Rating: 
Summary: Moving Beyond Mind-Shift to Statutory Implementation
Review: Wow! What a read! Kudos and thanks to Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson, co-authors of The Cultural Creatives. Beginning my cultural creative journey at age 30 (in 1960) I had no idea at age 70 I would learn there are 50 million of us. Not wishing to repeat what has already been noted in the previously posted 5 on-target customer reviews--particularly those of Dr Natasha.Todorovic, Terry H Matthews and John--I offer two things: a) a summary review note; and b) announcement of a critically significant culturally creative presence 'out there' which has eluded the co-authors' gaze. a) In broad brush stroke, The Cultural Creatives is cultural history primarily of the American people and secondarily of the Atlantic community of the past 50 years, It is cultural history laid out in a captivating way. Being extensively empirically grounded, the study offers valuable self-understanding for cultural creatives who, we are told, are on the cutting edge of a major cultural shift. Additionally, the study is cast with a mobilizing bent. It's a call to collective as well as individual culturally creative action. As such Cultural Creatives is so much more than a futurist treatment as was Alvin Toffler's Future Shock of the '70s or John Naisbitt's Megatrends of the '80s. This is about doing much more than simply coping with major and swiftly occurring cultural change. That this is a call to organized pioneering leadership action is corroborated by the co-authors' website.This being the case, I call attention to a culturally creative plan of pioneering leadership action which crossed my path some seven years ago and is NOT noted in this study. b) In 1989 former two term maverick U. S. Senator Mike Gravel (Alaska 1969-81) formulated the dream, idea and plan of action for directly enacting the structural prerequisite for statutory implementation of a culturally creative way of life. It is called the Philadelphia II (P2) project . Today still standing just below the level of sustained national media visibility, Philadelphia II is there ready and inviting to those cultural creatives who desire to go into organized action NOW in a constitutionally grounded, peacefully revolutionary orderly way. Both the project's necessity and timeliness to cultural creatives flows from the fact that institutionalization of any change in the civic arena requires enabling political legislation. Since our founding we, the people, at the national level have had to rely entirely upon elected elites for this. We have been deprived of the statutory procedure to establish policy and make laws directly. All we are able to do is beg, plead, protest to our elected 'leaders' and/or civilly disobey for enabling legislation. In this age of advanced telecommunications and abundant possibility for realizing a deliberatively informed public this state of affairs, i.e., representative democracy without direct democracy, is out of date. Why should cultural creatives ( one quarter of the people) rely upon non-cultural creatives ( i.e., elected representatives in government who are bought and paid for by special interests) to enact into policy and law a culturally creative agenda? Enactment of the National Initiative for Direct Democracy, being sponsored by Philadelphia Two- when-enacted directly by the People through its electorate --will provide the workable tool for cultural creatives to institutionalize their values through majoritarian decision under the rule of law. Two concluding notes: a) Mike Gravel and Philadelphia Two merit mention if only in an appendix in any subsequent edition of The Cultural Creatives; b) in the interest of full disclosure I admit I have not only been a supporter of Philadelphia Two since I learned of it seven years ago but I now serve as Secretary of its Board.
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