressives and unionists vs. big business and maybe the Ku Klux Klan. But that was before nuclear weapons could destroy life on the planet, before the civil rights movement and women's movement, before the insurgent radicals of the religious Right came back into politics, and before saving the planet from ecological destruction and globalization became a huge issue. Both the issues and the constituencies of the US have evolved, but our political rhetoric stays frozen in century-old lingo and metaphors, and so have our political parties and our politicians. When we add new data about values and political positions, it becomes obvious that this image of our politics is beyond inadequate, it's hopelessly wrong and misleading. With only 31 percent of the population fitting the image of Left versus Right, it simply doesn't have a future. My data for the New Political Compass come from a 1995 values survey that included just enough political information to do this analysis....The underlying structure of the data shows the opposition of liberal Left versus social conservative, crossed by the opposition of the New Progressives versus the Big Business Conservatives. The only ones left in the "center" are the politically alienated, the ignorant, and the studiedly apolitical. |
Paul Ray's full report: 
New Political Compass, 167 kb;
From 
World Forum - Cultural Creatives - Overview
Through decades of studying the values and lifestyles of Americans, Dr. Paul Ray began to notice a steady rise in the number of Americans who:
Even though Cultural Creatives only began to emerge in world culture fifty years ago, they now number over fifty million adults in the United States, alone, and substantially outnumbering social and financial conservatives. Cultural Creatives are even more numerous in Europe, and are growing in numbers around the world. A study of the Cultural Creatives has just been completed in Italy, France, Hungary, Holland, Germany, and Japan. One is underway in Sri Lanka, the first non-G8 country to do so.
The emergence of the Cultural Creatives is a crucially important development in world historical terms because this is the first time in over 600 years -- since the Renaissance -- that a new value system has arisen in western civilization, and it marks the first time in recorded history when a value shift has emerged at a global level simultaneously.
From 
Wikipedia:
Cultural Creatives is a term coined by sociologist Paul H. Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson to describe a large segment in Western society that has recently developed beyond the standard paradigm of Modernists versus Traditionalists or Conservatists. The concept was presented in their book The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World (2000), where they claim to have found that 50 million adult Americans (slightly over one quarter of the adult population) can now be identified as belonging to this group. They estimated that there were another 80–90 million Cultural Creatives in Europe in 2000.
Dr. Ray and Dr. Anderson divide cultural creatives into two subdivisions:
Green cultural creative - The more secular and extroverted wing of the cultural creatives. They tend to follow the opinions of the Core group and have a more conventional religious outlook. Their world views are less thought out than the Core group and less intensely held.
Dr. Ray and Dr. Anderson created a questionnaire to identify cultural creatives in Western society. The below characteristics were identified as qualities of a cultural creative. Agreement with 10 or more indicates status as a cultural creative.
Dr. Ray and Dr. Anderson assert that "values are the best single predictor of real behavior". The list below outlines the values that dictate a Cultural Creatives behavior:
Core cultural creatives also value altruism, self-actualization and spirituality.
The 2008 marketing text, Karma Queens, Geek Gods and Innerpreneurs, by Ron Rentel, was the first to identify the cultural creative subculture in entrepreneurship. Rentel named entrepreneurial cultural creatives "innerpreneurs". Innerpreneurs have the defining characteristics of an entrepreneur:
But while entrepreneurs use their business for monetary gain, innerpreneurs use their business to find personal fulfillment (creatively, spiritually, emotionally) and create social change.
In 2008, there has been much discussion in the Western media on the ‘creative economy’ and the importance of the ‘creative class’. Richard Florida published a series of books on this identified 'creative class' and their upcoming economic importance. Bill Gates spoke at the World Economic Forum 2008 on the need for ‘creative capitalism’ as a solution to the world’s problems. They theorize that being creative and inventive will be the key to business success in the 21st century. That a country’s economic success will be determined by its ability to mobilize, attract and retain human creative talent.
Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson, 
The Cultural Creatives. New York: Harmony Books, 2000. ISBN 0-609-60467-8.
Cole, Gary, "Artless: The Odyssey of a Republican Cultural Creative". Portland: Ooligan Press, 2006.
Lietaer, Bernard (2001) Sustainable Abundance. In The Future of Money (pp. 260-298). London: Century. Describes the connection between Cultural Creatives and new vision of the global economy.
Paul Ray's Web Site: CulturalCreatives.org
International Organisation for Cultural Creatives
Trademarked Culture Jamming Poetry
Cultural Creativity: A New Brand of Esoteric
Recreating Business and a New World
The Survey of Cultural Creatives in Europe
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Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License; last modified on 5 July 2009.