Lately in the SPACE
but starting back in September 2024
On JAN 05 2025 Brendan Graham Dempsey posted Critiquing Metamodernism and that got my attention.
James Cussen of joins me to discuss his probing 6-part critique of what “metamodernism.” We go deep into the strands of metamodern theory and discourse to debate the relative merits and demerits of various approaches to the topic. Along the way, we both explore various ways to clarify and nuance topics and ideas core to various metamodern projects.
However, I put the YouTube video on my Watch Later playlist and I went straight to The Living Philosophy Substack. I was unfamiliar with James Cussen but intrigued. This post will be my commentary on his 6-part critique.
Metamodernism Critique: Introduction
Over the past year or so I have found my Metamodern convictions lapsing.
This, after four years on a wonderful Metamodern adventure.
After five years, my metamodern interest continues to grow.
A serendipitous encounter with Ken Wilber’s A Theory of Everything was life-changing… A few months later, I started the YouTube channel and many of the early episodes touch on themes of Wilber and his “Integral” school.
I have not read Wilber’s book and my discovery of metamodernism was not through Wilber or Integral.
Not long after reading Wilber, I picked up Hanzi Freinacht’s book The Listening Society.
I discovered Hanzi early in my metamodern journey and still follow him with great interest.
But over the past year or so I have found my Metamodern convictions lapsing. There’s been an uneasiness brewing in me that I’ve been unable to articulate. Somewhere in the past few months I finally confessed the truth to myself: the spell had worn off.
I also have an uneasiness but not with metamodernism itself. In my opinion, shared with a few trusted friends, something is missing from the metamodern SPACE. I will explain what I mean later in this article.
I have no doubt that there are many gaps in my account but this is mostly for myself — it is my attempt to articulate where I stand with Metamodernism and thus to understand my own current belief system.
I love this approach. I am also writing mostly for myself. And Cussen and I are both doing so in public which somehow elevates the experience.
Metamodernism Critique Part 1
Metamodernism is a strange term.
The word itself has never felt strange to me but the sensitivity that some have to the usage of the word feels strange.
There is art and there is history. We can speak of art movements nested in history but it is unusual to speak of the reverse. Metamodernism does just this.
The two Dutch art scholars who kickstarted the Metamodern movement with their 2010 article in the Journal of Aesthetics & Culture titled Notes on Metamodernism merely recapitulated the error (as I see it) of Lyotard and Jameson… Had Vermeulen and van den Akker chosen a term like Neo-Ironism for the art trend they had identified then this confusion wouldn’t exist.
What the cultural studies crowd failed to anticipate however was that this naming convention enabled the revivifying of Wilberian Integral Theory and its New Age X Developmental Psychology Hegelianism (stripped, thankfully of much New Ageism). The Integral crowd snuck into the cultural studies nest, parasitically infecting and commandeering the host movement.
This is so interesting to read. It seems to me that there are many paths that lead to metamodernism. My path was very different from Cussen’s as I explained in my essay About Gregg Henriques.
One wonders what might have happened if Modern Art had been given a less historical-sounding name. Where would our Metamodernism and Postmodernism be then? Perhaps we could have enjoyed the irony of both moments without the ontological baggage they brought in tow
The two Dutch Scholars and Wilberian Integral Theory had almost no impact on my journey.
However, I would like to make a point about artists. Vermeulen and van den Akker noticed something shifting in the arts and that was significant because big cultural shifts seem to have a vibe first captured by artists, shifts for which words had not yet been found. Academics, philosophers, writers and all of us best pay some attention to the artists.
I was struck by something Cussen said after he completed his article.
If I’m mistaken I’d love to know…
For me, metamodernism is not something to be mistaken or correct about. I am reading Cussen with interest but not with any intention of assessing whether he is right or wrong. I will explain what I mean later in this article.
Metamodernism Critique Part 2
…today we are going to talk a little more about the Zeitgeist periodisation schema at the heart of almost all Metamodernisms (Modern → Postmodern → Metamodern). What I’m trying to figure out is how the metamodern aesthetic sensibility (ironic sincerity, informed naiveté, pragmatic idealism) got sewed up with process ontology, systems theory and developmental psychology.
For me, this is easy to figure out. I think we are witnessing consilience, a growing number of people taking very different paths and finding each other in the metamodern SPACE. It seems to me that what Cussen is trying to figure out is a beautiful mess beyond rational explanation.
