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Metamodernity: Meaning and hope in a complex world
Technological development, climate change and globalization are challenging the national institutions and modes of governance we created during the industrial era. Our old knowledge and general understanding of the world do not provide sufficient answers anymore. In order to maintain meaningful lives, social calm and liberal democracy, we need to upgrade our meaning making to match the complexity of the world we are creating.Metamodernity is an alternative to both modernity and postmodernism, a cultural code that presents itself as an opportunity if we work deliberately towards it. Metamodernity provides us with a framework for understanding ourselves and our societies in a much more complex way. It contains both indigenous, premodern, modern, and postmodern cultural elements and thus provides social norms and a moral fabric for intimacy, spirituality, religion, science, and self-exploration, all at the same time. It is a way of strengthening local, national, continental, and global cultural heritage among all and thus has the potential to dismantle the fear of losing one’s culture as the economy as well as the internet and exponential technologies are disrupting our current modes of societal organization and governance.Metamodernity will thus allow us to be meaning making at a deeper emotional level and a higher intellectual level compared to today; it will allow us more complex understanding, which may match the complexity of the problems we need to solve. Appropriate meaning making is the best prevention against the frustrations that generally lead to authoritarian ideologies and societal instability.Using metamodernity as the filter through which we see the world and as a template, we can create, among other things, new and appropriate education, politics and institutions for our societies of the 21st century. A vision such as this may even give hope.
- GenresPhilosophy
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Published September 9, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 18, 2022
A Jordan Peterson Future (Replete with "Maps of Meaning" and "Personal Responsibility!")
Wow...I was really, really looking forward to this idea of "metamodernism" and "metamodernity" but apparently it is really just a form of soft, top-down HR totalitarian Postmodernism. Not only was this text simplistic in the extreme (and frequently insults the intelligence of the reader with asides like "If that was too abstract...") but it was remarkably unsophisticated. To Wit:
1) Unquestioned (and often unwritten) Assumptions and Concomitant Buzzwords Abound
"Epistemologies", "Meaning Making", "Responsibility", "Emancipation", "Liberal Democracy", "Neo-Liberalism", "Cultural Codes", "Imagined Communities", "Collective Imaginary", et cetera. But first, what are some of the assumptions? Well Here are some:
A) Progress is real and modernity is CLEARLY superior because it gave "us" liberal democracy and emancipation.
B) The future is clearly KNOWN and it is either "nightmare" Globalism or "good" Globalism.
C) Liberalism IS GOOD and totally unstoppable (unless it is replaced by "nightmare" Globalism)
D) Class simply DOES NOT exist as a defining feature in social reality.
E) "Truth" doesn't exist because all epochs in human society "make meaning" ("truth" is confined to the "premodern" epoch according to one handy chart), except it does in the form of scientific facts and empirical data, except that is still just "meaning making" and isn't superior, but the postmodern obsession with "feelings and identity" is clearly worse, but...(and so on and so forth)
F) There is no such thing as metaphysics, but aesthetics and ethics are still a thing. But ethics is really just utilitarianism ("going out in nature is GOOD for you" but not good in itself) and aesthetics is just "not ugliness" (the ugliness of the "nightmare surveillance capital world").
G) Unlike every other totally contingent epoch of humans, WE have control of everything we need to make the future we want, if we want it.
As for the terms above they are weakly deployed and often vague if not subject to easy substitution. While Anderson mentions Plato (once) when she initially discusses epistemology we soon learn that said epistemology is NOT one of the grand philosophical inquiries into what constitutes knowledge or how one accesses knowledge but is really just a word that means "culture", "language", and most especially "ideology." Frankly I cannot find one place where "ideologies" could not have replaced "epistemologies", especially in a Zizekian sense. For Anderson "epistemologies" are the basic frames of spontaneous cultural/social reference with which we encounter the world and categorize it (or, it's already categorized...unclear). But this is also EXACTLY what "cultural codes" are as well as "collective imaginary" and these terms are repeatedly put together, all three, side by side, in sentence after sentence. There is nothing here, whatsoever, about knowledge as such, the approach to knowledge, or even basic cognition (or even what frames cognition). For Anderson no one really ever "thinks", they just wander about in "epistemologies."
