What is Metamodernism?
techstepgenr8tion
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I've heard this name dropped a few times recently and thought this article offered an interesting unpack of the content:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... amodernism
The overall idea - it's on one hand an agreement with many of postmodernism's critiques of modernism but at the same time a rebuff of the chaos and falling timbers in favor of a light, organized, and responsive pluralism. The author threw in 'transcend and include', I'm sure a lot of the people involved in this are Ken Wilbur inspired and it will be interesting to see if this in any way matches their 'integral' loop once it hits the ground.
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
techstepgenr8tion
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Agreed - I thought it would be at least good to see someone define it first. A lot of the people that I listen to regularly, like Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jamie Wheal, Jordan Hall, etc., are either involved or considerer adjacent. There could be a value as well in trying to avoid letting it get politically pigeonholed before it gets anywhere, otherwise it would just collapse as a subspecies of something that's already well-known.
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
Hehe It's Not Necessary
To Label 'It' Anything
Humans are Resourceful
Litter Critters Give Them A Path
And They Find Another One That Works Better
Information/Arts Are Free Now And Practically
Uncensored In Most Places on Earth
The Paths Are Here And
Folks Are Free
To Choose
What Works
For Them And Create
New Paths At Relative
Free Will As Always This
Is NaTuRE ALL They Surely Will
Some Will Rise Some Will Fall Now
No Different Than Waves on A Beach...
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KATiE MiA FredericK!iI
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techstepgenr8tion
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It's a project, that's for sure.
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
"Western Civilization Is Over"
All Who Will Be Worried
Is Domesticated
Wild-Life Now
Including Humans...
Simple Solution Go Feral
With Teeth And Claws
Foraging For
What's
Still Left Real
to Love And Eat...
The Rest Is Only A
Clothed Hallucination We
Create Like Everything Else
We Create With Our Minds
As Long 'As This Peace Lasts'
Where i LiVE AT Least Gonna
Make It The Most EPiC Story Possible
Cause
i CAN
AND WiLL
And Sure
i'll Write my Own
Story too Yes this
Is 'MetaModernism' My Style
As i Am Welcome to Appropriate
What Ever Metaphor i Choose
And Change the Meaning Freely Now
All The Colors Now Human Imagination
And Creativity Makes When Let Loose Wild
Mastering All The Tools of Western Civilization
Others Make As Western Civilization Becomes my Slave Now
And Yours
Too Unless
You Are Afraid
And Only Stay A Slave...
To Whatever Tribal Ideology
Rules You Outside of You As
'You' Become That Tool...
Just in my
View of Course
The Way i See it
Most Likely not Like You...
Yet On the Other Hand i Document
What i Do Works Irrefutable As Such...
"BeCoME A Wittiest Fool" Considering Neuroscience
Shows We Basically Hallucinate Our Reality Based On
Experiences Former We Hallucinate And Co-Create too...
We aRE All 'Fools' This Way Might As Well Be A Wittiest Fool We Hallucinate True
All of Life IS Chaos Magic Neuroscience SHoWS It Create A Great Work of Life BE ART....
When Less Than
A Grain of Sand
Becomes A Star ONE Arrives
No Different Than OZ Returning
Home To "Kansas' A 'Point of No Return Now'
Today Has Been A Great Day The First Day my Wife
Ever Questioned A Verse in the Old Bible; Why Does
'God' Say God Will Protect You From Harm When Folks
Get Harmed Every Day Who Believe in God Three Words 'The Book Lies'...
Do Like i Do
Find Your
Own
Truth Within
And Write Your Own
Bible That Tales no Lies...
You'll Be Confused And Amazed
At First Yet Humans Again Are Resourceful
Little Critters Won't Be The First Time Someone Writes Their Own Bible
And Plays All the Characters The Way They Wanna Hallucinate Life Now
That Much We Will Master What We Give While Everyone Else Consumes What's Taken...
Hint:
Anything
Goes Hard
For Some
Folks to Hear
Yet Even History
Shows Anything Goes...
