I’ve been to Copenhagen, one of my favourite cities for most of the week. I spent a lot of time there in IBM days thanks to the support of Hanna (I think I have the name right, but it was 25 years ago and I have lost touch with so if you are reading this …), and we did a lot of method development there as we could facilitate in English, but the participants would speak in Danish thus avoiding interference. The formal reason for this visit was to run the first Rewilding Leadership masterclass. But the originating reason was when Beth let me know that the Louisiana Museum was holding an exhibition on the Weimar Republic, a long-term interest and one of high current topicality as the 2020s and 1920s seem to have some depressing parallels. The banner picture is from my walk to the masterclass venue, and the portrait is by Christian Schad of the Italian pianist Anna Gabbioneta and represents both the shift from expressionism to precise realism and the increasing recognition of Die Neue Frau; Weimar art increasingly challenged gender norms, exemplified by Otto Dix’s androgynous portrait of Sylvia von Harden which featured in the exhibition. A bonus was that we used to hold masterclasses in the Boat House, which is situated on the grounds of the Louisiana Museum, so the visit there on Wednesday night was a sentimental journey.
As illustrated and exemplified in the Bauhaus school, the new objectivity of art in this period acts as a segway into yesterday’s session where I gave a talk on Metamuggleism, a somewhat ironic, but realistic title that I had to persuade the organiser to accept. The wider subject I addressed was meta-modernism, which has been popping up in several areas of interest over the last couple of years. The movement stands in Art for something that lies between modernism and post-modernism. It is characterised in some of the literature as ironic sincerity. One of the best examples is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where the irony lies in the young woman beating up the monsters. Another is The Great, which I strongly recommend. My use of Metamuggleism as a title was to suggest, ironically, that its use outside of art and some social movements lacked any real magic.
Meta-modernity describes a wider movement in art and social thinking, Like Modernism and Post-modernism it describes a multi-faceted movement even though many of the practitioners would not use, and did not use the label itself. All three modernisms are in effect a form of analysis of emergent phenomena. Aside from the artistic side of this, I’d probably place Lane Rachel Andersen’s vision of a future society which aims to combine the best of indigenous thinking with modernism and post-modernism, while avoiding their downsides, how to do this is another matter. We had coffee together in Copenhagen, and she will be one of three eagles at our coming retreat on Education. Both of us, interestingly are converts, we chose our religions rather than growing up in them which gives us a different perspective. We also chose religions that are distinctly not socially atomistic in their ontologies but focus on community forms of identity. The conversation was wide-ranging and could have gone on for longer than the hour we had available. But it will continue at and before the April event.
I think there is a significant issue when describing an emergent and somewhat messy movement shifts to being a thing, in this case called Meta-modernism. In that talk, I identified three areas of concern:
You can probably gather by now that I see meta-modernism, but not meta-modernity as dangerous. I’m not sure any of the three above have anything to do with ironic sincerity; it just looks like they like the name. I may have gone a little far in the session, and there was confusion when I compared rhetoric styles: some people thought I was comparing people. But overall, this stuff needs calling out for what it is: a dangerous set of distractions from real engagement with our various crises. While the authors and promotors of those distractions may, in the main, be well-meaning, the direction of travel has historical precedence, and at that point, I return to the Weimar Republic.
Postscript
In response to some social media questions – the reference to ‘between’ modernism and post-modernism is in the sense of mediation not some halfway house. My focus in this post was on my concerns over appropriating a way of describing an emergent aesthetic and social movement to be a thought, hence my separation of meta-modernity from Metermodenism. My use of hyphens and capitals is deliberate here, by the way.
Another distinction is that meta-modernity is engaged in an ironic mediation between modernism and post-modernism. At the same time, much of Metamodernism seems more about the assertion of a new doctrine and the othering of post-modernism. I’m doing my best to wade through Stone on the subject, and he at least seems to be wrestling with the wider issue. Still, he dismisses alternatives to post-modernism in a paragraph, such as the various strands of new materialism, which I would favour. Interestingly, his only argument against new materialism is that it uses some of post-modernism tools, which is a little (sic) ironic as mediation would permit that.
But as an overall statement, there are too many theologians and not enough philosophers involved in this, and they are very protestant in their orientation. The focus on stage theory is the product of atomistic thinking, confirming that view.
Second Postscript
Brendon is now justifying his use of the dubious statement by an appeal to authority; namely, Vervaeke said it. I’m even less impressed, and of course, there is no link to the so-called research which would allow a review of a sample of questions. But even if you take it seriously it says that the main reasons for the depression are lack of money and/or illness, Using religion to distract people from their physical condition has a somewhat negative set of precedents in human history.
If you read the Sun article, this is further emphasis. Yakult’s UK PR Manager, explains that “As a Japanese Company, we want to introduce the nation to Ikigai, a Japanese self-development concept, which is a framework for bringing satisfaction, happiness and meaning to your life.” So, their use is similar t the meta-muggle religious tendency.
Third Postscript
Even though he knows the survey has no value, Vervaeke was still using it to give spurious authority to his claims as recently as this December.
Fourth Postscript
And if anyone had any remaining doubts about the dangers of this nonsense, go no further than this announcement of an Illuminati-style Frathouse (with its own internal stage theory of enlightenment) by one of the prominent meta-muggles.
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