On Metamodernism and Curvism
On Metamodernism and Curvism by Steve Firkins
Western civilization is experiencing a paradigm shift. It is called Metamodernism. The prefix meta- means after or beyond. Metamodernism describes itself as following and reacting to postmodernism, which was a reaction to modernism. Metamodernism attempts to unify the optimism of modernism with the ironic cynicism of postmodernism. Metamodern theorists describe an oscillation between the two movements that include qualities of both, creating a new sensibility.
Curvism is the word I have been using for over forty years to describe an art concept that takes us into a more hopeful future. Like metamodernism, Curvism is a reaction to both modernism and postmodernism. Curvism, however, goes further back to include an understanding of premodern times, not fully accounted for by metamodernism.
To understand metamodernism, and Curvism’s critique of and additions to metamodernism, we need to return to the beginning of Western culture.
The Premodern World
We live in a manmade world. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the three major religions of Western culture, share a basic creation story and belief in a male supreme God.
Judaism and Christianity’s origin story is told in two versions in the biblical book of Genesis. In the first, God created the heavens and the Earth and everything on it in five days. Then, on the sixth day, God forms a man and a woman and gives them dominion over all the Earth.
In the second version, God created the heavens and the Earth, then out of the dust from the Earth, God forms a man and calls him Adam. God creates the garden of Eden for Adam to live in and tend. He gives Adam dominion over the garden but tells him not to eat from one tree, the Tree of Knowledge, or he would die.
Not wanting Adam to be alone, God filled the garden with creatures. Adam still felt alone, so God created a woman, Eve, from one of Adam's ribs while he was sleeping. She was to be his mate and helper. But evil, in the form of a snake, tempted the woman to take fruit from the Tree of Knowledge and share it with Adam. God gets mad, judges them sinful, and punishes them with suffering and mortality. God places Eve under Adam’s control and expels them from the garden paradise.
Islam developed out of Christianity and Judaism. The Quran tells the creation story slightly differently. Allah, the one supreme male God, created the universe and the Earth. Using different soils from Earth, Allah forms Adam, then Eve from Adam’s rib to be his mate and helper. They live in paradise with Allah, the angels, and the devil-figure Iblis. They are warned not to eat from one tree, the Tree of Life. Iblis tempts them and they both eat from the Tree of Life. Allah forgives them but expels them from paradise and sends them to Earth and mortality.
In all three religions, after Adam and Eve are expelled from the garden, Adam builds his own world based on his knowledge and experience of God. Adam knew God as superior, male, both creator and destroyer, the powerful rule maker, and a judgemental and punishing father figure to be feared. From Adam and Eve the human population multiplied and the story evolved. Humans divided themselves into territorial tribes with numerous creation stories.
The creation stories told of other powerful gods, mostly males, who interacted with humans. History became a compilation of war stories of gods fighting gods and humans calling upon God or gods for help in fighting other humans. Tribal wars and tribal gods. And by winning tribal wars, empires were built and expanded.
Christianity grew out of Judaism and developed its own following, eventually becoming a threat to the Roman Empire. Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity, 312 years after the death of Jesus, for personal and political reasons. Constantine‘s conversion led to Christianity becoming the official religion of the extensive Roman Empire in 380 A.D. Western civilization dramatically changed.
Christianity enforced the idea of one powerful male, God, who sent his one son, Jesus, to earth to save mankind from sin and help anyone get to a heavenly eternal life. That is, if they converted to Christianity. Through the political power of the Roman Empire this religion spread through Europe, conquering and converting people and replacing their gods. Roman Catholic Christianity became the unifying force at the center of Western civilization.
Some three hundred years later the prophet Muhammad appeared in the Middle East and revealed Islam, a modification of Judaism and Christianity, which unified the multiple gods of the Arab tribes under their one supreme male God, Allah. Throughout the world, wars were fought over which interpretation of the one God was most mighty. As time went on, Islam and Judaism themselves subdivided into various theological forms.
