This makes this Integral/Metamodern stuff seem like a dysfunctional version of Sufism. The Sufis also believe in developmental stages, in higher consciousness, yet, see this quote from Rumi:
"The one who sees the ray of divine power in the smallest things in the world is a person of high understanding and high aspirations. Such a person respects himself and others and does not disdain the smallest of tasks, for he sees them as manifestations of divine power."
Cuts through any sense of superiority someone may be developing, doesn't it?
Great quote Carlos I hadn't come across that Rumi line before. It makes me think of becoming more abstract vs. becoming more concrete. I feel like we need the simplicity cutting through our sense of superiority now and again (and again and again) otherwise we start to float off into the abstract. I think Metamodernism like Sufism (and perhaps unlike Integral) has that aspect towards grounding as well as its developmental path for consciousness. Seems to me like it faces a challenge though: to become drunk on the word wine and lose itself in abstract superiority or to remember its size in simplicity!
I am so out of my depth here, as I struggle to ingest and digest all of these ideas and references, but I am like a kid in a candy store with it all; I don’t know which tempting and seductive morsel to grab and gobble up first! Having come to reading (devouring) philosophy later in life, I am woefully behind the curve. But I have to say, stumbling onto your YouTube channel a few years ago helped light the path for me as I continue to read, learn and try to make sense of it all, fully realizing and accepting the fact that I’ll never get to the end of that path. Thank you! And I also appreciate the comments others have made on your posts too.
Haha well I'm glad you're enjoying the candy store Carla and I hope it's giving you a taste of which direction is going to give you the most bang for your buck! I'm so glad to hear that the YouTube channel has been a friend on your journey. Also I admire the attitude of never reaching the end of the path; I find it's a bittersweet grief I have to continually come to terms with
Hello. First an honest thank you for this wonderfully argumented series.
Also just wanted to mention for transparencies sake, that I originally wrote this comment as an answer to your third post, but now as I was about to post it I noticed and read this and find it fits even better here:
Trying to play off your analysis, and building on your rhizome metaphor, I would like to propose a small expansion of it, from the rhizome to the metaphor of an ecology / an ecological system (a short websearch tells me anthropologists have been using this metaphor for some time already, see "Cultural Ecology" or "Ecology of Knowledge" (Finke)). Viewed through this metaphor, metamodernist culture might be an evolution out of another species like post-modernism, but it doesn't mean that it superior to it (as a dolphin is not supperior to a cow, and neither a chicken to a dinosaur). Depending in which context/ecological conditions the organism is placed it can be fit or not for survival, essential for the ecosystems sustainability or a destabilizer/invasive species that wrecks the systems temporal homeostasis, or it can serve any other function within it. I would even go on to argue, that the hierarchic view of species within ecosystems is actually just a peculiarity of the western anthropocentric worldview, which ignores all of these contextual complexities. So in the same sense as indigenous and mystic knowledge reminds us to not elevate ourselves over nature, I would second you in cautioning us as metamodernists to not elevate ourselves out of the cultural ecosystem, as having transcended it. We haven't and we won't.
Yet nonetheless, I do think that metamodernism can play a quite important and regenerative role in the cultural ecosystem. And if the length of my message is not annoying already, I'd like to offer just one of the many functions that I believe metamodernism can wisely play. And namely the role of Mediator. As you've noted, the "transcend and include" which you exemplified in the previous post with Contrapoints is the exception to the norm in current culture. So, I also believe that "true" metamodernism (non-dogmatic, humble, non-hierarchic), is also this exception to the norm, as this attempt to truly understand the other cultural logics, via even epistemological methods like perspectivism (the shaman embodying the raindeer in order to understand it better) can only be done with true humbleness, and not with proclaiming one's own cultural logic as the climax of cultural logics, thus blindly reproducing the same ingrained hierarchic structures of dominator cultures and supremacism. And if we accept that by managing this immense task, of understanding both the centrist dad, the incel, the anarchist, the australian indigenous native etc. - metamodernists can function as a glue between them - helping in making transparent and visible deeper commonalitieis as well as deeper differences - thus facilitating coordination capacity among them - and finding collaboration leverage points between them. If used wisely and humbily the metamodern logic can act as the glue of the cultural ecosystem, with the powerful capacitay of transforming conflict into generative creative tension and thus creating new impressive and transformative forms of collaboration amongst logics, without reducing the whole thing to a unitary whole, I.e., a true pluralism, a world of many worlds.
