The World That’s Emerging
Cocreation and (In)coherence in Metamodern Praxis
What was Emerging?
In 2018, a novel network of intellectuals and changemakers convened for the first time, in Berlin at the “Emerge Gathering”. I participated and wrote about it in The World We’re Creating, partly a reflection on the context, event, and my role, and partly a review of Tomas Bjorkman’s book The World We Create, which is now out in English. This picks up from that narrative, a recounting of my personal journey, interpolated with some of the work involved. In September, 2019, the 2nd Emerge Gathering was held in Kyiv, Ukraine instead, and the some aspect of the world we’ve been creating are starting to emerge — at least our own microcosm of it — while the dark or “shadow” side is continuing to dominate. Kyiv would be the second time I would meet many of my new found friends and colleagues in person. One can partake in the emergence vicariously through Tomas Bjorkman’s opening presentation at the event:
In Berlin in 2018, few people there seemed to know or care what emerging metamodernism is, despite the fact Bjorkman himself cared and has written on it. In 2019, the collective coherence around it was more salient and supercharged (depending on your perspective of course). I write now of a world that’s ‘emerging’ both because of our creative efforts and in spite of them. In that sense, it is more accurate to say the world that’s ‘fledgling’, but I’m trying to stay positive.
The (2018) Berlin event brought me further into the fold, from my solipsistic universe of global concern to an embodied community that actually entertained some of my wild ideas and critical edge— though they actually supported none of it. In the year that followed (2019), I’ve been a part of a still forthcoming metamodern reader in development (set for December release), Hanzi published Nordic Ideology, I wrote a lot for myself and 5 articles on the ‘Emergentsia’ for the Emerge platform (for better or worse), more on metamodernism here, and fortified relations with many new friends, allies, and colleagues. I also worked on an unrelated smart cities book last year, in which I integrated metamodernism. No doubt countless other leaps forward — connections, projects, exposure— were seeded, while many setbacks emerged as well.
In retrospect, a most significant activity of the 2018 Berlin gathering may have been the submeeting for Kyiv plans to host an arts festival and perhaps land an institute and co-working space there. Such plans morphed over the year, but in the end settled into something small and special, a one-off festival, drawing the Emerge event itself there too. “Why Kyiv?” many people asked. Radical hope and change often do not come from the centres of power, such as London or New York, but from the periphery, the outskirts, the fringes, the margins. Whether in myth or reality, Ukraine seems to symbolize such a place. As we (fore)saw it;
“The sense of being in-between runs deep through Ukraine’s history and culture: between West and East, modernization and traditionalism, democracy and totalitarianism, faith and faithlessness, agriculture and industrialization, guided by both the red star of Mother Russia and the white stars of Father-Uncle Sam.
Ukraine is suspended in mid-air, immovably crucified on the intersecting beams of Russian and Western geopolitical interests, a grotesque image of our times and, simultaneously, a signpost on the way of what is to come.
It is precisely this inner torn-ness, and the suffering that accompanies it, which predisposes Ukraine to becoming the locus of metamodernity. It is the alembic in which the accumulated memetic heritage of centuries can come together to react, and purifies into something new, something metamodern.” — The Birth of Metamodernity from the Spirit of Alchemy (April 24, 2019), by Dennis Pachernegg with help from Denys Bakirov.
It’s a beautiful description. I can relate to a lot of it, as I feel I come from a similar disenfranchised position and sit at the nexus of critical intellectual theories and history. Of course, many of us resonate together on this. So we chose Kyiv, or Kyiv chose us. At any rate, it was a good decision and an opportunity to get to know Ukraine better and strengthen relations with them and within our network. I spent 3 weeks there with half of Hanzi himself, and other friends. Although Yuval Noah Harari was not at our event, he was in Ukraine over some of the same period and shared similar sentiments about the country in an interview:
Through our festival we were determined to break paradoxes, to “reach out and touch the event horizon”, as it were. And we sort of did. Our ideas and clever puns came alive in conversation, in the air, in the milieux. At minimum, we learned about Ukraine, we collaborated with its culture, while other dark forces conspired with it (ie. Trump, Biden, etc…). We all left with a piece of it lodged in our hearts. We watered the seeds of our project that are yet to grow into a resilient permaculture forest of ideas.
In the run-up to the Emerge event, about 1.5hrs worth of priming material was shared as follows: Margaret Wheatley on Emergence and Adaptation. (2 min video); Joanna Macy on Uncertainty. (3 min video); Meg Wheatley on Controlling Chaos. (6 min video); Daniel Schmachtenberger’s talk at Emergence. (25 min video) Or read a transcription on the Perspectiva website; Lene Rachel Andersen on Metamodernity. (30 min read) Jonathan Rowson’s on ‘What is Emerging?’. (20 min read). If you are new to emergence and Emerge, these are the prerequisites, though they will not teach you anything substantive or radical.