Christianity, and thus Western civilization, changed in 1517 when German theologian Martin Luther challenged the corrupt power of the Roman Catholic Church and its interpretations of Chrisitianity. As a consequence, Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church by Pope Leo X. Luther’s actions and his new Christian theology became known as the Protestant Reformation, departing from the Catholic Church. Over the next 400 years, Christianity fractured into multiple subdivisions, denominations, and brands of theological Christianity, all fighting for converts and superiority.
Western civilization expanded from 1500 to 1900 throughout the world, particularly into the Americas. Christianity continued to be the dominating religion. Non-Christians were considered heathens and savages who were inferior and could be conquered, robbed, enslaved, converted, or killed. Political and economic powers found Christianity useful as they expanded their nations and empires. Believing they had the supreme God on their side made it easier to feel superior and justified in being ruthless dominators.
Moving into Modernism
At the same time, the scientific methods of Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, the philosophies of Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant, and the capitalistic economics of Adam Smith were transforming Western culture. New political thinking inspired the American and French Revolutions. This historical period is known as the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. The ideas of this period challenged the ideas and superiority of the Christian religion and power structure. A paradigm shift occurred away from church and towards scientific, political, and economic powers. This was modernism.
New inventions proliferated and led to the Industrial Revolution of the late 1700s to the early 1800s. Civilization shifted from agricultural rural to industrial urban life. The laws of nature and science explained reality more clearly than the stories of religion. Reason, logic and mathematics became the new abstractions to explore, leaving the abstractions of God behind.
Modern inventions and technology were miracles that changed lives. New philosophy and politics gave people more to think and talk about. Economic profits were more inspirational than biblical prophets. The new energy of the Enlightenment pushed Western civilization into the 20th century and modernism.
The dominating power of science, reason, mathematics, technology, politics, capitalism, and militarism became supercharged. Modern art movements proliferated. The Grand Narrative of Western civilization evolved further, maintaining that mankind had made great progress through history and was now master of the universe in charge of their own destiny. These were hopeful times.
The culmination of modernism between 1900 and 1965 was incredible: the United States dominated the world technologically, militarily, and economically, man controlled nature, and God was no longer necessary. Yet God and religion endured.
The manmade worldview of modernism was built on the premodern religious domination attributes. Modernism followed a trajectory of manmade progress through history and projected confidence in mankind’s ability to create a futuristic utopia.
Moving into Postmodernism
There were, however, flaws in the story told by the “grand’ narrative of Western civilization’s progress that became more evident as the 20th century unfolded. A new paradigm shift was beginning. There were two World Wars. The atom bomb was created. Nuclear weapon proliferation did not make the world safer. Hot wars continued during the cold war. Colonialism was being challenged and minority views that had been suppressed demanded to be heard and included. Westerners became aware that Western civilization was mostly a white European story that excluded most other perspectives and cultural histories. Christianity lost its exclusiveness as other religions gained attention. New age religions emerged, combining various forms of spirituality.
By the 1970s, modernism had created a form of capitalism that had expanded globally, with multinational corporations, and was dominating the world. Many started to realize that capitalism was not always fair and consumerism was not always fulfilling. The harmful environmental consequences of capitalism became evident. Science and technology, capitalism and consumerism didn’t ultimately produce the utopia modernism predicted.
There was disappointment and hopelessness in the cultural air of Western civilization. Philosophers Jean-Francois Lyotard, Michael Foucault, Frederick Jameson, Jacques Derrida, and Jean Baudrillard began to identify this new mood as postmodernism. Characteristics of the shift included cynicism, skepticism, irony, and loss of faith in the grand narrative of Western progress. The concept of truth and morality became questionable. Personal subjective opinion gained preference over “facts“.
In the art world, styles were appropriated from the past and from other cultures, recycling and mixing them together. High art and low art fused. The art market and the selling of art became the art of postmodernism. Shock and spectacle was what sold art.
Academia debated ferociously about the meaning and implications of postmodernism. While postmodernism was the underlying mood of Western culture in the late 20th Century, it seemed to be an elitist concept that even the elite had difficulty fully understanding.
Postmodernism continues into the 21st Century with many of its aspects gaining in strength. Truth and facts are even more questionable, with a proliferation of “alternative facts“ and conspiracy narratives. For example, in the United States, the science of manmade climate change has been denied by a significant percentage of the population and politicians. Postmodernism does recognize multiple truths, but it is not always clear at what point an alternative fact or a conspiracy theory is clearly a lie.
