Metamodernism
Conor
Lumley
The
Current Landscape
Children today have
access to the complete wealth of human knowledge collected since the advent of
history. Are there aspects of the internet that function as distractions? Yes;
however, we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater because of fear.
And as for the statement
that the internet means children don’t have to work to gain information, yes,
this is true also. And because of this, we can reallocate the mental energy
that would have been used to complete a menial task to more pressing issues,
such as finding solutions to the existential catastrophe we have found
ourselves born within. Mental illness is rampant in our generation, due to the
fact we are forced to confront the world's evil, as well as our own, daily.
Social media, which once
showed a façade of what life was, has become a more honest medium. One cannot
scroll through Tiktok without coming in contact with videos of police
brutality, racism, war crimes, or Karens wreaking havoc in a Walmart.
We have access to every
philosophical system and know that none thus far have been worthy of the
throne. One may find quick relief from watching “How to be a stoic” on YouTube,
but it quickly becomes clear why this philosophy, as well as others, wasn’t the
solution to all of humanity's problems.
Our flaws are constantly
brought to the forefront of our thinking. We are too fat, but to be too skinny
is worse. We are too emotional, but also too callused. Our generation is too
lazy, our parents used to have to walk to school barefoot up a hill in the
snow, but instead, we get the privilege of riding a bus whose fumes are quickly
killing the planet’s atmosphere. “You people don’t have any real problems, your
concerns are not valid.” It's psychological warfare.
The findings of the
scientific community are also easily accessible. Concepts as complex as quantum
physics are extremely popular within communities like YouTube and Reddit. The
fact that our reality is but an illusion manifest by processes outside our
control, mere patterns of energy propagating through lower dimensions, such as
the ones we can experience. It's no wonder so many of us are full of dread and
despair.
To pour salt on the
wound, our inner desires for meaning and purpose of stifled by the philosophies
of our predecessors. The death of God has become our parents' God. Faith is
childish, including faith in science, faith in establishment, and faith in our
abilities to be true to inner values (Note that I’m not saying being critical
of systems is bad, the true danger is punishing those who entertain ideas).
Opinions are not truths, and there is no such thing as truth. That is the
paradox we are involuntarily subject to.
What are we to do with
our birthrights? We cannot ignore that which we are presented. We see the good
and the bad of each previous Aeon. To forsake the past, to forsake the idea
that an ideal can be reached is suicide. However, to fully embrace the pursuit
of an ideal, viewing it as infallible, is not only suicide but homicide. There
is a third option. A middle pilar.
We must integrate
everything while also destroying everything. We must keep an arsenal of
paradoxes. Life in a reality full of contradictions cannot be survived with a
single solution, for once you squash one roach, more come out of the woodwork.
We must get to the source, something that can only be done by absorbing and
embracing all. Understanding God kills him. But once a God dies, it always
returns three days later.
Conception
Of A New Paradigm
Our society is a secular
mind residing within a religious shell. We maintain morality. Artifacts of the
past lay scattered throughout our culture. We are taught that our ancestors are
primitive and stupid. They believed wholeheartedly in fairy tales, they had
seemingly meaningless superstitions. If they were magically transported into
our age, they would be delighted to experience a more “civilized” way of life
and would throw off the shackles of belief just as the intellectually minded
people of our time have done. This is the unspoken lesson given to us through
every history class we have been forced to take since we began our schooling
career. But is this an honest view of the past?
Our ancestors were faced
with their mortalities daily and found ways to manage this. They found ways to
propagate themselves in such a way that they and their tribes could persist and
create a better world for future humanity. As antiscientific as modern
Christianity is portrayed, it is the New Testament that sparked scientific
inquiry. Because “God is shown in nature,” it makes sense that they would want
to understand nature, and from this modernity was born. In a way, Jesus’s
teachings killed Jesus’s teachings. But as previously stated, in death there is
rebirth.