The reviews poured in shortly after the Kyiv event, and there’s a lot of good content and goodwill to consume and reflect on. Just like the past year saw coordinated action towards this new threshold, we intended to now spend the next year transmuting what we learned and experience into our work on metamodernism. As Tomas Bjorkman says “…this two day event is only the beginning… Where we go from here is up to all of us.” I recall during the event I put it to Tomas very directly that the 3rd event next year has to be about convergence. He agreed. It is the 3rd act in a trilogy, and our emergence has to coalesce. But this is still yet to be seen.
Emerge editor Tarn Rodgers Johns wrote of the Highlights From the Emerge Gathering 2019, in which she recaps such perspectives and takeaways; worth listening to are Indra and Jonathan’s introductions, the latter of which I quote below in its urgency. Jonathan calls us to reckon:
“The reckoning is ‘what the hell are we doing?’… [if the status-quo is not working] we need to wake up… We ask what is emerging — the answer is not necessarily lots of lovely things… While this is a very happy-go-lucky kind of group… we are arguably entering dark times.”
“Games…it’s really all about the big game at scale… we share in game creation.”
“We’re not suddenly going to have all these social miracles; we’re not suddenly going to have Universal Basic Income overnight, renewable energy at scale, we’re not all going to sing Kumbaya and glisten in the moonlight. This is a complex difficult world full of countervailing forces of power, people who are not aligned with us — plutocrats, kleptocrats, corruption. Part of the reckoning is to get real, game denial is not an option, but equally, we cannot go on as we are, game acceptance is not an option; we’re in the world of game change.”
— Jonathan Rowson, Introduction to Emerge, referring to terms used by Hanzi Freinacht. See also, the excellent article What is Emerging? by Jonathan Rowson.
Indeed Jonathan, what the hell are we doing? At the time I really appreciated the critical tack he seemed to be taking, as if following my cues to cut through the bullshit. But his performance did not carry over into his work or relationship with me. Having standards, convictions, and advocating for truth is not game denial. And I contend that we’re not going to have any of this ‘game change’ without consolidating power against the corrupt hegemony; nothing is going to emerge without solidarity. We aren’t going to change the game with his defeatist attitude and political apathy to match. We aren’t going to agree on anything without at least trying to bridge gaps (rather than papering over them) and build consensus (rather than fostering a pluralist stalemate). Most importantly, on a personal and agential level, we must reach out to each other precisely when it feels the hardest, or we’ll fall apart precisely when we need to come together.
As I’ve advocated since my entry into this network, we should be a community, forging common ground, because a house divided upon itself cannot stand. Jordan Peterson and the IDW split various communities like a sharp axe on soft wood angrily swung by the frail meat-powered man himself, along clear lines of social consciousness (left) vs. individual empowerment (right), among other dogmatic distortions and straight-up lies. The leaders and some members of Emerge downplayed the relevance of the anti-political culture war, while also courting some of its bad actors and pseudo-intellectuals. Various independent attempts at de-escalation failed miserably against the emboldened reactionary-fuelled intransigence of Rebel Wisdom, not to mention the general apathy and centrism of Emerge, Perspectiva, Integral, and other communities. But as Richard Hofstadter writes in the closing pages of Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1964);
“…what is important for society as a whole is that the intellectual community should not become hopelessly polarized into two parts, one part of technicians concerned only with power and accepting implicitly the terms that power puts to them, and the other wilfully alienated intellectuals more concerned with maintaining their sense of their own purity than with making the ideas effective… [but, potentially] the intellectual community will have within it types of minds capable of mediating between the world of power and the world of criticism. If so, intellectual society will avoid the danger of being cut up into hostile and uncommunicative segments.” — Hofstadter (1964)
And this polarization is what they’ve allowed to happen. It is more than plausible that we had such mediating potential, but it was not valued enough collectively. And undoubtably, rather than admit his own complicity and compromise in webs of power and social pressures, Rowson will frame and blame me in the latter category, of sabotaging my own chances at being heard and making an impact in the world. Of course that might be partly true, but only slightly. And instead of even attempting this mediation, as I advised, it was eschewed. This (in)action was, in a word — one which Jonathan Rowson pleaded total ignorance before — anti-intellectual. Nevertheless, the present moment is a teachable one, and the convergence still must happen.
Returning to the (hi)story at hand, Andrew Sweeny, my brother from another druther, provided his colorful Reports from the Kyiv Emerge Gathering, including a quite prompt and candid impression of the event (and of me), not that his opinion is valid. Though he’s a cordial self-fashioned romantic writer in person (particularly as an American expat living in France), I’ve scarcely met a person more incurious about politics and theory (ie. metamodernism), while simultaneously demanding of simple answers about them. That aside, Indra Adnan wrote an Alternative Editorial: What Emergency?. And Denys Bakirov followed up the event brilliantly with Notes on Metamodern Arts Festival and Emerge Gathering 2019 in Kyiv. One can also listen to a recap and reflection by Tomas Björkman on Tom Amarque’s podcast(Oct. 21, 2019).
There is a lot to chew on here, but the purpose of my article is something different. The links are just provided for reference, because I am trying to reveal deeper unpleasant truths and a more critical narrative. I was going to write my own reflection on Kyiv Emerge shortly thereafter, but it is now nearly nine months after the event, and a lot has happened, and not happened. I still recall a lot of the action vividly, but the momentum has faded. Over the busy 3+ days of the main events, friendships were fortified, antagonisms were assuaged, and concepts crystallized. Players were provoked, theorists were tantalized, and the network was nourished. But where are we now? Many of those involved may find themselves better or worse off, their pet projects growing up, their workflow stabilizing — who knows really. But how is the world? And what is the point?
Trump’s popularity has been surging, his odds of re-election calcifying despite despotism. Both Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders have been successfully suppressed, crushing with it any hopes of providing the basic human right of access to universal healthcare in the near future. Ironically, this also dims the possibility of any ambitious systems change which only progressive politics would certainly enable — and wasn’t that the point of all this metamodernism (or are we nihilist accelerationists and post-apocalyptic reconstructionists)? And now a pandemic has been sweeping the globe, as if to tell all of us (rightly so) to shut up and go home. It was followed up by a growing wave of global protests, starting with police brutality, and will only end with the dismantling of dehumanizing capitalism. The meta-crisis has deepened an order of magnitude, but conversely the flapping of lips has increased as all the sense-makers are looking out for themselves, opportunistically ruminating on the crisis.
In March, David Fuller published his atrociously bad commentary on the American election (par for the course), which Jonathan Rowson uncritically endorsed. The worst part being when, in a reductio ad absurdum that his surrogate father Peterson would be proud of, Fuller equates Biden and Sanders as essentially boring and useless septuagenarians. Fuller’s fallacious hot-takes on US politics follow on his December assertions that Jeremy Corbyn was anti-semitic (as if we should follow Fuller’s reactionary advice on anything?). When I kindly pointed out it was a right-wing smear campaign, which of course it was (we knew before), I was summarily blocked, after a failed attempt by David to humiliate me. Coincidently, even though Bernie Sanders is a Jew who lost his family in the Holocaust, the right-wing machine already had charges of anti-semitism loaded and aimed at Bernie, and even fired off a few, not to mention Chris Matthews’ casual comparison of Bernie’s Nevada win to Hitler’s invasion of France (what?!), which prompted Matthews to later resign.
What is Converging?
Rather than just further regale the tales, and recap doom and gloom, I want to now tell you what’s coming, what’s actually ‘emerging’. Along the lines of the “Reckoning” as Rowson so aptly includes in his E-M-E-R-G-E acronym, emergence is about to get wrecked by convergence. Convergence was the backbone of the smart cities book I worked on the past year, in which we developed a meta-theory of it. As interesting as emergence is, convergence is equally relevant (if not more), and an interesting counterpoint. But to the Emerge network, convergence poses a threat to their ambiguous direction, their open synergy, their vigilant patience, and their fence-sitting leadership. They voice explicit reservations about anyone who says they know what they’re doing, which is why I’m painted as such a threat. I am the mindscapegoat, a black sheep-cum-sacrificial lamb.
It turns out there is a ton of research on convergence (about the convergence of technology, knowledge, society, evolution, organizations, nature, economics, etc…), and nobody in this Emerge network has any idea or interest, but it is what I have been advocating for since I joined, and became more familiar over the past year, hence my suggestion to Tomas Bjorkman in Kyiv, that convergence is accelerating towards us and we should embrace it. In the simplest literal sense of the word, we have to come together, we have to evolve to become more similar and develop commonalities, and we have to get to the point, together.
The reckoning is upon us. All the conflicts that have been strategically swept under the rug for 3 years are emerging and have to be dealt with, or just be further denied. Some already have surfaced, such as the just desserts served ice-cold in three mock-Rap Battles I created, against Bonnitta Roy, Jim Rutt, and Jonathan Rowson, followed up by a longform critique on Game B(ullshit)? Just over a week after I published my critique, Rebel Wisdom followed up with a 1.5 hr “Story of Game B” that interviews some of the key figures but makes no reference to any of the racism controversy (solid journalism!), not to mention my expulsion which Fuller was directly involved in, or just anything critical of Game B in general. The strategic ignorance of these folk and the organizations they lead serves to advance their own brands and is at the expense of real critical intellectual work. Moreover, they ironically advocate for play, but are completely humourless when it smacks the stiff upper lip off their faces. For good measure, I also take the piss out of myself.
They don’t expect that the reckoning they speak of also applies to them. They will always fall back on plausible deniability. How can they be liable for anything if they advocate for nothing concrete? This is a cop-out, as the obstacles of our own development are reflected in the world. Likewise, the hypocrisies of the world are embodied in this community. The leaders of the meta-crisis discourse are reproducing the meta-crisis within their own work and relations, whether its by shoddy downsampling of better policies into one’s vague aspirations, anti-social justice bias with authoritarian control over discourse, or juggling pragmatic 4D chess games while getting very little done, to refer back to the three above, Bonnitta, Jim, and Jonathan. They speak of mastering individual processes (like “sensemaking” or “sovereignty”) that can scale up, but deny the obvious flaws in their own approach and the particular crowds it is spreading through.
We need less Bonnitta Roy, more Arundhati Roy. Less David Brooks, more Michael Brooks. Less people like Amy Cooper (the dog-choking racist “Karen” who called 911 on a black man in Central Park), and more like Christian Cooper (said black man who happened to be an upstanding citizen and avid bird watcher). And if I can get direct and personal; we need a little less Jonathan Rowson, and a lot more me, which I quietly petitioned to Rowson for a year to deaf and indifferent ears. I hear from many people that Rowson is overwhelmed with family life and project management as if he should be excused, but he is purely the victim/beneficiary of his own devices. The irony of Rowson’s modus operandi is that he says he values my critique, but instead of investing in it (me) he tried to shoehorn it into his weaselly writing style and appeasing diplomatic conduct.
So let’s get reckoning. Reckoning is a such beautiful and poignant word here, especially considered in its multiple meanings; It means to estimate or judge something (ie. I reckon that pig weighs 400lbs, or, I reckon Jordan Peterson is a pseudo-intellectual); it also means to avenge or punish for past mistakes (ie. there will be a reckoning); and it can mean a domain of contention or contest (ie. he’s in the reckoning for the top spot). All three meanings apply here. I reckon there is a reckoning in the reckoning. We’re about to enter a battle royal of ideas that make the Intellectual Dark Web look like a children’s birthday party, which still deserves its own reckoning by the way. And if the targets of my acerbic wit start to get the message, perhaps it could be a love fest instead.
We’re about to get wrecked by this planet which we’ve been trashing exponentially for 200 years of industrial capitalism. We’re entering a new phase of neofascism, right when the mask is coming off and the Emerge crowd has been in denial for 3 years that neofascism is the correct diagnosis, despite not only my warnings but even Hanzi’s (though Hanzi did not match my advocacy for new left politics) and other major social philosophers (like Cornel West; ‘Who?’ Jonathan says angrily). Police brutality and militarism have always been a problem but are returning to new moral nadirs, violently assaulting peaceful protests in literal state sanctioned murder, while Biden (an architect of racist mass incarceration who wants to increase police budgets) is hoisted over Bernie’s justice reform platform.
We are being judged, and should judge ourselves, for our past, present, and (baked in) future sins. You don’t get to choose whether to participate in it or not, because its happening everywhere all at once. And I saw it all coming, and I am part of the protestors coming (for you). Mass metanoia is upon us. There is no emergence without convergence (and other concepts; divergence, submergence, etc.). Convergence is a law of nature, just like emergence. If emergence shaped the last decade, convergence shapes the next one.
The good news is, there’s nothing to be afraid of, because the culture of fear we live in thrives on such indecision and cowardice embodied in the pundits of what’s emerging. The metanoiac convergence is absolutely necessary, there is no way around it, or it wouldn’t be a reckoning — did you expect the birth pangs of global civilization to feel good and make sense, even for elites? Did you think your ideology wouldn’t catch up to you and bite you in the ass? The ‘right relation’ to these events, to use Jordan Hall’s absurdly deployed phrase, is for him and others to come clean about obstructing social justice and politics leading up to these new inciting events. Truth be told, it could have been a lot easier and less painful. We could have had harm reduction, instead we have damage control. There are always better ways, but it requires trust and coordination that were absent. It requires active consensus building, and Emerge has been too open-ended to foster any of those things proactively. The world has been too busy fighting itself to believe it could be at peace. The proposition of anti-rivalrous dynamics has been anything but.
Outside our little network, very powerful actors are also to blame. Hillary Clinton wanted her cake and to eat it to, and instead she got a pie in the face then blamed everyone else. Nancy Pelosi has her industrially refrigerated bourgeois ice-cream and kente cloth PR-politics, and gave Trump everything he wanted while running a performative impeachment trial. And Elizabeth Warren has her fake heritage and two-timing pseudo-progressivism, and well… let’s just say these three women combined have still done less for feminism than Bernie Sanders has, and that is really saying something. Millions or ordinary people are also complicit in such systemic conspiracies.
The mainstream media aids and abets much of this nonsense along with manufactured consent, and consequently the presidential primary ended in scandalously anti-climactic fashion with all the bad actors doing everything we expected, and sadly, even Bernie collapsing under the weight of it all. There needs to be a reckoning about all this as well. The reckoning has already begun unleashing on the streets, spreading globally, following the graphic on-duty murder of a black man by a white cop over a misdemeanour. It’s part of a cascading pattern of systemic injustice and elite incompetence. Meanwhile, Trump and the Republicans dare not look in their mirror, especially while they escalate the crackdown, but they’ll get their comeuppance too. There will be reckonings around the world, big and small, and personally I can’t wait.
So where are we in mid-2020? Since January 1st, the post-truth sadistic irony has been deepening. It started with Australia on fire and Trump assassinating an Iranian general while solutions to climate change and abolishing the military industrial complex were suppressed as usual. It was quickly followed by announcement of the coronavirus and complete inaction by the US government (save a few insider trades) while the idea of universal healthcare was universally brushed aside by centrists and right-wingers alike. For the first couple months, the US election was at the forefront of mine and most everyone’s minds, as the last chance to institute the minimum viable foundation for systems change and a progressive leap forward. In retrospect all the politicking-as-usual was just a footnote of the apocalypse to come, save Bernie’s sincere efforts.
The Covid lockdown presented an opportunity for reflection and (re)conciliation, a pause and shift in the zeitgeist, but the establishment Democrats and Republicans swiftly enriched the ruling class further, while denying the rest. Many across our intellectual spaces used it as an opportunity to launch more egoic trips, albeit nominally self-less ones, building unity of a different kind. Brother Peter Limberg launched The Stoa, a cozy forum for sensemakers to wax on personal psycho-technologies, tantric therapies, and incoherent “situational assessments”. This has slowly evolved into creating space for some critical leftist voices like Michael Brooks and Ben Burgis. And as of late, upon my persistent insistence, I have done a Stoa session with Peter and friends titled Who’s Sensing the Sensemakers?
Meanwhile, as Covid set in, favoured emergence guru Daniel Schmachtenberger and crew, who never in his life has spoken up for Bernie Sanders’ universal healthcare plans (or otherwise), sprung into action with gusto to brainstorm logistical solutions to the pandemic, essentially LARPing that they were actually solving the problem like a tactical response unit, instead of giving a shit about the politics that could have prevented it. Now he’s doing the same thing with Black Lives Matter.
While this was all unravelling, Tomas Bjorkman was contracting me to write a trilogy of articles fusing his developmental narratives on social imaginaries with the emerging discourse of Modern Monetary Theory and economic reform. Meanwhile, Rowson was unaware of the collaboration and was pursuing publishing Bonnitta Roy’s articles that were at odds with this. I felt very alienated and neglected, which I insisted at the time was hurting Jonathan’s own agenda. He was also debuting some work from a black feminist scholar, Minna Salami, who I connected him with via my article Black Metamodernism, while refusing to acknowledge the issues around racism I’d uncovered in Game B. Granted, her gentler approach is much more palatable to the delicate Emerge audience than mine is, but we should not be mutually exclusive.
As I tried to explain to both Bjorkman and Rowson, my health has been suffering due to these engagements, particularly under the strained working relationship with the latter, and yet with the right support I could actually fill precisely all the gaps and holes that Emerge has. Emerge has built itself up as a sort of Ark for its yoga bourgeois intelligentsia to survive the coming flood, but its one big leaky abstraction that I don’t think can handle the deluge; especially if it can’t even handle my noble internal attempts at repair. The meta-crisis is in my bones and deep research library, but for Jonathan Rowson and the milquetoast membership he attracts, the meta-crisis is little more than an abstraction to apolitically pontificate, arising anxiety to sublimate, and an inevitable collapse to survive. So much for perspective.
Eternally Recurrent Metanoia vs. Emergent Noise
The denial that is rampant through Emerge is not that there isn’t a problem… its about the nature of the problem. It can’t come to grips with the fact that contemporary centrist politics feeds into neofascism (which is both overt and latent). While Emerge attracts some range of thinkers and doers, by and large they refuse to entertain serious discoursing or advocacy on politics, which is the primary lever of social change and justice, even while we are pushing for a post-political “boring” revolution. Emerge thinks its is uniquely equipped to lead humanity through the transition. More awkwardly, the Emerge website is filled with “proposals”, some of which are watered down wishful thinking about what the world could be, if we could just let it emerge. My commitment to critique and metanoia has emboldened me to stand my ground, yet again, but this time against this entire network for the betterment of it, evidently at my own expense.
Case in point, in her latest batch of articles (1, 2), Bonnitta Roy dreams of a “transformative philosophy of education” that “would empower young people to lead” but of course makes no mention of young people already leading, such as the Sunrise Movement, the Stoneman Douglass high school students, or even Greta Thunberg (who Rebel Wisdom loves to project their insecurity onto, and even though Bjorkman invokes her in his Emerge speech). Roy’s patronizing attitude wants to take credit for fostering some future leaders while eschewing those in the present; a ghoulish sentiment akin to the stance of Nancy Pelosi. Roy’s articles spin a literal “Tale of Two Systems”, in which one is the constantly collapsing mode of capitalism, while the other is an “ancient” mode of “pro-social values” (can’t be metamodern eco-socialism though, of course!), integrated with “the living world”. Her frame is a delusional dualism, to be sure, but hey, we have to just imagine a better world:
“Imagine instead, an economy where the flow of essential goods and services (food, energy, transportation communication, health care and education) — were not subject to this unruly, pernicious complexity of wealth extraction.” — Bonnitta Roy, Part 1
Roy’s ‘imagination’ here reminds me of celebrities singing off key to John Lennon’s classic song, and releasing such a mashup video at the most tone-deaf moment possible. At any rate, taking Roy seriously, her plan sounds to me like it has to at least dovetail with basic socialism to make any sense; socialism as the established political prerogative to reversing the neoliberal erosion of the indispensable welfare state, and drawing down hyper-capitalism. Further along, Roy clarifies that the problem is “the way we construct monetary policy today”. Naturally, there is no mention throughout the essays of Modern Monetary Theory, which is a major feature of my forthcoming articles, a basic talking point for anyone literate on the issue.
Roy advocates “to design a monetary system” (from scratch, I guess, since there is no research on such things, right?). “It would be easy — simple, really…” she opines. We’ll just call it “citizen currency” and put it on the “blockchain” (which has major limitations, by the way). Then Roy pivots to the “social imaginary”, again infringing in a most diluted way on the subject I was also hired to write on. If only the overloaded Rowson was communicating with his boss Tomas Bjorkman, and/or with me, as I was offering my services for free at that point. We could have avoided this embarrassing redundancy, perhaps her awful articles themselves, not to mention the hanging tension he has chosen.
Roy then argues, I kid you not, that we can ‘sense’ the clearcutting of rainforests and toxins in the water “not through complex systems thinking or computational logic, but through perceptual receptivity that comes through feeling and direct experience”. Perhaps I am being uncharitable here. Roy must know that we can’t just psychically intuit these things (right?); we rely on advanced technology to measure and communicate these complex realities at actionable levels, not to mention listening to the voices of particular oppressed groups. Or perhaps she genuinely just doesn’t know, because she doesn’t feel it. How insensitive.
Sensing the world still depends on our capacity to actually conceive it, not just ‘feel’ it. There has to be a correspondence between abstract and concrete, thought and feeling, not just one or the other. But Integralists, yoga bourgeois, and ‘emergence’ reductionists often seem to emphasize the feeling over the thinking, instead of real substantive qualitative balance. Moreover, I would contend that I — and certainly the people of the Amazon (rainforests) or Flint, Michigan (toxic water), respectively— ‘feel’ these things more than she does, and yet she’s the one constantly virtue signalling about advanced feelings (not to mention communication skills).
Roy starts Part 2 off echoing Nora Bateson’s sentiment that we can “solve everything at once” — a concept I totally agree with (via convergence, singularities, etc.) but believe they have no real idea about when they use it. Roy advises we do this by deepening interbeing (okay, yes) on one hand, and on the other “expanding our circles of trust and concern to others” (way, way ahead of you there). This statement coming from her is doubly laughable given her “both-sides” (we’re getting to that) political double-dealing and her very exclusive circle of trust and concern that does not extend to me or mass political movements. But it was the following sentence that caused me to do a double take so hard I almost gave myself whiplash:
“Could we tap into the network that keeps homeless people in contact with each other? These are the questions we would need to be asking.” — Bonnitta Roy
So the idea is not to solve homelessness, but figure out how homeless people stay in touch with other homeless people, or rather, how to adopt their practices for building “a network of peer-to-peer relationships”? Got it. I’m so glad Bonnitta is posing these probative and vital questions. Kidding aside, this is all the more insensitive given that her opening words of Part 1 was “Huddled in our homes…”, which immediately caused me to think of homeless people, whom I was close to joining only a couple years ago. All we have to do is help in “developing a sense of belonging, meaning, and voice within and among class groups.” But this is literally the role and function of politics (and Marxism specifically; class consciousness), and her sort of self-help start-up mentality is not only patronizing and redundant but offensive to grassroots social movements, particularly the class consciousness already salient in populism, if not for the mass media capturing it and people like her dismissing it.
Again, the disconnect here is with politics. The cult of Emerge seems to think that just because many things aren’t working, that they all need to be reinvented from scratch, which is not the case. The obsession with newness is very old hat. While I am also on board with having long-term plans seeded today, Roy’s are hardly original theorizing and advocacy, and is wilfully out of touch with the very people she seems to be speaking for. Roy claims that “transformation” (at least her version) is “not predictable”, but rather “emergent”. She then outlines the “first steps” (again with the fresh start, for a future fantasy under her auspices) to restart communities around “village learning”. What Roy calls “special work-to-college programs” actually just sounds like child labour when you really think about it. She has no awareness of the actual large scale transformation that is needed, including free education all the way through university.
I’m not even going to get into her ideas about “alpha” (status-quo) and “beta” (“rolled out over time”) paths. Again with a contrived dualism, one that suggests exclusivity not universality, and with the utter lack of urgency to boot. Let’s just fast forward to her peak cringe paragraph:
“You might be thinking “but where are the jobs and the medicare for all and the free college and green energy, environmental regulations and new jobs?” That kind of thinking is too fragmented for the change we need. It is stitched together for political purposes. From this perspective we see that political platforms on both sides are merely “work arounds” that cannot address the systems-level change necessary to make their claims possible.” — Bonnitta Roy
So, using such phrasing Roy is directly attacking Bernie Sanders’ platform here, in her classic low-key passive aggressive way. In Twitter parlance, we would say she is “subtweeting” the movement (and me). It says loud and clear that ‘I don’t have to do any research, and my opinion is above reproach.’ “That kind of thinking” (an extremely loaded phrase, hand-waving away the actual thinking behind it), she insists, is “too fragmented for the change we need”. Actually, Bernie’s platform are universalized programs, not fragmented at all, specifically for the people most in need, not Roy’s abstract “we”.
Moreover, Bernie’s platform was consistently the highest ranked from various reports, and has the most popular support across the country. That it is “stitched together for political purposes” outdoes the previous hand-wave gesture, and could not be further from the truth. What “political purposes” could such an honest and comprehensive platform serve other than to help people, especially when it was suppressed by the corporate establishment such that Bernie was defeated?
Finally, here’s the real jaw-dropper: that the platforms on “both-sides” are just “work arounds” that avoid the “systems-level change” we need. But Bernie’s platform was systems change. It still is, if it is adopted. The Green New Deal and Medicare for All are precisely the foundation that guarantees jobs, public health, fair wages, renewable energy, and more, even enabling bottom-up innovation, the type of things Roy is aspiring to. Not only is Roy saying “both-sides” as in Democrats and Republicans are equally flawed, but she’s collapsing Bernie and everyone else on the left into the Democrat side; which is a gross misrepresentation of political reality. If anybody has been wondering why I loathe Bonnitta Roy as a thinker, why she deserved to be roasted and critiqued, these are the reasons (as well as how she has treated me personally).
Now, to be sure, I have warned both her and Jonathan Rowson about the ‘bothsidesism’ fallacy (also called False Balance) no less than a dozen times, and they’ve never even acknowledged it, while also gaslighting me in the process. (See also Both Sides, Columbia Journalism Review, and Death to Bothsidesism). This is no joke; bothsidesism is a major anti-intellectual move, not something to casually lean into. To be sure, there are at least three major sides, the eco-socialist left, the neoliberal centre, and the neofascist right. Anyone who says “both-sides” is talking some mealy-mouthed bullshit, just like this, Roy continues;
“By contrast, my proposals work together on the systems level that all the particular needs are encased in. The needs are solved as a natural consequence of people participating in change at the adequate level… Education reform would mean more health care workers, especially for under served populations, and empower more people…” — Bonnitta Roy
Right… Not even going to bother with this one. What the hell are “my proposals” she refers to? Education reform does not lead to more healthcare workers, universal health care and investment in society does. I must pause at this moment to remind and assure readers that I’m neither motivated by animosity nor vying for renewed employment. No. I don’t give a shit about any of that. I’ve already processed my emotions through my roastmodern art directed at them. I just now have to resign in protest and total embarrassment that these articles were even commissioned, sanctioned, and edited by Jonathan Rowson himself. I’m motivated solely by doing what’s right, speaking truth to power, and advocating for the best path forward.
Roy’s impaired vision cannot see the path. Her “proposals” are wishy-washy self-serving anti-political pap, nothing a serious think tank should ever sponsor. Processing all this will no doubt be very difficult for a lot of people, as Roy is very popular, but this is also an indictment of those readers who have found nothing wrong in her thinking and writing. The strongest merits her articles have are the limited citations she includes outside her own work. Her feeble attempt at trans-partisanship or post-politics, if that’s what it is, is incoherent and dangerous in what it effectively leads to; diluting our meta-analysis of the meta-crisis and fostering more of the actual ‘both-sides’ bullshit we are stuck with in a Biden vs. Trump presidential race which, to be sure, are not equally bad sides — one is way worse.
And as I have articulated in past work and clarify in my forthcoming articles, Bernie’s platform was never enough, but it was the starting point for our metamodern mission. The “Green New Deal” of the UN (2009) as well as that of Bernie, AOC, and others (2019) are necessary but could go further, into what Benjamin Bratton calls Greener New Deals. Emerge’s anti-praxis of waiting to see what happens bestows no confidence or legitimacy on their brand, which is now enfolding into Perspectiva. Much less does Roy’s hackneyed plans for redesigning the world’s education system. What will save Bjorkman’s power-posing networks is a transparent self-conscious effort at repentence, metanoia, and reform, guided by my critique and convergence, which would also be inclusive of all the participants and their strengths. Closing out her wispy and WASPY whirlwind, Roy poses a series of questions for us, to which I have been answering.
“What choices will you make? What actions will you take? What stories are waiting to be born? What new worlds are wanting to be created? What new people are we wanting to become?” — Bonnitta Roy
Converging on a Conclusion
What are your answers to her questions? What are her own? How will you orient to me, a disabled veteran of the culture war and radical systems thinker ready to outcompete the whole lot of Emerge? How will you relate to the reckoning? This is not the end, it is yet another beginning of the world that’s emerging; particularly the one they helped create. This is my critique in motion, a set of live problems and proposed resolutions. I will continue to do what I’m good at, to show up as needed, regardless of who thinks they are calling the shots, who’s funding the work or not, and who scurrilously disparages and maligns me without actual critique. I care about the integrity of these platforms and the people involved, but they’ve given me no choice but to critique them head on.
In Berlin, I was uncomfortable and asked Rowson why we couldn’t resolve the conflict with David Fuller, and he whispered to me “David’s not an intellectual.” Feeling validated, I nevertheless replied somewhat along the lines of “well, maybe he could be…” if only we could figure out how to all work together. While Fuller is certainly anti-intellectual, a case I have made many times over, everyone has potential to think critically if they do the work. Intellectualism is more about moral conviction and work ethic than it about cognitive ability. Now, I’m warning about how extensive the anti-intellectual crisis really is, pervasive in all these adjacent sensemaking spaces that claim to be intellectual, not to mention institutions and the public at large.
For the most part, I had a good working relationship with Jonathan Rowson, and that is because I tolerated his methods and agenda while I admired his professional acumen, life experience, and the promise he recognized in my abilities and our collaboration. But in the bitter end he failed me as an employer as well as a friend, and for that I say: get convergent or get wrecked (and reckoned), because the world cannot wait.
In my latest, I wrote Mapping Metamodernism for Collective Intelligence in The Side View, which Bonnitta Roy was also published in and completely hogged the airtime during the Stoa launch party. I couldn’t help but quietly smirk and shake my head at her hollow performance disconnected from the collective intelligence I spelled out, not to mention that of others in the volume. If it has not been made clear throughout this essay and my work, I cannot stress enough the importance of supporting actual critical intellectual voices, cutting through the hypocrisy; this is how we solve the meta-crisis.
Long before all this shit hit the fan, I argued that my research was more original, vital, critical, and relevant than the work he was asking me to do (including pumping up Bonnitta Roy in Emergentsia #3), and that it deserved funding just the same. Rowson acknowledged this somewhat but insisted that following his instruction was the best path forward. I complied, but in retrospect it served what I had vocally speculated was a problem; we’re being drawn into a cul-de-sac, and my reservations about certain bad actors have become self-fulfilling prophecies.
At the final critical moment, rather than hear my case Rowson suppressed the critique of Game B, out of disinterest and frustration rather than any substantive reason. I like to believe that he cares on some level, for his sake rather than mine, but caring is a supportive action, not a sentiment. Rowson likes to say I am “self-defeating”, which wrongly assumes that I am playing on his terms. I am not. I am changing the game. Check, mate.
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