The Listening Society — Part I
This review and a summary covers part one of “The Listening Society”, it contains “the basics of metamodern politics”.
“There are three parts of political meta-modernism:
The Listening Society — which is the welfare of the future, a welfare that includes the emotional needs and supports the psychological growth of all citizens.
Co-Development — which is a kind of political thinking that works across parties, works to keep ego-issues and emotional investments and biased opinions in check, and seeks to improve the general climate of political discourse: “I develop if you develop”.
The Nordic Ideology — this is my name for the political structure that would support the long-term creation of the listening society and make room for co-development. It is called the Nordic ideology because its early sprouts are cropping up in and around Scandinavia.”
Political meta-modernism as outlined above (verbatim extract from the book) is justified on the grounds that modernity has hit its limits and can no longer serve to deal with our complex global challenges related to sustainability of ecosystems and inequality of social systems.
This is the best metaphor of political meta-modernism I have come across so far:
“Idealistic, naive child of modernity, develops into a cynical, ironic teenager of post-modernism who in turn may develop into a wiser adult of meta-modernism” by Arran Rogerson.
Meta-modernism is particularly sensitive to the existential meaning crises. Personal psychological development is considered both a central goal in itself and as a means to ensure transition to sustainable societies.
It is authored under a pen name of “Hanzi Freinacht” (fictional hermit living in the Swiss Alps), by two young men with a PhD in sociology. Perhaps this sociology background explains a focus on the politics rather than say, a discussion of unsustainability or planetary boundaries.
Chapter 1: How Politics Changed
This chapter rather triumphantly claims that ‘Green Social Liberalism’ has won. It is the hegemonic ideology in the Nordic Countries with only slight variations (including the likes of Swedish Democrats, who do not oppose the gay rights). Obvious critique of this proclamation would be that it is not so obvious in the other parts of the world (for example the US). But this premise also holds a grain of truth if you for example consider the flow of migrants. Another important aspect is that Nordic countries are in some ways, becoming ‘post-materialist existential’.
Chapter 2: Crisis Revolution
After briefly covering the obvious global challenges and multi-level crises, author emphasises an importance of “meta-narratives” cultivated by the triple H: “Hackers, Hipsters, and Hippies with significant ‘social capital’ ”. He dismisses longer-term viability of populism for the same reason: its dissonance with social capital.
Chapter 3: In a Nutshell
Meta-modernism is ‘Green Social Liberalism’ on steroids: “an extremely social, extremely libertarian and extremely green society.”
“We are failing to evolve humanity to a maturity matching her newly won powers over nature that the information age (or rather: the multidimensional crisis-revolution) brings.”
Author emphatically rejects and denounces (“most severe moral condemnation” of) both post-modernist: “game-denial” or “cynicism” and modernist “game-acceptance” or “naïve complacency” about how great the modern world is.
Chapter 4: Possible and Necessary
Possible:
Author further elaborates how Green Social Liberalism 2.0 with its focus on personal development would outcompete contemporary materialist capitalism.
Necessary:
But his central focus is how the ideals of the listening society / welfare 2.0 are the keys for enhancing psychological and social health (he illustrates meditation with impressive citations). Things like collective intelligence capable of tackling global challenges would be the spin-offs….
Once again, compelling rebuttal to modernists and post-modernists:
“If you don’t allow yourself to explore what positive feedback cycles are possible, you are also stopping yourself from looking at realistic paths ahead. Because, after all, the world really has changed many times before — so why not again?… Since the fate of the world’s poor is intimately connected with the inner selves and conceptual horizons of the world’s more progressive populations — like in Scandinavia — it makes perfect sense to want to cultivate a deeper layer of welfare in these societies.”
“if you insist on being grateful for all the wealth and progress, you are stopping yourself from reacting against things that are obviously still unjust and terribly wrong with the world — such as climate change, global poverty and animal slavery.”
“Fundamentally, it is a matter of understanding that society is both very, very good and simultaneously very, very bad. Reality is rich. It has room for plenty of extremes. It has multitudes of contradictions. We must increasingly learn to live and deal with such paradoxes.”
