Curvism: The Curved Worldview
Curvism: The Curved Worldview
Early 2017
We live in the masculine square world. We've been living in the square world since the beginning of time. Western culture is built on the foundation of the Judeo, Christian, Islamic creation story. In the beginning a male God figure creates the universe and the Earth, then creates the first man, Adam, in the likeness of God himself. God puts Adam in charge of the Earth. God then creates the first woman, Eve, to be Adam’s helper. God puts Adam in charge of Eve. The story is similar in each of the three religions with some minor differences.
The three religions started with the same 10 Commandments. The 10th commandment reads as follows: “ You shall not covet your neighbor‘s house. You shall not covet your neighbor‘s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.“ Men are the property owners.
This western religious narrative pushed its way through history – from the Middle East, through the Roman empire, through Europe, and through the dark Middle Ages.
Most other historical religions have also been dominated by male gods and deities. The Egyptians, the Arabs, Greeks, Romans, Vikings, Hindus, Mayans and Aztecs all had patriarchal societies. East Asia, Africa and North American cultures have likewise been politically controlled by men since before recorded history. It is difficult to identify many cultures where women had prominence in religious, political or cultural decision making. Women have been relegated to play supportive roles. Worldwide men have ruled the world forever.
Who put men in charge of the world, in charge of women? A male God and male deities? Who created a male God and male deities?
The western world began to change around the 14th century with the dawn of the renaissance period. Reason, logic and science began exerting more influence and independence from religion - leading to the Age of Reason, The Enlightenment, the scientific and industrial revolutions.
Reason, logic, scientific thinking and methods, and man-made technological inventions challenged the older religious beliefs and world order. They offered a new way into the future – where God and the Gods weren’t needed to explain nature or keep social order. Men took greater control over the world order.
Along with the rise of reason, science, technology, and industrialism came the capitalistic economic system of organizing power and control over society and the world.
Capitalism advocates for all individuals to act in their own economic self interest and to compete against all others to get the goods and services they want and can afford to buy. The driving force of capitalism is the profit motive and the accumulation of wealth and the power money can buy. Science and technology fueled capitalism and capitalism fueled science and technology.
This change in thinking pushed its way into the 20th century with the modernist movement. Early 20th century modernism was impressed with the manmade progress of the past and believed that the power of science and technology could create a futuristic utopian world.
Then came world war one and World War II and the cold war.
Looking back now in time we can see the history of the world as a story of constant wars, one after another, of men fighting men for control over power, land, resources, people and money. Aggression and competition have fueled men and wars. The men in power have always ruled by domination, force, repression, oppression and militarization.
By the late 20th century, we began to see some problems with the manmade world order. We entered the postmodern period of questioning.
Features of postmodernism includes cynicism, skepticism, deconstructive criticism, irony, loss of the grand narrative of progress, fractured identities, relativism, super capitalism, the questioning of what is truth, empty commercialism, and acknowledgment of the limits of modern science, technology and capitalism to provide satisfying meaning to life.
At the beginning of the 21st-century there is a growing sense that some things are missing regarding how the world is being ordered.
The art and philosophy of Curvism creates a conceptual framework and model to identify and explain the problems of world history and what seems to be missing. Curvism points the direction for moving forward into a more hopeful future.
Curvism art and philosophy believes religion, culture and history has been and continues to be dominated by what can be called the square worldview. Features of this square worldview are as follows:
a God who is identified as being male
men dominating nature
men dominating women
women subservient to men
patriarchal structured society
social order by rules, commandments, regulations and economic laws
justice by fear and punishment
kings and kingdoms
power and aggression
militarization and wars
reason logic numbers abstractions
science and technology
individualism
separateness
materialism and things
money
consumerism
super capitalism.
Pictorially the square worldview can be symbolized by the straight line, squares, rectangles and cubes.
The square worldview started with the biblical creation story and evolved through the science and technology stage, to the present late stage of super capitalism.
The world is now dominated by the distorted aggressive rules of capitalistic money and power. A small number of capitalistic super wealthy oligarchs control capitalism. At this point in time the eight richest men in the world own and control as much of the world’s wealth as the bottom half of the global population, 3.6 billion people. Of the 250 richest persons in the world, 90% are men.
As I write this in early 2017, Donald Trump is president of the United States. He exemplifies much of the square world attributes and beliefs. He is a capitalistic billionaire; an aggressive, self centered, domineering, macho, misogynistic, and racist prejudistic ruler.
America has never had a female president. In fact, women were not allowed to even vote in America until the 19th amendment became part of the constitution in 1920. This followed years of peaceful protest by the women’s suffrage movement, forcing men to deal with the issue of a woman’s right to vote.
After 97 years of women voting, women only comprised 20% of legislators in the Congress and Senate. Men continue to rule the world.
