Twenty-first Century Romanticism: The Basic Principles

     In previous essays I offered some simple contrasts between Apollonian and Dionysian ethos's, and between their subsets of rationalism and romanticism.  Now it is time to delve into the core principles and characteristics of contemporary twenty first century Romanticism. Obviously, in the future, this era will partly be defined by what precedes and follows it.  All I can do on this website is demonstrate how the era of Modernism was, and its remnants still are, different in kind from what is emerging as a new pattern of ideas and behaviors.

     The basic principles are:

     Dionysian cognitive framework:

• Spontaneity, passion, intuition, rebellion, and love of excess 
• Rawness, we want to see, smell, touch, and taste the real thing, not an abstraction.  But we will also settle for the virtual thing. 
• Holistic ideas; nature/culture is one system

     Romanticism is High Context (HC) culture: 

• Social issues, relationships, and gatherings are more important than intellectual pursuits; (Intellectuals and intelligence are not revered as they were during Modernism; “the life of the mind is a waste of time”).
• Wisdom is more important than theory; Science and the Humanities are secondary players that help embellish and celebrate life; the pure search for Truth is asocial but tolerated within certain bounds.
• Collecting and storing vast amounts of information about people and their relations, habits, and likes/dislikes is necessary.  This is done at all levels (small intimate groups maintain constant contact; corporations monitor their staff, competitors, and partners; governments track large numbers of people); individualism and privacy are being redefined
• It is personal.  In The Godfather series (1972) when someone was to be killed they would offer the consolation “its business, not personal.”  When I first heard that as a young teen I cringed but most adults didn’t even flinch.  In Sleepless in Seattle (1993) that line was used but the important reply was “It’s personal to me.”
• HC culture is also high contact culture; calling, texting, tweeting, and emailing your significant other, your friends, and your extended family many times a day is allowed in most situations, even at most workplaces.  The Text of these messages is often inane because what people are doing is sustaining the Context of their lives.  The guy who’s walking into a building and is on the phone saying “I’m walking into the building; be there in a minute” is sending the message I am close to you, socially and emotionally.  It is phatic language. Focus on the Context not the Text to understand the behavior.
• The matrix Organization; you are placed somewhere and have vertical, horizontal and nonlinear relations.  Example:  "Ms. Betty Fxoxox has been associated with the program from its very beginning. Recognizing that open systems and conformance to standard architectures are critical to a program like CIS, she has worked hard to ensure these requirements were identified early. She is matrixed to the IPT from CECOM's Software Management Directorate".  (AQ101:  fundamentals of systems Acquisition management, Lesson 5.) 
• Technology is being used to maintain, sustain, expedite, and proliferate the needs of HC culture, and for gathering and storing vast amounts of information; relational databases, mobile communication devices, and web sites keep it all going. Identity theft is an unfortunate outcome.  

     Romanticism and Pop Culture:

• Our movie and cable industries are dominated by fantasy:  witches, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, mummies, zombies, etc. (They replaced all the popular westerns and mysteries).  They are metaphors about human behavior.
• All you Need Is Love, The Beatles, 1967.  This song hit the square headed affection supressed Modernists square in the face.  And so, after decades of suppressing displays of affection in public, by the late 1970s, people were openly affectionate everywhere and at any time.  Today, few people remember that saying hello and good bye at the airport used to be a subdued quick awkward moment. Now, it can be that or a social circus and no one cares.

     Key Metaphors in contemporary American Culture

• Situational Awareness; it’s HC so be aware of everything around you and all the non verbal stuff; on the nonlinear battlefield, Total Situational Awareness is the playbook.   We are all situated in life (unless you are having a communication problem which means you are desituated--out of touch, lost, confused)
• Empathy; you must care about everyone
• Engaged; not in the sense of getting married, but being out there in high contact with people
• Integrated; my team’s policies and procedures are integrated with all the policies and procedures from other groups in this organization (whew)
• Relationships (your doctor, dentist, lawyer, etc., now wants a “relationship” with you
• Community; strongly defined us/them groups; you have to decide who’s in and who’s out
• The matrix organization (we are more than a top down society; it’s diagonal, zigzag, and sideways too)
• Sustainability; we have to sustain the environment; and now that the go-go years of greed is ending, we have to sustain our business for the long haul instead of maximizing short term shareholder return
• Embedded, everywhere. In culture, in nature, journalists in the Army, videos in your web posts, viruses in your emails.  People and things are parts of wholes, and parts can attach to other wholes.  Again focus on the fractal aspect of Context.

