​Let the Ideas Evolve

holding and fostering metamodern conversations

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Metamodern Conversations

A Process Practice
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​"If postmodern thought holds that all truth is relative, metamodernism holds that absolute truth exists — but evolves differently for each person. Where postmodern thought deconstructs, metamodern thought reconstructs that which it acknowledges has previously been deconstructed." (Seth Abramson)

Open and relational (process) philosophy is sometimes imagined as a constructively postmodern orientation toward life.  This language, coined by David R. Griffin, has been especially influential in China.  See the Institute for a Postmodern China.

But insofar as the word postmodern can too often suggest merely a deconstrutive postmodernism, other language is possible.  Process philosophy can likewise be imagined as a metamodern orientation toward life.  Indeed, the word metamodern has many meanings, too. Check out Metamodernism in Wikipedia.  But here I use the word solely in the way adumbrated by Seth Abramson above: that is, as denoting a reconstructive postmodernism that takes truth seriously.  Maybe not absolute truth, as if truth were a changeless pillar on which to rest, but certainly objective truth: that is, truth that transcends human whim and vicissitudes.  Consider the truths so important to process philosophy, as identified in the meme at the bottom of this page.  For most process philosophers, these truths are "true" even if people do not recognize or agree with them.

Liberalism

Process philosophy also seems to many to be a "liberal" approach to life, not in the neo-liberal sense of over-emphasizing individuals at the expense of community, or personal liberties over social needs, but in the sense of being generously open to new ideas and, more importantly, to the vulnerable in society: the very young, the very old, the forgotten and forsaken.  Process philosophers are more interested in taking care of people than in getting ahead in the marketplace. They prioritize friendships over money, love over material success.  Their ideal is an ecological civilization consisting of local communities that are creative, compassionate, participatory, humane to animals, and good for the earth - with no one left behind.  See Creative Localization: ​ A Community-Based Approach to Ecological Civilization in Practice and Theory

Important as such values may be, it is nonetheless the case that those who espouse them can fall into their own kind of arrogance.  They can be mean-spirited in relation to "conservatives" and unwilling to listen to the stories of those on "the other side."  They fall into arrogant and insulated liberalism.  They fail to recognize that there may be something like truth - resonance with the way things are and ought to be - among those who think differently.

Metamodern cultural spaces where ideas can evolve

The short essay by Jared Morningstar below takes heed of this tendency and offers a valuable alternative: metamodern liberalism.  One of the practices of such a liberalism is to help develop, and participate in, what he calls meta-modern cultural spaces, where people freely exchange ideas but allow the ideas to evolve in ways that are beyond their (or anyone's) control into something more "universal" and "multivalent."  The conversations can be local and face-to-face, remote through zoom, or less personal through social media.  What is important is the attitude people take toward their conversation partners.  They enter the interactions with humility, with a recognition that the ideas can and should evolve.  They don't own the ideas or cling to the ideas with such ferocity that the ideas become false gods in their imagination.  They know that truth, whatever it is, is always more than their concept of truth.

- Jay McDaniel, February, 2021

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Towards a Metamodern Liberalism

Jared Morningstar *
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reposted from Medium: https://jaredmorningstar.medium.com/

Critiques of liberalism are good and needed in our current situation, but wholesale rejection of liberalism in favor of some anti-liberal alternative is sheer foolishness. The people making these critiques are always imagining a hypothetical utopia where their views are the ones controlling the paradigm. Certainly an imperfect pluralism featuring safeguards for personal liberties is preferable when compared with some anti-liberal authoritarianism which forces a conformity.

Liberalism definitely needs an update or a reboot at this point to account for some of its failings, but regressing to some pre-modern cultural hegemony is nothing but a fantasy, at least on a broader societal level. The very thing liberalism seeks to provide (ideally) is conditions where communities can freely form around their own values and commitments, and this has historically been sought by attempting to give no one community ruling power culturally. How well this has worked is debatable, but again I’ll take it any day over an explicitly anti-liberal culture which intentionally prevents the formation of communities with values or traditions outside of the determined norm.

The paradigm shift I think we need to see is a transition from thinking liberalism provides an even-playing field for all cultural groups to realizing that even here certain hegemonies can develop and the danger lies in them becoming transparent and acting without us being aware of it.

Even in a deeply pluralistic society there is something of a meta-culture which develops to allow for interactions between the disparate groups with their unique norms, and so we need to be conscious that such a meta-culture exists and contribute to it with a sense of stewardship and care.

To be an effective steward to this meta culture, you must learn to be an adept translator, developing the skill to mutate particular values and traditions from your own group into something more universal and polyvalent. This will require humility, as it means letting go of control, as once ideas become translated in such a way they are given away to unceasing iterations of appropriations by other communities. But if this humility is present, doors will open to all sorts of fruitful new relations — both on an individual and communal level.

The meta-culture won’t be defined by any fixed traits, norms, or customs, but instead will be procedural — in a constant state of co-creation by myriad participants. Perhaps the only set constraint for the meta-culture will be the promotion of a mode of being which preserves its own existence and future development. But even that must be achieved internally, from the ground up, by the various contributors who recognize the necessity for this meta-culture while acknowledging that it could not be created artificially through top-down directive but that it must evolve organically.

Ideally, this makes for a profoundly democratic social landscape, but not democratic in the sense of a political arena separated out from other facets of life, with its specific and pre-determined forms of engagement. Rather, this is an all-encompassing democracy, where the forms of participation are themselves constantly evolving through imperfect democratic consensus.
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At least, this is the kind of “post-liberal” future I’d prefer to live in. One which acknowledges that an inert, level playing field is a fantasy, but that we can communicate and cooperate together to create a functional landscape. Can we agree that moving towards some kind of paradigm like this is preferable to regressive hegemonies? I’d rather work cooperatively on this kind of vision than get mired in combat over whose hegemony should be at the top.

* Independent academic specializing in 20th century religious philosophy, Islamic studies, and interfaith dialogue based out of Madison, WI. ​