On the face of it the term cultural logic seems more innocuous. But the more I’ve thought about the less convinced I’ve become. It seems to me that “cultural logic” is no more innocuous a term than developmental stage or dialectical stage. On the contrary, these characterisations of Metamodernism are, as well as being bad framings, a danger to the effectiveness of Metamodernism.
It never occurred to me that the framing that Brendan Graham Dempsey uses, cultural logic, was bad framing or in any way a danger. All words have limitations, the words cultural logic have limitations as do the words of Cussen and as do mine. I do not see a danger to the grand, perhaps impossible, mission of Metamodernism as I see it, a transition from a self-terminating civilization to a sustainable one, from a win-lose game to a win-win game, from a finite game to an infinite game, but I mostly see it as something else rather than a game.
It has taken me a long time to triangulate the source of my uneasiness. This no doubt stems from the fact that there is a part of this conception I am sympathetic to and another part I am repelled by. But after much reflection I have differentiated the baby and the bathwater for Metamodernism. I’ll leave the baby for later. For now, let’s talk about the bathwater.
I am very curious about what Cussen finds repelling.
The idea that previous (“enduring”) cultural logics are somehow contained in the Metamodernist’s mind and intuitively “available to it” seems hubristic to me.
And I agree with Cussen, although I prefer the word audacious rather than hubristic. However, I have never seen anyone claim that they personally can hold all previous cultures in their own mind. And I think there are obvious solutions to this problem. It seems to me that the truly Metamodern mind will be a collective mind. And it seems to me that AI will be a great tool for individual minds and the collective mind to hold more and make more available. As for me, my metamodern mind remains highly aspirational.
Perhaps we might find forms of discourse emerging in all of these groups such as memes and hit pieces. But I don’t think we’ll find ironic sincerity, informed naiveté or pragmatic idealism emerging among all these groups —not to mention a proclivity for complexity science, process ontology and developmental psychology.
Again I agree and again I see the path forward as necessarily being collective.
When we pull apart the threads that are gathered together in a cultural logic such as Premodern, Modern or Postmodern it is impossible to find a coherent singular cultural logic that unites these groups.
No. I can see no overarching cultural logic that we can take for granted.
James Cussen cannot see it but Brendan Graham Dempsey can, and I can. But we do not claim to see clearly. In his book Metamodernism: A Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics, Dempsey has, imo, written a good introduction for an unfolding story that has many chapters yet unwritten.
Metamodernism, when conceived as a nested series of “transcending and including” cultural logics/zeitgeists/epistemes/developmental stages, totalises.
Perhaps I am mischaracterising Dempsey’s view and the view of many metamodernists. I hope so.
I will add one word to Cussen’s sentence which, for me, makes it far less problematic: Metamodernism, when conceived as only a nested series of “transcending and including” cultural logics/zeitgeists/epistemes/developmental stages, totalises.
There is more to be said about the dangers I perceive in this zeitgeist version of Metamodernism and much I want to say about a more modest Metamodernism. These will be covered in future instalments.
And I will keep reading and writing.
Metamodernism Critique Part 3: Why a Single Spiral?
In this instalment, we are going to prod this notion further and ask: why a single spiral? Let’s work with a highly generalised version of history. Why should we think of culture as having a linear developmental scheme? That is a relic of Wilber reading too much developmental psycholog or, what is more likely, too much Hegel (why do all roads seem to lead back to Hegel).
I will again rewrite a Cussen sentence to reflect my view. I will not use the word should and I will add the word only and a few other words: We can think of culture as having a linear development scheme but this is not the only frame we can put around culture. And, for me, Wilber is more Integral than Metamodern and I am personally not much influenced by Wilber’s framing.
…in a nutshell, Sowell’s “visions” are akin to worldviews. They give us a way to navigate a reality “far too complex to be comprehended by any given mind.”
I am not familiar with Thomas Sowell but I totally share this viewpoint.
There are a plurality of such visions active in our society.
I completely agree and I believe pluralism will always be with us. What I am looking for, but do not yet see emerging, is cohesive pluralism. I remain hopeful but not optimistic.
Without getting too deeply into the Sowellian weeds, I merely want to sketch this theory enough to point out that, for Sowell, the political history of modernity has not been of a “transcending and including” à la Wilber but of two conflicting visions.