2) Shallow and Misguided History and Historiography are EVERYWHERE
Early in the text we are subject to a "matrix" of all civilizational and human history past and speculative. Anderson makes clear that this is quite reductionist but in some ways it is where she delves into greater detail that she commits absolute blunders. Anderson claims that the "premodern epoch" was consumed with "fundamentalism" but fundamentalism as such is part and parcel of modernity. "Literal" readings of The Bible, for instance, are a product of the late 19th century (just read the Church Fathers). Also, the 30 Years' War is lazily labeled a "war about religion" because there can be NO materialistic or economic basis of ANYTHING in Anderson’s historiography (except in a vague sense regarding technics). IN fact, the total lack of ANYTHING economic (apart from buzz words like "neo- liberalism") is a HUGE misstep. At one point Anderson rightly indicates that Nazism, Stalinism, and Maoism are all products of modernity but at other points she refers to these as "relapses" and ultimately Modernity=Freedom, Emancipation, and Liberal Democracy. Nazism, as such, is a mere "deformation."
But the GREATEST issue is her unquestioned promotion of the modernist truism that everything is getting "more complex" and that past epochs were necessarily "simpler." This is SUCH bullshit! A moment's reflection proves that the exact opposite true: the fully authentic "postmodern" subject is someone who doesn't grown their own food, make their own clothes, perform any acts of worship or ritual, or move in a world that has any true formal customs or manners as hierarchy is simply informal in day to day life. Seriously, we believe it is more complex because of "the internet" and "social media" and "algorithms" but people wear t-shirts, work from home on laptops where their entire job is writing emails, live alone without extended family, eat food out of boxes, have sex without any spiritual meaning, vote for clone politicians (that you have no real affection or loyalty towards), play video games and sleep. There are no real rites of passages, or authentic celebrations, or extended rituals, or even difficult relational negotiations for the fully postmodern subject (the one that is, apparently, so much more "complex"). Life is far more "simple" in the worst way possible. Just read anything from David Graeber to The Golden Bough to the Book of Leviticus or even just some Medieval Literature let alone Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. The world was much, much more complex in the past, socially, religiously, culturally, and politically.
Due to Anderson's almost total reliance on contemporary (modern and postmodern) sources/scholarship the reader encounters a strange, semi-whig view of history. While someone like Machiavelli looked back at Julius Caesar and Aristotle, or Marx reengaged the Gracchi, or Rene Guenon literally ALL tradition, the best Anderson can do is say "Beethoven came before Darwin and Darwin came before Nietzsche!" The past and present are ALWAYS in conversation and not in some totally residual way where just a sliver of premodernism still exists. Marx didn't see the Gracchi as inhabiting a "totally different epoch with a distinct epistemology" (although for him it was a different material era) nor did Machiavelli think such about Caesar. Time IS circular AND linear and always has been for all humans at all times. Anderson makes at once too little and far too much of these "unique" epochs.
3) Utilitarian, Arrogant, and Postmodern
Lastly, Anderson's unspoken ethic is a form of yuppie utilitarianism married to an arrogant postmodernism. The crowning chapter for this is titled "A Future Scenario" wherein she picks and chooses what is "best" from the past epochs. The stereotypes, again, are endemic and frankly laughable. We should look to the "Indigenous Epoch" to "return to nature" and revisit "spirituality" and "music" and "intimacy." Only the most sad sack, atomized loser would assume that this has simply disappeared en masse from the world. Once again, Anderson betrays herself as the PRIMER Postmodern Subject. She then performs a similar song and dance through the "premodern", "modern" and "postmodern" epochs. What is most distressing about this exercise is there is nothing intrinsically good, or bad, or right, or wrong, or beautiful, or necessary about the "positives" from previous epochs. Like a good postmodernist there is no such thing as "transcendence" for Anderson and one is free to "pick and choose" (or, SHE is free to pick and choose FOR YOU). Yes, nothing is really "true" or right...It's just that we "need" this "stuff" to maintain "emancipation" and "liberal democracy" and "freedom" and "responsibility" ("values" that have no value if they are not in service to something more). Eventually, she REALLY lets the cat out of the bag when she proclaims that the "good" metamodern future is a "network" (seriously??? how are these ideas "new?") that can be analogized to an archipelago of distinct "epistemologies" with bridges that allow the subject to go from one to the other without issue. Subjects will sail through a "personal meta-modern meaning web." In other words...POSTMODERNISM! Just "choose" what YOU want to think/believe/feel/do when you WANT to! Somehow this is "metamodernism" but I've heard this same shit my whole life in one way or another. How is this NOT the commodification of experience without making mention of material conditions? This IS postmodernism par excellence...the only difference is Anderson is arrogant enough to proclaim that such a regime is REQUIRED in the future and MUST be ENACTED OR ELSE!