Modernity offered an
exponential improvement in daily life. Power was given to the individual, and
not only power but responsibility. Want to change the state of society? Vote,
protest, cause a revolution, destroy the leviathan. It is no longer an external
power that oppresses you but your complacency. Any truth can be concluded
through prudent scientific analysis. One must bear his cross, and in doing so
become enlightened. And with this collective realization, utopia could be seen
shining through the fog. However, this only lasted for so long.
Soon, the course mapped
out by these beloved optimists grew stale. We were no longer seeming to head
straight for Eden, and it became clear there were flaws in our course. Power
was dispersed, but only to certain individuals. Why is this? The fallibility of
the system itself. All men were created equal, and therefore a man who believes
others are inferior has the same agency to control society as those who truly
desire the best for the collective. Eventually, slavery ended, but racism
persisted. Women could now vote, however, to this day they haven’t been able to
secure equal wages and political positions as men. Freedom for all led to
oppression of some. Evil is a systemic part of this collective dream.
To combat this,
enlightenment was slain. Men like Foucault and Derrida deconstructed reality
itself, showing its rotten core, and threw it in the firepit. The idea of truth
is but a social construct. Moral systems are not fully moral. Philosophy itself
is but mental arousal, and our true existential problems cannot be expressed in
verbal explanation. Even language itself systematically oppresses. A new
process of experiencing reality was formed, a post-modern way of existence,
which refutes all and discriminates none (unless your sins were seen as overly
heinous).
Post-modernism had
overcome its unconsciously oppressive father, seemingly distancing itself from
all of the enlightenment’s flawed ways of thinking. And with this, social
activism flourished. More people enjoyed a higher level of freedom. But this
freedom came without a direction. The idea of a direction itself seemed to be
frowned upon, even if not explicitly stated. Man was satiated with all the milk
and honey he so desired. But a question began to bubble up from the depths of
the collective unconscious, why am I doing what I am doing? My simple pleasures
and relative comforts are amusing, but why am I given these in the first place?
A wound had been covered with makeup, but this only caused it to ooze more. Just
as enlightenment had bred its demons, which had to be overcome by
postmodernity, the new philosophy harbored a shadow that was more covert and
potent. This demon whispered in the ears of the youth, explaining how
meaningless their pursuits were. We roll the stone up the hill, only to have it
roll back down. But even if we made it to the top, what’s the point? Why must
the stone reach the top in the first place? Even if Sisyphus was happy, his
happiness was fruitless.
Post-modernism was never
a means to an end, never a true child of the enlightenment, but instead a
biological opposite, a womb. A set of conditions in which the essence of what
modernity had set out to achieve could penetrate and develop. The idea was the
father, its refutation had become the mother, and with the father now dead,
only the bastard child two can redeem the trinity.
Why was postmodernity’s
fatal flaw? That in refutation of modernity, it became its opposite, infinitely
different yet equally as destructive. It created a duality to be reconciled. A
feminine critique of a toxically masculine mode of existence. Therefore the
child must be a hermaphrodite. Like the Baphomet, it must be a union of all
opposites. It must embrace its humanity as well as its animal nature. It must
make the below like the above, and in doing so create the above. The Tao is not
to be understood as yin and yang respectively, but instead as two poles
creating a unified whole. This means understanding that there lies both good
and evil in all action. Things done in the name of the good only create new
evils. Religion, which was a means of union with a transcendent good (in its
later conceptions) has led to some of the worst actions ever manifest in human
history. However, the same can be said for systems that sought to remove
religion from society.
We live in a time where
postmodernity is suffering from its chronic illness, however, it has not yet
died. We, like Moses, are in charge of leading the children of the future to
Canaan, but we will most likely never see the land of giants for ourselves. The
idea of the child has been conceptualized, as that of a prophetic revelation,
however, the messiah remains in the womb, waiting for the right time to come to
fruition. We can only observe the subtle shifts in perspectives that will allow
our reality to form in such a way that will give this child a home in which it
can properly develop.
Evolution
of A Disposition
We are drawn to
paradoxes, without consciously understanding why. The answer to this lies
within works of artistic/philosophical expressions which have slowly sensitized
us to the existence of such contradictions. As far back as the late 1800s,
Nietzsche pointed out what he called the “metaphysical wound” which plagues our
reality, the fact that the world is not what it ought to be. There is an ideal
of perfection, however, we exist in a state in which this ideal can never be
fully achieved. This, he states, shouldn’t stop us from striving to achieve the
ideal. For the Ubermensch is infinitely distant, yet visible, and we must
understand ourselves as steps on a ladder that will help future generations get
closer to perfection, closer to becoming the “over-man” or what we may refer to
as meta-human. His ideas gained traction but were widely misunderstood due to
the vagueness of his language (whether that was purposeful on Nietzsche’s part
is unknown).
His ideas found footing
in what became esotericism, chiefly due to Alister Crowley’s integration of his
philosophy into an already present stream of thought which survived within the
bowels of religiosity since the time of Plato. This, although it initially gave
such philosophical ideas a bad rep in the eyes of academics, would later become
an integral part of what we now conceptualize as metamodern, the integration of
a kind of neo-spirituality (more on this later).
Alongside Nietzsche,
romanticism flourished. Nietzsche referred to Emerson as a true child of
Dionysus, a figure from ancient mythology which he used to represent someone
who truly experiences life in all its fullness, integrating passion into a
world dominated by intellect (Apollonian existence).
During the turn of the
20th century, particular schools of academic philosophy began to become more
sympathetic towards religiosity, such as the pragmatism of William James. It
seems that having a religious system helps some people better relate to existence, and wards off certain existential dilemmas. James himself struggled
with meaning in his youth, bringing him to the brink of suicide, but found
solace in a pragmatic view of reality.
James, an important early
psychologist, influenced others such as Carl Jung, who sought to map out human
consciousness and in doing so discovered that a perceived relationship to the
divine was an important aspect of psychic health. He came to view religion as a
“proto-psychology” where gods and goddesses were archetypal representations of
common psychic functions. What was thought of as transcendent morality was a
mode of dealing with these inner forces which work unconsciously to try and
sustain life. He adopted a spirituality in which he viewed the collective
unconscious as the divine and his personal unconscious as a soul “anima” which
unified him with this divinity.
As philosophical
discourse persisted later through the 1900s, such streams of thought seemed to dim.
Post-structuralism began its work by tearing down the idea of grand narratives present in such philosophies. This development was very
important, for it showed that this Dionysian element had not been completely
refined. Post-modernity can be seen as a crucible, which applied heat enough to
melt away any impurities which may have diluted said ideas. It burned away
personal bias, which plagued the works of Nietzsche and Jung, who often failed
to realize their own experience cannot be completely generalized to the
collective psyche. They, like the prophets of the old testament, were but
reflections of the messiah. Post-modernity showed us that reality itself is a
polarity.
Modern man is left to
grapple with this dichotomy; meaning and lack thereof. Some have begun to see consciousness as a
Piagetian development, as time progresses not only do species evolve but their
conscious awareness of the ultimate state of reality does as well. Some choose
to see this progression in a Hegelian sense (a metaphorical structure used in
this essay), only with thesis and antithesis can a final synthesis be reached
(however, in this case, although striving towards an end, it is most likely
that this synthesis will later prove to be but a thesis to another antithesis).
This meta-man, although well versed in all aspects of philosophical thinking
(thanks to the internet), finds solace in works of religious sympathetics who
satiate an inner need for meaning in a world devoid of it.
