Metamodern Stipulation

The tonality of it. Image is from here.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship… is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing. And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. (David Foster Wallace);

Only by presupposing God’s prior and inconceivable forgiveness can the limitations of human good will be transcended, and only thus can the danger of human pride be avoided… God deserves more love than the world gives him. Men, too, need more love than they receive from the world. Our community wants to take her place where these two needs meet… The Mystical Body of Christ does not rest on abstract principles but on concrete persons who have missions, or on missions which are personal. (Hans Urs von Balthasar);

(I DO NOT DESERVE TO STIPULATE)

Word stipulation, “a commitment to do something”, has its roots in Latin. It derives from “stipulari” — “to demand a guarantee”. Metamodernism commences not as a condition (we are not there yet), but as a stipulation — a set of demands to its contemporary “classmates” — uttered not from a position of power (we are not there yet), but from the position of mistreated and humiliated precariat — those who found their voice in postmodernity but decided to commit it to reconstruction instead of deconstruction. If we are to create a narrative for people to derive meaning from it has to have the moral underpinnings that stem from the gaping holes of suffering, anxiety, meaninglessness and a reborn strive towards everlasting horizons. As a matter of fact, many of my fellow Ukrainians often have days when they cannot afford anything to eat. Inequality makes us suffer. Godlessness makes us suffer. But— full stop and caesura— this is ridiculous. “Create a narrative?” Me? I think I know myself. I am full of sin. I will bad things. I act bad. I do not want my will to be carried out, I want to be an instrument of God’s will, I want to be a vehicle through which His will can be implemented in the world. I don’t see other way to outsmart my ego. I don’t fucking see any other way. If I to take humility to its extreme, then I am about to search for God amidst the phenomena of the world to find him in the blood, acts and words of a somebody, whose archetypal story cannot be taken one step further (innocence, betrayal, torture, death, resurrection). I want historicity, affect and depth, I don’t want to be a mythmaker, a creator of my own values, as Nietzsche implied, I want to be a slave of God who is love. Metamodernists don’t necessarily name this Love properly, but nothing stops them from doing so. After all, praxeologically, only one word separates those who say they serve Love from Christ, but it is this sole word that changes everything.

Few days ago I listened to the podcast where a metamodernist monk complained that Buddhist practice is too other-wordly and does not concern itself with serving poor and struggling souls even in close proximity. I felt urge to sardonically ask him whether he ever heard about Franciscans, Jesuits, Carmelites, etc., but of course I would never do that. I never preach Christianity if I wasn’t asked to explain it in the first place. Not because there is an excruciating amount of snobbishness when the topic of Christianity is discussed (even metamodern humility falls short of seeing the core of Christianity behind, no doubt about it, its endless layers of moral corruption and insensible bigotry), but because I cannot talk about what Christ means and wants without tears. I don’t want my intellect to be divorced from my flesh and acts, instead of proselytizing, I need to partake in the rituals and chanting and life of the community which stems from the very event of Christ’s death (this is why I see Protestantism as a bastard child of Modernism). See, I am about to explore something that may not be quite ready — at least in terms of my own competence. Now and then I have an urge of leaving these attempts of arranging ideas on this level of abstraction and committing my life, in the fashion of Leo Tolstoy, to serving regular people (which of course sounds as if I’m not regular in some important way). Not because I need to somehow outcompete my fraudulence, as in the case of D.F. Wallace (in his Good Old Neon), but because they need help — now. As my friends needed it, even though I had no idea about it. I wish I had better ideas about what they needed. And I still don’t. See, it is vivid and salient, in comparison to my theoretical undertakings. Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose critical biography I just finished reading, helped me with this problem. How wise he was in comparison to his older mentor Bertrand Russell! How wise he was when they discussed what has the priority — intellect or morality. But it’s not about Wittgenstein’s Christianity. It’s about what he did when his friend and lover died. It is about acts, not words. Don’t just pray, bend your knees and wash their feet. And if they want to nail your hands to the cross — let them do it.

THE EVOLUTION OF SYMBOLIC CODE, BRIEFLY

Hanzi Freinacht emphasizes presence of “a qualitative difference between the various cultural codes available to contemporary people, and that this difference arises from the logic of the semantic structures available to individuals and groups, but not because of their cognitive level. Each such code includes a set of tools consisting of interrelated symbols that are used to interpret the world. The symbolic toolkit determines how a person sees the world and acts in it” [Freinacht 2017, p. 212]. In this fashion, human psyche is analogous to hardware and symbolic code is analogous to software — and any person can have any symbolic code, independent of his intellectual abilities. In general, seven symbolic stages correspond to seven cognitive stages of the MHC.