Moving into Metamodernism
So, where in the world are we, and where is the world going to, evolving to, hoping to get to? Currently we are here in what is being conceptualized as metamodernism.
Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akler
The term metamodernism had been in use since 1975 to describe what was starting to emerge after postmodernism. It was, however, not until Dutch theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akler wrote the essay “Notes on Metamodernism“ published in the Journal of Aesthetics and Culture in 2010, that the term became increasingly used to describe Western culture’s state of being. Since then much has been written to describe, critique, and expand the concept of metamodernism. In that essay Vermeulen and van den Akler described the arising cultural sensibility as one that “oscillates between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy, between naivete’ and knowingness, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity.” Vermeulen and van den Akler created the website metamodernism.com in May 2009 to fully explore the concepts of metamodernism.
Luke Turner
Artist Luke Turner was an early recognizer of metamodernism and helped edit the website metamodernism.com. In 2011 he wrote what he called the “Metamodernist Manifesto”, postulating eight key points. Oscillation between polarities was a main characteristic of metamodernism. He summarized this concept on the website posted January 12, 2015 in his essay Metamodernism: A Brief Introduction. He writes:
Whereas postmodernism was characterized by deconstruction, irony, pastiche, relativism, nihilism, and the rejection of grand narratives (to caricature it somewhat), the discourse surrounding metamodernism engages with the resurgence of sincerity, hope, romanticism, affect, and the potential for grand narratives and universal truths, whilst not forfeiting all that we’ve learnt from postmodernism.
Thus, rather than simply singling a return to naïve modernist ideological positions, metamodernism considers that our era is characterized by an oscillation between aspects of both modernism and postmodernism. We see this manifest as a kind of informed naivety, a pragmatic idealism, a moderate fanaticism, oscillating between sincerity and irony, deconstruction and construction, apathy and affect, attempting to attain some sort of transcendent position, as if such a thing were within our grasp. The metamodern generation understands that we can be both ironic and sincere in the same moment, that one does not necessarily diminish the other.
With all the problems facing the world at the beginning of the 21st Century, metamodernists want to believe that things are not entirely hopeless. Perhaps their new motto could be “False hope is better than no hope at all!”
Greg Dember and Linda Ceriello
When writers Greg Dember and Linda Ceriello read the essay “Notes on Metamodernism“ in 2010, they instantly became believers. They have been adding to the theory on their website whatismetamodern.com. In a blog post on the website dated April 17, 2018, Dember writes:
...as far as I’m aware, most discussions of metamodernism have been rooted simply in the notion that oscillation between the qualities of modernism and postmodernism is what defines a metamodern sensibility. (Some even seem to conceive a metamodernism as being about oscillation, in general, i.e., involving any pair of opposites.) My purpose here is to suggest an expanded list of metamodern strategies/methods, starting with a slightly different premise. For me, oscillation is not the defining, essential characteristic of metamodernism, but is instead merely one of many potential methods employed in metamodern cultural artifacts.
In fact, I propose that the essence of metamodernism is a (conscious or unconscious) motivation to protect the solidity of felt experience against the scientific reductionism of the modernist perspective and the ironic detachment of the postmodern sensibility. (Italics from original.)
Dember’s essay identifies and describes eleven methods used to distinguish metamodernism from what came before. To describe one of the methods of our current times Dember coined the word ironesty. “Ironesty is irony/sarcasm/sardonicness/snark employed in the service of making an earnest point, or expressing a heart-felt emotion.“ You can find an abundance of examples of this ironesty on Twitter.
Seth Abramson
Metamodernist poet and writer Seth Abramson has been investigating and writing extensively about metamodernism since 2014. Abramson uses the philosophical concepts of thesis/antithesis/synthesis associated with Frederick Hegel to describe our cultural evolution. Abramson sees modernism as the thesis and postmodernism as the antithesis. He believes we are in a period of synthesis where the best arguments of modernism and postmodernism are reconstructed to create something new and improved - metamodernism.