Lastly, one comment more than any other shows that Anderson has NOTHING new that does not easily fit the ideology of being a deracinated consumer:
"We can also choose to refuse to deal with more than one 'thing' at the moment: in one setting, a church, for instance, I am 100% Christian and that's it; I insist on the right to immerse myself into this one particular mode of being and not consider anything else right now! As long as I am in this church, connecting spiritually with Jesus is my sole purpose!"
Only someone who has absolutely no connection, comprehension, or even the most basic appreciation of spirituality would type this shit up without blushing. TO BE A CHRISTIAN IS TO BE AS IMMERSED AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE WITH JESUS AT ALL TIMES, NOT JUST AT CHURCH AND TO PUT HIM FIRST ALWAYS! The same is true for anyone else practicing any true religion (once again, consult Guenon). She thinks she makes the opposite case but what she is really saying is: "Under a metamodern regime you ONLY need to be a 'Christian' at church! Ooooh! Think of the emancipation of having no identity!"
I have another book on my shelf of essays regarding metamodernism that hopefully is much better. It looks like honest to God THEORY and ANALYSIS (not some piss-poor facsimile of Sapians) and hopefully paints a totally distinct and UNIQUE portrait of metamordernity which isn't just a pseudo-futurist encomium to postmodern stakeholder-capitalism by another name.
Wow...I was really, really looking forward to this idea of "metamodernism" and "metamodernity" but apparently it is really just a form of soft, top-down HR totalitarian Postmodernism. Not only was this text simplistic in the extreme (and frequently insults the intelligence of the reader with asides like "If that was too abstract...") but it was remarkably unsophisticated. To Wit:
1) Unquestioned (and often unwritten) Assumptions and Concomitant Buzzwords Abound
"Epistemologies", "Meaning Making", "Responsibility", "Emancipation", "Liberal Democracy", "Neo-Liberalism", "Cultural Codes", "Imagined Communities", "Collective Imaginary", et cetera. But first, what are some of the assumptions? Well Here are some:
A) Progress is real and modernity is CLEARLY superior because it gave "us" liberal democracy and emancipation.
B) The future is clearly KNOWN and it is either "nightmare" Globalism or "good" Globalism.
C) Liberalism IS GOOD and totally unstoppable (unless it is replaced by "nightmare" Globalism)
D) Class simply DOES NOT exist as a defining feature in social reality.
E) "Truth" doesn't exist because all epochs in human society "make meaning" ("truth" is confined to the "premodern" epoch according to one handy chart), except it does in the form of scientific facts and empirical data, except that is still just "meaning making" and isn't superior, but the postmodern obsession with "feelings and identity" is clearly worse, but...(and so on and so forth)
F) There is no such thing as metaphysics, but aesthetics and ethics are still a thing. But ethics is really just utilitarianism ("going out in nature is GOOD for you" but not good in itself) and aesthetics is just "not ugliness" (the ugliness of the "nightmare surveillance capital world").
G) Unlike every other totally contingent epoch of humans, WE have control of everything we need to make the future we want, if we want it.
As for the terms above they are weakly deployed and often vague if not subject to easy substitution. While Anderson mentions Plato (once) when she initially discusses epistemology we soon learn that said epistemology is NOT one of the grand philosophical inquiries into what constitutes knowledge or how one accesses knowledge but is really just a word that means "culture", "language", and most especially "ideology." Frankly I cannot find one place where "ideologies" could not have replaced "epistemologies", especially in a Zizekian sense. For Anderson "epistemologies" are the basic frames of spontaneous cultural/social reference with which we encounter the world and categorize it (or, it's already categorized...unclear). But this is also EXACTLY what "cultural codes" are as well as "collective imaginary" and these terms are repeatedly put together, all three, side by side, in sentence after sentence. There is nothing here, whatsoever, about knowledge as such, the approach to knowledge, or even basic cognition (or even what frames cognition). For Anderson no one really ever "thinks", they just wander about in "epistemologies."
