by Erich Hamburgh
Genre Universalism explained :
Genre Positivism is a theory that I have been working on for years, explained simply: it's the theory that one can actually judge a book by its cover and cover alone if one only knows how to read book covers aesthetically. That is to say that, a book cover is no different than an album cover, movie poster or any other poster or artwork meant to advertise a piece of entertainment or represent a form of media.

Understanding the Universality of Genres

Genre Positivism is the universal application of the way genres are applied to and utilized to categorize art and media. So, again with the analogy of book covers, the creator(s) of a book cover had a particular mood and tone in mind (general idea) when they created the cover, and they intended to make an impression on whomever is shopping for the right book. The goal is to attract the right customer who will purchase the book, enjoy the book, and recommend the book, so they have the incentive to not be misleading. It's why films with a multi-million dollar budget don't spend 100 dollars on a poster, and why independent films don't spend 98% of their budgets on making the perfect poster for their films respectively. So how does a company convey the general idea of their media? Well, in terms of a poster or book cover, colors used, fonts used and overall design are all chosen specifically to encourage the customer to get an accurate idea of what to expect prior to purchasing the media/book. Book companies never want to make a romance novel appear to be a cook book, for example, or vice versa. The "idea" is the "point" of the book cover/poster, and the idea of anything, including things in nature, can be re-classed in the case of Genre Positivism by calling the "idea" of a thing its "genre." 

So in understanding the universality of genres, and replacing "general idea of X" with "genre of X," one can meaningfully say, "the genre of the forest," or "the genre of ice fishing." More specifically, would John be the kind of person, who would enjoy spending time in a forest or ice fishing? Or is John the kind of person who would be into Bitcoin? John is not a book, but John is "the kind of person who X," which is true of anyone. All people are kinds of people, relative to their general characteristics. Take the general idea of a person's personality, and think of it as that person's "genre," and you can make some accurate predictions about those people by first properly identifying the genre.
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Positivism

Let's take for example the definition of "Logical Positivism," defined by the Oxford dictionary as "a form of positivism, developed by members of the Vienna Circle, which considers that the only meaningful philosophical problems are those which can be solved by logical analysis." ​For the Logical Positivist, logic must be applied universally, and so too is the case with Genre Positivism, in that genre can be applied to the world universally. To say that, "the hotel was cozy," "the plane was stuffy," or "the beer was thick," are ways of communicating what it would be like to stay in that hotel, take that flight or drink that beer. 

If X has certain characteristics, can it also be true that parts of X have similar characteristics, like DNA? Well, yes. I'll go into more detail on this matter, but I wanted to explain that if one were trained in understanding art and design, one could literally, and I do, know just how much they're going to like a book, film, television show etc, simply by looking at the cover. Sound too good to be true? It's not. It's also not simple, and you'd have to have an open mind to learn how to read a book by it's cover, but it can be done, and I've been doing it for decades without fail. Thanks for reading. 

Take responsibility for your mind. Monoconscious.com
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