I am intrigued but still not sure how effectively ‘the Scandinavian model’ can serve as an attractor…. while much of the world crumbles…
Chapter 5: The Alternative
This chapter is a brief discussion of the Danish political party:
The alternative is a meta-political, “process-oriented” political party, founded in Denmark in 2013. “Most central to the party’s founding and organization is still the how, rather than the what.”
“The Alternative has its electoral and organizational base mainly in the urban creative class — the triple-H (hipsters, hackers and hippies) as well as some yoga bourgeoisie.” As a result, “In a way, you could say that The Alternative represents the revolution of cultural capital against economic capital.”
Cultural paradigm first policy: “they lift their gaze from the concrete issues of ecological sustainability, and target the cultural context within which such long-term politics become possible and meaningful”
Author highlights “metamodernism, has all the deeper structures of society working in its favour. The long-term game is rigged. In this way, metamodernism spreads like a virus, by hacking and hijacking the thoughts, words, practices and institutions of modern society, bit by bit sneaking its way into the programs of all parties, Left and Right. Late modern society is pregnant with metamodernism.”
And another thing:
“In the long run, we know that the nation state cannot remain the primary, or at least not the hegemonic, building block of our governance and self-organization. Basically, there are a growing lot of issues and people and cities that just don’t fit into the nation state.”
This also means that you refrain from over-essentializing nationalities and ethnicities. Frenchness, Chineseness, Arabicness, the Nordic ideology, the German ideology — it’s all nonsense; just temporary, contingent patterns, cutting through water. So you can use the features of any one culture or nation state or form of governance, but the goals remain world-centric. The meta-modernist does not hate or despise nations or nationalism. It’s just that they are treated instrumentally.”
“Power and freedom are sisters”. Freinacht rejects postmodern dogma that power itself is pathological. Lovers of transpersonal power seek the empowerment of selves and others.
The metamodern aristocracy:
“ are people who have a combination of two things: great privilege and high personal development.” “Total capital is a combination of social capital, cultural capital, economic capital, emotional capital, sexual capital and good health.” The second part, about personal development, is that we have “high” effective value meme (progressives 2.0 discussed in part 2)
“people who have somehow fallen outside of the normal meaning making processes of everyday life — without breaking apart — and for whom there is no going back to a bourgeois lifestyle.”
“Metamodern thinking involves an increased acceptance of the paradoxical nature of things. All this talk of aristocrats rests upon a central paradox of political metamodernism (which I have mentioned before): the deep, unyielding struggle for greater egalitarianism, inclusion and democracy — together with a renewed tolerance towards and understanding of hierarchy and elitism. (Personal note 1.0: this is the part, that makes me most uncomfortable)
The metamodern aristocracy isn’t actually going to rule the world. We’re going to tweak it, somewhat, in a favourable direction.” ( Personal note 2.0: denying inconvenient parts of reality, including social reality isn’t reasonable either!)
“We’re exploring ideas. We’re being open-minded and curios about the potentials. But we are not laying down “the one path”, and if it ever leads us in the direction of killing, lying, cheating, torturing — we need to drop it and think again. It’s not worth it.” “The more serious questions and matters you play with, the greater the moral demands. Almost all political ideas have led to atrocities.”
Chapter 6: Political Philosophy
(probabaly my favourite chapter so far…)
“The idea of the “individual” no longer fulfils its function as an effective unit of society’s self-organization.”
The French philosopher Deleuze proposes that we should see society as made up by dividuals, i.e. that we all are in fact part of one another and affect one another. We consist of many different influences, roles and perspectives, within a multitude of contexts.Freinacht offers a related bid for anti-individualism: the transpersonal perspective.
“The transpersonal perspective holds two seemingly opposed, but in reality complementary, positions.
1. The first position is to see society as determined by the deep, inner lives — the most personal relations and tender emotions — of human beings.
2. The second position is that this deeply human and personal experience is in turn created by societal processes that are largely invisible to each single person, and accessible only through a profound and systematic sociological and psychological analysis of society.”
