Nordic Ideology: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book Two

by Hanzi Freinacht

The problem with multiculturalism is of course that it does not qualify which kinds of diversity are good, in what quantities, and under what circumstances. It’s just that diversity is good in-and-of-itself, which is then taken as a dogma, and it is often seen as unethical to even question this assumption: multiculturalism is good, period. This naturally leaves the field open to all sorts of dysfunctional social and cultural practices to be defended in the name of ethnic or cultural diversity, be it forced marriages, brainwashing and scaring children with de facto ghost stories, or female circumcision.

all cultures are equal, this means that cultures which work against multiculturalism and seek to retain isolation and purity should also be seen as equal; b) if all cultures have a right to be preserved, they must also be allowed to defend themselves from subcultures splitting off, which then works against a greater diversity; and c) if all cultures should be exposed to one another, this leads to monoculture, which often effaces cultural differences in the first place.

Trans-culturalism is a multi-perspectival and developmental view of cultures and ethnicities; it sees all of these as being in constant flux. In a way, it is the synthesis of the three former perspectives.

Cultures and ethnic identities can always be transformed, and they should be transformed to be the best versions of themselves, whenever this is possible without destabilizing people’s lives too much.

And it is a matter of cultural discourse and exchange to determine which values should—in the long run—trump which other values.

But given the choice, given the chance, we can and should evolve cultures.

Cultures have a right to exist, but it is not an absolute right. And in the last instance, all cultures will change and evolve either way, so we might as well have some ideas regarding in which direction they should develop.

But that does not mean certain cultures have infinite rights to impose their values upon others; it just means the more universal and functional values should be allowed to win in a longer Darwinian struggle, and that such victories shou...

Cultures generally have something to learn from one another—and the aim of trans-culturalism is to make sure that this exchange is genuinely enriching, sust...

You see what they did there? Mayor Somers and his crew took a majority culture and pushed it towards tolerance, and they took a minority culture and gently pushed for its transformation in a progressive direction.

Right, so if you think you can create a good and healthy society without dealing with what I will here call “the gender-sexuality-family-formation complex”, (to catch all of these interrelated issues under one banner) you are just not being realistic.

Post-feminism is a both-and position: both feminism and masculism.

Both women’s issues (sexual harassment, lower wages, lesser political power, pressures to conform to body ideals, slut-shaming, etc.) and men’s issues (expendability, having dangerous jobs, easily being considered losers when asking for help, homelessness, higher suicide rates, crime and incarceration, more physical violence, etc.).

Both teaching men how to become more successful at dating and picking up sexual partners, and to respect sexual boundaries and not sexually objectify women. Both defending the right to be a hipster beta-male, and to be a tough masculine guy; both a butch, and a pink girlie-girl. Both solidarity with the jaw-dropping babes, and with the chronically unfuckable.

It’s that we are too poor at taking the perspectives of one another across genders and sexualities; it’s that we are too insecure about our own positive gender identities; it’s that we have lacking social skills to entertain and seduce one another in playful and respectful ways; it’s that we know too little about the social dynamics between the sexes; it’s that we carry too much subtle dissatisfaction and bitterness; it’s that we simply have had too few and insufficiently instructive sexual experiences; it’s that we feel good romantic and sexual relations are scarce rather than abundant in our lives; it’s that we have too few reliable friends with whom we can really talk about these issues; it’s that we don’t feel safe and comfortable enough to express our needs and insecurities to one another; that we are unable to listen and take it in when others talk about intimate and sensitive matters; that we’re not good enough in setting and maintaining healthy social boundaries; that we don’t manage to show sufficient respect for one another’s boundaries; that we have insufficient self-knowledge about our innermost needs in the first place; that we don’t feel we can afford brutal and direct honesty—the list goes on. Do you see it? It’s not some evil structure out there. It’s our own lacking development. We—as human beings, as biological, behavioral organisms—lack the right properties to interact in good enough ways.

Shifting the landscapes of desire is not only about changing people’s skills, perspectives and behaviors, but also about evolving our openness to a wider range of potential partners, lifestyles and erotic or emotional exchanges.

