The first article I selected this morning from my overflowing inbox was The Future of Peace (3/4) by Jonathan Rowson. At the end of his article, he writes “That was a strange post, but somehow it had to be written.” And, perhaps also strangely, the article did not seem strange to me, made good sense, and was one I had to read.
Metamodern Wannabes live in a liminal space, a time between worlds, between chaos or control, between breakdown or breakthrough, two possible paths.
There is, however, a ‘third attractor’, at least in principle, and people are beginning to articulate it. Somehow, perhaps propelled by ‘the flip’ in perspective about who we are, we navigate technology well and evolve through a spiritual, cultural, and intellectual renaissance into some kind of (and here I’m freewheeling a bit…) wisely governed, polycentric, pluriversal, regenerative, cosmo-local, bioregional, open society that is continually learning, creating and caring, not merely as means to other ends, but as our preeminent societal ends. Maybe. Such a world will also need some resistance, some struggle, and some conflict to remain resilient and healthy.
See you there?
Yes, this hope gets me out of bed in the morning.
The more discerning modern match for the Death Star is Moloch. In Moloch in Therapy I describe how game theory sets up Moloch as “The God of coordination failure, or the spirit of unintended consequences, the secret reason that good things turn bad. Moloch…is usually depicted as inorganic, as some kind of statue or machine…the thing that is not of true value toward which people nonetheless feel obliged to sacrifice things that are of real value.” If peace today means recognizing that we are at war with ourselves, Moloch represents our inability to respond to ecological collapse or technological developments with sufficient resolve due to the inertia caused by competing commitments.
To the best of my knowledge, all this talk about Moloch in the SPACE flows from an article, MEDITATIONS ON MOLOCH, by Scott Alexander published on July 30, 2014. He currently writes Astral Codex Ten on Substack. I only find time to read him occasionally these days but I always find doing so time well spent.
Moloch is the symbol of negative outcomes caused by inexorable competitive logic arising from a lack of imagination and unwitting design.
The second article I read this morning was a long one, Understanding Iain McGilchrist's Worldview - Eleven major premises discernible in The Matter with Things written by David McIlroy for Perspectiva, Jonathan Rowson’s organization. I wish I could understand and retain all this article says, but I lack the intellectual capacity to do so. But from time to time I hope to go back and study these premises which seem important and metamodern.