In essays published in the Huffington Post dated April 27 and May 17, 2015, Abramson identifies and describes 15 basic principles of metamodernism. For the purposes of this essay I will comment on four of these principles. He suggests looking at metamodernism as:
a “negotiation between modernism and postmodernism.” While postmodernism was a reaction and critique of modernism, metamodernism does not necessarily see them in direct opposition to each other but views aspects of each acting together simultaneously.
a “dialogue over dialectics”. Rather than modernism and postmodernism in an oppositional win/lose battle, metamodernism favors facilitating dialogue to create change and positive progress.
a “simultaneity and generative ambiguity”. Abramson saw that early metamodernists described oscillation “between opposing states of thought, feeling, and being - almost as though human beings were pendulums swinging between very different subjectivities.“ He suggests this type of oscillation is just postmodernistic either/or, one or the other, this side or that side, dialectics. As the study of metamodernism philosophy has progressed, it is now understood that opposites occur and are incorporated simultaneously. This can lead to paradoxical juxtapositioning of opposites, creating feelings of ambiguity, being overwhelmed, or a sense of the sublime, that is, “awesomeness.”
“an optimistic response to tragedy by returning, albeit cautiously, to metanarratives.” The modern Western grand narrative of progress using science, democracy, technology, and capitalism was disputed by the deconstructive critiques and arguments of postmodernism. Modernism created problems that postmodernism identified and added to. The cultural reaction was feeling disappointed, mad, fragmented, lost, directionless, cynical, and hopeless. Metamodernism wants to inspire hope, sincerity, and optimism. Metamodernism believes reality will change for the better only if we act “as if'' change is possible even if we have some doubts. It’s better to do something then to not act at all.
Emil Ejner Frilis and Daniel Gortz via Hanzi Freinacht
Hanzi Freinacht is a character created by Nordic metamodernist writers Emil Ejner Frilis and Daniel Gortz to explain their vision of metamodernism. Hanzi Freinacht is the philosopher “author“ of The Listening Society (2017) and Nordic Ideology (2019) and “editor” of the metamoderna.org website.
Writing from a developmental, psychological perspective, Freinacht describes individuals growing and evolving sequentially and hierarchically through various stages. Freinacht contends that Western culture is trying to transcend to a metamodern understanding. He expands on what is defined as metamodernism and explains practical ways that thinking metamodernly can help individuals evolve and cultures advance, particularly politically.
For the purpose of this essay I will focus on Hanzi Freinacht’s call for the creation of a metamodern proto-synthesis of a new grand narrative. From his blog post of March 15, 2015 from the metamoderna.org website, he explains:
The major overarching intellectual goal of metamodernism is the attempt to construct a unified overview of all knowledge in a cosmological context, a grand narrative of everything – while knowing full and well that the synthesis produced can never be final or absolute.
The mantra of Metamodernism is “Reconstruction must follow deconstruction.” This is to be seen as a reaction against the postmodern aim of deconstructing everything. But Metamodernism is not the same as modernity. The grand project of modernity was based on the belief that given enough time, rational thought and careful objective analysis, science would reveal the secrets of existence. Metamodernists are aware that creating a new grand narrative of the world is a never ending endeavor and only Proto-Synthesis is achievable.
The grand narrative of Metamodernism can be described as a meta-–narrative, a modern mythos of creation. Metamodernists are aware of the postmodern insight that knowledge can only be transferred through narratives. Metamodernism is concerned with creating a meaningful creation myth for our time. The message is stated in mythic form; it is not to be taken as absolute truth.
Humans need stories, metaphorical stories. Stories give us history, structure, social values, a map of reality, and a vision of future potentials and direction. Humans cannot live by science and commerce alone. Freinacht’s metamodernism sees that the old story of modernism and postmodernism is coming to an end. It does not look to have a happy ending.
Freinacht wants to believe that humans are growing, developing, evolving, and incorporating history’s lessons and story. However, to continue to move forward, to transcend our current modern/postmodern problems, Western civilization needs a new story, a new grand narrative, a new mythos of creation. If that is the task of metamodernism, then what is that story?