2) Shallow and Misguided History and Historiography are EVERYWHERE
Early in the text we are subject to a "matrix" of all civilizational and human history past and speculative. Anderson makes clear that this is quite reductionist but in some ways it is where she delves into greater detail that she commits absolute blunders. Anderson claims that the "premodern epoch" was consumed with "fundamentalism" but fundamentalism as such is part and parcel of modernity. "Literal" readings of The Bible, for instance, are a product of the late 19th century (just read the Church Fathers). Also, the 30 Years' War is lazily labeled a "war about religion" because there can be NO materialistic or economic basis of ANYTHING in Anderson’s historiography (except in a vague sense regarding technics). IN fact, the total lack of ANYTHING economic (apart from buzz words like "neo- liberalism") is a HUGE misstep. At one point Anderson rightly indicates that Nazism, Stalinism, and Maoism are all products of modernity but at other points she refers to these as "relapses" and ultimately Modernity=Freedom, Emancipation, and Liberal Democracy. Nazism, as such, is a mere "deformation."
But the GREATEST issue is her unquestioned promotion of the modernist truism that everything is getting "more complex" and that past epochs were necessarily "simpler." This is SUCH bullshit! A moment's reflection proves that the exact opposite true: the fully authentic "postmodern" subject is someone who doesn't grown their own food, make their own clothes, perform any acts of worship or ritual, or move in a world that has any true formal customs or manners as hierarchy is simply informal in day to day life. Seriously, we believe it is more complex because of "the internet" and "social media" and "algorithms" but people wear t-shirts, work from home on laptops where their entire job is writing emails, live alone without extended family, eat food out of boxes, have sex without any spiritual meaning, vote for clone politicians (that you have no real affection or loyalty towards), play video games and sleep. There are no real rites of passages, or authentic celebrations, or extended rituals, or even difficult relational negotiations for the fully postmodern subject (the one that is, apparently, so much more "complex"). Life is far more "simple" in the worst way possible. Just read anything from David Graeber to The Golden Bough to the Book of Leviticus or even just some Medieval Literature let alone Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. The world was much, much more complex in the past, socially, religiously, culturally, and politically.
Due to Anderson's almost total reliance on contemporary (modern and postmodern) sources/scholarship the reader encounters a strange, semi-whig view of history. While someone like Machiavelli looked back at Julius Caesar and Aristotle, or Marx reengaged the Gracchi, or Rene Guenon literally ALL tradition, the best Anderson can do is say "Beethoven came before Darwin and Darwin came before Nietzsche!" The past and present are ALWAYS in conversation and not in some totally residual way where just a sliver of premodernism still exists. Marx didn't see the Gracchi as inhabiting a "totally different epoch with a distinct epistemology" (although for him it was a different material era) nor did Machiavelli think such about Caesar. Time IS circular AND linear and always has been for all humans at all times. Anderson makes at once too little and far too much of these "unique" epochs.