But I would say that the political history of modernity is much more than a story of “transcending and including” or a story of two conflicting visions.
With the Constrained and Unconstrained Visions we can see a political history of modernity that is not one of developmental transcendence and inclusion but of conflict.
Looking at political history through another lens, the lens of conflict, seems useful to me, the more lenses the better.
But now let’s talk about another vision of history that is closer to the heart of Metamodernism: Iain McGilchrist.
Yes indeed. The framing of Iain McGilchrist is much closer to my heart than the framing of Ken Wilber. But I have not read The Master and His Emissary.
Essentially McGilchrist’s work is a cross-breed of neuroscience and history… For our purposes here we can reduce this to a tension between a romantic (right-hemisphere) and a rational (left-hemisphere) worldview… That’s a brutal oversimplification but it’s enough for our purposes here. The point I want to make is that McGilchrist’s account isn’t one of sublation but of tension.
Cussen does not say much about McGilchrist so there is not much for me to respond to. Most of what I have learned has been through the writings of Jonathan Rowson and his work makes a lot of sense to me. But I would like to share another twist on right-hemispheric and left-hemispheric thinking, another oversimplification but perhaps a useful framing.
The Queen and her Knight - Midwifing the McGilchrist Manoeuvre by my metamodernist friend Claudia Dommaschk explains,
I have written several articles envisioning the prioritizing of the mature feminine spirit, that is, valuing relatedness at least as much as decisiveness, as a new way of organizing ourselves, both individually and in groups (here and here). What McGilchrist refers to as the right hemispheric, broad attention, I intuit as the "feminine spirit," and the left hemispheric, narrow focus, I sense as the "masculine spirit." While there is evidence in our reproductive differences for the origin of these different ways of being, we would all probably be better off if we aimed to cultivate the ability to attend to both in such a way that brings us into greater alignment with reality.
Metamodernism Critique Part 4: The Dangerous Ladder
Following up on the last couple of critiques I want to articulate why I feel a discomfort with stage models in general… Truth is, I was once rather taken with stage models (to put it mildly)… I was bewitched by the Spiral Dynamics model.
I am reminded of Nora Bateson, “Stage theory is bullshit.” and the rich discussion of this in the Hanzi Freinacht facebook group a few years ago.
In the second paragraph of this article, Cussen again critiques Ken Wilber. And again, I consider Wilber a giant but I am more interested in current thinkers who stand on the shoulders of giants. My sense of Integral thinkers and the Integral community is that they are adjacent to Metamodern but not metamodern. And my sense of Integral is that they are stuck while Metamodern feels ALIVE to me.
As time has worn on however I have sobered up from this stagial narrative of history and what once rang like glorious truth to me now sounds like hollow truthiness.
I much appreciate Cussen sharing his lived experience. Mine has been very different. Perhaps Cussen was once a True Believer who lost his faith. I do not want to be a True Believer in anything, including a True Believer in Metamodernism.
One key encounter however was a post-mortem of Ken Wilber’s Integral theory on Rebel Wisdom a few years back.
I will note that I too had a Rebel Wisdom experience but I feel some mild frustration with Cussen going on and on about Ken Wilber.
In the Rebel Wisdom post-mortem, Jamie Wheal (Stealing Fire, Recapture the Rapture) gives a great account of what went wrong: hierarchy… Wheal attributes the unravelling of the Integral movement to this hierarchisation.
And I will note that I follow the work of Jamie Wheal and I have a report on Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That's Lost Its Mind on my website.
My fear is that Metamodernism is falling into the same trap as Integral and for the same reasons… they are all creating a linear hierarchy for humanity.
This, imo, is a very good piece of advice. However, Hanzi Freinacht has addressed this directly and to my satisfaction. Cussen does not seem to be aware of Hanzi’s defense of his take on stages.
If you’re Metamodern you’re more advanced than the Woke and hippie postmoderns and the atheistic, scientism of the Moderns. You are more complex, more psychologically developed and rarer than them. You are at the cutting edge of human evolution. You, by virtue of the thoughts in your skull, are special. And if they don’t recognise it, it’s because they aren’t complex enough to see how special you are.
I plead guilty… almost. I was once a True Believer in Christianity and I did indeed feel special. And there probably are metamodernists today who feel special and elevate themselves. But what Cussen fears, imo, has not yet happened in the Metamodern community that I am part of.
