Traditionalists emphasize a stable life organized around the idealized standards of small town America that prevailed in the early 20th century. Traditionalists are critical of modern standards and all large institutions in society, including corporations and government. Religious authority, family life and political independence constitute their core values. The Moral Majority and most home school families and groups are representative of traditionalists. Individuals holding traditional values constitute some 22 percent of the population in the year 2001.
Modernists presently dominate our institutions in business, government, science, entertainment and the arts in the US. They number slightly more than half our population. Modernists value occupational achievement, economic growth, and making money. They subscribe to secular authority and rational/legal standards. In essence, modernism is a philosophy of worldly achievement:If you follow the yellow brick road to success, you will end up with the good life—the diploma, the job, the house and cars, the promotion or the stock options or both, the children, their education and their accomplishments. But this road is really not so much a life path as a career path. The guideposts to success are really signs to the marketplace.
Post Modernists reject the Modernist emphasis on materialism and challenge the assumption that knowledge is certain, objective and good. Post Modernists are less concerned about financial success and more concerned with authenticity in life, at work, and even in business and politics. They value personal growth, spirituality and a more natural environment as shown in the Table below. Post Modernists form the core supporters and users of CAM therapies, although people in the other two categories also use CAM but in lower percentages. While often as well educated as Modernists, they support environmental reforms to improve global ecology and the well being of people on the planet. They support issues concerning equality of the sexes, cultural diversity, and tolerance. The number of Post Modernists in the population rose dramatically by 2001 to more than 50 million people in the US or 26 percent of our adult population.
Different Values in America
Post Modern values arose out of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s among the younger and more educated people who moved into the information-based occupations within the new economy. These people work with words and abstract concepts and value creative work. The people of these movements, especially the environmental and counter culture movements, were rebelling against the emphasis on materialism and artificial environments created by Modernists. Post Modernist values are the most supportive and champion health promotion in a more holistic orientation to life, greater self responsibility and more “natural therapies.”
These are the values that spawned the holistic health movement of the 1970s and 1980s according to June Lowenberg. Shared themes across three or more of movements of the 1960s and 1970s included: holism, distrust of established authority, naturalism and the quest for personal empowerment. These values propelled many individuals to join a variety of self-care movements that grew in the 1970s and 1980s including organic and whole foods, personal fitness, and the use of yoga, tai chi, meditation and massage. Holistic health spawned both “home grown” therapies and imported therapies from India, China and Tibet.
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