Clare Graves and Ken Wilber
Clare Graves’ spiral dynamics and Ken Wilber’s integral theory make the case that humans and civilization are at various stages of evolving. They theorize that while the majority of the world is struggling to advance out of the modern/postmodern stage, which they associate with the color orange, and into the metamodern green stage, the rest of the world is stuck in lower developmental beige, red, and blue stages. Few humans are even aware of the more advanced yellow or turquoise stages of consciousness.
In this theoretical model the orange stage corresponds to the rational, scientific, industrial age of modernism and early postmodernism. The green stage represents environmental awareness, expansive equality, renewed sensitivity and compassion, and the expanded interconnected worldview of late stage postmodernism and early metamodernism. Spiral dynamic and integral theorists hope that civilization will eventually evolve into the yellow and turquoise stages where science and spirituality work together to solve human problems and live harmoniously with the earth. Utopia!
What about the premodernists?
Western civilization seems to be evolving into the hierarchical place called the future. We are struggling to transition into metamodernism and the integral, spiral dynamic green stage, but what is holding us back?
Metamodernism has defined itself as a dualistic conflict between modern and postmodern ideas. Metamodernism has failed to take into account premodernism. Modernists, postmodernists, and metamodernists all seem to believe that premodernists were defeated, killed off a long time ago by the Enlightenment, by science, democracy, capitalism, and the American way. They have forgotten the premodernists: the billions of Jews, Christians, and Muslims who continue to believe in the foundational creation story, grand narrative, and mythos of Western civilization. They have also excluded the billions of Buddhists, Hindus, pagans, people of indigenous faiths, and a host of other believers.
It is true that all premodern believers live in a modern, postmodern, metamodern world that influences their subconscious, thoughts, and actions. Yet the believers believe. They believe in spite of conflicts imposed by the 20th and 21st century ways. They are alive and well without knowing about the intricacies of the intellectual and elitist debates about modernism, postmodernism, and now metamodernism.
When modernism offered the premodern world reason, logic, science, new technology, and democracy, many converted and the world transformed and evolved. Yet many of the believers continued to believe.
When postmodernism shattered much of the belief systems of the modernists, many lost faith in modernism, not knowing what to believe. Yet many of the premodern believers continued to hold onto their beliefs.
Now the metamodernists want to reconstruct, recreate, and synthesize something new to believe in. But what? And for whom? For the premodern believers or the modern and postmodern disheartened souls?
If metamodernism is a peaceful synthesis between the modernists and postmodernists, what does it offer to the culture? And what does it have to offer to all the premodern believers?
Metamodernists might want to look at premodern belief systems to get some background, ideas, and understanding about what is missing and what to include in creating a way forward into the future. What do premodern, traditional believers get from believing? Perhaps:
a personal relationship with something greater than themselves that is experienced and defined as spiritual
a history that they are part of
social law and order to diminish chaos
a grand narrative that gives meaning to life
an afterlife after death
routines, rituals and holidays
a sense of identity and community
a sense of purpose with a mission
some understanding of good and evil
And they still get all the conveniences of living a modern/postmodern/metamodern life!
Why should Western civilization’s premodern believers or any other premodern believers give up their beliefs? What does metamodernism have to offer them that’s better than what they have? Let’s retrace the history of Western cultural beliefs and focus on the implications of the grand narrative.
Premodern Beliefs
If the heavenly father, one male God is supreme, then all other gods are inferior. The Earth is inferior to heaven and to mankind. Women are inferior to men. Believers in the one God are superior to nonbelievers. The original creation story tells who and what is superior and who and what is inferior. The superior get to dominate, rule, suppress, or destroy the inferior.
Modern Beliefs
Reason, logic, science, technology, democracy, and capitalism became superior to religion and fought to dominate and replace religion as the main driving force after the Enlightenment. All the while women remain inferior to men. “Mankind” continues dominating nature. Emotions are seen as inferior to intellect and abstract thinking. Smart people judge themselves superior to ignorant people. Modern, “enlightened” Western and Northern white-skinned people are superior to Eastern and Southern “primitive”, premodern dark-skinned people.