The square worldview dominates and sees its attributes as superior. By being superior it identifies other life qualities as being inferior, justifying its domination, repression, suppression, marginalization and extermination.
In the first phase of domination, the biblical, creation story, religious phase:
One almighty powerful male God is superior to all other multiple gods
men are superior to women
men are given domination and power over women and nature by God
other religious believers are pagans and heathens to be converted or killed
laws and social order developed hierarchically based mainly on property and wealth protection
aggression, killing and war are used to expand property.
In the second phase of domination, the scientific, technological phase, superiority attributes shifted and expanded. Reason and logic was superior over emotions, the senses and experiential wisdom. Thinking superior to feeling. Numbers and abstractions superior to the visible and the sensual. Science and technology superior to myths and religion, the arts and humanities. Knowledge, inventions and power of the manmade expanded domination and superiority over nature.
During the third phase of the square world expansion: late stage super capitalism aggressively demonizes communism and socialism. Money is superior to labor. Individual wealth superior to communal sharing. Money, wealth and the corporate inferiorizes compassion, and empathy. Competition beats cooperation, relationships and community. The commercial, material world superior to the spiritual.
The following is a listing of attributes or qualities the square worldview deems inferior:
Nature
Women
The senses
Emotions
The Experiential
Care
Compassion
Cooperation
Intuition
Creativity
Community
Relationships
The arts and humanities
The spiritual.
Curvism identifies these qualities with the curved worldview. Curvism believes these repressed qualities hold the key to the future of the world. This worldview is symbolized by the curve, the circle and the ellipse.
Curvism wishes to recognize and unify these curved world qualities to create a renewed spirituality to deal with the troubles of our time: manmade climate change, worldwide capitalistic injustice and inequalities, religious wars, consumeristic emptiness, repression of minorities, fractionalized identity politics, militarized arms race, and ecological destruction.
Our problems have been created by square world thinking and more square world thinking cannot solve our problems. Curvism advocates for a change in values; a change in guiding principles, philosophies and theology.
Curvism recognizes it’s symbolized view of the square world and the curved world are a simplified and generalized view. Of course the world is more complicated. Of course not all men are all square and all women are all curved. Of course there have been times and cultures that have appreciated curved world values but in the overall view of world history one would have to admit that those situations have been few and far between.
The western world has never been ruled by curved world qualities. The square world principles have always ruled by domination, by force, by repression.
Power fights power with force to gain control of power and to keep control of power. Throughout history there has been a constant occurrence of the repressed and oppressed fighting back with force to overthrow the dominating oppressors, the tyrannical controllers. If the oppressed fight back with force they are labeled enemies and terrorists and the oppressor feels forced to exert more force and repression.
Square world thinking and predominance creates tyrants and terrorists fighting in a never ending battle for power. If one tyrant or one terrorist exists, the world will always feel forced to use force to defeat the tyrant or the terrorist.
Curved world principles are against ruling by domination, force, oppression, repression, power, control, or militarization. It is not in their nature to be aggressive. For the curved world qualities to ever have a major influence in guiding western culture 1) it would have to be the result of the square world utterly failing, which would result most likely in a world of chaos and millions of small aggression wars. Or, 2) The square world power would have to see the wisdom of relinquishing its power and control to the values of the compassionate curved worldview.
There have been a few instances in history where the oppressed have used curved world values and methods to get the square world to see the injustice and tyranny of the square world order.
Peaceful protests, civil disobedience and non-violent passive resistance have changed history. Examples include American women getting the right to vote through the suffrage movement, Mahatma Gandhi leading India to freedom from British colonial power, Martin Luther King leading the civil rights movement.
The day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States, women marched in Washington DC and the cities across America and around the world. Millions of women, children and men peacefully protested arrogance, aggression, and forceful square world domination. The protesters advocated for the curved world values of the oppressed.
The women’s movement has expanded the awareness of men in power exploiting and abusing women. Women are increasingly voicing the injustice of being repressed and abused throughout the history of the masculine square world rule.
As we move into the future will this women’s movement be crushed? Will it be divided into pieces and repressed and conquered? Will it give up and retreat into silence and inaction? Or will it expand and grow, uniting curved world value believers into sustain resistance?
Can women re-create the political, economic and spiritual systems using curved world values? What if men got out of the way and let women run America for the next 250 years?, Or let women run the world for the next 10,000 years?
Men and the square world values have dominated the world forever. Maybe it’s time to give women a chance to change the world. The women’s movement is probably the world's best last chance of changing the world.
Forget for the moment the categories of male and female and think more globally about the square worldview and the curved worldview as described. What would the world be like if the curved world qualities were valued much more than the square world values?
The art and philosophy of Curvism advocates transitioning into the curved worldview, where religion, reason, science, technology, politics and economics are tools serving curved world values while humanity heals and the Earth is renewed.