Most strains of Metamodernism (but it’s worth noting — not all! more on that in future instalments) believe in this advanced status of Metamodernism. And they believe that Metamodernism contains these previous worldviews within it. Whether that’s a developmental stage that they pass through or as a “decentration”, each new stage “transcends and includes” the previous stages (for more on this see the previous critique).
I remain very curious about where Cussen is headed and I suspect that I may be in some agreement with him.
By setting up Metamodernism as that which is ahead, above and beyond of the Postmodern, Modern, Premodern, it still creates a linear hierarchy in which the Metamodernists are advanced and special. That is pragmatically dangerous… The Metamodernists are in danger of repeating the failure of Integral — getting caught in the snare of their own theory.
I completely agree. However, I believe this criticism is premature, aiming at a future possibility rather than the current reality. But I see ways to mitigate this danger and will say more about this later.
At the end of his articles, Cussen has this note:
Once again, for anyone, for any Metamodernists (or other critical readers) reading, I’d love to hear your thoughts on any blindspots, oversights, errors, distortions or strawmen you see in this or any other piece in the series. As I said in the intro this isn’t some polished piece of art but a wrestling to articulate something I sense. If I’m mistaken I’d love to know; future pieces can benefit from that knowledge.
Metamodernism Critique Part 5: The Irony of Sincerity
In this instalment of the Metamodernism Critique series, I want to talk about a blindspot in the Metamodern narrative.
We have terms like “informed naiveté”, “pragmatic idealism” and the most distinctive one “ironic sincerity”.
So much of metamodern discourse is an optimistic simping over the capacity for this new aesthetic sensibility to get back to believing in things — to an earnest affirmation of something.
Again, I plead guilty. I too want to get back to believing things and to be affirming of something. But whatever that something is, it needs to be grounded in something more than aesthetic sensibility and I will say more later.
But ironic sincerity is a double-edged sword. Metamodern writer Hanzi Freinacht’s idea cuts both ways:
“Without the irony and the sarcasm, my sincerity would simply be too much; it would awaken severe suspicions, and for good reason too.”
At this point I would like to disclose that I took A Dramatic Introduction to Metamodernism and the Philosophy of Hanzi Freinacht last year. I shared some of that experience in my article, "Islands of Coherence". I became quite fond of Emil Ejner Friis and I will do my best to manage my defensiveness of Hanzi as I proceed.
Cussen makes an important point.
All of this is undoubtedly ironic sincerity but it is not the rosy utopian ironic sincerity of the Metamodernists but the true discourse of the Internet age.
However, a critique of the misuse of ironic sincerity is not a critique of metamodernism.
And my version of metamodernism is protopian, not utopian, a concept that I first learned about from Hanzi.
In contrast, go out and read and watch and interact with Metamodernists. Check out Shia LaBeouf’s Metamodern art performances and then watch Internet Historian’s account of 4Chan’s trolling of him. What you find is that the Metamodernists are far from being so advanced in their use of irony that they win the day. Instead, their earnestness is so transparent that it is easily taken apart by irony and it ends up looking cringy.
The above paragraph is meaningless to me. It does not reflect on my flavour of metamodernism. It does not reflect on the metamodern SPACE that I feel part of.
When I first picked up Hanzi Freinacht’s book The Listening Society I found it off-putting and threw it away for a year or two… I found it cringy. It felt like one of those adolescent imitators of Nietzsche who are too grandiose in their style and it ends up being cringy.
I accept that this is Cussen’s lived experience. Mine is the opposite. Never once reading articles on the https://metamoderna.org/ website, or browsing Hanzi’s books or spending a week with Emil has anything felt cringy.
While Metamodernism uses ironic sincerity to give voice to an optimism the “postmodern” left in its Shadow, the populist right uses ironic sincerity to give voice to much deeper and longer buried demons.
This is probably true.
…survey the Metamodern literature and you’ll find little irony.
This is also probably true.
I think what’s going on is that the Integral crowd are LARPing as Metamodernists. They read that ironic sincerity is part of Metamodernism and so they try to embody that as a signal of their advanced state. But it doesn’t work. Instead, it undermines their earnestness.
And this may also be true.
This meta-irony doesn’t strike one as being particularly “Metamodern” and while it smacks of rhizomatic memetic mutation I struggle to see how it might fit into a narrative of cultural evolution. But maybe that’s just me.