Postmodern Beliefs
At this stage of Western evolution, capitalism is the supreme rule maker and dominant force determining the future. Women and nature continue to be exploited. Socialistic and communistic ideologies, workers, and the poor are added to what is labeled inferior. Capitalists view these as threatening enemies requiring continued suppression. Capitalism exploits science and technology. It co-opts and corrupts democracy and religion to expand its power. Wealthy people have the power.
Here We Are
There is a pattern here. The dominators write the laws and impose the order. They write the history. The dominators create enemies and fight against them. At each stage of its development, Western civilization has identified itself as much by who its enemies were and what it fought against as what ideologies it was advocating for. It has dominated more than unified.
All along the trail of Western history we see actual wars and ideological wars fought to control natural resources, territories, and human minds. The result of this history has been an accumulation of people and qualities divided into winners and losers, superiors and inferiors, exploiters and the exploited, powerful and powerless.
Capitalism wants to continue to tell the grand narrative of Western progress, which claims that civilization escaped a cruel and indifferent Nature by gaining control over it to benefit humanity. Capitalialism points to the riches created by American exceptionalism and makes the case for it to continue to lead Western civilization forward. Capitalism argues that, given more time, it will solve all our current problems
Throughout Western history the oppressed have tried to resist, have tried to defend themselves. They have been crushed and silenced or converted and assimilated. Yet the oppressed have continued to try to have their voices heard. The story they tell is that Western civilization itself is cruel and indifferent, harming them and the Earth. That grand narrative is problematic.
The problems are significant and urgent. Postmodernism has identified and consolidated our understanding of the issues created by late stage capitalism and Western civilization’s history. They include:
Suppression of women
Racism
Extreme income inequality
Climate change
Degradation of nature and species extinction
Exploitation by religion, particularly Christianity
Arrogant exploitation by Western and Northern nations towards Eastern and Southern nations
Militarization and warrior culture
Monopolistic capitalism
Exploitation of workers
Decadent consumerism
Corruption of democracy
Division between rural areas and values and urban areas and values
Confusion and doubt about truth, facts, and who to trust
Erosion and loss of faith in institutions and ideologies
and more…
That’s a lot of problems. No wonder there is so much postmodern cynicism, guilt, blame, and hopelessness. And despair. No wonder there is so much division, confusion, and frozen inaction. Western civilization is in crisis and struggling to become more just and fair, that is, more civilized.
Metamodernism
Metamodernism defines the crisis as being a divisive tension between the modernists and the postmodernists. The metamodernists have offered solutions as explained in this essay. There is, however, deeper division between the premodern religious/spiritual believers and the modern/postmodernists that has not been described or addressed by the metamodernists. The modern/postmodernists feel superior to the premodernists. The premodernists feel discounted and threatened by the arrogant, godless, modern/postmodern elitists. The modernists believed they had defeated the old time religion of the premodernists. But then, postmodernism came along and poked holes in modernism’s belief system. Postmodernism, however, never created a unifying replacement system to believe in. All the while, premodern true believers held onto their old time religion.
For the metamodernists to succeed in moving the world progressively forward, it cannot just aim to unify modernism and postmodernism with a grand new narrative. The metamodern task needs to include renewing and revitalizing the old time religions of Western premodernism.
Western religion, a combination of Judaism, Chrisitianity, and Islam, is a dominator religion, and the very foundation of Western civilization. This premodern religion continues to influence the world as part of the old grand narrative struggling to move into the future. But take a close look at Western religion. It is fractured into hundreds of theologies and philosophies, sects, and denominations, all fighting for survival, relevance, converts, and dominance. They fight each other, and they fight the godless science of modernism and the hopelessness of postmodernism.
Western religion is not unifying, rather it is part of the divisiveness of our times. In its present form it cannot heal humanity or the Earth. Western religion needs to be transformed along with the outdated and harmful grand narrative. How will metamodernism reconstruct and synthesize a new grand narrative? What story will it tell? Will it follow the old formulation and become a new dominator story?
Can metamodernism really offer hope, authenticity, a new sincerity? A renewed spirituality? Can metamodernism represent the people, qualities, and values that have been oppressed throughout history? Can it renew premodern religious beliefs? Can it create a renewed grand narrative, a proto-synthesis mythos to unite dualities and divisions, inspiring humanity to work together to solve our common problems? Can metamodernism help the world imagine a better future and take action to move forward?