Again Waves Do Rise And Fall
Never The Less Waves Exist As
Rain Drops And Oceans Whole
i For One
Don't
Mind Being
All Three At Once
Night or Day Matters Not...
Note: This All A 'Koan' Create It As You Will i Sure Do...
Matter of FAct More Reasonably Art Every Word i Write IS
Just
Because i Am
i Can Will Do Create Now
Actually It's What ALL Humans Do
Whether They Realize IT or NOT They Create Now (God)
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KATiE MiA FredericK!iI
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I don't care for how steeped the article is in ivory tower vocab--it kind of undermines my faith in the articles ability to explain new patterns of understanding when it does so in a way that the psychologically uninitiated cannot understand. I'd love to see this article in plainer English. (I realize the irony of this given my usual choice of vocab).
Still, I've been waiting for a while for post-modernism to die. It's served its purpose of questioning the certainty of the past, but we need to move past the irony and irreverence for it's own sake. We need a kind of new certainty and sincerity--one that recognizes that the deconstruction of antiquated ideas under post-modernism was necessary, while also recognizing the need to accept and assert the new perspectives formed under post-modernism with sincerity and clarity. Especially because reactionary conservatives have begun to weaponize post-modern irony against itself. Consider the usage of memes to spread reactionary beliefs. As post-modern ideas become more mainstream, right-ring became the counterculture. Thus, irreverence for contemporary ideas becomes increasingly reactionary. Post-modern irony was useful when it questioned conservative christian hegemony--that same irony is dangerous when it is used to undermine ideals that spread as a result of questioning that hegemony: feminism, queer rights, religious equality, secular government, etc.
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I guess I just wasn't made for these times.
- Brian Wilson
Δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν.
Those with power do what their power permits, and the weak can only acquiesce.
- Thucydides
Western civilization as conservatives understand it killed itself. Nationalism gave us two world wars. Capitalism gave us environmental destruction, inequality, and autocracy. Refusal to accept democratic socialist reform gave us violent leftist revolutions which were hijacked by tyrants. Archaic understanding of Christianity gave us bigotry.
Nothing did more to discredit Western Civilization (as conservatives understand it) than Western Civilization itself.
_________________
Diagnoses: AS, Depression, General & Social Anxiety
I guess I just wasn't made for these times.
- Brian Wilson
Δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν.
Those with power do what their power permits, and the weak can only acquiesce.
- Thucydides
techstepgenr8tion
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Joined: 6 Feb 2005
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I think it's jargonny more for the sake of being as non-committal about final form as it can by while explaining the rules that define it as tightly as possible, thus it goes in a very technical direction.
The idea seems to be: admit that ripping things down has its limits, that cultural needs vary across groups, that our world is filled with complex problems that can't be solved with a top-down media or government instruction for the populace that's one-size-fits-all, and from there how do we have a media and government ecology that allows for variation across populations while simultaneously catering to the needs of each in a non zero-sum way, and on top of that doing a good job with both national security and reducing the need for national security by trying to play the same positive-sum games with other countries as well as possible.
_________________
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
The idea seems to be: admit that ripping things down has its limits, that cultural needs vary across groups, that our world is filled with complex problems that can't be solved with a top-down media or government instruction for the populace that's one-size-fits-all, and from there how do we have a media and government ecology that allows for variation across populations while simultaneously catering to the needs of each in a non zero-sum way, and on top of that doing a good job with both national security and reducing the need for national security by trying to play the same positive-sum games with other countries as well as possible.
That had been my general understanding. It's something I think can get behind. I'm a believer in the need for synthesis.
We will just need to take care that its ideas and rhetoric are not appropriated by reactionaries to undermine it. They've learned that since they can't come up with new ideas, they are left with disguising old ideas in new clothes.
_________________
Diagnoses: AS, Depression, General & Social Anxiety
I guess I just wasn't made for these times.
- Brian Wilson
Δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν.
Those with power do what their power permits, and the weak can only acquiesce.
- Thucydides
techstepgenr8tion
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Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,196
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We will just need to take care that its ideas and rhetoric are not appropriated by reactionaries to undermine it. They've learned that since they can't come up with new ideas, they are left with disguising old ideas in new clothes.