Maybe to make it more concrete I see Metamodernism acting as something akin to Miki Kashtan's "Highest Common Denominator" methodology for conflict transformation. Or a trade union organizer, talking to 40 workers to find their common needs, oppressions, frustrations and demands in order to support in the development of collective agency.
I hope these few jumbled ideas can resonate somehow and if they do, please feel free to use them as however you see fit, without feeling pressured to mention anyone. And of course, I am very curious of your impression and critique.
Great to hear you're enjoying the series Sergiu and I appreciate the deep engagement with it. And I have to say that our visions of Metamodernism are in deep harmony. It is this vision of "Metamodernism as emulsifier" that I am most keen on. There's a later instalment in the series that outlines just this (after deconstruction comes reconstruction some Metamodernists would say) and connects it with other metamodernist thinkers who have expressed similar sentiments.
I think this would require a shift in the Metamodernist subculture. I think the hierarchical transcend and include food chain is the fascination of the subculture (I could be wrong of course since I am but a peripheral lurker). It seems to me that this is a fascination with the very existence of metamodernism and ends up being Narcissus lost in the pool.
As I'll talk about in that instalment the Mediator framing requires humility because there is a possibility of failure. We may fail to accurately take the others' perspective/s. It is not guaranteed by our being the apex complexi-brains in the ecosystem (I'm a fan of the ecosystem fram as you might have guessed!). Getting humble and doing the work, Metamodernism may have a huge amount to contribute but I fear it's more on a trajectory of Narcissus — fascinated by its own complexity and hierarchical superiority. A shame.
This makes this Integral/Metamodern stuff seem like a dysfunctional version of Sufism. The Sufis also believe in developmental stages, in higher consciousness, yet, see this quote from Rumi:
"The one who sees the ray of divine power in the smallest things in the world is a person of high understanding and high aspirations. Such a person respects himself and others and does not disdain the smallest of tasks, for he sees them as manifestations of divine power."
Cuts through any sense of superiority someone may be developing, doesn't it?
Great quote Carlos I hadn't come across that Rumi line before. It makes me think of becoming more abstract vs. becoming more concrete. I feel like we need the simplicity cutting through our sense of superiority now and again (and again and again) otherwise we start to float off into the abstract. I think Metamodernism like Sufism (and perhaps unlike Integral) has that aspect towards grounding as well as its developmental path for consciousness. Seems to me like it faces a challenge though: to become drunk on the word wine and lose itself in abstract superiority or to remember its size in simplicity!
I am so out of my depth here, as I struggle to ingest and digest all of these ideas and references, but I am like a kid in a candy store with it all; I don’t know which tempting and seductive morsel to grab and gobble up first! Having come to reading (devouring) philosophy later in life, I am woefully behind the curve. But I have to say, stumbling onto your YouTube channel a few years ago helped light the path for me as I continue to read, learn and try to make sense of it all, fully realizing and accepting the fact that I’ll never get to the end of that path. Thank you! And I also appreciate the comments others have made on your posts too.
Haha well I'm glad you're enjoying the candy store Carla and I hope it's giving you a taste of which direction is going to give you the most bang for your buck! I'm so glad to hear that the YouTube channel has been a friend on your journey. Also I admire the attitude of never reaching the end of the path; I find it's a bittersweet grief I have to continually come to terms with
Hello. First an honest thank you for this wonderfully argumented series.
