Sociologist Paul Ray in a recent audio interview with Jim Garrison, President of the State of the World Forum, talked about what he has called the cultural creatives and the potential that the emergence of this group of people means. The cultural creatives are people who have an interesting set of values and perspectives quite different from the modernists and traditionalists. In the 1950's there were only two cultural types the modernists and the traditionalists. Today there are three distinct cultural groupings each making up one third of the adult population in the USA, Europe and Japan.

The numbers are probably much the same in many other countries such as Australia and New Zealand.

Paul Ray argues that there is an avalanche of changes, both negative and positive underway. The negative avalanches include ecological and economic collapse, social division within societies and globally and widespread psychological alienation. These avalanches are well known and widely reported upon.

What is less well known is the avalanche of positive change that is underway as millions of people worldwide recognize that the current economy and the culture that supports it is no longer feasible and want to replace it with something else - what this something is nobody knows.

Ray argues that a new civilization is forming worldwide right now through 1 to 2 million different social movements that already exist throughout the world. The numbers of people involved in these social movements is not known but Paul Ray speculates that it could be in the hundreds of millions. These movements, given the numbers involved have and will continue to spark a massive wave of change. It will be quite different from any form of change of the past. It will be a bottom up change made possible by the communication technologies of the Internet that makes it possible for ordinary people to coordinate and integrate their activities in ways unheard of in the pre-Internet days.

Organizing for political action and the formation of public opinion was once the preserve of the rich and powerful. Ordinary people now have the means to match this power and present a new and different story, one that can aid the wave of change.

The mainstream media either don't know about these social movements or refuse to acknowledge them. The mainstream media has no way of acknowledging these movements in their current mindset. As well as this the way these movements are organized doesn't fit the mainstreams perception of how things are changing.

This massive wave of change is happening now; it is not something that is going to happen in so many years in the future. These changes will hopefully see a new economy emerge based around the repair of the Earth's ecology. The systems used to organize this economy will be built from scratch out of the remnants of the collapsed banking and finance systems. It will mean diverting the expertise now employed in ecologically damaging industries to green industries. This transition will not be smooth and straightforward as entrenched positions fight to retain their privileges.

It will involve a new set of cultural values far broader, deeper and more inclusive than the current failed modernist and traditionalist values.

There is also major ecological, social and economic disintegration that is all too plain for us all to see. Historians will, however, look back in fifty years or so and recognize that the current economic meltdown was in fact necessary to clear the way for a new economy, a new culture and a new type of human being to emerge.

One of the major battlefields of the future will be fought over the consciousness of people, their values and their culture.

The dominant modernist consciousness has created the modern world and it has been responsible for many fine achievements. However, it has also given rise to the four major negative avalanches, ecological and economic meltdown, social division and psychological alienation. Modernist consciousness cannot reverse the threat these avalanches present.

This new form of consciousness will need to have the potential to solve a series of big questions. It will be needed to create a new economy that obeys the ecological boundaries of the Earth, protects the positive features of our civilization, addresses the social divisions that exist and heals widespread psychological alienation.

The avalanche of change that the emergence of the cultural creatives signals means that the emergence of a broader' deeper and more encompassing consciousness is in fact forming. The emergence of the cultural creatives indicates that the battle lines are being drawn. It will be a battleground of immense proportions but it won't be a shooting battleground, or at least that is my earnest hope. It will be a battle for the hearts and minds of people. It will also be a struggle fought alongside the creation and building of a new green economy.

It will take a great deal of fortitude and courage on the part of the ordinary people who make up the wave of positive change. This is why I believe that it will need to be sustained by a spiritual life that will nourish the spirit and courage of those who engage in the struggle.

In a future article I'll deal with the three choices that we have, the consequences of the choice made and what will be involved in joining the wave of change. The three choices we have are, join the wave of change; resist the change; do nothing.