“The more primitive and stupid your ideas about society, the cruder your “bad-guy theory” will be. To the Nazis, the bad-guys are the Jews, plain and simple. To the nationalist conservatives, the bad-guys are not necessarily Arabs, but certain problematic aspects of their culture and religion. To the modern libertarian, the bad-guys are laziness and lacking sense of responsibility — and all those pesky leftwing control freaks. To the Left it is capitalism. To the critical sociologist it is power structures. To the ecologist it is industrialism and a consumer society disconnected from the ecological systems.
To the meta-modernist, there are almost no bad-guys left, nobody and nothing to blame: not even an impersonal structure. With the view from complexity, there is only the painstaking tweaking of many small things that can help us fix the failures of our society and mitigate the tragedies of existence.”
“Breivik, the mass murderer, was born in the school yard, in the dysfunctional family, in the peer group, on the internet, in the labor market, in failed love aspirations, in sexual frustrations, in failed masculinity, in hurt pride, in failed interethnic relations and stalling integration processes. In short, he was born as a result of the entire fabric of society.”
“With the view from complexity, it becomes apparent that you can’t really blame the individual behaviors of the many people who interact, and you can’t really identify an evil “power structure” out there, which you can just get rid of and things will be fine. You have to look at the rules of the game, at the patterns of interactions, and how we create one another through those interactions — and how that in turn produces society as a whole.”
The growing re-integration of these three different spheres of social life — the civic (politics, democracy, bureaucracy, public), the professional (market exchange) and the personal (the civil sphere, family life, communities) — requires of us a kind of political thought that does not take one of the dimensions as fundamental or inherently superior to the other two. We must see the totality of social and political life.
“So you need to keep three stages in mind.
One: markets, politics and personal relations are not clearly differentiated;
Two: in modern society these three spheres gain a great measure of independence from one another (this was positive: separation of state and religion but also negative: existential hyper-individualistic alienation);
Three: in metamodern society, these three spheres are being re-integrated, ideally without any one of them dominating or contaminating the other two.”
Another very interesting formulation:
“In all societies that have ever existed, these three interdependent dimensions always repeat themselves and they ultimately depend on one another:
Solidarity: you, rather than me
Trade: me and you, but only conditionally.
Competition: me, not you.
The unstated, irrational belief that people have, is that one of these three dimensions somehow makes up a higher truth than the other two. The Left somehow believes, in a subtle but pervasive manner, that solidarity is the highest truth. The libertarian Right believes that trade is the first principle. The conservative and the fascist believe in their hearts that fierce competition lies beyond the other two, that it ultimately defines social reality.
The metamodern political activist makes no such mistake, has no such prejudices, and recognizes that each of these three beliefs is equally dishonest and violent against the nature of reality. Each of these prejudices comes at a terrible cost in terms of human and animal suffering
The very fact that you were born into this world — is it not a violent act, that you have eaten your way through other organic matter, as much as the result of a mating competition and the authentic bond between your parents?
No matter how profoundly symbiotic and loving a relationship, there is an element of struggle.
Once you accept the metamodern fractal perspective, you don’t seek to colonize and destroy fundamental and necessary dimensions of social life anymore.”
You can play the same game with another, related triad: equality, freedom and order. They sometimes work against one another, sometimes create synergies — but they cannot even exist without one another.
Moving on:
“Another foundational metamodern principle holds that you must continuously doubt your own ideological position.
The point is that everybody already is like you — a very limited, vulnerable, hurt, single human being with almost infinite distortions and blind spots, working from within the narrow frames of her emotions, intellect and experience. And that is exactly why the world is a complete, utter mess. And because the world is a mess, you are a mess.
The more correct, abstract and complex your map of reality, the greater non-linearity you can afford in your thinking and agency, since you hook up with deeper and more universal structures of how society is evolving. That is how it works: The Heracles, Prometheus or Achilles of our age is whoever can think the most abstractly and act the most non-linearly — those who can live with and skillfully handle uncertainty and not be paralyzed by it.
The non-linear stance is needed all the more today, given how complex global society is becoming, how difficult it is to predict each specific event.”
“Ours is a meat-eating, animal-exploiting, cruel, capitalist, alienating, unfair, oppressive, unscientific, undemocratic, unsustainable society. If you partake in it, you are complicit in its crimes, mistakes and vices.”
(I have quoted verbatim from chapter 4, 5, and 6 and I have tried to indicate with “…”)
