Evolutionary Realism: Art Rising From The Dead

Evolutionary realism follows or synthesizes evolution, it is art in harmony with nature evolving, or devolving, or staying the same before evolving again.

Nature is not a total mystery and art should not be a total mystery. The rules of evolution in nature have become increasingly clear since Darwin, and so should the rules of art. 

Art should not deconstruct nature, it should follow nature.  Art lies to itself if it thinks it can be free of nature. Art needs to affirm nature, and then art can project nature as nature evolves into the future, without abandoning nature.

The inward activating instinct of life, defined here as the material Spirit-Will-To-Godhood, is not monstrous or Dionysian, it has a rational goal activating life to evolve toward the zenith of success in life and evolution, which is real Godhood.

The artist and the philosopher can project both inward and outward life, both the Involutionary Inward Path to the symbolic God Within, and the Evolutionary Outward Path to real supermaterial Godhood, which is the balance sought.

The phrase “the object is all” suggests that the human imagination should not think itself greater than the object it sees, which has led to distorting or even rejecting the real object. That is pure idealism or non-material spiritualism. Reality is lost this way.

There is a difference in evolutionary realism between imaginatively projecting the future direction of material evolution and abandoning the the object and material evolution entirely.

This abandonment of the material object in favor of a non-material ideal has been going on since the time of the Vedas, or Plato, or since the formation of traditional religions. This pure idealism or spiritualism has caused a Great Spiritual Blockade against evolving to real Godhood in the cosmos---not outside the cosmos.

Theological materialism is a new model for theology, science and art which does not reject traditional religion but conservatively transforms it. The inward experience of God or the Father Within is transformed in the outward evolution of material life to real supermaterial Godhood.

Spiritualism imagined itself more important than materialism, which is an anthropomorphic and even narcissistic position to take. It was the lack of imagination viewing the world the way strict scientific empiricism viewed the world which led to the rebellion against a boring and incomplete materialism.

The rules in nature and evolution allow the rules within evolutionary realism to project future evolution. Abstract expressionism thought nature was without rules, and so did postmodern philosophy, and so they abandoned nature and evolution in favor of anarchy, nihilism, and relativity.

Art becomes increasingly insane the more it abandons nature and real human nature. Artists and intellectuals did not like the biological view of human nature and its role in the origin of cultural behavior, it did not fit their Marxist preferences.

The rejection of the real life instincts has been suicidal, and so art and philosophy have become suicidal, which leads to defining art and culture as death, or death as art and culture.

We need to evolve in harmony with the laws of real nature, activated by the material and then supermaterial Spirit-Will-To-Godhood within life. This can bring art and science legitimately back to religion. 

What has come before in religion can be retained but considered as incomplete glimpses or inward experiences of real Godhood, which all life strives to evolve toward in the cosmos. This is the affirmation of the sacred in art which has always defined the greatest art.