Enter Curvism
I began to use the word Curvism in 1978 to describe my art and philosophy. Curvism grew out of the landscape. The horizon, the hills and valleys, the flow of water, the shape of rocks, plants and animals, and the human figure are composed of curves. Nature is curved with few exceptions. The straight lined, angular manmade world sharply contrasts with the natural world. Curvism believes that humans have boxed themselves into their own world, isolating themselves from the curved, spiritual world of nature.
Western culture is manmade, built from a male perspective. It is the view of science and technology, reason and logic, power and aggression, conformity and competition, materialism and commercialism, quantity and packaging, fragmentation and separation. This worldview is symbolized by the straight line, the rectangle, the square, and the cube.
During the 20th century the power of this worldview increased exponentially with science and commerce gaining almost total control over the way the world and humans are viewed and defined. Modern art began with Cubism and has since been dominated by the symbolism of the square and the exploration of the rectangular format.
Curvism seeks to move out of the square, rectangular, cubed world and into the sphere of the curved line, the circle, and the ellipse.
Curvism views the world from a more female perspective. Curvism speaks of nature and the Earth, the environment and the ecological. Curvism seeks wisdom. It is about wholeness and diversity and concerns itself with quality. Curvism values the senses and the sensual, the intuitive and the experiential, the emotions and empathy, caring and cooperation. It is orientated to cycles and the nonlinear, to both spontaneity and reflection. Curvism is concerned with relationships and ultimately involves love. For too long the spiritual world of nature and the female qualities of humans have been dominated, suppressed, repressed, and destroyed by the forces of the manmade Western, square worldview.
There has been a growing awareness that the modern/postmodern culture of science and commerce cannot feed the soul’s deeper longings or satisfy spirituality‘s higher aspirations. Curvism believes that cultural renewal and a new balance can be achieved by moving toward and through the spiritual curved worldview.
Curvism is a word and a concept that manifests in pictorial art, essays, stories, philosophy, theology, and ultimately a worldview. Curvism presents a unified theory and critique of Western civilization’s long history and imagines a way forward. It equates the past with the square worldview and the future with the curved worldview.
If the major goal of metamodernism is to create a new mythos and a new grand narrative, then Curvism fulfills that task.
Metamodernism describes itself as a new structure of feeling: a combination of postmodern ironic cynicism and modernistic hope. Metamodernism has us picture this combination as an oscillation between the opposites, simultaneously unifying them. Curvism sees this oscillating motion as frozen energy stuck in place, vibrating but going nowhere; hesitant, waiting for purpose and direction.
Metamodernists suggest that “acting as if“ positive action is better than no action; trying to do something is better than cynical non-action. Curvism views such action as lacking confidence and conviction, without purposeful direction.
Curvism not only includes the metamodern synthesis of modernism and postmodernism, but also the premodern influences that metamodernism doesn’t fully address. The result is a unifying and strengthening of the oppressed and repressed peoples, qualities, and values dominated by the square worldview for the past 4000 years. Western civilization used religion, then science, then capitalism, to gain power over nature and maintain power over the vulnerable, the meek, and the weak.
Curvism recognizes and fears the dangers of continued domination by the square worldview and offers a transformative new worldview. Rather than a frozen oscillation, the Curvism model causes a paradigm shift in two major ways. It changes how we see the past, which changes the pushing power of history. Its vision of the future creates a pulling force to move civilization forward, giving humanity renewed hope, purpose, direction, and spirituality.
Curvism represents the nonviolent resistance, the peaceful protesters confronting the powerful, seeking change, requesting justice, and presenting a moral vision for the future. Curvism seeks to harmonize humans with nature.
Curvism believes that the best way forward is for the masculine square worldview to stop dominating and oppressing the curved worldview. Curvism does acknowledge the many wonderful gifts of the square world. Perhaps it was a stage humans needed to evolve through. It is a part of our history. But in order for the transformation of Western culture to occur, even to survive, a change in dynamics needs to happen. It is time to move into the next stages, through the curved worldview.