Desire is not only a vulnerability; it is also a strange and potent faculty.

But just as people can become better at perspective taking and conflict resolution, so can they be more or less narrowminded about whom to have sex with and which relationships to form. To sum up, we can work for game change in the realm of sex and gender by: Raising the abilities of men and women to be seductive and sexually competent, thus increasing the level of abundance and satisfaction in their lives. And that in itself means there will be many more satisfying men and women around for all parties, which makes underlying tensions and games of competition less fierce and desperate, just as it will put less pressure on new relationships, as there will be more good potential partners or liaisons available. And this will create more fair games of love and sex, which means people are generally treated better, and that people act from a greater inner space of safety, affecting all aspects of their lives. And this will reduce the number of strange repressed desires, thoughts, drives and dreams, clearing people’s inner emotional lives for more productive engagements with existence. And this will let people become freer in their sexual and gender experimentation, which means they will consider partnerships and liaisons across more

social and cultural boundaries and identities. And this will create a more profound integration of all walks of life and more stable family relations, which improves the socialization of all children in society. And this will lead to higher mental and physical health, not least as the sexual undercurrents of everyday life shift and harmonize, relatively speaking.

Sex is transformative. Gender is creative. The landscapes of desire can be made safer, easier to traverse; their many peaks and valleys better connected.

Feminism becomes a mindless carrier of gender antagonism.

I’m just saying that gender antagonism sneaks in and ruins whatever emancipatory potential

feminism and masculism might have.

Want real, effective feminism? Then find ways to reduce gender antagonism.

Want to reduce sexual violence against women? Reduce gender antagonism. Want to reduce male suicide? Reduce gender antagonism. Want to create freer gender roles in professional life? Reduce gender antagonism. Want to improve the quality and stability of family relations? You get the picture.

rabid bitches”. But it’s not those rabid bitches. It’s a complex host of emergent properties of the games of everyday life. We are mutilated not by an evil patriarchal structure, but by a blind and meaningless chaos engine, which is incidentally also the source of all goodness and beauty of life.

Hence, creating a deeper and more harmonious resonance in everyday life is not only a matter of critically reconstructing the rituals, but also of increasing our ability to genuinely participate in them.

Ministry of Existential Affairs whose purpose should be to monitor, understand and affect issues pertaining to the existential foundations of everyday life—in sensitive, respectful and transparent ways, of course—so that more of us can develop fruitful ways of relating to life.

How many people honestly feel they are following their dreams? How many are tormented by the existential crisis that seems epidemic to early adulthood, and how seriously? How many and how fundamental lies do we tell one another? To what extent do

we live with truths that cannot be told to our nearest and dearest? How large inconsistencies and sources of self-deceit can be detected in our moral reasoning and actions? How many of us do things that are counter to our moral intuitions in our professional lives? How many of us feel a pervasive lack of meaning? How afraid are we of death, and how does this fear shape our lives? How many have strong, transformative experiences of a spiritual nature, and how often, and who? How many of us feel genuinely identified with the ecosphere, future generations and the animals? How many people get stuck in untreated traumas, so that deep wounds are never healed and greater inner depths never fully integrated into our personalities? How many live our lives with a nagging sense of anxiety in the background (Book One: subjective states 6 and 7) and how many live with a general sense of safety and basic goodness (subjective state 8)?[92] To what extent do we define ourselves, our identities, in terms of material wealth and worldly success versus in terms of inner qualities? How do we reason about the highest ethical principles and how do we relate to paradoxes and dilemmas? How many of us are on serious spiritual paths, or otherwise trained in introspection, meta-cognition, inner self-scrutiny and useful forms of meditation?

How accurately and dispassionately are we able to describe our own behaviors, strengths, weaknesses and vices? How many of us have profound regrets on our deathbeds?

And in these days of exponentially growing human power, the failure to pursue deeply worthwhile goals in as many people’s lives as possible, can and will be nothing short of catastrophic. And the only way to get many more of us to develop much more global and worthwhile goals is to support our genuine inner development. Global scale calamities are likely to follow pretty soon, unless we start looking inwards.