1. Archaic stage. Small groups of people are settled throughout the land. The only problem is survival. Corresponds to the cognitive stage Pre-operational. The code contains only individual words: e.g. “me/you”, “give”.

2. Animistic stage. The main human issue is the environment, which has to be encouraged to help people via rituals. Corresponds to the cognitive stage Primary. Code contains sentences: for example. “in the totem live the spirits of the ancestors”.
Examples: some contemporary tribes, adherents of astrology and magic, pre-Christian Slavs.

3. Faustian stage. Develops in agrarian civilizations, where power is exercised over a large community. The main problem of man is other people, therefore worship of the spirits of nature is replaced by the worship of anthropomorphic deities, whose psychological traits lead to an ascent in the social hierarchy — that is, power, glory, status, revenge, anger. Like Goethe’s Faust, man “sells his soul for the sake of treasures and power.” Corresponds to the cognitive stage of Concrete. The code contains specific stories (several sentences related to a common story, such as myths about social heroes: “Prometheus stole fire from the gods so that people could use it”).
Examples: Polytheistic Ancient Greece, modern pagan neo-nazis.

4. Post-Faustian stage. Develops in civilizations with rich literary traditions through abstracting universal principles. At this stage all the great religions are borne to radically subvert the static state of societal affairs: Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, Confucianism. Plato and Aristotle begin to write “God” not in plural, notwithstanding the surrounding pantheon of the Faustinian gods. The main truth of the world is the Absolute, the ideal above any profane passions and social conventions. Off with Prometheus, disobedient to the gods, enter the Christian saint. Instead of Pharaoh-god comes a righteous rebel. A king no longer has absolute authority over the people — he only serves the universal truth — God. At this stage Goethe says “do not sell the soul for pleasure and power”.
Corresponds to the cognitive stage of Abstract. The code contains abstract concepts (people have learned to abstract among the many narratives, the main, often counter-intuitive patterns, e.g. the stories of the anti-social martyrs and revolutionary heroes) and calls for long-run instead of short-run aspirations — “seek first of all the Kingdom of Heaven”.
Examples: pre-modern Europe, most of contemporary mankind.

5. Modern stage. If truth is universal, it must be proved inter-subjectively and made falsifiable. Instead of revelation comes an objective scientific method. Premises of Progress are used to exploit “backward” civilizations. Instead of Moses’ passage through the Red Sea, we fly over it with a plastic cup of coffee and a much better view.
Corresponds to the cognitive stage Formal. Theories, principles and rules that combine abstract concepts, e.g. Newtonian physics.
Examples: The Soviet Union, China, Intellectual Europe 1700–1940.

6. Postmodern stage. Modern view is “much better” because “progress” killed most fish and underwater animals — almost a trillion dies each year. And Moses did not drown Maldives. If you offer the reign of inter-subjectivity, should we not take into account all the positions? Before reality becomes “objective”, it is phenomenological and is always determined by social constructs. Even ideas on physics, such as a hydrogen atom, are only available through the presence of socially constructed symbols that are not a direct representation of objective reality. The modernist says that he does not believe in God, but he still believes in the existence of the Absolute Truth of Reality seen via the “absent” the eyes of the “absent” God. In fact, the modernist never left faith in God, he only pushed it out of the scene by a simple denial. Descartes and Newton did the same, but they recognized that cognition is possible only with the premise of God. At this stage Derrida says — “any degree of progress does not justify the fact that never before so many men, women and children have been tortured and starved…” [Derrida, Spectres of Marx, Routledge, New York, 1993, p. 85].
Corresponds to the cognitive stage Systematic. System that combines principles and rules, e.g. Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Thomas Kuhn’s concept of “Scientific Revolutions”, Quantum Mechanics, and Theory of Evolution.
Examples: Sweden, Germany, Intellectual Europe in 1960–2000.