Curvism believes that Western culture would best be served by an emphatic shift to a curved worldview. Curved world qualities need to lead the way into the future. And because it is not in the nature of those qualities to be dominating, it will require the square world power structure to willingly serve curved world qualities.
The arrogance of the masculine square worldview of Western religion, science, and capitalism must humble itself. Of course we need law and order and judgment, but just as important we need compassion, kindness, wisdom, and morality. Of course we need reason and logic, science and technology, but equally we need emotion and experience, stories, myths, the arts, and humanities. Of course we need individualistic capitalism. But also we need the counteracting, counterbalancing values of community and government that works for everyone.
Curvism believes that the square world dominator culture can be reformed and transformed. God, reason, science, technology, democracy, and capitalism can be reimagined and reconstructed, preserving their best qualities while discarding their destructive domination.
To return to the color concepts of spiral dynamics and integral theory, Curvism will help the world transition out of the red and blue authoritative religious stages and the orange scientific and materialistic stage. It will help the world fully enter the green stage of environmentalism, pluralism, and equality. Yet, Curvism aims higher: to help culture transcend to the integrative yellow and holistic turquoise stages of evolutionary development. Curvism points the direction and leads the way.
Here is a simple example of Curvism’s view of the world. When you lace your fingers together, then bring your arms up and over your head, then slightly before you, you make an elliptical frame. When you look through that frame, you can easily see how our eyes naturally see. Humans naturally see elliptically. Curvism believes that seeing differently will lead to thinking and believing differently. Visual artists have only just begun to see and think outside the box. Curvism advocates for exploration of elliptical and circular formats, pictures and windows. It is how we see the world.
In time, Curvism believes a new partnership will form, a new marriage between male and female qualities without domination, violence, and repression. Without divisions. Without wars. This could happen quickly, but more likely it would take some time, after all, the square worldview has dominated Western history for the past 4,000 years.
In time, things seen as opposites, as dualities, will come together in a non-binary holistic balance. Male and female. Heaven and Earth. Material and spiritual. Science and art. They shall unite in love to work together as one to collaboratively solve square world problems and learn to live in harmony with the Earth. Only then will we become fully human beings. This is the direction and vision of Curvism.
Curvism: The Journey Continues
Curvism went back to the very beginning to explore Western religions’ original creation stories. There it found a square world concept of God. Western civilization continued to evolve into a masculine, dominator power structure with a square worldview.
We are where we are. Curvism hopes to help the world see more clearly where we are and where we need to go.
Curvism Resources
Revisions of Genesis: Seven Modern Creation Stories is an Amazon Kindle e-book (published 2012) that offers a new mythos. The stories are based on the original Genesis stories. These new creation stories suggest that by changing how we see the beginning of Western civilization, we can change the future. Here is the link to Revisions of Genesis. Here are the links to two of the stories, The Replica and God and the Scientist.
In addition, an eighth creation story has been written in the form of a movie script titled The Filmmakers (2020). Two aliens who identify themselves as Adam and Eve come to Earth to meet with three filmmakers for a news conference in a secluded desert location. Adam and Eve warn the earthlings that they are in imminent danger from a global warming apocalypse and must take immediate and significant action to save themselves and the Earth. The filmmakers make a road trip documenting the climate issues and the aliens’ advice. You can read The Filmmakers movie script using this link curvism.com/filmmakers.
You can explore the 45-year visual art journey of Curvism by going to curvism.com and more specifically to this gallery link curvism.com/gallery. There you will find the history of Curvism beginning with its early photographs of nature and landscapes. Early paintings, drawings and prints show the transition from the square worldview to the curved worldview. Curvism goes through numerous projects and periods to illustrate the concept, art, philosophy, theology, and worldview of Curvism.
Over the years I have written extensively about Curvism, constructively criticizing the history of Western civilization’s square worldview. Curvism offers a coordinated and comprehensive new worldview. The first collection of writings from 1997 to 2006 are included in the Kindle e-book, Curvism: The Journey of an Artist (Thoughts on Art, Nature, Philosophy, and Spirituality). Excerpts are on the Curvism website using this link.
Writings from 2007 to present can be found using this link. I plan to publish a collection of these writings titled Curvism: The Journey Continues.
Re-creation and transformation! Onward and forward!