Maybe. It does not seem to be true of the people I follow and the people I hang out with.
Metamodern Critique Part 6: An Optimistic Alternative
Ending the series on a hopeful note
It’s about time we bring this critique home and true to my nature I’d like to end it on an optimistic note. This critique was never meant as a death blow to Metamodernism but as a distillation. I see this critique the same way as I see (in my optimistic moments) this year in my life: as burning away of that which doesn’t serve.
The primary bone I’ve picked in this series in the self-serving and reductive nature of stagial models in Metamodernism, which oversimplify cultural complexity and impose linear complexity hierarchy that Metamodernists (conveniently) sit atop.
Is metamodernism self-serving? In my opinion, metamodernists deeply understand that Modernity is a self-terminating civilization, as were all previous civilizations. Metamodernism seeks to build a better civilization that is truly self-sustaining. This mission, imo, is the most ambitious and inspiring project ever undertaken by human beings. Metamodernism is, imo, in service to all of humanity.
Is metamodernism reductive? Yes. We seem to be in a time of a paradigm shift that is far wider than Metamodernism. The understanding of the incompleteness of a scientific reductionist worlview is growing. But that worldview is not wrong, just very incomplete. Reductionism is one way that humans understand complex matters, reducing them to parts that can be understood. It seems to me that metamodernism does this with a deep understanding that the whole is something more than the parts.
And it seems to me that James Cussen has, with sincere irony, reduced metamodernism to parts that he understands which he then critiques, perhaps without having grasped the whole and without awareness of what he has done.
Does metamodernism oversimplify? Yes, but with awareness. Reality must be oversimplified and can never be grasped as a whole. Metamodernism must be oversimplified. Cultural complexity must be oversimplified. It seems to me that it cannot be otherwise.
And it seems to me that as I read his articles, James Cussen has oversimplified metamodernism. And it seems to me that he could not do otherwise. And my critique of his critique is likewise oversimplified. I do this with awareness that his words do not capture all he knows, nor do mine. There is always more to say, and I will say more later.
Have metamodernists created a self-serving hierarchy so that they can sit at the top? Perhaps, yes, if metamodernism is reduced to stage theory. No, if metamodernism is a project to build a nonself-terminating civilization. No, if metamodernism is understood a historical period that follows Modernity.
At this point I will add that many metamodernists sense that we are living in a liminal time, perhaps a time between Modernity and Metamodernity, a time of Possibility, a time between possible breakdown and possible breakthrough.
And I will add something about paying attention to intention. Each of us have a private self that is probably not shared with anyone. In my opinion, it is not possible to fully know the intentions of others. We may not even fully grasp our own intentions, but we can reflect on them and we can try to be transparent. Why did James Cussen write these articles? Why am I writing a commentary on them?
…there is a more modest conception of Metamodernism which is not just more accurate but strategically superior.
Perhaps.
This more modest Metamodernism has more pragmatic value for a Metamodern community seeking to make an impact in the world (or simply seeking to endure).
But will it try to solve the metacrisis, which is another theme in Metamodernism? And for the record, I love pragmatism. And I would point to Jim Rutt and the Game B project as something that is deeply pragmatic and metamodern.
As we looked at in Part 4, Jamie Wheal (Stealing Fire, Recapture the Rapture) did a great post-mortem of Integral theory with Rebel Wisdom back in 2020.
Once again, it seems to me that Cussen is writing a reasonable critique of Integral rather than a critique of Metamodernism. And I love the work of Jamie Wheal, who I regard as a metamodernist thinker.
I believe that Metamodernism can be a cultural logic of cultural logics without the self-reflection becoming the gaze of Narcissus.
Yes, I believe this as well.
Perhaps Hanzi Freinacht is right and Metamodernism requires a certain level of mental complexity to appreciate. But I don’t believe that Metamodernism is the only one that requires such a complexity.
I agree, although framing Hanzi as being right (or wrong) is framing I try to avoid. I have not seen any effort by metamodernists to exclusively capture an approach utilizing complexity. For example, personally, I do not regard the Santa Fe Institute, a leader in the field of complexity, to be part of the metamodern SPACE.
I do not believe Metamodernism is necessary but contingent — one paradigm/episteme/worldview/subculture among many. Despite its contingency, I believe it is a paradigm that can do a lot of good in the world. But I believe this hegemonic hierarchising endangers that and risks (as with Integral) collapsing into a dick-measuring, back-patting exercise in which an ingroup takes for granted its superiority and proceeds to infight over its chosen metric: who is the most complex? who is the most self-reflective? And I fear “with this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action”.
