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

by Hanzi Freinacht

It’s not that nature or God “wants” height, weight or an increased number of people, it’s simply a description of important aspects of these forms of growth.

What about determinism? Am I saying, by discussing stages of symbolic development, that it is already determined—ordained—what is going to happen in the future? Nay. For instance, describing that kids become taller and heavier between ages of five and seven does not say that this particular kid necessarily will. His growth can be stunted due to malnourishment or disease or any number of genetic or biochemical reasons.

We live in a could’ve-should’ve world, hinging on an absurd number of contingencies.

Nice summary of Nassim Talebs ideas

NO, the following sequence of symbol-stages isn’t a monolithic railway path that society can and must follow, a mold into which people can and should be forced.

fatalism, which is teleology and determinism put together (“destiny”), which is of course even worse.

Symbolic stage de...

As opposed (or separate) to cognitive stage development

traditional,

Modern indeed is a better word than postfaustian

Like in the story about Faust, you can “sell your soul” for ascension and power.

Around 2500 years ago, across the Eurasian continent, there was a widespread critique of the “might makes right” logic of the growing faustian societies.

Exit the god-king, the pharaoh; in walks the righteous rebel. Exit Prometheus and his defiance of the gods—and the saints come marching in. Exit rebellion, violence and power; enter surrender, peace and harmony.

And the postfaustians are telling us: Don’t sell your soul for pleasure and power! It just ain’t worth it.

render unto Caesar what belongs to him; but remember, that in the last instance the law of the heart precedes any law of the land, says Jesus. And to speak out against an unjust ruler, adds another prophet, is the highest form of jihad.

these traditions set out to create disciplined spiritual practices to develop the human soul towards realization of the ultimate truth, towards some form of inner ascension.

One becomes prepared to oppress and destroy others in order to resist such challenges to one’s ontology (sense of reality), ideology (sense of what a good society is) and sense of self (the social construction of an ego), to protect and maintain the boundaries of one’s symbolic universe.

Instead of setting us on a search for universal truth, it says it already has the Truth and installs the inquisition;

While most of our institutions are perhaps informed by modern thinking, humanity, demographically speaking, still mainly runs on the symbol-stage D Postfaustian code.

But if the “truth” is to be truly universal, said the pioneers of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, shouldn’t it be verifiable by everyone?

This line of thinking leads us down the path of materialism, reductionism, positivism, determinism and scientism: There is a real reality “out there”, and by means of inter-subjectivity, by verification, by science and the scientific method (induction, deduction and abduction), we can go beyond the shackles of subjective illusion and see the real world for the first time.

There is only one reality, one truth carved in stone. In physics.

We have been fooled and manipulated by what is ultimately just a bunch of power hungry and self-righteous potheads who dreamed up realities that suited them.

We leave behind the private revelations, the ones found in remote caves after forty days of solitude, and bring forth the public revelation—that which can be confirmed by every human being by virtue of her own senses, reason and rationality.

Jung vs Behavioural Economics

It’s objective. Can you taste that beautiful word? Objective science about objective reality, through which we can obtain our societal and personal objectives.

Universal peace? You have been belligerent from day one, religious wars raging to this day. Has there ever been a war about science, even one small skirmish?

A universe which has no pre-given meaning, which is just pristine, open meaninglessness and where we ourselves have to create meaning—be it scientific exploration, political struggle, artistic expression or just comfort, love and fun—is so much more exciting.

The predators and hypocrites that create all of this pseudo-science show no mercy for the poor, confused people they fool, exploit and molest—and so they can expect none from me.

We had more fun and our knowledge produces results: real, clear, hard, effective, reliable, repeatable, delicious results. The truth, by logic, rewards those who know the truth.

And when their gods fail them, they come crawling to our modern hospitals, begging for a cure that only painstakingly hard-earned science can grant them.

ScIence is indeed painstakingLy Hardearned

There is a central flaw to the whole idea of intersubjective verification: Namely that it presupposes that each individual is independent of her social context.

And if every individual is being freed by this universal order of enlightenment that you are so graciously sharing with the rest of the world,

what if people do not verify some great discovery simply because they are too stupid, afraid or invested in some other idea? Did that ever happen?

For instance, if only what is intersubjectively verifiable ever counts as universal, and therefore as real and important, what happens to all of those who cannot partake in the intersubjective discussion?

This opens the way for abuses, as the world is turned into dead, cold resources under your mechanical, exploitative regime.

Fair critique of psychographic data science

it is in the cracks and ruins of your world, in a perpetual questioning and criticism, that humanity is truly emancipated.

While you say that you are fair and impartial, you in fact end up serving power and oppressing the weak.

create a society that solves the three major problems of modern life: the excessive global inequalities, the alienation or neurotic anxieties of modern life, and ecological unsustainability.

You have to offer a path to Utopia yourself, and it has to really include the traditional, modern and postmodern—even

you have to actually deal with the prospect of One Universal Truth, that you harbor and cultivate within yourself a deep, sincere faith (symbol-stage D Postfaustian);

your problem is not that you have been too critical, postmodern and mulitiplistic—you have not been nearly critical, postmodern and multiplistic enough.

Postmodern mocks and condemns modernity but not more than that; whereas symbol-stage G Metamodern teases postmodernism a bit, but then seeks synthesis and reconciliation between all of the former symbol-stages.

her cognitive complexity, and the development of the cultural “code” she has “installed” through her participation in society. Both of these constitute a kind of “exterior” reality, meaning that they can both be intersubjectively recognized and in some sense “objectively” studied.

Where Goertz would place psychographic data analysis

and their heirs in spiritualism, phenomenology and existentialism (from Schiller, Schelling, Herder and Goethe, to Kierkegaard, to Bergson, Camus and Sartre, to Emerson and Blake and William James or Whitehead or Heidegger and beyond), or upon Zen teachings, or upon Taoism, or the inner landscapes described in Christian and Western mystics like John of the Cross, Teresa of Ávila, Meister Eckhart or the anonymously written Cloud of Unknowing. The point that I want to make here is simply that subjective states of organisms—regardless of things such as cognitive stage or “knowledge”—are what must be of ultimate significance in life and society.

respect for science does not necessitate that we turn the world into a dead object, the universe into a machine.

Nor people and their interactions apropos psychographic data science

states. You have a sense that life is large, reality vast. Things are magical;

But somehow these very different forms of experience are connected; they quite clearly have a common denominator. Higher states are not bound to certain emotions, even if they may, in a profound sense, be very the essence of “meaning and happiness in life”.

So what are low states? I have already indicated that they are not synonymous with anger and sadness or with the lack of feelings of happiness. Rather, I suggest that the lower states are the moments of existence when reality “lacks wholeness”: when there is split and brokenness and separation in our experience; when reality is lost and a formless, chaotic confusion reigns, together with untruth.

Try these words:

Sure, I'll search for similar words in a word embedding.

Low states are not the same as difficult emotions.

What you never heard a person say, and you never will, is the following: “I have lived a life full of anxiety and angst; self-hatred has filled my days. I have never found meaning and reality has been utterly confusing, and still is. I regret almost everything. I feel suffocated, degraded, filthy, disgusting, worthless. I hate my mother, I would like to murder her in the cruelest manner; and I hate myself for having these thoughts and feelings… But it is beautiful! It has all been worth it.

Very good explanation!!!

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Very important footnote

most of us live our lives in the medium state ranges, only vaguely aware of the very real possibilities of the higher or lower states. And, what’s more, relatively few people have experienced the highest and lowest states at all.