3) Utilitarian, Arrogant, and Postmodern
Lastly, Anderson's unspoken ethic is a form of yuppie utilitarianism married to an arrogant postmodernism. The crowning chapter for this is titled "A Future Scenario" wherein she picks and chooses what is "best" from the past epochs. The stereotypes, again, are endemic and frankly laughable. We should look to the "Indigenous Epoch" to "return to nature" and revisit "spirituality" and "music" and "intimacy." Only the most sad sack, atomized loser would assume that this has simply disappeared en masse from the world. Once again, Anderson betrays herself as the PRIMER Postmodern Subject. She then performs a similar song and dance through the "premodern", "modern" and "postmodern" epochs. What is most distressing about this exercise is there is nothing intrinsically good, or bad, or right, or wrong, or beautiful, or necessary about the "positives" from previous epochs. Like a good postmodernist there is no such thing as "transcendence" for Anderson and one is free to "pick and choose" (or, SHE is free to pick and choose FOR YOU). Yes, nothing is really "true" or right...It's just that we "need" this "stuff" to maintain "emancipation" and "liberal democracy" and "freedom" and "responsibility" ("values" that have no value if they are not in service to something more). Eventually, she REALLY lets the cat out of the bag when she proclaims that the "good" metamodern future is a "network" (seriously??? how are these ideas "new?") that can be analogized to an archipelago of distinct "epistemologies" with bridges that allow the subject to go from one to the other without issue. Subjects will sail through a "personal meta-modern meaning web." In other words...POSTMODERNISM! Just "choose" what YOU want to think/believe/feel/do when you WANT to! Somehow this is "metamodernism" but I've heard this same shit my whole life in one way or another. How is this NOT the commodification of experience without making mention of material conditions? This IS postmodernism par excellence...the only difference is Anderson is arrogant enough to proclaim that such a regime is REQUIRED in the future and MUST be ENACTED OR ELSE!
Lastly, one comment more than any other shows that Anderson has NOTHING new that does not easily fit the ideology of being a deracinated consumer:
"We can also choose to refuse to deal with more than one 'thing' at the moment: in one setting, a church, for instance, I am 100% Christian and that's it; I insist on the right to immerse myself into this one particular mode of being and not consider anything else right now! As long as I am in this church, connecting spiritually with Jesus is my sole purpose!"
Only someone who has absolutely no connection, comprehension, or even the most basic appreciation of spirituality would type this shit up without blushing. TO BE A CHRISTIAN IS TO BE AS IMMERSED AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE WITH JESUS AT ALL TIMES, NOT JUST AT CHURCH AND TO PUT HIM FIRST ALWAYS! The same is true for anyone else practicing any true religion (once again, consult Guenon). She thinks she makes the opposite case but what she is really saying is: "Under a metamodern regime you ONLY need to be a 'Christian' at church! Ooooh! Think of the emancipation of having no identity!"
I have another book on my shelf of essays regarding metamodernism that hopefully is much better. It looks like honest to God THEORY and ANALYSIS (not some piss-poor facsimile of Sapians) and hopefully paints a totally distinct and UNIQUE portrait of metamordernity which isn't just a pseudo-futurist encomium to postmodern stakeholder-capitalism by another name.
January 21, 2023
It's tempting to dismiss the author based on the shallowness of some of her claims and assumptions, however that would be unfair. I respect her advocacy for an increased focus on localism, and her critique of post-modernism was perfectly valid. Her educational ideas were also interesting. It's just such a shame that she makes some laughably bad assumptions and false equivalences. I also enjoyed the bit where she criticises utopianism, and then goes on to present a utopian vision of her pet theory (I'm probably still being a bit unfair at this point).
Anyway, I don't read philosophy to agree with the author, I read philosophy to challenge my views and to get me thinking. In that regard, the book was a success. Well written, albeit with a number of poor semantic choices, and in desperate need of a proof read.
Anyway, I don't read philosophy to agree with the author, I read philosophy to challenge my views and to get me thinking. In that regard, the book was a success. Well written, albeit with a number of poor semantic choices, and in desperate need of a proof read.
August 11, 2022
I came to this book after reading John Higgs's " The Future Starts Here". They explore some similar ideas. Metamodernity points to a future that favours hope over despair, and suggests ways that we can draw on past traditions to find ways to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
August 14, 2022
Really enjoyed this concise overview of a subject that is difficult to break down concisely. I really think she pulled it off though. Great way to be introduced to the ideas of metamodernity. Then it’s on to Hanzi Freinacht!
March 8, 2023
waste of time
Vague and general. No model of meta or any other modernity. States the obvious and believes it is part of an answer. Trivial examples from education given. Nothing here.
Vague and general. No model of meta or any other modernity. States the obvious and believes it is part of an answer. Trivial examples from education given. Nothing here.
October 22, 2023
Very useful book, I’d be curious about a descriptive, rather than prescriptive treatment of metamodern social imaginaries.
But overall, I loved the breadth and ambition of the book, and found it very useful.
But overall, I loved the breadth and ambition of the book, and found it very useful.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews