When it comes to philosophies, most persons accept the myriads of differentiating philosophies as natural in the evolutionary development of intellect. They recognize that intellectual expressions respond to the various root-sources, like individual cultures and societies from all continents, many religions, all epochs—Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Industrialization, Modern and Contemporary—and some generated by specific schools of thought, while some build on each other’s interpretations and some unique philosophical ideas that can be attributed to particular professions and disciplines—among them language, politics, biological and physical sciences, and the arts. In discussions on aesthetic philosophy in art, especially in design, this inclusiveness is still very uncomfortable and challenging. Maybe the relatively long success of certain avant-garde Modernist design dogmas, stemming from Suprematism, Constructivism, Futurism, or Minimalism, which when accepted by the international industrial complex, provided the impetus for the search of a single over-arching set of guiding aesthetics. Like Esperanto, an artificially constructed world language, this search seems to have been curtailed by the increasing global democratization and cultural emancipation of countries, hastened by independence from the clutches of traditional gatekeepers that certain design dogmas of form, image, and text have brought to the public.
It is nearly impossible to escape a discussion of aesthetic traditions, which are also vast. As is true with philosophy, the subject of aesthetics is dynamic, never stable, always in flux and under constant influences of the intellectual energies of specific time periods.
Aesthetics in homeostatic cultures
Periods: Beginning with human history and ending mostly during medieval times, but they are still surviving in traditional cultures
Homeostasis imposes a quality of constancy, consistency, and dependability on traditional social/cultural systems, which to a certain extent tend to survive not on principles of invention or drives for discovery but on self-preservation by attempts to repeat the past, making only adjustments to maintain the safe equilibrium between inside and exterior through regulations, conventions or directives and dogma. Homeostatic cultures seem satisfied when the milieu de l’intérieur, the environment within, maintains stable and constant without being greatly influenced by ideologies stemming from the exterior. Only when conditions in the external environment cannot be instantaneously compensated and equilibrated by interior self-similar adjustments, or the influences from the exterior are seriously threatening, will there be an attempt to adapt to the overwhelming conditions of the exterior force.
The systems of aesthetics in homeostatic cultures may be original, ancient or small, isolated, and deliberately shielded by political, philosophical or religious dogma, taboo and by specific restrictive social rules. Like the societies of Australian Bushmen or the Amish, they show only very slow and nearly imperceptible change over long periods of time. There are few or no generational gaps and the perceptions and anticipations of futures are in exact synchronization with past traditions. They displayed tendencies of maintaining internal as well as external stability, to the coordinated response capabilities of their members to any stimulus tending to disturb normal conditions. Anthropologist Margaret Mead argues that in homeostatic cultures, grandparents, holding newborn grandchildren in their arms, cannot conceive of any other future for them than the exact mirror of their own past lives. The past of the adult is the future of each new generation—son like father, daughter like mother.
Aesthetics in adaptive and assimilating cultures
Periods: Beginning with the Renaissance, leading to Enlightenment and Modern Times
In a culture that sanctions a relaxation of the intellectual borders and yields to influences of ideas from the exterior, both old and young generations begin to assume that it is quite natural for the behavior of each new generation to differ from that the preceding one. Even though directives and dogmas still persist, and elders are still dominant in setting and defining the social and cultural rules and hierarchical limits, there is a new open space for intellectual discourse, which allows new ideas to mingle with traditional concepts. While adapting and assimilating ideas from the outside are considered non-creative and still slow, the interloping ideas begin to make unconscious modifications and adjustments of individual and social activities, leading to new cultural surroundings, which force persons to adjust to the intensity and quality of stimulation of formerly unknown environmental conditions. Margaret Mead claims that the main causes for substantial change in adaptive cultures are due to unforeseen events like wars, new insight caused, social inventions and technological discoveries, causing the experiences of the young to be very different from those of the old. Unlike homeostatic cultures, adaptive cultures are better equipped for survival. Even if there are no drives for invention or discovery, adapting from the exterior creates a better fit for survival in a change-environment. An adaptive culture is no longer trying to duplicate the achievements of the ancestors. Adaptive cultures present a prevailing model for their members, which looks at the behavior of contemporaries rather than that of ancestors, and presents a willingness to alter its reservoir of language, customs, and lore from another culture. Adapting and assimilation prepare for discovery and invention.
Aesthetics in continuously metamorphosing cultures
Periods: Beginning with Enlightenment, Modernity, and Industrialization
Continuously metamorphosing cultures are those in which all information is dynamic and in flux, and in a process of refinement, reassessment, and revision. Nearly incomprehensible from moment to moment, without traditional markers or dependable guidelines, they are very demanding, thought stimulating ,but also fatiguing and exhausting.
Margaret Mead wrote forty years earlier:
Today, nowhere in the world are there elders who know what the children know, no matter how remote and simple the societies are in which the children live. In the past there were always some elders who knew more than any children in terms of their experience of having grown up within a cultural system. Today there are none. The culture will depend on the existence of a continuing dialogue in which the young, free to act on their own initiative, can lead their elders in the direction of the unknown. Then the older generation will have access to new experiential knowledge, without which no meaningful plans can be made.
The extraordinary dynamics of contemporary times are facilitating the flow of information in very impressive ways, to the point that quality educational institutions provide free and direct access to all of their courses, not just syllabi and outlines, but all lectures, all reading assignments and discussion blogs, removing any social barrier to education, no matter where students are living or what ideologies or religions they grew up with. Initially, the concepts of knowledge and information societies were commerce-specific and industry-driven, couched in the rhetoric of emerging digital technologies, and rethinking the production line and warehousing, focusing on conceptual and knowledge products. Experts refocused the semantics from hand and machine skills to coin terms like “knowledge workers” and “managers.” In the last forty years, these concepts have further evolved. No longer are only concepts of disseminated and shared information at the core, but rather the desire of all members of societies to communicate as authors (form, image, text, performance) in a unique and insightful manner and share their knowledge. It is still about a society that shares knowledge but much more about the unique ways in which world citizens experience their universe, their methods of apprehending the information, analyzing, and assembling the foundations of their understanding, and their ability to provide better and more appropriate metaphors to describe the knowledge. By freeing up all individuals from any kind of gate keeping, the chances for greater varieties of aesthetic expression have immensely increased, demanding from the audience the same independence and openness to see the many contributions through many filters that are not controlled by power, tradition, or notoriety.