In other words, it may be a very sound investment—in terms of “the economy of happiness”—to put much, much more of society’s time, effort, resources and attention to people’s inner worlds, to the existential journey of each of us.

This would be the *meta*-modern mission: to create a deeply self-reflective modernity; a modernity operating not only upon nature and the environment, but one that reexamines its own perspective, its own choices—if you will—its own soul.

Secular Monasteries The purpose of metamodern monasteries would be to offer all citizens necessary periods of seclusion (and/or community) and concentrated honing of inner skills, such as healing from trauma, making crucial life decisions or transitions, learning new life philosophies, practicing meditation and taking care of the body, forgiving people who hurt us, sorting out ethical dilemmas, and other transformational practices. We all have a few toys in the attic to deal with.

would make sense to create a great network of secular monasteries, properly equipped with teachers, coaches, therapists, libraries, gardens, gyms and simple accommodation.

People would be trained in one or more wisdom traditions, be supported in making necessary changes of habits, face their traumas and so on. Instead of an authoritative priesthood like in traditional religions, the main agent would be a professional group of “existential social workers”, trained to deal with people’s different life crises and to act as advisors. They should be highly ski...

An important aspect of such a neo-monastic societal infrastructure would be to include different kinds of bodywork and “subtle body practices”, refining the skills of dealing with direct bodily experiences and sensations and developing the general wellness of our bodies. Such development is not only of great value for its own sake, but also a necessary tool for strengthening our overall body-mind systems so ...

If the listening society is to fulfill its promise—a society where everyone is genuinely seen and heard—it must rest upon a foundation of inwards listening.

The point is that it is only by seriously helping people to get what they really need and want from life—by supporting serious adult development, development of the mind and the personality as a whole—that we can raise the level of behavioral functioning throughout society and the level of mental health throughout all social groups. It is in this manner we can raise the average “effective value meme” of the population above the modern stage.

If we are to turn the tide of spiritual poverty and alienation inherent to modern life, we must begin to nourish the souls of millions.

a systematic and deliberate nourishing of the human soul throughout the life course; a clarion call for adult development.

In a similar vein Existential Politics should work to develop the meditation skills and the level of introspection and meta-cognition in society at large, as well as raising the average inner “subjective state” experienced by people in everyday life. So basically, it should be a long-term goal to train everybody in contemplation, self-observation and meditation, starting from early childhood when our brains are especially malleable.

Meditation turns out not to be a convenient black box or a nifty add-on, but a whole continent.

metamodern society, meditation—contemplation, introspection, phenomenological exploration—is that fundamental.

very different. First of all, a true metamodernist “killed God”. (And then we killed the modern residual God, and then killed the yet subtler residual postmodern God, and pissed and spat on their graves. And then we revived God on the third day as a co-created meta-pattern of a self-organizing multiplicity of perspectives, which includes the said three dead Gods… But that’s another story, so let’s not get carried away with theology, fun as it is). Point being: If there is no God to serve as ultimate umpire, there can be no final goodness or badness of a soul, not even circumscribed as the “integrity” of a person.

Secondly, the metamodern perspective is fundamentally non-judgmental. In other words, it is based upon a radical acceptance of “reality-as-it-is”, which necessarily includes any “evil that men do” and whatever “integrity” people may have or not. Without non-judgment there can be no metamodern “solidarity with all perspectives”, which is the cornerstone of metamodern ethics.

And thirdly, the metamodern perspective is transpersonal. It sees that even if different organisms do indeed have different behavioral properties, they do not have any core “essence” or “self” that can be pinned down, and their behaviors must always emerge through the interplay of so many other factors interacting non-locally (across time, space and through different dimensions of analysis).

So the question becomes, then, not to judge the integrity of the individual and to explain society as based upon an imagined sum of such integrity, but to see how people’s inner lives and behaviors co-emerge in a greater and deeper transpersonal space. And if you have that starting point, it makes perfect sense to talk about integrity.

Integrity is a measure of how and to what extent the different parts of your psyche—be it thoughts, beliefs, emotions, habits, reflexes, assumptions, perceptions, evaluations, intentions, motives, or identities—contradict and undermine each other, and/or how well they reinforce and strengthen one another.