7. Metamodern stage. If we really “must take into account all the positions”, do we not have to evaluate, compare and combine them, respecting each one? By rejecting all grand narratives, ironic postmodernism could not offer something better because of fear to appear naïve and remained only a critique and antithesis, unable to solve inequalities, psychological anxieties, and environmental problems. Proto-synthesis should include traditional, modern, and postmodern insights. “You have to deal with the prospect of one universal truth… harbor and cultivate a deep, sincere faith (postfaustian stage), look for objective truth (modernist stage), and seek to criticize and find all possible cracks and excluded voices in thus-created story (postmodern stage)” [Freinacht 2017, p. 242]. Metamodernism returns respect for hierarchies, but with great caution of the postmodernist, who failed to be critical, postmodern, and multiplicative enough. Not a hierarchy is returned, but the idea of ​​one, the ultimate hierarchy, on the pedestal of which, in precessional terms, one finds something akin to martyrdom for the sake of truth and love. In order to be in real solidarity with someone, you must respect her position. Postmodernist still sees the world through the Newtonian worldview — in materialist and deterministic terms, transcended within the scientific community, where were deployed many theories with greater complexity than the Newtonian physics — quantum mechanics, Lobachevsky geometry, Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific revolutions, and, especially, the theory of evolution. Darwin surpassed Newton. After these discoveries, it’s no longer possible to be a reductionist. But the consistent whining of sense and meaning from human life requires a radical redefinition of the locus of significance which needs to be moved to a person. This is what religion does by uniting the cosmos with human life, using a language where the sacred is allowed space. At this stage, Luke Turner says “we offer pragmatic romanticism, without ideological support”. Thus, metamodernism proclaims “transcendence and mercuial oscillation between irony and sincerity, naivety and omniscience, relativism and certainty, optimism and pessimism — it is a pursuit of a multitude of disparate and slipping horizons “ (http://www.metamodernism.org/themanifesto). Corresponds to the cognitive stage of Metasystematic, which assesses whether generalisations of individual elements of the system (sacralizing of meta-important principles and modalities) is possible, e.g. integralism, eucharistic anthropology, ana-theism, et cetera.
The examples I know: At present, only a few comedians, Bo Burnham (Make happy), Nathan Fielder (On You Side, Nathan For You), Russell Brand (Under the Skin), writer David Foster Wallace (the Infinite Jest), filmmaker Wes Anderson (Full Moon Kingdom), philosophers Hanzi Freinacht (Metamodern Guide to Politics), Slavoj Zizek (Fragile Absolute), Luke Turner (Metamodern Manifesto), and chess grandmeister Jonathan Rawson (Perspectiva), sociologists Brent Cooper (Abs-tract Org.), Frederic Lalu (Reinventing Organizations), psychologists Ken Wilber (the Integral theory), Jordan Peterson (The Maps of Meaning), John Vervaeke (https://youtu.be/RUzkCRuYhyI), poet Seth Abramson (Metamericana), mathematician Eric Weinstein (immigration restrictorist and xenophile at once), C. G. Jung (symbol formation), H. U. von Balthazar (fourthfold distinction).

