Metamodernism

Iain McGilchrist doesn’t address Metamodernism anywhere in his books. This is the proposed name of a paradigm that has emerged after Postmodernism. Perhaps it was still too much of a novel idea while he was writing. However it’s been steadily gaining greater attention. And while there are differing descriptions of exactly what this paradigm might be, some do comport very well with the hemisphere hypothesis, and thus provide us with an entry point into a wider discussion. Etymologically, the term metataxis translates as “between, beyond”. Plato's metaxy denotes a movement between (meta) opposite poles as well as beyond (meta) them. In their essay Notes on Metamodernism, Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker write:

"Ontologically, metamodernism oscillates between the modern and the postmodern. It oscillates between a modern enthusiasm and a postmodern irony, between hope and melancholy, between naïveté and knowingness, empathy and apathy, unity and plurality, totality and fragmentation, purity and ambiguity. Indeed, by oscillating to and fro or back and forth, the metamodern negotiates between the modern and the postmodern."

Basically, the modern and the postmodern are both incomplete, both subject to error. And by navigating between them we are in a better position to avoid the pitfalls of either. In a sense, it is an answer to the "no free lunch" theorem. Those familiar with what Jonathan Rowson described as the McGilchrist Manoeuvre will note the similarity here. During a conversation with Michael Garfield, Zak Stein described Metamodernism succinctly:

“The Modern view of science is that science is truth. Period. It's very definite. The Postmodern view of science is that science is one view, and that there's actually many sciences. The Metamodern view essentially tries to say that both of those are true, within a specific context. Science works and actually discovers things. But the problem is that it's overstepped its context, and so it takes for example an experiment that was done under very closed conditions, in a laboratory, and pretends that what's discovered there applies to radically open systems outside the laboratory. The Metamodernist says "We have to pay attention to the 'moment of truth' in the Modern, and then contextualize it with the Postmodern alternative." The combination of the Modern and the Postmodern in a Metamodern reconvergence provides the very distinct possibility of a new historical epoch, a nonreductionistic, complex systems science. Many people on the fringes know this. Building institutions, building medical practice, and building educational practice around that "new paradigm" is what the Metamodern attempts to do." And again: “One of the things that characterizes the move beyond Postmodernism is a reemergence of objectivity, but not the simplistic Modern objectivity. It's an objectivity that has to do with the refraction of different perspectives, a new synthesis, a global Renaissance, that's more than a Modern view.”

Why would we need to advocate for a reconvergence in the first place? Consider some of the obstacles that are preventing this. One of these may be what's been called the “cynical genius illusion,” concerning which several research articles have been written. The Postmodern critique, particularly those forms that tend to view social interactions solely in terms of power and control, is sympathetic to a “negativity bias.” And according to Jamil Zaki, this can easily take us along the slippery slope from skepticism, to mistrust, to cynicism. Stein noted that philosophers like Roy Bhaskar have observed a sort of "crypto-normativism" that Postmodernism gives rise to. As Stein puts it, "the Postmodern critique is always implying that there is a better way, but is unwilling to state what the better way might be, because if you state the better way you now open yourself up to critique. Bhaskar wanted to actively counteract the overtly pessimistic and nihilist kind of critiques of the Postmodernist." We have seen a similar dynamic playing out in politics, where some individuals might advance specific policy platforms, while others seem only eager to criticize and deconstruct these, without articulating any substantial alternative of their own.

Stein suggests the possibility of a new "historical epoch," so one could certainly interpret Metamodernism within a sort of "grand cosmological Hegelian theory of history." I have little interest in the actual terminology. But what does interest me is the use of the  "Metamodern" term to help 1) reveal the limitations of any "-modernism" through opposition, and 2) suggest that complementarity, rather than elimination or a simple synthesis, may be a more preferable response. The Metamodern reconvergence has attracted diverse writers. In his book More Deaths than One (2014), the New Zealand writer and singer-songwriter Gary Jeshel Forrester wrote that "It's okay to search for values and meaning, even as we continue to be skeptical." And in Metamodernity: Meaning and Hope in a Complex World (2019) Lene Rachel Anderson claims "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." Jonathan Rowson wrote: 

"The point of invoking metamodernity is not to insist on this name for a chronological phase of time, but to resolve to characterise a cultural epoch with a Kairological quality of time... to feel into what it means to be in a time between worlds, where meta-crises relating to meaning and perception abound and we struggle to perceive clearly who we are and what we might do... To be metamodern is to be caught up in the co-arising of hope and despair..."

Metamodern education

Zak Stein: “The modern innovation of schooling is a result of the separation of church and state. (Note: There was progress in that move. The 30 Years War, for example, was bad. That was religion.) But today there's an incoherence of how we make meaning, of our identity in life, death, and tragedy. They're basically not telling you “what it all means.” You just go in, up, and out, and don't really question “Why am I doing this?” But the smartest ones will want an answer to that question.

