Art, Morals, Consciousness and the Evolutionary Vision

(Art by: Peter Westermann)

"The arts put man at the center of the universe, whether he belongs there or not. Military science, on the other hand, treats man as garbage — and his children, and his cities, too. Military science is probably right about the contemptibility of man in the vastness of the universe. Still — I deny that contemptibility, and I beg you to deny it, through the creation of appreciation of art." - Kurt Vonnegut

I think it is not only entirely possible, but desperately needed, that the visionary art movement as it's growing globally today - can and is collectively self-organizing and birthing the cultural attractors, or archetypal guiding images in the collective unconscious, for creating and envisioning a transformational planetary culture - a meta-movement that pulls the future—through the imagination—into the present - all in light of the slow emergence and convergence of a new unitive meta-paradigm of understanding in consciousness, evolution, and our place in the cosmic story..

"There is a failure of moral courage, and the failure of moral courage is perhaps most evident in our own community, the community of the artists.

In a way it's the poets who have failed us, because they have not provided a song or sung a vision that we could all move in concert to.

So now we are in the absurd position of being able to do "anything" - and what we're doing is fouling our own nest and pushing ourselves toward planetary toxification and extinction.

This is because the poets, the artists, have not articulated a moral vision. The moral vision must come from the unconscious. It doesn't have to do I believe with these post-meaning movements in art, deconstructionism and this sort of thing.

I mean I'm basically putting out a very conservative, but I think exciting program for art.

That arts task is to save the soul of mankind, and that anything less is a dithering while Rome burns." - Terence McKenna

"We need a new story. We need a story that actually comes out of what we know about the universe. That's our moment." - Brian Swimme

"The new vision of the universe - it must be kept alive. The only people that can keep it alive are artists of one kind or another. The artists function is the mythologization of the environment and the world." - Joseph Campbell

"The ultimate importance of the evolutionary vision lies not just in its power of unifying scientific thinking and stimulating a truly transdisciplinary approach, but also in the philosophy it expresses--a philosophy close to life and its creativity. The alienation of science from life, which has become a matter of growing concern, is about to be overcome by the evolution of science itself." - Erich Jantsch

"Art is an echo of the creative force that birthed the galaxies.

Creativity is a way that the cosmos evolves and communicates with itself.

The great uplifting of humanity beyond its self destruction - is the redemptive mission of art." - Alex Grey