The general idea here is that ethnic tensions are to be resolved through a high degree of exposure of ethnic groups to each other, and that more diversity is almost always preferable to less.
The problem with multiculturalism is of course that it does not qualify which kinds of diversity are good, in what quantities, and under what circumstances. It’s just that diversity is good in-and-of-itself, which is then taken as a dogma, and it is often seen as unethical to even question this assumption: multiculturalism is good, period. This naturally leaves the field open to all sorts of dysfunctional social and cultural practices to be defended in the name of ethnic or cultural diversity, be it forced marriages, brainwashing and scaring children with de facto ghost stories, or female circumcision.
Inter-culturalism has important roots in anthropology and ethnology. What anthropologists have found time and again is that the modern project—its bureaucracy, market and “civilization”—has oppressed and destroyed the life-worlds of smaller societies, disrespecting their ways of seeing the world and ruining their societal dynamics. In our days, this view is perhaps most famously represented by the anthropologist James C. Scott, who has argued in Seeing Like a State (1998) and Against the Grain (2017) that all development from agriculture and onwards may be a mistake. Anthropologists hang out with animist cultures and notice that life there isn’t so bad. They notice there are many “beauties lost”, and that there is a profound richness and diversity which is tragically effaced by modern civilization. So the stance generally becomes to defend the minority cultures against discrimination and oppression from the majority. A defense of understanding, multiplicity, diversity—and a critical distance to one’s own culture.
On a strictly logical level, the inter-culturalist idea doesn’t really work. It emphasizes that all cultures are equal, and that each of them has a right to exist, but it is still somehow preferable with more different cultures rather than fewer. This leads to self-contradictions: a) If all cultures are equal, this means that cultures which work against multiculturalism and seek to retain isolation and purity should also be seen as equal; b) if all cultures have a right to be preserved, they must also be allowed to defend themselves from subcultures splitting off, which then works against a greater diversity; and c) if all cultures should be exposed to one another, this leads to monoculture, which often effaces cultural differences in the first place.
TRANS-CULTURALISM
Trans-culturalism is a multi-perspectival and developmental view of cultures and ethnicities; it sees all of these as being in constant flux. In a way, it is the synthesis of the three former perspectives.
Cultures and ethnic identities can always be transformed, and they should be transformed to be the best versions of themselves, whenever this is possible without destabilizing people’s lives too much. Even if humans do need cultures, shared imaginaries, narratives, histories, customs, traditions and other vital aspects of Gemeinschaft —this does not mean that all current cultural forms and expressions are necessarily good and conducive to sustainable human flourishing, or that all combinations of cultures are mutually enriching under all circumstances.
It is an empirical matter of when cultures spur development and exchange with each other, or when they create pathological dissonances that breed conflict, confusion, insecurity and resentment. The answer, naturally, differs from case to case. And it is a matter of cultural discourse and exchange to determine which values should—in the long run—trump which other values. Is freedom better than chastity? Under the circumstances of modern life, yes! Are human rights better than respecting the logic of caste systems? Yes. Is equality better than slavery? Yes. Is peace-loving better than war? Yes. Is gender equality better than patriarchy? Yes. Are animal rights (or some other version of caring for all sentient beings) better than anthropocentrism? Yes. This does not mean that these values should be defended at all costs, that they should be forced upon all people under all circumstances. It is simply not worth the rapid breakdown of someone else’s world, or an ethnic cleansing, or an inquisition, or a Thought Police. But given the choice, given the chance, we can and should evolve cultures.
Cultures have a right to exist, but it is not an absolute right. And in the last instance, all cultures will change and evolve either way, so we might as well have some ideas regarding in which direction they should develop.
But that does not mean certain cultures have infinite rights to impose their values upon others; it just means the more universal and functional values should be allowed to win in a longer Darwinian struggle, and that such victories should be secured in the least painful and detrimental way possible. Cultures generally have something to learn from one another—and the aim of trans-culturalism is to make sure that this exchange is genuinely enriching, sustainable and conducive to human flourishing.
Trans-culturalism corresponds to a more metamodern take on ethnicity. In academia you can find early beginnings of a trans-culturalist perspective among sociologists, such as Michael O. Emerson’s and George Yancey’s 2010 book, Transcending Racial Barriers: Toward a Mutual Obligations Approach .
