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A Modest Introduction to Metamodernism
By Moses Cirulis
Presented by Modest Metamodernist
What is Metamodernism? Is probably the first question one is going to ask themself upon looking at this little blog of mine. After all, you can’t have a Modest Metamodernist without a Metamodernism to which such a person belongs.
Let’s try to situate this question a bit. What is Modernism? That one’s relatively easy. Modernism is a system of systems. A system, as I speak of it in this sense, is a grouping of abstractions into a coordinated set; abstractions in of themselves being rules that describe groups of concrete reality.
In this sense, Modernism is a set of philosophies and practices that started around the turn of the Renaissance in the 1500s. Humanism, Individualism, Capitalism, modern science, modern democracy, and more obscure philosophies, such as Objectivism; all of these systems of thought were born within Modernism. One can call a system of systems a paradigm, and Hanzi Freinacht and other researchers in the Metamodern community call this specific type of paradigm a Metameme.
All sorts of ideas, or memes, were born and are contained within the Modern Metameme. But a Metameme isn’t limited to just politics or philosophy. It is also an overall structure of feeling for an age, and as such can be reflected in the arts-Impressionism, Cubism, and Fauvism could all be considered examples of Modern art.
Now, through our brief tour of Modernism, hopefully you now understand what a Metameme is and can thus move on to the next one.
What, then, is Postmodernism? As a Metameme, it comes after Modernism. As we’ve already established, a Metameme is a system of philosophies, moods, and practices that characterize a particular age. This “age” can be synthetically applied to history or to a single person, or dividual. As applied to a dividual psychologically, Freinacht refers to a Metameme as an Effective Value Meme. However…