CHRISTIAN GRAMMAR, BRIEFLY

Thinking is a dynamic top-down/bottom-up process that co-adapts mind to its environment and vice versa. It is a process of relevance realization — dynamic grasping of gestalts around us that correspond to the engrams that evolved to orient us in the world filled with an infinite amount of facts. Our encounter with reality is always mediated, or rather negotiated, through these pre-cognitive engrams — containers of potential phenomena — designed to fit to the most important gestalts we as humans are about to face in our environment. These gestalts are as constant as human nature of a social animal is constant. It is only in Christianity that the complete set of such engrams had found its representation and articulation: it contains explicit epitomes of the fundamental constants of the human experience. There are times when I live in this landscape and converse with its epitomes. It is a dark place to be, a dark experience (my particular fixation was on the figure of Red Queen who wants you to run “as fast as you can just to stay in the same place”). Just as harsh reality of life is dark — in my case especially in times before my entering Christian faith (after which figures of a positive valence have took the upperhand). The task of symbolic language is to naturally inherit archetypal engrams of psyche; we know this language is true when it helps us highlight its otherwise dark, unvisited strata, and our unconscious acts which it breeds. As environment changes, symbolic language needs updating. As a new structure of feeling emerges, we have to develop new semantics that will be adapted to it. With commencement of the 21st century, the metamodern sensitivity is being born — sensitivity of the Internet Age, where sincerity cannot be unironic, and faith cannot be unchecked. To stay adapted to this new condition, in it incumbent on us to arm ourselves with a corresponding symbolic code. If skeptical postmodernist abandoned naive universal judgements of modernism because of the danger that totalizing ideologies bring, metamodernist forbids herself any ironic solipsistic isolation and risks to self-sacrifice for the sake of the transcendent. Metamodern mind risks returning to the “religious” language, since only within its confines the absolute solidarity of all living beings (note that this proposal itself sounds religious) — since only religious language provides the ethos which can go as far as prohibit any excersise of meanness — something that cannot be stipulated by mere rationality, since it is impossible to demand of everybody to be good with the help of rational argument — people would inevitably rebel against it just to show that there is more to them than their rationality (D. F. Wallace stated that “many of logicians ended lives with a suicide, shooting themselves in the rationalizing head — main root of their suffering. It is a fact”). In contrast with its relativistic predecessor, metamodernism renounces all secondary pursuits to leave sacred space for the divine love, to which transcendentals of beautiful, good, and true are analogous. Understanding the implications of quantum physics and cognitive science (chaos, fluctuation, entropy as constitutive elements of reality), metamodernist denies himself the moral right of having a naïve faith in concepts like progress, rationality, individual, nation, etc. While postmodernism denied moral right to use any static ideology, because identification with static attributes inevitably leads to collapse of the whole schema, since rational constructs have only provisional value in face of constantly-changing risomas of reality, metamodernism cautiously returns to traditional belief systems, where identification is with the process-oriented patterns, described as assimilation and accommodation by J. Piaget, where stress is on the Way, and not on static laws. The main attributes of metamodernism are informed naivety, new sincerity, anatheism (gr. Ἀνά- “re-”, that is, a return to theism), and antinomy of [either-or + both-and] precept, instead of modern [either-or] and post-modern [both-and]. The metamodernist accepts all perspectives at its face value and agrees to be responsible for everything which includes the responsibility to make decisions (thus creating a hierarchy of values). In contrast to the formal-linguistic and ideological-axiological tolerance of postmodernism, metamodernism affirms “credonism”. If the subject of postmodernism is immersed in his own reflections and exists in a practically virtual world where everything is a simulacra, metamodern consciousness is borne through uncontroversial pain (as Buddhism and Christianity are) and lives in the world of Good and Evil that are intelligible with the lenses of compassion. In “the manifesto of Russian metamodernism” Maria Serova describes “search outside of the ordinary” as a dominant constant of metamodernism, considering that prefix meta is derived from Greek metaxy — “an interval where transcendent God touches human sphere” [http://metamodernizm.ru/russian-metamodern-manifesto/]. If postmodernism valued deconstruction, metamodernism values reconstruction: pursuit of new horizons with the best instruments at hand. If Russian metamodernists posit a quasi-religious version of metamodernism, its Dutch and American schools speak in a more pragmatic tone. Luke Turner proposes “a pragmatic romanticism unhindered by ideological anchorage. Thus, metamodernism shall be defined as the mercurial condition between and beyond irony and sincerity, naivety and knowingness, relativism and truth, optimism and doubt, in pursuit of a plurality of disparate and elusive horizons”. While Dutch metamodernists Vermeulen and Van der Akker translate prefix meta as with, among and after, its American and Ukrainian schools tend to translate it as beyond. Thus two sub kinds of metamodernism can be distinguished — low metamodernism and high metamodernism. Low metamodernism, as introduced in Holland, concentrates on providing a possibility to reconcile modern and postmodern perspectives, oscillating between the two and not really making new claims except those that implicitly arise because of the merge. High metamodernism, as advocated by H. Freinacht and B. Cooper, goes further by equivocating perspectives starting with post-faustian stage and by setting a horizon of moral imperatives.

