Same; recognizing pretentious bullshit when one sees it is pretty much a requisite…
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Did we talk about pseudoscience yet?
It’s a bit of a red flag when somebody wants me to “upgrade” my “perceptual fields”
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We used to call that “acid”.
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A couple things immediately raised red flags on this supposed thought-movement. (Not even getting into the aforementioned phrases that easily read as nazi-friendly dog whistles) - Isn’t the guy on stage ten seconds into the “Here’s a brilliant 8-minute video about how Metamodernism…” video from the summary - the lobster-king himself, Jordan Peterson? That there identifies this stuff pretty squarely into, at the very least alt-right-lite territory, (dark en-lite-enment?).
Another item that jumped out, linking perhaps even more deeply to that strain - and following on the very cogent analysis @anon61221983 developed upthread, is this particular preoccupation with the “traditional-modern-postmodern” framing. That setup that some cultural malaise that is all around us and comes at the hands of supposed corrupting postmodernist influences - is specifically a bugbear that Steve Bannon and his coterie of cretins constantly invokes with their radical traditionalist dreck. (pretty much standard world-decline savior-heroics fascism-101 script). This thing may not have the same conclusions or outward calls to action - but it appears very much to adopt that worldview/framing.
(FWIW there’s a rebuttal to that description by Bruno Latour “We Have Never Been Modern” that offers a dissenting perspective).
So … my hot take was basically, even if not advocating explicitly fascist tropes, it appears conspicuously adjacent to the extent that an entryist type agenda is not unimaginable. Also easy to imagine why alt-right grifters would be looking for new marks these days, adapting to the current environments - preying upon (often-legitimate) disaffection and youthful idealism has always been big in their playbook, as is worming into respectable/academic sectors. The whole scoundrel/guru/predator model is super played out though and if the internet is good for anything it should be calling those spades whenever they show themselves.
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So what I’ve learned about this:
Metamodernism is a literary theory term. It gets applied to a lot of art and media I like but seems mainly to be about the need to find some way to talk about moving on from “postmodernism.” I can see how it lives in lit crit space. We gotta have thing to call whatever contemporary life is and years ago some folks came up with “meta” so here we are.
Yep…That sounds like lit crit. And lit crit matters of course… some. It’s just that there’s so much it can’t do.
As for this Hanzi shit, I guess it is some kind of performance art that is going to save the world but it’s a parody of that attitude also. I am supposed to laugh at it but also take it seriously and that will fix the world. It might be further acceptance of fascist extremism in culture or it might just be pretending to be.
In the meantime also today not even that far from me 18 people were murdered. Most of them were like 10 years old. And goddamned lit crit is supposed to help us how again?
Up the street from me a few miles fully armed Nazis stand regularly, hanging a swastika and a confederate flag on an overpass that leads to a well known Jewish community, and people on reddit think that hanging a “birds aren’t real” sign will help… something… like it’s an optics problem.
What we need in this world rich or poor, I think, is clarity of thought and action on the ground, not dark jokes that may or may not be sincerely dangerous and artsy platitudes.
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That’s a good summation.
From everything here, I do like the notion of creating your own narrative, and acting the hero in your own story arc. It reminds me of pretty much every faith I’ve learned about, and if people find strength in that to help themselves and others, more power to them.
The part I don’t like (from what I’ve gleaned here) is the idea that you have to pretend current ideologies don’t exist or, if you do recognize them, try to “move beyond them” while we’re right now suffering the effects of those ideologies.
Personally, I think, yes, be a hero. Build bridges, change lives, but don’t try to tell me NAZIs and bigots aren’t bad. It reminds me of the NAZI bar story. I’m not giving them, even the “nice” ones, a seat at my bar.
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I just don’t have patience for it at all anymore. Everyone should strive for self-respect and each of us has to figure out how to get there and stay there our own way. I believe that sure.
But literally every guru says that.
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Mod note: if you are coming here because this is your pet theory, and you intend to attack this community in order to defend it, then you are on the wrong forum.
If you can’t discuss this topic without disparaging Boing Boing or the BBS, then this is not the place to have this discussion.
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It seems that Hanzi’s creators appropriated metamodernism mainly so they could justify having it both ways by pretending they’re being both sincere and/or ironic (depending on what’s expedient at any given moment – what other groups have we seen doing this in the political sphere?) and also to use as a scaffold on which to erect their lazy yet verbose teleological views of stages of development.
As it turns out, Hanziism is yet another way for privileged white people to convince themselves they’re above it all and look down upon people seeking real solutions to defeat those who’d deny them their right to exist. Perhaps it’s a sly parodic commentary on those who’d buy into it to the point of dedicating many walls o’ text to defending it, perhaps not. It doesn’t really matter.
Actual metamodernism seems to be a lot more complex, novel, and interesting at its core than the bothsidesist pablum that Hanziism is peddling. I appreciate your clarifying things and putting them in perspective.
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Well, if we’d just listen to smug white dudes with privilege and do exactly what they told us, then we’d be saved! /s
That’s what they’re basically saying here… if we just “ignore them and move beyond them” then they’ll apparently just go away… But I suspect that there is at least a little sympathy for those right wing ideologies.
Indeed.
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It’s funny how it’s easier for me to read Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality but this Metamodernism is just confusing as hell to me. I’m glad you noticed the latter, I don’t know what you know of the former but if you dare to read Process and Reality then you’ll see what I mean.
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That their name is ‘Chinese Characters Not Your Friend’ is a little telling that they’re a construct, but I guess it was all they could do to not make also it a catalog or dating notebook or direct care guide at some point. AAPI viewpoint probably has a cameo somewhere in the good idea recaps, who knows.
eta: They had a chance to advance a hateable Final Fantasy/SquareENIX hairstyle and did not. Darn it!
Will it be possible to order through small bookstores instead of Amazon, because 100% it’s on Pirate Bay, but maybe I need to search Daniel Görtz and Emil Ejner Friis. They have blogs, you can see if they’re honest cosmopolitan people a bit.
Do not take EU sustainable directives if you are allergic to EU sustainable directives…
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If there is a pie beyond good and evil, then what kind of pie is it, and is it shelf stable or do we have to keep it in the fridge?
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My gut tells me that this is on the same level as The Book of the SubGenius, only the authors who invented this caricature aren’t as in-your-face with their parody. But more importantly, my gut is telling me that it is best to let the attempt fade into oblivion, yet be catalogued for when some idiot with a gun uses it as their manifesto.
As for actually reading it? No. I got more wisdom from Malaclypse the Younger and from J.R. “Bob” Dobbs than whatever this greyfaced imitation of philosophy is.
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The long and short of this is that it’s a night without closing time for pubs.
And youths pull pranks and practical jokes, for various values of “funny”.
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