Notes. This is the period of ‘The Stern Report’ of the severe global ecological crisis, but also of the achievements of the Genome Project and mapping of human DNA (albiet owned by private company copyright) the expanded use of the internet and the WWW great accomplishments. But also a time of significant ecological losses. A vast world of increasing inter connectedness in communication, but also of nation/state capitalist competitiveness for export markets, raw material and energy sources, that could lead to expanded military conflicts. The Pax Americana model of national relationships that ruled the world is now under threat. Culture from after the WW II until today is now being challenged by China, India and Asia with very ancient and very different cultural traditions.

New Aspects

China now has the largest number of internet users in the world-totalling hundreds of millions of people. 150 million Chinese have now entered the middle class. More people in China have been lifted out of poverty than any other civilisation or time in history. The Chinese will soon be the new power brokers on the block of history and they will still recall the wrongs dealt out to them by Western Empires. The rise of contemporary China brings both new hopes and dangers as does the decline of US Imperialism.

So this is a period of intensified crisis and paradigm shifts, where none of the earlier models of capitalism still apply, and yet, established power and privilege still remains in the hands of the power elites in the Western World, who created the crisis in the first place. They live within a culture of constant greed, waste, unending envy and ephemeral diversions.

How does a Multicultural artist deal with these problems of ‘paradox’ and ‘complex seeing’ in their art. It means that he or she will need a ‘philosophy’ or ‘philosophies’ that will function like a special light to find their way through these darkened complex fractured entities and processes

This is a world where nothing is what it appears and may indeed be its opposite, or as Shakespeare put it so prophetically and accurately in the C16th in his play Timon of Athens and in Sonnet LXV1; it will reflect a culture of paradox where ‘black is white and white is black and foul is fair as well as its opposite; and wrong is right; base and noble will be confused; old and young will change beds; what is cowardly will appear valiant and vice versa. Gilded honour will be perverted, and the urge to perfection will be distorted, human strength will be enfeebled and made dysfunctional, folly will be ubiquitous. No one will understand true simplicity and goodness as it will be caste beneath a shadow and always accompanied by a deep type of illness. Art will be made 'tongue tired by authority' as the bard puts it.

Essentially, Shakespeare gives us many things, but also a full vision of what human estrangement looks like in society.Our task is to update that model. (see appendix 1).These aspects are opposed to human beings finest sentiments and their humanity; but today all this has intensified and become a gigantic, malignant malformation.

The world is now full of a pox of contraries due to collapsing Capitalism. There has also been a culture of sophisticated avoidance within Post Modernism and Cultural Theory.

This selected ideology has also contributed to a culture of confusion. The embrace of Post Modern and Post Structuralist culture has contained little interest in ‘the human’, ‘the passionate’,evolving 'fate', nor anything which extends themes or subject matter related to’ love or amore,’ each of the deeper truths, tragedies, predictions of new, workable revolutions, healthy comedy, wise intuition, nor is there very much awareness of any major insights into life or reality or new kinds of ‘goodness or beauty ’nor is there an enchantment with existence itself.

Today, the paradoxical process of inversion of reified means and ends is being intensified. across the culture of the whole globe.

It could all end with the prophetic Catch 22 maxim ‘that only by destroying the earth could they finally save it!’

What we do need in our search for constants and essentials is an aesthetic or what the Germans called ‘weltanchauung’ or an aesthetic of worldly insight, or universal, tough- baked knowing which fits our new situation.