New Creative Community: The Art of Cultural Development

In Arlene Goldbard's book New Creative Communities: The Art of Cultural Development she identifies 7 unifying principles of cultural development:
1. Active participation in cultural life is an essential goal of cultural development.
2. Diversity is a social asset, part of the cultural commonwealth, requiring protection and nourishment.
3. All cultures are essentially equal and society should not promote any one as superior to the others.
4. Culture is an effective crucible for social transformation, one that can be less polarizing and create deeper connections than other social-change arenas.
5. Cultural expression is a means of emancipation, not the primary end in itself; the process is as important as the product.
6. Culture is a dynamic, protean whole and there is no value in creating artificial boundaries within it.
7. Artists have roles as agents of transformation that are more socially valuable than mainstream art world roles-and certainly equal in legitimacy.

What strikes me is that in order for cultural development through the arts to work there needs to be a change from the linear way of thinking that currently exists. In which a hierarchy exists with a clear order of good to bad, successful to unsuccessful, powerful to weak, to a more circular way of looking at the world. In which all things are connected and all have equal value. A leader cannot exist without a follower, a follower cannot follow without a leader, etc. Is it possible to look at the world this way? To change the ladders we have now into wheels? I think so, but I think it will take someone or something at the top of the ladder to make the change. Which, is unfortunate since those at the top have the most to lose when and if it topples.