“But what about climate change! The runaway climate doesn’t have time to wait for generations of shifted human consciousness.”
The transformation to metamodern politics and a listening society can hardly be expected to suddenly get all countries of today to sign a satisfying climate agreement. That work needs to proceed within the dissatisfying boundaries of the here-and-now of international politics. But that does not mean it cannot get help from the emerging metamodern structures. And if disaster does strike and we get a 5°C or more rise in global temperature or an AI or nanotech induced calamity in fifty years, we’re going to need every bit of the metamodern layer of governance we can get to handle the crisis at all. Regardless of how you look at it, metamodern politics is what must be done. Also, the abovementioned transpersonal swarms are needed to solve the climate crisis—so let’s create a society that empowers them in a far-reaching manner.
Besides, do you really think you will get even the resemblance of good environmental politics without Empirical Politics? Think again. Do you think you will get biospheric and deep-ecological consciousness in the general population without Existential Politics and Politics of Theory? That, my friend, is un informed naivety.
“Elitism and arrogance! Self-flattery! Exclusive club!”
You are right to worry there are some pitfalls here: If we think of ourselves as “the metamodern aristocracy” we may be deluding ourselves and falling for seductive self-flattery and patting each other’s backs. It may even invite megalomania, undue immunity to the perspectives of others deemed “less developed”—and less-than-epic marathons of the Dunning-Kreuger effect may follow. [122]
We do, however, have a couple of safeguards against this. One thing is that the developmental models presented in Book One include at least some measurable aspects. Hence, it is possible to check oneself and one another for realistic expectations in terms of our capabilities. People of very high complexity tend to have a rich history of groundbreaking innovations. [123] You can check if someone understands the metamodern code or not by asking them probing questions: Either they can describe them correctly and reason independently around them or they cannot. As for ourselves, we can check for inner states and depth and hopefully be able to assess ourselves realistically: If you didn’t have a cosmic full-body orgasm last night, you’re not that high state after all, etc. And then there’s always the general “know thyself”; we all have lots of weaknesses, even if we happen to have this or that developmental property. As long as humans are involved, it is unavoidable that a certain degree of elitism and unproductive arrogance sneaks in.
On the other hand, political metamodernism needs to be elitist in the sense that it has to target and engage highly competent people of high effective value meme. This, of course, leaves out most of us. But it is, after all about “saving millions of lives”. And it doesn’t make sense to charge such a project with a demand that “everybody should feel welcome” and be included. At a minimum, you need to be able to read this book and critically reflect upon it, and you need to have the time and opportunity to do so. We’re doing serious and dangerous work here; we need to be relatively exclusive and hold ourselves and one another to high standards. If you want to play professional football or do heart surgery, you need great skills to do so—same goes for doing metamodern politics. What can and must be avoided, however, is that unfair biases exclude people from taking part, or that people are unnecessarily alienated. Other than that, metamodern activists don’t owe it to anyone that they should be included. No apologies made.
And then again, seeing as political metamodernism is a virus which aims to eventually infect the entire political spectrum and then nimbly surf the dialectics that flow from competing political parties, it does actually include “everybody”. Metamodernism works by finding ways to include the deeper partial truths of people’s perspectives and to have solidarity with these: and in that sense it is not exclusive at all. This is true not least because, if people are empowered by a listening society and have much better relations and inner development, they will be able to act freely in swarms. So it’s not elitist in that sense.
A word of warning: If you commit to working with political metamodernism, people will try to use the charges of elitism against you. Some of it may be warranted, but some of it is Sklavenmoral ; i.e. insincere calls for humility to stop you from making truth claims that conflict with their own ideas. It’s not always simple to tell the difference, and it takes practice, and sometimes it may be a combination of both. Just be kind and polite, don’t get derailed, go home and reflect and be kind to yourself and remember you don’t owe them any excuses.
“This is the ‘Nordic ideology’… What about the US?”
Since many readers are from the US, this question comes up: As a country, the US has the world’s largest metamodern population in absolute numbers, a relatively dynamic market economy and a strong civil society—but unfortunately also a rigid two-party system, with wealthy special interests holding too great influence over politics. Arguably, this hinders any successful execution of the “sinister plot” as outlined above. Besides, the US bureaucracy as a whole has been on a steady decline for decades and it may be difficult to build a new layer on top of it: too much rotten wood. So you are right to wonder what could possibly be done to create a significant force of political metamodernism in America.
Fundamentally, political metamodernism is a global project. It calls for, as argued by some political thinkers (such as philosopher James Tully), for an expansion of citizenship itself . So the main task is to make it take hold somewhere in the world and to begin to compete on the world market, leading by example. And that “somewhere” doesn’t have to be over the rainbow.