     The Embodied Cognition Movement [1]:

• 98 percent of human thought is unconscious
• Human thinking entails emotion (there is no separation)
• Most human thought is metaphorical with very little literalness
• The human body is the basis and grounding for thinking; the brain’s primary function is self regulation and self monitoring-awareness; the brain and the neurological system is a full body system; yes, wiggling your toes can affect thoughts
• Rational Man, as defined by Modernist social scientists, especially economists, is wrong.  People sometimes employ logic and formulas to make decisions but more often than not they employ other cognitive frames to make decisions, and these are often embedded in situational and impulsive frames.
• Enlightenment-Modernist Thought that disembodies the mind from brain and body, and thoughts from emotion, is wrong; there is no scientific basis for it. Descartes was wrong.
• American conservatives and neoliberals still hold to the Rationalism of a fading era.  They are traditionalists being pushed to the sidelines, to be called “Old Lights” because their ideas don’t shine as brightly as they once did. They won’t go quietly because they still claim the status of Status Quo.
• The en-cultured brain/body see here

     The Behavioral Economics Movement [2]

• Human psychology drives the economy
• People’s economic activity is influenced by confidence (or the lack of it), fairness, corruption and bad faith, money illusion, and stories told about people, businesses, and the economy
• Monetarists have been discredited by the current economic crisis (see here [irony intended], here, and here).  The Keynesians will be next (do we really have to watch this ship go down? An early look at this is here and here)

     Romantic Science and Humanities

• Nonlinear analysis is done by itself or jointly with linear analysis to seek both Text and Context
• Fractal analysis
• Situational Analysis
• Cyclical analysis

     These principles cover quite a bit of ground.  Where it all takes us I have no idea at this time.  But, since I am an experimental researcher, I guess I’ll have answers when I get there.  Everything in its own time.

Notes:

1.  The primary sources in this area are Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error:  Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, Penguin Books, originally 1994 but reprinted in soft cover with new Preface 2005; and his Looking for Spinosa:  Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, Harcourt, Inc, 2003; and, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh:  The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought, Basic Books, 1999.  The rationalism of American conservatives and neoliberals is described in George Lakoff, The Political Mind, Penguin Books, paperback edition 2009.Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body,Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007

2.  Start with George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, Animal Spirits:  How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why it Matters for Global Capitalism, Princeton University Press, paperback edition, 2010, and read their references; and, read the references at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics.

Cubism: From Moderation to Excess

         The Progressive Era (aka the Third Awakening, ca. 1890-1920) was a great quest for order after decades of romanticism.  Modernism would sweep in behind it and dominate most of the twentieth century.  Let’s take a look at some of the key designs, ideas, and values of Modernism.  They basically include linearity, geometry, squares, and rectangles. Balance and equilibrium are also important ideas. 

      At the turn of the 20^th century artist Pablo Picasso began a new art form called Cubism where “artworks, objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow ambiguous space, one of cubism's distinct characteristics” [1].  As typical in an Awakening, cubism was a hybrid style--Apollo abstracting Dionysus.  This gets inverted 75 years later.

    

                                                                       Picasso 1910

     
     Cubism was just one trend that was signaling that another Apollonian era was emerging.  That trend was Modernism with its love of straight lines and angles.  In Architecture the German Bauhaus school would soon put its stamp of order on the world.  Many of its practitioners would move to the US in the 1930s and influence designs here. See the design below. 