If no one actually answers that, or if all the answers are obviously not enough, then there's built-up tension. So sometimes I think we misunderstand as attention-deficit what is really the tension produced by the absence of an answer. There's a pent-up desire for this. When there's a sense of why, and when my motivation and the motivation of what I'm doing aligns, it all feels right and I can do it.

There's a basic problem when we can't say good, true, and beautiful things about the nature of the situation we're putting the youth in. And they know it. So of course they’re not paying attention. Oh, they're paying a lot of attention to other things, just not to you, and not to school. This is part of the dynamic of the educational crisis. It is part of the larger “legitimacy crisis,” the absence or inability to secure political legitimacy or investment in the project of cooperation, which is society. That's one of those things education has to do, or the center falls apart.”

On the Metamodernism and the post-tragic: "How do we have conversations about topics of 'existential risk' and 'catastrophic risk'? We had to experience fearing having those conversations with the youth as Covid began. The fear of having to have the conversation about 'when billions watch millions die' and there's nothing they can do about it. I talk about the need for the future of education to be ‘post-tragic’ in terms of its orientation in psychology. Basically it means there are different ways to relate to tragedy. Tragedy is inevitable. If you believe tragedy is not inevitable then you're in the 'pre-tragic' state of consciousness. How do you move from the denial of tragedy, to stepping into tragedy (without getting stuck in it), and then to the post-tragic? It's not a new denial of tragedy. It's being in the tragedy still, but having also found a way to manage and transcend the tragedy, phenomenologically, psychologically, emotionally.

During the tragedy it's very hard to laugh and love. In the post-tragic there's laughter and love again, but it's different from the pre-tragic laughter and love. That's a simple characterization. But as educators thinking about this dynamic of intergenerational transmission, do we lie to our kids and give them a pre-tragic view? Do we traumatize them by getting them stuck in the tragic, and telling them there's no way out? Or do we have some way to actually become post-tragic? How do we tell stories about our own history that are not just simply tragedies?" 

Metamodern politics

Trump is an oligarch who openly admires other greedy, power hungry people. In a sense, he really walks the talk. And if we happen to agree with his ethos, that can seem very compelling. But greed sees no use for higher values like social equity. And what many Americans want, though they cannot easily find, is a politician who holds higher values, and has a record of putting those above their self interest.

Politicians across the political spectrum have forgotten values for the most part and are still dealing with the cultural legacy of postmodern cynicism. So, on one side we have self-aggrandizing greed, and the other side is a confused vacuum. What we need is a strong sense of values to confront greed, but all we can muster is, as Jonathan Rowson put it, “an avalanche of cliches and platitudes, cheered on by an unthinking crowd desperate to believe in something.” That isn't enough. So we get the greedy monster instead.

Apathy, false equivalence, the “bothsidesism” that tries to justify cynical disengagement from politics, all played a role. Sure, Trump is bad, they say, but the other side is more of the same “business as usual,” the same corporate criminals and war hawks, that got us to this point to begin with. To a significant extent that is true. When you are empty and stand for nothing behind the words, anti-value is what you get. It seizes the opportunity. Rowson again, “Those who lament Trump’s victory should also lament the absence of a powerful story of the present and vision of the future - that is an even bigger problem than Trump’s victory, and part of its basis.” George Lakoff and Gil Duran wrote: 

“All politics are moral politics. Trump won because he has tapped into something deep in the American psyche: Strict Father morality. This is a hierarchical view of the world, rooted in the metaphor of a family with a dictator-like patriarch whose word is law. Millions of American brains are wired to accept this moral system, and this is why none of the facts about Trump (his impeachments, his convictions, his lies) mattered. Moving forward, Democrats must stop ignoring the metaphorical and moral frameworks underlying our politics… Unfortunately, Trump reflects the values of many Americans – even those whose “self-interest” is clearly threatened by his policies… They identify with his projection of dominance and strength, and it matters more than their own gender or racial identity.” 

There’s nothing inherently wrong with a hierarchical view of the world (often associated with Modernism), indeed hierarchies are everywhere and very few things would function or make sense without them. But, and this is a very big “but”, we need to understand them correctly and not have a delusional view on them. Trump’s authoritarianism is a delusional, completely inverted moral hierarchy. Not only is this ethically illegitimate, it’s built on a foundation of lies. And the only reason it has attracted as much support as it has is that Democrats have apparently given up that game (the influence of Postmodernism). They aren’t advancing much of a moral hierarchy of their own to confront inverted one Trump presents us with, and connect it to the evidence needed to back it up. Where there are no convictions there is no courage to act. As David Brin wryly noted, "there are reasons why the all out assault on all fact-professions is the core agenda" underlying Trump's rise to power.