It is easier to imagine such transformations occurring in small, nimble states with highly functional bureaucracies. Metamodern activists who are US citizens may find it wiser to think transnationally and to help out metamodern activists in other parts of the world first . They may also focus on changing society within the boundaries of smaller progressive cities, such as Boulder Colorado or San Francisco. Simply building a transnational network of metamodern activists can facilitate future entrances of metamodernism into US politics. And surely there must be more pathways for the creative.
“Democracy in China?”
Yes, the question of democracy in China may be a fateful one for the direction of the world-system as a whole. The clock is ticking, “the count-down for democracy”, as discussed in Chapter 10. As American hegemony is waning, Chinese power seems to waxing and an increasingly confident Chinese government has begun to challenge democratic powers and values head on—for instance by imprisoning a critical journalist and Swedish-Chinese citizen after arresting him in Thailand, charging him with fake crimes—and then telling the protesting EU countries to, more or less, go take a hike. At the same time, China is expanding its infrastructure and foreign direct investments so as to interconnect the Eurasian continent around a central Chinese hub while boasting that they seek to spread their form of governance in the world—all the while retracting on independent assessments scores of democracy and freedom.
Even more frighteningly, the Chinese government censors the internet—lately they got rid of Winnie the Pooh (true story, this was after people started using the yellow stuffed animal as a symbol for their leader XI Jinping) and, more tellingly perhaps, they have banned George Orwell’s books 1984 and Animal Farm . It is safe to assume that anybody who has something to fear from Winnie the Pooh certainly has a lot to hide.
China even has a surveillance system that scores citizens for their degree of complacency, “Sesame Credit”, affecting every aspect of one’s life and career opportunities within the country. University professors in Australia and elsewhere complain about the
easily hurt and offended Chinese students who will tolerate no slights against their country’s government. And of course, Xi Jinping is breaking the tradition of passing on power by staying in office for a longer period than what has been custom.
And yet, this bold new China has a strangely alluring power, not least as its authoritarian system allows for holding back consumption in favor of investments; and these investments can more easily take on more long-term goals such as large and admittedly dazzling infrastructure projects and transitions to sustainable energy (being the world’s greatest solar cell producer).
Could then political metamodernism find its way to the Middle Kingdom? Could it offer paths to democratize China? It is clear that Chinese society is pretty far away from anything like political metamodernism. But there is always a chink in the armor, always some unseen potential. If you think transnationally, it is possible to imagine that some lead-by-example parts of the world could inspire Chinese leadership and some of its population. For China, going directly for metamodern politics may be a more appealing route to create “a listening society” with all six new forms of politics than first transitioning to modern liberal democracy. This, however, can and would be very risky since Chinese society at large would be entirely unprepared. Hence crude and perverted versions of metamodernism could turn into totalitarian nightmares and/or collapse. Remember what causes pathologies above everything else, as discussed in Book One: developmental imbalances. If you try to use metamodern ideas from a, relatively speaking, immaturely modern mindset, and you have the unchecked power to do so, it can get very ugly.
Even as things stand today, Chinese authorities and its state-controlled media attempt to portray the Chinese system as a “direct and/or deliberative democracy” which they claim is more in tune with the cultural heritage of China—sometimes with the help of bought Western academics. They try to hide the crude dictatorship behind the thin mask of “another system”, of supposed radical deliberative democracy.
On the one hand this suggests that Chinese intellectuals and leaders may want to take up political metamodernism in the future (they’re already talking the talk, maybe that will lead to some attempts to walk the walk); on the other hand, it suggests metamodernism may find its most perverted expressions in China. Perhaps we will even live in a world ruled by a superpower that oppresses us with manipulative and intimate technologies of surveillance and control.
We have all the reason to shudder. I’m not optimistic about the matter, but the question about China’s role remains unavoidable. The best way ahead is to try to see and affect the attractor points at the earliest possible stage.
“The economy! The economy!”
A very important aspect of all this concerns the evolving economic system and its changing characteristics at the centers of the world-system and the hubs where cultural development has progressed the farthest. Many readers will feel this analysis is incomplete without seeing how it relates to the economy and, to some extent, to post-capitalism and the rise of cultural capital—and how all of this connects to the listening society and to increasing the average effective value meme. This will be addressed in my other book, Outcompeting Capitalism .
Still, though, it should be underscored that the obsession with economics can prevent people from understanding the main points of this book. And the ideas presented here do make up a coherent whole and they can be applied even without a further structural analysis of the economy of the internet age. Suffice to say here that the listening society transforms the economy across all six dimensions of inequality and thus brings about greater agency in the world. This means that resources are used in more efficient ways in terms of happiness and ecological footprint. Hence, political metamodernism and post-capitalism are married to one another.