The postmodern mind tended to see culture as an obstruction to the many freedoms. In a way, culture is such an obstruction, but not exclusively — culture is also something else, something added to the cult. The thing is that the cult inevitably serves as a reference point of decision making, since cult is fundamentally built upon the preferring of some domain of reality over the other domains, it prefers one story over other stories. The problem is that the cult is “selected for”, for those who partake in the unadaptive cults tend to die out quite soon, but is also “selected for” the past circumstances, not for the present circumstances, that always change, for this is the nature of how consciousness finds itself in the world of changing materially — “here we have to run as fast as we can just to stay in the same place”. So it is a canonical both-neither juxtaposition — culture simultaneously needs preserving and updating. After questioning the modernist concept of progress, advocates of postmodernity hoped that everything positive in society would remain, presupposing, in a quasi-Rousseauan sense, that the current state of love and equality were there to stay as organic products of human nature, not realising that the positive features of society have been constructed in the historical process, where all kinds of levers were used to adjust social relations in the direction of stability, equity, and love, implicitly and unconsciously as well as explicitly and consciously. Postmodern mind believed that having destroyed all constructs would leave only positive features of society, but instead the result was lifted in midair between the understandings of Rousseau and Hobbes. One way or another, many positive characteristics of our society have arisen due to the gradual development of symbolic code. Although it is our duty to perpetually deconstruct it, it is necessary to carefully discern its tangled elements to “separate wheat from the chaff”, without throughing the baby of Judaeo-Christianity out by deciphering the decisive influence of Christianity (as synthesis of Athens and Jerusalem) on the development of the European culture. And to do so not because of some identitarian whim, but because of the necessity of true transnationalism.

JUNCTIONS OF METAMODERNISM AND ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY

1. EPISTEMOLOGY. While modernists tried to formulate the universal truth “for all”, creating each time a new mythology, postmodernists valued the relativistic subjectivity. Metamodernists synthesize these two principles and argue that truth is always refracted through the subjective lenses of the mind, through mythological perception, and is constantly resurrected in the interaction between consciousness and phenomenological reality mediated through symbols (if this interaction is carried out in the modality of paying attention, listening to what everybody has to say, and not lying — modality of love and care). As argued by T. Vermeulen, “one should be careful not to confuse this oscillating tension (a sort of both-neither) with some kind of postmodern in-between (a neither-nor). Indeed, both metamodernism and postmodernism turn to pluralism, irony and deconstruction in order to counter a modernist fanaticism. However, in metamodernism this pluralism and irony are utilized to counter the modern aspiration, while in postmodernism they are employed to cancel it out. That is to say, metamodern irony is intrinsically bound to desire, whereas postmodern irony is inherently tied to apathy”. To counter modernist aspirations instead of canceling them out there needs to be a vision that outcompetes modernist aspirations in terms of morality, spirituality, and truth. In other words, metamodernism needs to set its upper-case Truth at odds with modernist one, and to do it we need to affirm Truth as un-graspable, un-static transcendent stipulation for creation, instead of the modernist truth of static laws, structures and ideologies. And, simultaneously, the attainability of this Truth would not be cancelled out as it is in postmodernism. In might be states in this way — Truth is universal and we fall short of attaining it, yet now and then our sentience has glimpses of it. Rowan Williams was able to describe this metamodern concept of Truth in his letter to an eight year old girl: “Dear Lulu — nobody invented me — but lots of people discovered me when they were very quite surprised. They discovered me when they looked round at the world and thought it was really beautiful or really mysterious and wondered where it came from. They discovered me when they were very very quiet on their own and felt a sort of peace and love they had not expected. They invented ideas about me — some of them sensible and some of them not very sensible. From time to time I sent them some hints… to help them get closer to what I’m really like…” As termed by St Thomas Aquinas, Truth is non aluid, not another thing among worldly things, not one set of ideal laws among others, rather it is a pre-condition of existence as such. If modernist donkey naively strived after the carrot that cannot be attained and was therefore utterly unhappy and projecting its inssufficiencies on innocent beings around him as if they were the cause of his misfortune, and postmodern donkey just terminated the chase by deeming it futile; metamodern donkey reaches infinity by consciously continuing to chase unattainable carrot which stays on the horizon.
2. TELEOLOGY AND ESCHATOLOGY. As argued by T. Vermeulen, “the current sensibilities acknowledge that history’s purpose will never be fulfilled because it does not exist. Critically however, they nevertheless take towards it as if it does exist. Inspired by a modern naïveté yet informed by postmodern skepticism, the metamodern discourse consciously commits itself to an impossible possibility”.
3. UNIVERSAL PROBLEMS, SOLUTIONS AND FAITH. As the problems of contemporary humanity become more complex and universal (ecology, inequality, anxiety, meaninglessness, bullying), the emergence of a new approach to their surpassing is inevitable. At this stage metamodernism outcompetes capitalism by solving a conundrum which capitalism was unable to address — in order to implement international policies to universal problems, particular societies that maybe getting short-term profits for their economy (e.g. because of the location of resources on their territory — see the Gulf countries) have to sacrifice their own advantages and profits for the sake of a common good. And to it the faith that the common good is worth of sacrifice is needed. Metamodern sensitivity is configured to provide this exact kind of faith;
4. ETHOS. Societies and individuals that embody metamodern ethos are finally able to take absolute responsibility for the life of the world (all its sins) upon themselves, yet exercise this responsibility exclusively through their own individual agency of influence, thus synchronizing with the ethos of Christianity; and transcend suffering by its voluntary acceptance (carrying one’s own cross to Golgotha). Metamodernism presupposes complete and final riddance of culture of shame for the sake of culture of sin. If one is to live out this ethos she has to commit to constant refusal of meetaing sardonic side-glances of her “classmates” when listening to someone awkward or seeing something strange;
5. EMANCIPATORY TRANSCENDANCE. In metamodernism the stress is on the relations of love, the emancipated community, which blooms thanks to amalgam of sacrifices for the sake of the transcendental categories (beautiful, good, true). Metamodernism is characterized by an immanent imperative to act in a certain way — to speak only truth, to serve only love, to never justify suffering, to be responsible for everything and to be happy (which is impossible without fulfilling preceeding stipulation, including self-sacrifice, because nobody really possesses something until he gave it to other as a gift). In Christianity, such a modality of loyalty to the Logos is called holiness, which arises on the crossroads between personality and history;
6. MEANING, HAPPINESS AND SELF-SACRIFICE. The meaning of metamodernism lies not in the realization of a particular model of the hierarchy, but in the pursuit of co-creative interaction with the Absolute Truth; not in the implementation of static ideology, but in emulating the process of Logos, that is possible to accept only with humble humility and gratitude (revelation is always interpreted through the apperceptive-mythological cognitive scheme, and here there is a language that brings forth the best of all schemes: humility of obedience, nobility of chastity, appreciation of ascetism). It is impossible without such moral categories to build a truly sincere, happy, and free society (in this sequence);
7. THE OTHER. In order to put things right at the levels of individual and society we have to aim at the transcendent. All this is impossible without living God, who rescusciates the relations between consciousness and its moral environment. In the metamodern mode [D.F. Wallace 1994] and in Christianity, as advocated by H. Balthasar, only love is worthy of faith [Balthasar 1965]. In human condition, love is born in relationship with the Other (including God and other people). Necessary humble modality of addressing the Other was outlined by, of all people, J. Derrida during his discussion with J.-L. Marion about the Gift — “it is precisely with the theme of the impossible gift that he tries to answer the main demand of E. Levinas to thinking, namely: not to seize, to possess and not to know the other, for “to possess, to seize, to know — all these are synonymous with power”, in which there is no other, but to contemplate the relation with the unregulated other, which allows Other to exist outside of the saturated totality” [Filonenko 2018]. Only in Christianity the basis for such modality is provided — by sacralizing certain attitude towards the category of the Other which provides ground for the unconditional care for others as advocated by E. Levinas. A. Lee argues that it is exactly this part of Christianity that is disturbingly absent from J. Peterson’s considerations — “if Peterson’s goal is to fix society, then his message needs to include an ethics of the Other… he only recognizes the self in terms of success instead of seeing society as a whole. As a psychologist, he is literate in terms of meaning for the self, in relation to a spiritual sacred other and culture. For example, Peterson understands sacrifice. He understands how to build the self in terms of future gain. But his entire message is only about the self, what we should do with others and with ourselves for ourselves”. I have many friends who are JBP’s acolytes. There is a crux for them — you cannot enter metamodernism without actually incorporating all the previous symbol-stages on their own terms — which includes nurturing sincere faith (post-faustian stage), continuing scientific exploration (modern stage), and proving the two with a permanent watershed of all the possible moral criticism that two endeavours deserve (postmodern stage). Look, it has something to do with integrating postmodernism instead of brushing it off. It has something to do with the resentment that emerges from the unwillingness to watch one’s language. There are two ways of approaching Peterson — one is to fully buy into his backslide into the “enlightened” modernism. The other, better one, is to concentrate on Peterson’s work on belief systems (Maps of Meaning) and critique of scientism that shows how spiritual outlook is actually better synchronised with the actual existentials of human consciousness than the scientific outlook (since we do not live in the world of science, we live in the world of meaning, world of what matters, not of matter itself). If scientism ultimately dissects and reduces, and mythopoetic endeavour ultimately connects and marries, theology at the same time discerns and holds together in creative tension the opposites of being. Theology strives for unity by accepting destruction of everything that can be destroyed by truth and, simultaneously, attempts to perceive how the shattered pieces compose a newborn Gestalt, attempts to transcend it by resurrection of a unified, more holistic symbolic structure. Dissociative acts of reasoning and marrying acts of loving, have to be united in the creative tension of Logos that brings closer the Kingdom of God — where theory and practice, God and human, meet each other.
8. NEITHER-BOTH, BOTH-AND AND APOPHATICISM. Both-and. Early Christian theological debates in Byzantine centered around one christological issue — attempts were made to reconcile two natures of Christ — human and divine. Many great and complex minds were trying to posit their accounts, yet it was hard to settle it down — obviously, Christ had to be considered divine God, second person of the Trinity, but, simultaneously, his humanity also had to be affirmed and ascertained. This was a hard problem to solve, obviously, for ancients did not possess the logical frameworks that we do. So some were assessing that Christ was half-human and half-divine, which is reasonable, but undermined the fullness of both natures. Yet the wisest theologians had found the way to speak about Christ properly — in a truly proto-metamodern way, not dialectical but dialogical, they understood that it does not have to be a zero-sum game, that Christ’s divinity is not something added to his humanity and is not something that competes and takes as if a place missing in the intitial humanity. Rather, when when two natures become united in Christ, both of them preserve their fullness. In a way, it was the first glimmering of the non zero-sum game attitude. Neither-both. It is easy to apophatic way of theological thinking as a precursor of neither-both precept. Not as much sceptical as cautious and humble, apophaticism was a way to address issues of transcendent complexity and significance. In this kind of negative theology all sides of the argument have to concede a little and listen carefully to what opponent has to say, since it is that they inevitable fall short of the topic at hand, rather, they are to pay close attention to how conversation unfolds and be grateful to its fruits — rather than trying to defend their position, sides of the arguments are to practice humility and patience. It is easy to see when metamodernists speak that they are incomparably closer to Christian metaphysics, ethos, etc., than , say, modernists or postmodernists. They sound deeply spiritual in their striving towards things transcendent and sacred.
9. TRADITION AND ITS TRANSFIGURATION. Metamodernism simultaneously transcends and returns, i.e. it is an organic outcompeting of all previous symbolic stages on their own terms, and a humble coalescence with the ancestral tradition. After all, development of a new set of ideas called metamodernism can be construed as nothing more than one of the fruits of the initial seed of Christianity. The metamodern mindset does not make sense outside of the milieu of Christian axiomatic values. Metamodernism is but a phase embedded within the unfolding of Christendom. But if metamodernism is a structure of feeling and a set of abstract theories, Christianity is centered around a person, it is an embodied institution whose living history takes us on a journey that encompasses tens of thousands of years — journey, that cannot be disentangled from the history of our civilization. Central precepts of metamodernism — both/and dictum, informed naïveté, sincere horizonism, nurturing faith, integrative transcendence — are all rooted in the dogmas of the Church. Metamodernism’s main idea — that faith is risky and naïve, yet is worthy to be placed solely in Love — is but another explication of the Crucifixion — where one is abandoned by God and bereft of meaning in the postmodern sense, and yet his love for God and humanity is so unlimited that he is ready to self-sacrifice in it’s name. And here is the crux –it seems that without this temerarious and desperate madness no human being ever reaches the fullness of it’s humanity — a hint of insanity seems to be a pre-requisite stipulation for a proper life.
10. GUILT, VICTIMHOOD, AND MORAL REALISM. If metamodernism includes an imperative to use the most sophisticated moral worldview it must presuppose the responsibility of addressing all sins (including those of others) in the act of sincere repentance, and, at the same time, the unconditional forgiveness for all who harmed us — rejection of revenge for the sake of preserving purity. Thus, together with moral realism, metamodern consciousness returns both of its constituent spectres — sin and hope of erasing of sin — that address two central snarls of human conscience, that is, guilt and victimhood.
11. META-GAME AND PROTO-SYNTHESIS. Metamodernists talk about meta-game and proto-synthesis. That is, about how to act, and about what we can believe in. In the meta-game, we abandon the programmed roles within the game in order to abstract and take into account the interests and suffering of others because of the love for all participants in the game (the plot of what Christ did, stated in different words). In the case of proto-synthesis, we are engaged in apophatic (negative) theology, where, without false modesty on our part, the truth is always considered transcendental. In other words, we do not know the truth, but we know where and how to look for it. We know the modality in which we are given the chance to approach it. We have magic words, symbols that lift its veil — we have Love. In other words, “ignorance of the laws is not an excuse”. In particular, the responsibility to recognize amidst the chaotic information those particles that are worthy of being deemed Sacred. That is the problem — whether we like it or not — we inevitably act on the basis of sacralizing certain domains or symbols of reality. Otherwise, we would just do nothing. A person does not know all the information, and even knowing the person could not calculate our whole meaning. On the one hand, we are in conditions of ignorance, on the other hand, we make decisions. In other words, we either recognize that we act on the basis of axiomatic presuppositions and consciously choose these presuppositions for ourselves, or we deny it and get support regardless of our desires and statements — which one will fall. As Carl Jung said, either we choose our own myth, or we become pawns in other people’s myths — most often with terrible consequences. David Foster Wallace said that the problem of the second case is not that the motives themselves are bad, but that they are unconscious. A metamodernist assumes responsibility (without imposing it on others) for what is happening in the world, seeking to “abide by the laws”, despite her ignorance. Here, a thin theoretical window is the preservation of the modesty of ignorance and, at the same time, the taking of responsibility for setting the rules of the game (in a quite Piagetian sense). It is a gap between the pitfalls of modernism and postmodernism.