Also just wanted to mention for transparencies sake, that I originally wrote this comment as an answer to your third post, but now as I was about to post it I noticed and read this and find it fits even better here:
Trying to play off your analysis, and building on your rhizome metaphor, I would like to propose a small expansion of it, from the rhizome to the metaphor of an ecology / an ecological system (a short websearch tells me anthropologists have been using this metaphor for some time already, see "Cultural Ecology" or "Ecology of Knowledge" (Finke)). Viewed through this metaphor, metamodernist culture might be an evolution out of another species like post-modernism, but it doesn't mean that it superior to it (as a dolphin is not supperior to a cow, and neither a chicken to a dinosaur). Depending in which context/ecological conditions the organism is placed it can be fit or not for survival, essential for the ecosystems sustainability or a destabilizer/invasive species that wrecks the systems temporal homeostasis, or it can serve any other function within it. I would even go on to argue, that the hierarchic view of species within ecosystems is actually just a peculiarity of the western anthropocentric worldview, which ignores all of these contextual complexities. So in the same sense as indigenous and mystic knowledge reminds us to not elevate ourselves over nature, I would second you in cautioning us as metamodernists to not elevate ourselves out of the cultural ecosystem, as having transcended it. We haven't and we won't.
Yet nonetheless, I do think that metamodernism can play a quite important and regenerative role in the cultural ecosystem. And if the length of my message is not annoying already, I'd like to offer just one of the many functions that I believe metamodernism can wisely play. And namely the role of Mediator. As you've noted, the "transcend and include" which you exemplified in the previous post with Contrapoints is the exception to the norm in current culture. So, I also believe that "true" metamodernism (non-dogmatic, humble, non-hierarchic), is also this exception to the norm, as this attempt to truly understand the other cultural logics, via even epistemological methods like perspectivism (the shaman embodying the raindeer in order to understand it better) can only be done with true humbleness, and not with proclaiming one's own cultural logic as the climax of cultural logics, thus blindly reproducing the same ingrained hierarchic structures of dominator cultures and supremacism. And if we accept that by managing this immense task, of understanding both the centrist dad, the incel, the anarchist, the australian indigenous native etc. - metamodernists can function as a glue between them - helping in making transparent and visible deeper commonalitieis as well as deeper differences - thus facilitating coordination capacity among them - and finding collaboration leverage points between them. If used wisely and humbily the metamodern logic can act as the glue of the cultural ecosystem, with the powerful capacitay of transforming conflict into generative creative tension and thus creating new impressive and transformative forms of collaboration amongst logics, without reducing the whole thing to a unitary whole, I.e., a true pluralism, a world of many worlds.
Maybe to make it more concrete I see Metamodernism acting as something akin to Miki Kashtan's "Highest Common Denominator" methodology for conflict transformation. Or a trade union organizer, talking to 40 workers to find their common needs, oppressions, frustrations and demands in order to support in the development of collective agency.
I hope these few jumbled ideas can resonate somehow and if they do, please feel free to use them as however you see fit, without feeling pressured to mention anyone. And of course, I am very curious of your impression and critique.
Great to hear you're enjoying the series Sergiu and I appreciate the deep engagement with it. And I have to say that our visions of Metamodernism are in deep harmony. It is this vision of "Metamodernism as emulsifier" that I am most keen on. There's a later instalment in the series that outlines just this (after deconstruction comes reconstruction some Metamodernists would say) and connects it with other metamodernist thinkers who have expressed similar sentiments.
I think this would require a shift in the Metamodernist subculture. I think the hierarchical transcend and include food chain is the fascination of the subculture (I could be wrong of course since I am but a peripheral lurker). It seems to me that this is a fascination with the very existence of metamodernism and ends up being Narcissus lost in the pool.
As I'll talk about in that instalment the Mediator framing requires humility because there is a possibility of failure. We may fail to accurately take the others' perspective/s. It is not guaranteed by our being the apex complexi-brains in the ecosystem (I'm a fan of the ecosystem fram as you might have guessed!). Getting humble and doing the work, Metamodernism may have a huge amount to contribute but I fear it's more on a trajectory of Narcissus — fascinated by its own complexity and hierarchical superiority. A shame.