I don't know if you're familiar with the names but Daniel Schmachtenberger, Jamie Wheal, and Jordan Hall are all good listens.
It's a funny thing in that I have a tough time occasionally parsing these things, ie. these are Game B guys who are in principal at least one foot in to Metamodernism (TM) but they're more known as GameB top brass thinkers and in a lot of ways there seems to be a lot of overlap between the two camps, just that metamodernism as I understand it is more of a political and civic philosophy where as GameB is much more like 'GameA is falling apart, what can we potentially do - based in altruism but informed by what vulnerabilities GameA exploits to win - that will outsurvive or replace GameA as it crashes of its own dysfunction?'. They're two slightly different tracks, particularly considering that metamodernism is coming at it instead from 'if we take modernism, postmodernism, Ken Wilbur, and try to shake out the best ideas - what do we end up with?' - which is a slightly different proposition but it seems to land quite close.
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
Metamodernism has been around for a decade or so in the arts - it's been coined by the guys, Vermeulen and Akker, mentioned in the paragraph about it as a socio-cultural phase.
For a while I was quite interested in it, because the post-modern irony felt flat and played out to me. It's the aesthetics of generation-x, while metamodernism feels like a good description for the aesthetic sensibilities of millennials - an example would be organic, fair-trade fashion, which used to be for hippies until about a decade ago, and has since been designed by and for hipsters. Or organicfood, which used to be all wholegrain sugarfree and awful, but for ten, 15 years has become varied, interested in specialties and craft and pleasure. It's a synthesis of the idealism of the environmentalists and hedonist consumerism.
The obvious problem is that postmodernism wasn't bread in a lab, but grew out of a late-capitalist society - and I'm by now pretty sure that metamodernism as a socio-cultural movement is no longer a synthesis of modernist progressivism and postmodernist skepticism, but has been recuperated by capitalism...
the perfect image for that is the wealthy SUV-driving soccer mom who buys organic quinoa. (as you may know, quinoa used to be the healthy staple food of parts of South America- but due to its popularity, it's being exported to the US and Europe now, while the indigenous farmers of South America have to rely on less nutritious crops like potatoes).
you can't just prescribe a mindset like metamodernism - postmodernism wasn't invented by philosophers and pushed onto people. Postmodernism is a materialist mindset that grew out of what capitalism did to social structures (you know: all that is sacred is being profaned, all that is solid melts into air, as Marx wrote about the socio-cultural effects of the capitalist mode of production).
To paraphrase Joseph Goebbels: When I read the word metamodernism, I reach for my Baudrillard.
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techstepgenr8tion
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I have a different take living in the US. For the cultural and media McDonalds we've been raised on I'm surprised we can still even pronounce multisyllabic words. Anything, even cut/diluted a bit from base-potency, is still a better trajectory than Kardashians, donkey vs. elephant, what celebrity is in rehab, or which end of the apparatus goes in your mouth vs. up the butt.
The US is Pleasure Island from Pinocchio if I've ever seen it.
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“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin
I have a different take living in the US. For the cultural and media McDonalds we've been raised on I'm surprised we can still even pronounce multisyllabic words. Anything, even cut/diluted a bit from base-potency, is still a better trajectory than Kardashians, donkey vs. elephant, what celebrity is in rehab, or which end of the apparatus goes in your mouth vs. up the butt.
The US is Pleasure Island from Pinocchio if I've ever seen it.
The city of Munich, which I live near, gave up its vaccination-prioritization program for teachers the other day, because teachers weren't interested in getting vaccinated anytime soon. I'm not sure if Europe is that far behind the US.
I have the strong feeling that the next "big philosophy" is going to be non-human. - we're basically still in the romantic period, where the depth of human wisdom and emotion is the be all and end all of everything. But I think the growth of AI in every sector will put an end to this, it will decide on when and how to treat people, it will make decisions, and it will allocate resources. The Trekkie in me is looking forward to this, but the Marxist already knows that this will help Elon Musk reach immortality before it will distribute food so that Somali children aren't being starved by the global commodity markets.
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