The best example I know of trans-culturalism in action is in the Belgian town of Mechelen, under the ingenious mayor Bart Somers, who also received a “World Mayor Prize 2016” for his efforts. Belgium was the European country with the largest per capita outflow of ISIS fighters. But Mechelen, with a population of some 85,000, has had no such registered cases. A couple of decades ago, the town had plenty of ethnic tensions, a large group of alienated immigrant inhabitants and growing nationalist and racist sentiments. All of this was turned around by a number of policies and practices under the leadership of Somers. Initially, the city established a much stronger police presence on the streets so that people could feel safe. Hence, housing prices stopped falling in “unsafe areas” and segregation was curbed. Then, they had forceful information campaigns against discrimination and racism, urging tolerance and openness as civic obligations of all citizens, creating a common civic identity around such values. Then the municipality officials talked the white middle-class families into putting their kids back into the schools with many children of immigrants, family by family—hundreds of them—by giving them specific guarantees of how the quality of their kids’ education would be preserved. Then they put higher pressure on dysfunctional immigrant families to fulfill their social obligations and live up to their increased status in society, offering to support the civic actors who played important parts in this. And then—this is where it gets really radical—they sent Muslim kids on special study trips to Córdoba, Spain, where they learned about the era when Islam was a dignified European power and Córdoba was a center of science and tolerance, a multicultural society ahead of its time. The kids were thereby presented with a positive narrative of what it means to be Muslim: to be a pinnacle of enlightened civilization, as the Caliphate of Córdoba was in the 10th century AD.
You see what they did there? Mayor Somers and his crew took a majority culture and pushed it towards tolerance, and they took a minority culture and gently pushed for its transformation in a progressive direction. That’s trans-culturalism in action, and it is also the beginnings of metamodern Gemeinschaft Politics—and the beginnings of the listening society. How cool is that? [82]
All of this is an example of what smart Gemeinschaft Politics might look like. Imagine if what Mayor Somers is doing was already part and parcel of how societies diffuse ethnic tensions. And could it be further developed? Maybe there could be meeting places and settings that provide facilitated exchanges between different ethnicities? Wouldn’t that dramatically improve society, lessen ethnic tensions and create a firmer basis for a transnational global community?
Yes, it’s an increased level of the intimacy of control. But is it oppressive and manipulative? Or is it
just constructive and liberating? Should sociological, cultural and ethnic issues really be beyond the scope of the political realm?
Stupid forms of Gemeinschaft Politics will be nationalist, non-nationalist, or inter-culturalist. Smart Gemeinschaft Politics will be trans-culturalist.
Post-Feminism and Gender Antagonism
Another Gemeinschaft topic that would deserve a book, or at least a chapter, of its own, is gender relations and feminism. But we’ll have to do with a measly subchapter in this book since we’ve got so much ground to cover if we ever want to establish what metamodern politics is—so that we can begin conspiring about how to non-linearly save those millions of lives.
There’s just no limit to how central gender relations are to society. It’s just that important. I mean, if you miss this perspective, and gender relations get screwed up, you seriously screw over every other aspect of society.
Consider the following:
Sexuality is ever-present in our psyches, affecting our moods, feelings, decisions, behaviors and relations in every moment.
We stay within our gender identities at all times, and these also affect a very significant part of our economic and political behaviors. A very large part of all things we do are somehow related to having, keeping or managing spouses, partners or just the possibilities of these.
Gender relations and roles are at the center of sexual and romantic relations, which are the deepest and strongest relations in most people’s lives and the foundation for family formation.
As the sociologist Francesco Alberoni famously observed, falling in love is central to the transformations of our personalities, and thus to our developmental psychologies. Falling in love connects our carnal lust and animal body to our highest spiritual strivings—it’s an “all-level affair”. And falling in love, and how this plays out, has everything to do with the interactions between the genders.
As the classical psychologist Erik Erikson observed, erotic and romantic relations are at the center of certain universal life phases, and are thus either conducive to our mental health or our ruin.
Family formations, in turn, are the basis of secure attachment patterns and good upbringing, which are instrumental to all human growth and flourishing.
When people are sexually and romantically rejected, dissatisfied and humiliated, this translates into a profound bitterness that easily combines with destructive ethnic or political identities, as well as criminality and delinquency.
By far most psychological issues that people have are about relations to other people, and the largest category of related problems have to do with love, eroticism and sexuality.
If people are less satisfied and more insecure in their gender identities and love lives, this undermines trust between people. They will simply be much more prepared to betray one another to satisfy their sad, aching hearts.
If people have gender identities which are not acknowledged by their surroundings, this causes immense suffering and confusion. Transgender people, for instance, frequently display mental health issues and have high suicide rates.
In many contemplative traditions—not only tantric and yogic ones—sexuality is used as a transformative practice, as there are always strong currents of sexual and sensual impulses flowing through us.
Gender inequalities are interlinked with gender roles and identities and with the games of love and family relations, and they underpin many of the most destructive inequalities in the world. Discrimination of women is a major hindrance to economic growth in poor countries and a major source to gendered and sexualized violence.
Men are also discriminated against, being seen as more expendable than women, and more pressured to “be a success”, which often makes them unable to be honest and vulnerable.
During good sex, some people experience their “highest” moments in life, meaning the highest subjective states, as discussed in Book One. This means it is here they breach their boundaries for what they know is possible in life and existence.
The first thing anthropologists study when they try to describe how a certain foreign society works is how the system of marriage, sexual reproduction and inheritance works—as this is the basis of a society’s social logic and its self-preservation.