“Wait! Please, again . And how did all of this stuff about six new forms of politics relate to the development of a new layer of governance called ‘the listening society’, to raising the average developmental stage of the population, to higher freedom, deeper equality and the development of ‘better’ norms in society come about? And how will that ‘save’ us?”
Okay, you just summarized the entire book in one question. The point is that if all of these six forms of politics are instituted and affect people for decades, they will together, in many and complex ways, change us as human beings and change our relations to one another. They are developmental forms of politics, each aiming at dynamically changing subtle parts of what it means to be a human being. Hence, the human life-course will change in its entirety, and new patterns will emerge throughout all of society. As psychology, behavior, culture and system develop, humanity will self-organize in new manners, and all of life will be recreated. Maybe that won’t “save” us. But it might give us a flying chance. And that isn’t so bad.
“And how does all of that connect to general cultural metamodernism? Magical realism, pragmatic romanticism, informed naivety, proto-synthesis, transcend and include, both-and thinking, reconstruction following deconstruction, relative utopia, transpersonalism, dividualism, the view from complexity and attractors, fractality, the death of the liberal innocent, super-secular but radical spirituality, the expansion of arts into all realms of life, a non-deterministic, self-critical developmentalism and sincere irony?”
Nice punch. The point is that if you have this cultural background understanding, this kind of embodiment, you are capable of planting metamodern seeds throughout society. Without this battery of breathed and lived understanding you can still play a part, but you cannot be that real change in the world because you’ll get stuck in the contradictions of modernism or postmodernism. Ultimately, you need to be metamodern to do political metamodernism. Even if the metamodern emergence is transpersonal and can consist of patterns of a lot of different bits scattered over many different people (like a “bit torrent” download), there still need to be some central actors that act more deliberately and consciously. A metamodern society cannot emerge without metamodernists.
“Lastly, then: How do we get to a transnational metamodern world order?”
Again, I’m glad you asked. This dialogue is promising for any future co-creative collaboration between us.
The goal here is to hijack governance structures of nation states, city administrations and perhaps companies or the UN and use them to build a transnational layer of governance while competing on the world market by cultivating a listening society. The nation state is slowly transformed into a part of a transnational meshwork and people’s need for belonging and meaning are fulfilled in other ways than through nationalism: Gemeinschaft Politics, Existential Politics and so forth. If you lose the control of some areas, go elsewhere, keep playing, help each other.
Basically, we need to found something like The Transnational . Much like the communists had the International (there is and have been a bunch of them, including socialist and anarchist ones). And then we conspire (the literal meaning of which is: breathing together) openly and transparently to change the world with transnational, transpartisan, non-linear, co-developmental politics with a view from complexity. We improve upon the code, strengthen the network, gather key competences as we sensitively try to understand the twists and turns of the world-system. We look for places of opportunity, globally. We look to places to act, for ways to engage—for “pressure points” we can work on; for the right moments. We work on our relationships to each other and we help one another out.
With sincere irony, we work and play patiently to increase the potentialities and likelihoods of radical metamodern emergences in the world. There’s always a glimmer somewhere.
—
And that concludes this second part of the book. That’s the Master Pattern of the Nordic ideology; the seeds of which can bloom into transnational political metamodernism re
sonating throughout the world.
PART THREE
The Proof: Nordic Ideology
Chapter 19:
REQUIEMS FOR MODERN IDEOLOGIES
“Soon to fill our lungs the hot winds of death
The gods are laughing, so take your last breath”
— Fight Fire with Fire , by Metallica
Remember what I promised on the first page of Book One? I contended that political metamodernism beats all the modern ideologies on their own terms: It is more egalitarian than socialism (and social democracy), freer than libertarianism and classical liberalism, more sustainable/resilient/regenerative than ecologism, more sensible and prudent than conservatism, and more radically rebellious than anarchism. Now it’s time to deliver on that promise.
This third and last part of the book is, by the way, much shorter. It only has two chapters, one on mainstream modern ideologies and one on the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century—and then an epilogue that closes both Book One and Two on this metamodern guide to politics.
Subtle Memetic Revolution
The main work of this book is done.
Now that you have learned what the Nordic ideology is, and how it aims to construct a listening society with six interacting, ongoing political processes, we can look at each of the modern ideologies and see how they don’t hold up against political metamodernism. Defeating them in theory is one thing, but outcompeting them in practice may of course be a more complicated affair. At least we are given valuable hints about how it can be done. And we get to pan out some ideas about this “Green Social Liberalism 2.0” in the process.
Nordic Ideology Page 46
