The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

by Hanzi Freinacht

I am offering a related bid for anti-individualism: the transpersonal perspective. The transpersonal perspective holds two seemingly opposed, but in reality complementary, positions. The first position is to see society as determined by the deep, inner lives—the most personal relations and tender emotions—of human beings. This takes the unique lived experience of each human being very seriously. Such lived experience is taken to be the very foundation of society: if there is anger or love in our hearts, if there is peace in our minds, and if all manner of psychological issues have been properly dealt with. Such things determine if we turn out engaged world citizens, mindless consumers or bitter reactionaries. 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.