The Listening Society Quotes

“We fail to take responsibility, to act productively in the interest of ourselves and others. And in our attempts at a better life, we are often severely limited or thwarted by the immature and socially inept behavior of ourselves and others. There is a great fabric of relations, behaviors and emotions, reverberating with human and animal bliss and suffering, a web of intimate and formal relations, both direct and indirect. Nasty whirlwinds of feedback cycles blow through this great multidimensional web, pulsating with hurt and degradation. My lacking human development blocks your possible human development. My lack of understanding of you, your needs perspectives, hurts you in a million subtle ways. I become a bad lover, a bad colleague, a bad fellow citizen and human being. We are interconnected: You cannot get away from my hurt and wounds. They will follow you all of your life—I will be your daughter’s abusive boyfriend, your belligerent neighbor from hell. And you will never grow wings because there will always be mean bosses, misunderstanding families and envious friends. And you will tell yourself that is how life must be. But it is not how life has to be. Once you begin to be able to see the social-psychological fabric of everyday life, it becomes increasingly apparent that the fabric is relatively easy to change, to develop. Metamodern politics aims to make everyone secure at the deepest psychological level, so that we can live authentically; a byproduct of which is a sense of meaning in life and lasting happiness; a byproduct of which is kindness and an increased ability to cooperate with others; a byproduct of which is deeper freedom and better concrete results in the lives of everyone; a byproduct of which is a society less likely to collapse into a heap of atrocities.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“People are hurt and afraid at a subtle psychological level—and are therefore self-absorbed, incapable of taking on larger perspectives and incapable of acting upon the very real long-term risks that threatening our global civilization. We must, at all cost, make the world population much, much happier in the deepest sense of the word.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“Let’s return to the main argument. People are hurting as hell. It matters. We should do something to make them happier, if we can.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“Ours is a world full of self-deceit, my friend. But it is at the same time a world full of sincere truth seeking, scientific progress and curios late night conversations about the nature of reality and existence.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“I develop if you develop. Even if we don’t agree, we come closer to the truth if we create better dialogues and raise the standards for how we treat one another.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“The society we live in today is just an experiment. Nobody has the answers. Nobody knows where it’s going, or why. We don’t even know where we would like it to go. There’s no grown-up out there, looking out for us. Nobody’s home. It’s just one big, glorious chaos engine; busy, busy spawning all manner of unimaginable creatures, existences, relations, exquisite beauties and excruciating tragedies. When you truly see this, an experimental attitude towards society suddenly seems much less reckless or disrespectful. It is the only appropriate stance.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“It is solemn duty of the philosopher to piss on all that you hold dear and sacred, to show you that your gods are false.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“We are witnessing the rise of the digitalized, globalized, transnational, postindustrial society—and its discontents. The
nationalist resurgence is only that: the outdated, the outgunned, the outmaneuvered. That does not make the
confusion and suffering of the losing side any less real.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“In plain English, you need to wrestle the doubts and accusations that it’s all just bullshit. And, needless to say, the majority of the work of the triple-H population is undeniably so. The reason that it’s so valuable to society is just that some of it isn’t bullshit and even a small percentage of genuine innovations of software, culture or lifestyle can have a huge impact. Still, you never quite know if you are the bullshitter or the hero, or if you are being sold utter bullshit.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“Polarization (and Trumpism) is in itself a kind of political crisis. But all of this would be fine in the long run,
if the stakes weren’t so high and the time frames so narrow. As a world-system, we really don’t have the time
for Trumpism and the like. Global warming and the rapid changes pertaining to the internet age won’t wait. We are
entering a time of unprecedented transformation and we are in dire need of politics that are progressive—in the
sense that they anticipate and productively respond to the upcoming multidimensional crisis—revolution.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“At the micro-sociological level, most humans are doing better than ever. Yet there is so much confusion, suffering
and bitter resentment. How many beautiful, privileged people have I not heard whisper to me, late at night, that if
it were up to them, they would never have been born; that they are angry with the world; that they were let down;
that they live with guilt and self-doubt; that their friends and families are hypocrites? These are signs of the
alienation suffered by modern human beings.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“We can and should create a happy society,
simply because we care. Unfortunately, I have found, this is not obvious to many professors of psychology, theologians, philosophers, economists and the like. Pond scum.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“The marriage of irony and sincerity helps us to take the perspectives of others: the racist, the exaggerated feminist, the conservative. Each ironic position you play with is simultaneously saturated with sincerity, which means that you can honestly be with their feelings and values while still being in opposition to them.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“Our current society is designed to achieve growth of industrial output and redistributing its
spoils. Future society must expand upon today’s society’s way of functioning; its institutions must be geared towards achieving more psychological goals. More goals of the soul.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“Lovers of transpersonal power seek the empowerment of selves and others—realizing that power and freedom are sisters.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“We simply haven’t advanced to that stage of thinking—a stage where you see that the inner development of each person is intrinsically connected to the development of society as a whole.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“And secondly, admit defeat. Socialism (or anarchism) is not going to happen. And there is no national resurgence