METAMODERN STIPULATION

This new structure of feeling responses to the tragedy of human condition with unbridled compassion, solidarity, and tears. Like Job defied those of his theological friends, so do we defy all justifications of suffering of living beings. We are to take pain seriously: bullying, depression, anxiety, animal suffering, problems of self-actualisation, massive inequality, injustice, loneliness, et cetera. To address and solve these and many other problems, we have to take risks — something that most of the modern people detest. Yet it is horizons that shall lure us forward, not fears. It is love that should be put on the top of the value hierarchy, not comfort, not safety, not risk-avoidance. To fulfill our aims, we ought to resuscitate the attitude of faith, but to do so with caution, for it is exclusively where faith is put in love, true hope blooms. This structure of feeling puts on its fellow travellers a heavy praxeological and moral burden — unbearable cross of self-sacrifice for the sake of the Other. This burden, this Metamodern Stipulation, necessitates and demands a corresponding symbolic code, one that pragmatically outcompetes all its “classmates”, one that endows lives of those who hold it with ultimate meaning and unbridled happiness. We affirm that this worldview is not to be created, it is to be recovered; if the rational mind can only dissipate partial and incomplete ideologies, millenniums of evolutionary selection gifted us with holistic acheiropoietal (gr. not-made-by-hands) belief systems — traditional religions — perfectly adapted to the constants of human experience; among which Christianity is reliably synced with with metamodern striving by the incarnating the process of Logos, in which conjunctive love meets disjunctive truth, practice meets theory, repentance meets pardon, words meet flesh, oikoumenê meets paradise, and humanity meets its Creator.

This is the third part of the Syncing Worldview and Consciousness series:

1. Neuroscience of Intelligibility: the inevitable lenses of our mind through which we encounter the world are evolutionarily adapted to see the world through the symbolic topology of categories like nature, culture, and the self;

2. Constants of Experience: these categories are the constants of phenomenological experience; to be human means to have a symbolic code that accounts for these constants of experience, most thoroughly articulated in language of myth and cult;

3. Metamodern Stipulation: the new structure of feeling demands a new and, simultaneously, intra-traditional symbolic code to be adopted: one that is able to put Love and Truth anthropomorphized in the agency of human life at the top of the value hierarchy;

4. Orthodox Worldview: incorporating the truth of myths before and traditions around itself in a truly metamodern synthesis, Orthodoxy has been able to be the fairway that epitomizes the delineated maxims; with a complete set of beautiful symbolic accounts for the pre-cognitive engrams of human mind, and with a central doctrine that connects human with God via acting out faith placed solely in Love and Truth (process of theōsis), we claim that Orthodox worldview is the best bet we have got to stay adapted to the constantly changing environment.