Most sad songs and poems are about love.
Right, so if you think you can create a good and healthy society without dealing with what I will here call “the gender-sexuality-family-formation complex ”, (to catch all of these interrelated issues under one banner) you are just not being realistic.
Gender and sex issues are at the very heart of society. If you mess them up, you mess up society in very profound and far-reaching ways. Any Gemeinschaft Politics worth its salt should actively and deliberately seek to heal and develop the gender relations of society.
At this point I will refrain from giving the whole list (from a traditionalist gender politics, to a modern one, to a postmodern one) and just jump right to the metamodern perspective.
A smart Gemeinschaft Politics would work from a post-feminist perspective , applying a developmental-behavioral understanding, evolving the very landscapes of desire , and seeking to reduce gender antagonism in society. A very important contributor to the apparent ubiquity of societal problems in the realm of sex, love and reproduction are the paradoxes of love and desire which seem built into the human psyche.
POST-FEMINISM
Basically, the post-feminist position is one that accepts the “queer feminist” idea that gender roles change with historical circumstances and culture, and that ideas about genders and their interactions can and should continuously be critically reconstructed to optimize for new circumstances—but doesn’t buy the feminist idea that there is one “toxic” mainstream ideal of masculinity (which is pitted against the feminine underdog), and that if “patriarchy is crushed” then people will become free from gender roles and their oppression.
Post-feminism gets its name by transcending and including feminism: Once we have accepted the basic feminist tenets, then what? What comes after? Post-feminism is a both-and position: both feminism and masculism . Both women’s issues (sexual harassment, lower wages, lesser political power, pressures to conform to body ideals, slut-shaming, etc.) and men’s issues (expendability, having dangerous jobs, easily being considered losers when asking for help, homelessness, higher suicide rates, crime and incarceration, more physical violence, etc.). Both anti-discrimination of sexual minorities, and the facilitation of positive heterosexual relations and secure attachment patterns for family formation. Both teaching men how to become more successful at dating and picking up sexual partners, and to respect sexual boundaries and not sexually objectify women. Both defending the right to be a hipster beta-male, and to be a tough masculine guy; both a butch, and a pink girlie-girl. Both solidarity with the jaw-dropping babes, and with the chronically unfuckable.
There is a scale from classically masculine to feminine values, demeanors and behaviors. Post-feminism defends the whole scale: the right for people to move freely and explore across all of it. It doesn’t defend the androgynous at the expense of sexual polarities, or vice versa. It defends all points of the scale; the entire richness of human gender and sexual expression. This means, some people will settle for traditional gender roles while others will be queer shape-shifters. All should be defended.
SHIFTING THE LANDSCAPES OF DESIRE
This defense of “the whole scale of genders and sexualities”, and all dimensions of it, is made possible by taking a developmental view of the gender-sexuality-family-formation complex. Post-feminists recognize that the problems is not—as classical feminists and queer feminists believe—“that evil patriarchal oppression”, assuming that people would be free to express their sexualities openly and fairly if it went away.
It’s that people are insufficiently developed to tackle these sensitive issues productively. It�
��s that we are too poor at taking the perspectives of one another across genders and sexualities; it’s that we are too insecure about our own positive gender identities; it’s that we have lacking social skills to entertain and seduce one another in playful and respectful ways; it’s that we know too little about the social dynamics between the sexes; it’s that we carry too much subtle dissatisfaction and bitterness; it’s that we simply have had too few and insufficiently instructive sexual experiences; it’s that we feel good romantic and sexual relations are scarce rather than abundant in our lives; it’s that we have too few reliable friends with whom we can really talk about these issues; it’s that we don’t feel safe and comfortable enough to express our needs and insecurities to one another; that we are unable to listen and take it in when others talk about intimate and sensitive matters; that we’re not good enough in setting and maintaining healthy social boundaries; that we don’t manage to show sufficient respect for one another’s boundaries; that we have insufficient self-knowledge about our innermost needs in the first place; that we don’t feel we can afford brutal and direct honesty—the list goes on.
Do you see it? It’s not some evil structure out there. It’s our own lacking development. We—as human beings, as biological, behavioral organisms—lack the right properties to interact in good enough ways. And we all suffer for it. Men are left with that strange hunger and those somber thoughts at the outer rims of our minds, things that rumble deep inside and seldom give us peace. Women are left with a sense of fundamental unsafety and resentment, a subtle sense of betrayal. It goes on everywhere, all the time. It affects all aspects of society.
If a smart Gemeinschaft Politics was in place, it would actively and deliberately deal with all of these issues on a long-term demographic level. People would be supported through the educational system and throughout life in a wide variety of ways to grow in sexual, emotional, romantic and relational skill and self-knowledge. If the average personal development of a population shifts—if we all act less insecurely, greedily, immaturely and defensively—then the whole game of life changes.
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