of organic community coming our way. There will be no night-watchman state and libertarian utopia where the
public sector is all but removed. There will be no ecological-spiritual awakening spontaneously growing
from the goodness of your heart. And no, Mr. Conservative, there will be no rolling back of gay rights,
bike paths, vegan diets, animal rights and queer perspectives—they are all here to stay and expand. You can give up on all of that nonsense. Those were whispers of another time. Let them die hard. Clear your
head of these hallucinatory fantasies. They are about as meaningful today as belief in ghosts or Jesus walking
across King Herod’s swimming pool.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“A smaller axis of progressives do have intuitive and sometimes explicit understandings that the times are-a-changin’. These strata are concentrated around progressive parties such as the Pirate Party (started in Sweden, but had the most success in Germany and lately in Iceland), the Greens, the Feminist Initiative (also Sweden) and The Alternative (a Danish party, by far the most insightful and progressive one, discussed in chapter 5) Such parties are indicative of new progressive strata of the population, representing the groups we can call the triple-H: hipsters, hackers and hippies.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“Radically new spiritual movements are cropping up, notably the “atheist” practice of Syntheism. And musicians are creating stranger and stranger electrical sounds and rhythms, mixing them with strained voices, as if to underscore just how mysterious, yet peculiarly familiar, it all seems. And fashionable, tattooed young female DJ s play that music on the dance floor, and we dance under flashing lights into the darkness and get high and drunk and make out, as the reality we thought we knew is being torn down and we plunge into the sublime
and the unknown. And far out into the desert, under the clear skies of that luminous, open blackness lit by perfect
stars, we find each other in an intimate, loving embrace. Without the slightest effort we converse for hours and all
of reality melts away as we let go of our inner shields and. become one. In that timeless moment of forgiving embrace
we lose ourselves and find ourselves, both at once.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“Everybody should get a good gym coaching from early age so that they grow up to have fit bodies, good bodily awareness, positive body image, relaxed body language and healthy habits. Everybody should be trained in dialogue and get the chance to participate in public debates or deliberations. Everybody should get a year off once in a lifetime to go look for new purpose in life and make tough life decisions under professional care and support—in a kind of secular monastery. Everybody should be “nudged” and supported to consume both healthy and sustainable food that prevents depression and supports long-term societal goals. Everybody should be trained in social and emotional intelligence so that conflicts arise less often and, when they do arise, are handled more productively. Everybody should have a proper sexual education from early on, knowing things such as how to tackle early ejaculation, tensions in the vagina, sexual rejections, making approaches in a charming but respectful manner, how to handle competition and how to handle pornography or sexual desires that diverge from the norm. Everybody should get some aid in managing the fear of death and facing the hard facts of life—to help us intuitively know that our time here is precious.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“Everybody should have the benefit of talking to a kind, listening professional therapist while growing up (just think of how the number of molestations would drop, how kids would treat each other better, how family life would improve). Everybody should get to learn to meditate, both with mindfulness and other techniques so that one can handle stress and get in touch with one’s own emotions.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“Once upon a time, Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting about happily, enjoying himself. He did not know that he was Zhou. Suddenly he awoke, and was palpably Zhou. He did not know whether he was Zhou, who had dreamed of being a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming that he was Zhou. Now, there must be a difference between Zhou and the butterfly. This is called the transformation of things.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“It is by looking at deep psychological issues, the inner development of each of us, and how such properties are generated within society, that we address the core of society’s problems.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“The idea of the individual is actually an ingenious solution to a difficult social-philosophical problem: Should we focus on society as a whole, or on its different parts and singular processes?”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“Issues such as universal freedom of migration, international security, terrorism, internet policing, climate crisis, ecological sustainability, stabilizing international finance and banking, global poverty, basic material security, basic income, labor rights, human and animal rights all share one fundamental trait: they are transnational by nature.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“People need irony in order to build interpersonal trust based on self-knowledge, humor and critical thinking.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“As voters, many of us often recognize that we cannot know the answers to all the complicated societal questions. And frankly, neither can the politicians reasonably be expected to. But what we can know with some reliability is that if politicians are more humble in their opinions—and more open to new information and thereby more intelligent in their dialogue and debate with others—we are likely to get more balanced and sound politics.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“Building—or cultivating—the next and deeper layer of social welfare requires the ongoing posing of two questions: How can good conditions and prerequisites for human flourishing and “thrivability” be brought about? How can this be done in a manner that is open, democratic, non-manipulative—without a “creepy” undercurrent of control?”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One

“Metamodern politics aims to make everyone secure at the deepest psychological level, so that we can live authentically; a byproduct of which is a sense of meaning in life and lasting happiness; a byproduct of which is kindness and an increased ability to cooperate with others; a byproduct of which is deeper freedom and better concrete results in the lives of everyone; a byproduct of which is a society less likely to collapse into a heap of atrocities.”
― Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics, Book One