What is metamodern thinking?

Metamodernism is the latest narrative of our times. The term originated in the 1980s and was further developed in 2010 by cultural theorists Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker. It describes a contemporary culture that no longer fits the notion of postmodernism. Metamodernism defines the interconnected changes in philosophy, politics, ethics, and aesthetics after postmodernism that you should be aware of if you want to see the future humanity is moving towards. Metamodernism corresponds to the digitalized, post-industrial, global age. It attempts to fuse idealistic modernism and cynical postmodernism into a single concept. In this way, metamodernism swings like a pendulum between modernism and postmodernism.

Here are five key insights that make thinking metamodern, based on statements by Hanzi Freinacht (a pseudonym of sociologist Daniel Görtz and theoretical artist Emil Ejner Friis) from metamoderna.org:

Conscious awareness of emotions and thought processes

We all experience uncontrollable negative emotional responses to an idea or person for no apparent reason. It is a gut-wrenching feeling of rejection. The metamodern approach is based on metacognition - the conscious awareness of one's own thought processes and the patterns behind them. Metamodernism encourages objective judgement based on careful analysis, uncontaminated by the clouds of automatic reactions. Just because something evokes negative emotions in you does not mean that it is a bad thing. The trick is to be aware of when your brain and emotions are deceiving you. Often emotions trick the mind into constructing arguments based on strong reactions. Remember that your brain is biased, and your emotions do not reveal the full truth. The next time you hear a concept that triggers a negative emotion, try to step back from the emotion and analyse where the reaction came from. Becoming aware of the influence of your emotions on your thinking is a stage in personal development towards metamodern thinking.

 Confidence in development and progress

The metamodern way of thinking is a reaction to the postmodern relativist dogma that progress is an illusion and that things are always changing, but that doesn't mean there is any development. However, metamodernism does not return to the modernist uncritical celebration of technological progress and the belief that all development is positive. It is an attempt to redefine what constitutes adequate progress, based on post-modern critique, but with the belief that we can move towards positive progress.

If you are allergic to technological progress and sincerely believe that things are getting worse, then your views are close to postmodernism. If you get annoyed every time someone points out the shortcomings and potential harms of new technological advances, you are probably a modernist. However, if you understand that all progress has advantages and disadvantages, and that progress is inevitable and eventually necessary, and if you also understand that cultural progress goes hand in hand with technological change, and that we have a personal responsibility to deal with such processes appropriately in order to get the most out of them - then you are on the road to metamodernism.

Understanding hierarchies

Hierarchies are necessary structures that help to organize entities into coherent systems and meaningful narratives. Hierarchies are all around us. Humans are more complex than frogs, animals are more complex than rocks. Industrial society is more advanced than hunter-gatherers. There are hierarchies based on complexity, but that does not mean that more complex is necessarily better. However, there are also things that can be ranked according to their ethical validity. Love is better than hate. Parental leave is better than apathy for the child. Metamodernism reintroduces hierarchies as a unit of analysis - as a reaction against the postmodern relativistic view that all hierarchies are bad. But it is not a return to the old arbitrary dominant hierarchies (race, class, privilege, gender) that postmodernism acted against. Instead, the metamodern mind attempts to restructure reality according to non-arbitrary and well-founded hierarchies in terms of complexity and ethical value, incorporating the higher ethics discovered in postmodernism and beyond.

Pursuing reconstruction

The mantra of metamodernism is: reconstruction must follow deconstruction. Postmodernism sought to deconstruct the world of signs, so metamodernism takes up the task of reconstructing our symbolic universe and reconnecting it with other aspects of reality. The great goal of metamodernism is to create a new grand narrative, combining all known knowledge and wisdom, with the understanding that this is a never-ending work, and that the only synthesis that is achievable is the synthesis of minds, eternally criticized, and never flawless. The metamodernist is not content with merely describing the world when the real explanations are just over the horizon. What exists is just as interesting as what does not exist. For the metamodern mind, the most important thing is to say what it really believes. This is what distinguishes it from postmodern caution, which explains why others are wrong.

"Both-and" thinking

The essential tool for creating a new grand narrative is "both/and" thinking. It is not just a matter of taking the best from modernism and postmodernism, or finding a middle ground between the two, or being able to reach a compromise. It is the ability to synthesize apparent opposites and to construct new syntheses from theses and antitheses. Objective science or subjective hermeneutics? Both and. Heritage or natural environment? Both and. Biological determinism or cultural adaptation? Both and.

If you feel convinced that everything is mainly determined by physical laws and biological, genetic conditions, then you are a science-obsessed modernist. If, on the other hand, you consider everything to be merely social constructs, then you are a flaming postmodern. Both positions have truth in them, but only the metamodern mind knows how to create possible syntheses and understands the relationship between external and internal conditions, physical and social variables.

So, to what extent do you have metamodern thinking?