                        Johannes Itten, 'House of the White Man - Architectural Study' (1921) [2]

     After World War II, as the middle class began expanding, there was a need to build small inexpensive homes all across the nation.  Architects and urban planners began building planned suburbs such as Levittown, PA and the many Capehart and Wherry housing tracts on military installations.  The ranch style became one of the more popular home styles in the US.   These small, modest homes are all variations on cubes and rectangles. 

                                        Wherry style home, Elgin Air Force Base, CA. [3]

     During those years plaid clothing was common.  People also used phrases such as “he’s square,” “he’s straight,” and “He’s a straight shooter” to complement someone. (A straight person is honest and has integrity; a crooked person doesn't).  Later, during the Fourth Awakening and after, people who had once been complemented in such a manner would be criticized for being “uptight” because they were viewed as being overly controlled and “emotionally repressed.”  Loosen up man.

                                                                              Plaid shirt

     The closing years of Modernism saw a great deal of beautiful architecture that offered simple and elegant designs.  The glass office building with its repetition of cubes and rectangles was the high watershed of Modern architecture.  In every day puzzles, the Rubik’s Cube (aka Rubix cube) was the ultimate game.  Below we see some nice lines and geometry.

                                            Towers of Bella Terra, Orange County CA [4]

     Even before Postmodernism got moving in the 1980s there were some early examples of Dionysian excess.  One art style is called Op Art that uses simple Apollonian lines and geometry to create eye dazzlers.  Here is one piece by American artist Richard Anuszkiewicz.  The Op Art movement is typically viewed as being an outgrowth of the Bauhaus school.

                                                           Richard Anuszkiewicz 1961

     Currently much new Romantic architecture is basically about embellishing the Modernistic standard.  If glass buildings were elegant then they also need to become opulent with more detail and materials, and they need to be contextualized (mimicking feng shui) to their environment.  Here is the MacAllen Building & Condominiums in Boston MA, built circa 1999.  It is described in this way:

                                      MacAllen Building & Condominiums, Boston MA,1999

“On the western end, the building responds to the highway with a curtain wall yielding panoramic views for the residents inside the building. On the eastern end, brickwork mirrors that of the residential building fabric, extending the logic of the storefront and pedestrian scale elements on that facade. On the north and south facades, bronzed aluminum panels reflect the industrial neighborhood component and express the structural system organization.”[5]  I think it has a nice mild eye dazzler effect.

     “Often post-modern architecture is referred to as neo-eclectic, essentially representing a revival of period styles for houses, and an unending variety of forms and sleek, asymmetrical designs for commercial buildings. Post-modernism is based on several reactions: a rejection of modernist thought; a return to traditional, historical precedents; and a re-awakened interest in history and heritage.” [6]. 

     And often it is just unpleasant to look at—not because they are eye dazzlers, but because they are ugly cubicles and rectangles.  Eventually, our new Dionysian era will stop anchoring itself to Modernism.  When it does hopefully we will be inspired by new forms of beauty.  Meanwhile all I can do is try not to cringe at the sight of such crap as below. And this crap is being built all over the west coast. Please stop. 

                                                       Neo Eclectic Hotel, Fullerton, CA

This essay is now fairly popular.  Please also see:

Modernism and Romanticism: A Visual Aid

Apollonian and Dionysian: A Visual Aid

Notes:

1. Quote and Picasso photo found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism.


2. Picture found at http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/tablog/entries.en/2008/02/bauhaus-strikes-a-domestic-chord.html.

3. Picture found at http://www.eglin.af.mil/photos/mediagallery.asp?galleryID=7968&?id=-1&page=1&count=48.

4. Picture found at http://huntingtonhomes.ocregister.com/2010/02/12/office-towers-to-get-a-loan-mod/84557/.

5. Picture and quote found at http://www.architecturesdesign.com/2009/11/25/modern-macallen-building-condominiums-by-office-da-architecture-firm/.

6. Quote and photo from http://www.fullertonheritage.org/Resources/archstyles/postmod.htm. Not all post modernism rejects Modernism; as I've been saying, it often embellishes it.