However, with that said
he is faced with the task of integrating new scientific findings. At first,
this task was daunting, but the progression of our understanding of the
infinitesimal has hinted at a universe that is merely a simulation, with
consciousness being means of computation on a grand scale. Objectivity is being
discarded, and our individual subjective experiences are understood as
infinitely different from one another as if existing in parallel to one another
(harkening back to the Leibnizian idea of the monads which cannot come in
contact with one another). The prevalent universal patterns seem to suggest a
reality greater than our own, which emanates down, allowing cosmic waves to
form the quarks with which the mater itself is comprised. With experiments such
as the double-slit, it is shown that all matter exists in a state of
superposition until observed by a conscious entity. The implications of this
are not fully understood in the academic community, which further fans the
flame of metamodern thought, allowing it to create metaphysical systems which
can reconcile this fact.
Spiritual systems, such
as neo-Gnosticism, Wicca, neo-paganism, hermeticism, Sufism, Buddhism, and
other “esoteric” understandings of previous religions integrate the Jungian
ideas of the archetypes with the platonic forms, as a way of understanding the
universe as a greater conscious system functioning on a plane of existence with
which our observable universe is only building block. These systems emphasize
subjective experience over dogmatism, with many taking aspects from each system
and integrating them into their own (just as Jung suggested the creation of a
personal myth). They value self-knowledge overall knowledge, following the
maxim of the Delphic oracles “Gnothi Seauton.” These communities find their
homes in internet forums, allowing a mix of ideas from all around the world.
One must bracket this
subjective experience off from his perception of the objective (even if the
objective is illusory) to avoid the same pitfalls which fell upon pre-modern
religions which bread the dogmatic thinking that later poisoned enlightenment thinking.
One must cultivate his inner life while also maintaining an outer life as if
the two were separate from one another. In a world of paradoxes, one must
become a paradox. This means respecting everyone’s inner pursuits, no matter
how they conflict with your thinking, and understanding that each consciousness
is different from one another. However, an ego must exist which emphasizes
communal values to allow society to exist in such a way to encourage personal
development. The thought process is that if every man is allowed the ability to
introspect and truly understand and control his psyche, then the community as a
whole would benefit.
An example of metamodern symbolism within works of art:
Howls
Moving Castle
Within
this film, Miyazaki (See also “Spirited Away”) grapples with his own psyche in
a highly Jungian sense. The movie is in the third person, where the main character Howl
(a young wizard dealing with personal and societal struggles) lives in a large moving
castle, representing his mind. A young and unassuming girl comes in contact
with a witch who curses her to look like a crone and her only hope is to find
the elusive Howl and ask for help. The only catch is the girl cannot mention
the curse to anyone.
Upon
finding Howl, and being that she cannot speak of her curse, she becomes
somewhat of a housemaid/mother to the young wizard. She begins by cleaning his castle,
and after a series of adventures leading to Howl overcoming his emotional
issues, the girl returns to her natural state, and the two live together in a
new castle. Here it is easy to see the Jungian story of the Anima and her
effects on the male psyche. Howl represents Miyazaki’s ego, of which
becomes improved through exposure to the deepest levels of the unconscious
(Anima- represented often times as the triple female: Lover, Mother, Crone.
This symbolizes the development of our relationship to the unconscious over our
lifetime. The castle representing the mind harkens back to Jung’s works on
dream interpretation where he says the mind is symbolized as a childhood home
with many rooms.
Music with metamodern undertones:
1. The
Empress – Empressionism
2. Walk
– Denzel Curry
3. Phantom
Regret by Jim – The Weeknd
4. Roads
– Portishead (My personal favorite on this list)
5. My
Body is A Cage – Arcade Fire
6. Alright
– Kendrick Lamar
7. The
Dead Flag Blues – Godspeed You! Black Emperor
8. Seigfried
– Frank Ocean (potentially alluding to the vision of Siegfried seen by Jung
prior to WW2 recorded in Liber Novus)
9. Holy
Fucking Shit: 40,000 – Have a Nice Life
It may be easier to
experience metamodernity through art, it's more of a feeling/disposition towards
existence rather than a metaphysical explanation of it. But that’s just my
personal opinion. This was not an exhaustive tractate on metamodern ideology
but rather parts I personally resonate with and feel capable of discussing.
