Daniel Görtz

“Let’s return to the main argument. People are hurting as hell. It matters. We should do something to make them happier, if we can.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“Polarization (and Trumpism) is in itself a kind of political crisis. But all of this would be fine in the long run,
if the stakes weren’t so high and the time frames so narrow. As a world-system, we really don’t have the time
for Trumpism and the like. Global warming and the rapid changes pertaining to the internet age won’t wait. We are
entering a time of unprecedented transformation and we are in dire need of politics that are progressive—in the
sense that they anticipate and productively respond to the upcoming multidimensional crisis—revolution.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“In plain English, you need to wrestle the doubts and accusations that it’s all just bullshit. And, needless to say, the majority of the work of the triple-H population is undeniably so. The reason that it’s so valuable to society is just that some of it isn’t bullshit and even a small percentage of genuine innovations of software, culture or lifestyle can have a huge impact. Still, you never quite know if you are the bullshitter or the hero, or if you are being sold utter bullshit.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“We fail to take responsibility, to act productively in the interest of ourselves and others. And in our attempts at a better life, we are often severely limited or thwarted by the immature and socially inept behavior of ourselves and others. There is a great fabric of relations, behaviors and emotions, reverberating with human and animal bliss and suffering, a web of intimate and formal relations, both direct and indirect. Nasty whirlwinds of feedback cycles blow through this great multidimensional web, pulsating with hurt and degradation. My lacking human development blocks your possible human development. My lack of understanding of you, your needs perspectives, hurts you in a million subtle ways. I become a bad lover, a bad colleague, a bad fellow citizen and human being. We are interconnected: You cannot get away from my hurt and wounds. They will follow you all of your life—I will be your daughter’s abusive boyfriend, your belligerent neighbor from hell. And you will never grow wings because there will always be mean bosses, misunderstanding families and envious friends. And you will tell yourself that is how life must be. But it is not how life has to be. Once you begin to be able to see the social-psychological fabric of everyday life, it becomes increasingly apparent that the fabric is relatively easy to change, to develop. Metamodern politics aims to make everyone secure at the deepest psychological level, so that we can live authentically; a byproduct of which is a sense of meaning in life and lasting happiness; a byproduct of which is kindness and an increased ability to cooperate with others; a byproduct of which is deeper freedom and better concrete results in the lives of everyone; a byproduct of which is a society less likely to collapse into a heap of atrocities.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One