Cussen’s concerns are best heeded. But, imo, the danger he warns against is merely a future possibility. What he fears has not yet manifested.
I believe that Metamodernism is doomed to the same fate as Integral…
I hope not and I remain motivated to help metamodernism flourish in a healthy way.
…consider a Metamodernist community that conceives of itself merely as one worldview among many.
Descriptively, at this time, metamodernism is but one worldview amongst many. And metamodernism, imo, does not seek to eliminate pluralism. What Jim Rutt and others have pointed to is the need for cohesive pluralism.
It is not guaranteed to be anything more than a footnote in history. It may remain a drop in the collective ocean — a subculture that never penetrated more than 0.01% of the culture.
Yes, possibily metamodernism will never be more than an insignificant subculture but Cussen has not dampened my desire for something more.
…I see Jason Storm’s work to create a Metamodern research paradigm…
And I see Jason Storm and Brendan Graham Dempsey working together as metamodernists as I wrote about in Something New in the SPACE.
I can see it in McGilchrist’s work (which I consider at the very least Metamodern adjacent).
And I see this too and I see Iain McGilchrist and metamodernist Jonathan Rowson working together.
A Metamodernism which isn’t destined for mass-adoption in a couple of decades must go forth and braid, oscillate, peacemake and show that it can integrate worldviews together and show that it can depolarise our culture and our discourse and bring its adherents to a greater quality of life.
I agree.
Appreciating the difficulty of the challenge and its contingency has the chance to orient the Metamodern community outwardly and towards action rather than inwardly towards competition and echo chambering.
I agree, and I see many in the metamodern SPACE who are action oriented and outwardly focused.
That concludes the series. I will be chatting to Brendan in the next couple of weeks and will post the interview on here as well as the link to it on his YouTube channel Metamodern Spirituality. Thank you for going on this journey with me. I hope it has brought some fraction of the value to you that it has to me.
And in the next few days I hope to watch the video.
I wrote a detailed report on Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics by Brendan Graham Dempsey which I assume Cussen has also read. It seems to me that Cussen has addressed only a small fraction of its content. Consequently, his articles have had very little inpact on me.
I would now like to add to my personal view of metamodernism, and I would also like to add my own critique. I do this in the spirit of making something good even better. If anything, my enthusiasm has grown as I have been reading and writing.
I do not consider myself, or anyone, to be a metamodernist. I am a Metamodern Wannabe. For me personally, metamodernism is highly aspirational. Metamodernism is in its infancy and has a long way to go to become more mature. As such, a critique of metamodernism at this time is easy, and helpful.
I consider metamodernism to be something like a hyperobject, something so vast that it cannot be fully grasped by a single person. In my opinion, Brendan Graham Dempsey has a very deep undertanding of metamodernism, but his too remains incomplete, as does that of James Cussen, as does mine. For me, adding to metamodernism makes more sense than critiquing it.
I hold metamodernism as a story, just a story but not just a story, a paradox inherent in the story itself. We have written only the first chapter of the story. The authors of the story, all of us, can reflect on the story so far, critique it, modify it, add a new chapter, reflect on and critique that new chapter and continue writing, and living, the metamodern story for as long as possible as we seek to build a radically new and better world for everyone.
One of my critiques of metamodernism is that it has too much Galaxy Brain and not enough Galaxy Heart. My friend Claudia Dommaschk and I and others are attempting to add more of this vibe to the SPACE, and she has written beautifully about Connecting with Our Galaxy Heart. We have noted that metamodernism to date seems to be a left-brain, mostly masculine effort. We would like to add more right-brain, healthy feminine thinking, or better said, feeling, to the mix.
Also, metamodernism currently feels very individualist and we would like to add something more that is collective. It seems to some of us that building a capacity for collective intelligence, and more importantly, collective wisdom, is important work to do. AI may help with this.
Another critique of mine is that metamodernism has not (yet) created enough space for average and ordinary people like me, I say self-servingly with a poor attempt at sincere irony.
And one more critique. Where are our comedians? We are, I am, far too serious. Best we cultivate a capacity to laugh at ourselves, and lovingly, laugh at our critics who don’t seem to get it.
You are invited to explore the following: