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

by Hanzi Freinacht

Very basically, political metamodernism tries to bring about the society that comes after, and goes beyond, what we usually think of as “modern society”.

But without that postmodern narcistic hippie thing, but in a responsible and mature, yet still playful and caring way.

The Left works only to maintain the welfare state, the Greens to maintain the sustainability of our current civilization, the libertarian Right to boost economic growth and the nationalist or conservative Right seeks to maintain the old nation state in the face of immigration and globalization.

The sorry state of current party politics

So the aim of political metamodernism is to take us from one “modern” stage of societal development (liberal democracy, party politics, capitalism, welfare state) to the next “metamodern” stage of development. It is aiming to outcompete liberal democracy as a political system, outcompete all of the political parties and their ideologies, outcompete capitalism as an economic system, and outcompete and replace our current welfare system.

It is the solemn duty of the philosopher to piss on all that you hold dear and sacred, to show you that your gods are false.

Somehow, you are always on the side of science, or so you believe. Yet, strangely, so many intelligent and educated people seem to have opinions differing from your own, even when science herself clearly says that you are correct. They must all be deluding themselves, mustn’t they?

An aquaintace's claim that you cannot judge psychological development stage by linguistic patterns was not based on any empirical science facts, it's not TOTALLY doable, but maybe good enough if one gives it a good try.

Future society must expand upon today’s society’s way of functioning; its institutions must be geared towards achieving more psychological goals.

To be a respectable, democratic, liberal citizen is increasingly synonymous with being a green social-liberal.

This meta-ideology is dominant simply because it is superior to its alternatives under the current economic, technological, socio-psychological and historical circumstances. That doesn’t give Green Social Liberalism any transcendental value or divine justification. It just happens to have a competitive edge under the current circumstances.

The media, for their part, increasingly try to present their TV-shows, webpages and newspapers as the ones that “take a higher perspective”, to be the platform where “real deliberation” occurs.

Is that so?

post-materialist values of happiness, quality of life and self-development are booming at the expense of materialist values. And government welfare spending has gone up over the decades.

Is that so?

The more artsy, creative, well connected, socially intelligent, emotionally developed, idealistic, digitalized, diversified and educated you are—the more likely you are to be a rising star of the new society.

A sign of this is the growing number of humanities majors who make it big within IT startups.

Is that so?

relative withdrawals from modern life.

The demands for basic income are hence often premature and naive,

Political metamodernism takes the consequences of the current political situation and follows them to their respective logical conclusions. The aim here is to create a synthetic solution between Left and Right—to strike a new balance or to find a new equilibrium. But Green Social Liberalism 2.0 is not a matter of compromise. It is a matter of taking the three elements of Green, Social and Liberal to their utmost extremes.

until even the most sensitive among us can blossom; indeed, until the truly sensitive become our kings and queens.

In Sweden Lars Lerin is a good example of this. Let's make him King of Sweden and the Fine Arts

Our society generates huge amounts of trauma, every day, every minute.

Psychologically speaking, we want a radical acceptance of pain, so that we can deal with it much more productively and create happier (and less miserable) lives for people and animals. But to truly accept the pain of life and deal with it, we require a lot of comfort, support, security, meaning and happiness.

Their mistake lies primarily in the failure to make the analytical distinction between unsustainable, hysterical “happiness” on the one hand, and authentic, sustainable happiness on the other. Authentic happiness includes hedonism (pleasure, fun) and eudemonia (meaning, contentment) as well as the productive and responsive acceptance of pain and sorrow.

Their backs aren’t made for carrying other animals, you know.

Speaking about horses. Is that so? Is it really a problem for them if we coexist that way?

We are speaking about conscious and deliberate social-psychological and cultural development.

that so many people live their lives with a pervasive lack of meaning and never truly work to improve the world.

I could have changed social reality, thereby changing the lives of these fellow beautiful creatures under God. It was me all along. It always will be. This is the commitment of the metamodern activist.

Hear, hear

People long for more depth and authenticity—and

failure to adopt a more efficient welfare system is likely to have very negative consequences.

it has all the deeper structures of society working in its favor. The long-term game is rigged.

Defaitism?

What we are looking for is a nicer, softer, more nuanced and flexible form of Leninism, an avant-garde, or vanguard, of people who recognize and align with some of the deep structures and long-term attractors of our age, and who cooperate transnationally to bring about profound changes in global society.

Superficial readings of social philosophers such as the Frankfurt School (or their fellow traveler Erich Fromm) can make us believe that power in itself is pathological. But in reality, even the softest souls and most

we have enough opportunities and support around us to do pretty much whatever we want with our lives (so, total capital is a combination of social capital, cultural capital, economic capital, emotional capital, sexual capital and good health). High total capital means that you can live your life relatively unafraid.

I suppose you could say that you have preludes to this development already in the so-called cybernetics back in the 1950s—and notably in the work of the polymath biologist Gregory Bateson.

If you try to be “against enmity”, you are creating enmity between yourself and others who don’t share your view, views that you then by definition seek to conquer and defeat.

Higher degrees of order is often what allows for greater freedom—but only if the order is of a general and abstract form.

It is a question of choosing totality over partiality.

Poorly constructed or misinterpreted developmental theories have been used for all manner of oppression, the formation of sects, and worse.

Want to know the reason why moral philosophy almost never makes a difference, why most academic moral philosophers remain rather useless? After all, we are obliged to ask: Why don’t they manage talking people into being vegans, selling their cars and giving away more of their money to charity, and being more selfless generally? Or even getting us to do what makes us happy either way, according to happiness research (give away your stuff, exercise, do mindfulness, eat healthy, walk in nature, don’t stress, have more sex and care about others)?

development does matter, and it can be studied in coherent and reliable ways.

In this strange new wonderland, the developmentally blind become the oppressors, much like Christianity went from being a liberating force to having its own landed elites and an inquisition.

stages of development in humans and other organisms must be studied in the light of a radical acceptance, a pervasive non-judgment—much like Christianity (in its liberating forms) teaches, really.

The perspective shifts from judging people for not being like us (damning all who are racist, not socialist, uneducated, not environmentally minded, not sensitive, not good listeners, etc.), to trying to give a universal account for why our own position is better than theirs (why it would trump their position on their own terms) and explaining why the same insight or capability is not available to them at this time. Such explanations can be: it’s just a kid, he didn’t have the chance to learn this, she wasn’t allowed the peace of mind to think this through, he’s in a too precarious position to allow himself to think along these lines—etc. In this way, the acceptance of hierarchy serves non-judgment and forgiveness.

hierarchical stage theories of human development have different dimensions and that development in one dimension does not necessarily translate into development within another.

Goertz prime argument against data linguistic stage prediction

The dimensions do interact, however—as we shall see in the coming chapters. In fact, you will find, the development of one dimension can possibly even hamper development in another dimension.

The $10.000 question for me. Correspondence or not between symbolic development and MHC?

Psychologies of personality are much more well-known, more academically kosher, and more widely taught than the developmental stage theories.

Please remember, stage is something other than personality.

stage development should not be confused with “healthy” psychological development,

a psychologically messed up high-stage adult human being.

... is very much a possibility

Religious faith (James H. Fowler, James Meredith Day);

http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-00518-001

They all make the same mistake: They smash together different forms of development into one and the same model, and force these (interrelated but still distinct and often independently developed) dimensions into the same stages.

The model has real merits in that it is at good describing the overall cultural logic inherent to each stage, as I discuss further in chapter 16.

Spiral dynamics:

Here is what I believe: Commons is the only one that has discovered one of the four fundamental dimensions of development—that of cognitive development.

If you’re a smart scientist, maybe you can help out by operationalizing research on one of the other three dimensions and have a fascinating, pioneering career. Cheers.

I heard that, but at the moment I don't feel like a smart scientist and has just entered the precariat ;-)