Horseshoe maximalism is the social temperament of our times, an emerging cultural temperament that will dominate cultural industries in the coming half-decade. It is what the mid twenty-twenties feel like: a collective realization that we no longer trust our institutions.
The death of establishment narratives of progress gives way to an exhilarating sense of dread—when our systems fail us and we’re more polarized than ever as a society, everything becomes fair game to reexamine, to reimagine or to redo. The possibilities seem as limited and they are limitless. It is now up to us collectively to build a new pantheon of social narratives that give us a shared vision of the future.
It explains why so many cultural trends today, from new age spirituality to prediction markets to alternative financial assets, bring together audiences from the extremes of different social and political ideologies together. These extremes don’t necessarily oppose each other in culture. They can converge, creating new centers from contradiction, giving way to new social configurations of exchange that offer the possibility of building new cultural narratives.
In OAS Dossier 2: The New Pantheon, co-authors
@nottonywang ,
@cdslls ,
@se.re.na.wa.ng ,
@victoria.massey ,
@chrisgayomali ,
@helenyinchen ,
@michaelhmyeung investigate the emergence of a social phenomena we call horseshoe maximalism, and explore how political polarization today has given way to new cultural trends that embrace contradiction and extremities. It features quotes from interviews with experts and practitioners including Adina Glickstein, Phillip Pyle, Alan Berliner, Char Stiles, Sammy Sins, and more.
OAS Dossier 2: The New Pantheon is the second edition of OAS’s physical-only, annual research publication, again limited to 1,000 copies. If you’re a friend, or friend of a friend, you can request a copy of the NFC chip version of the publication be shipped to your address. Click on the link in bio to learn more.
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