The Listening Society

[7Wannabe5]

@guitarplayer:

I had the same thought when I read that bit.

[7Wannabe5]

I finished reading "Nordic Ideology", Book 2 in the series. I thought a couple of his summations pertaining to why the metamodern model outdoes every other model might be of particular interest to this forum.

Metamodernism vs. Liberalism

The easiest way to defeat liberalism is by attacking its core supposition: the individual. The moment we are shown it is a surface phenomenon and that the real unit of analysis is the dividual or transindividual, and that freedom must ultimately be defined in transpersonal terms, we can see that liberalism must be subjected to metamodernism: Ultimately, you can never be free unless the people around you develop well, because their development affects not only your choices in every moment of your life, but even the degrees of freedom by which you can think, feel, and be in the world. We co-emergre, and freedom is a social category that functions through different emotional regimes...
But that, of course, is cheating. Libertarians and classical liberals won't give up their belief in the individual anytime soon, so in order to beat them on their own terms you must show them that the maximization of individual liberty cannot be done without political metamodernism...
Imagine that you're a "client-citizen" of the kind envisioned by anarcho-capitalists: You have blockchain money and you shop around for the best state services. In one such state service, the metamodern one, you can affect the mode of governance, people are nudged to treat you better and you get a framework that helps you find profound meaning in life, and the fellow citizens will be much more peaceful and socially intelligent, and it's all empirically proven to work. The other providers lack such services and end up using your voluntarily paid money much more inefficiently...
The only way to stop perople from voluntarily choosing the metamodern solutions would be to stop free competition by some kind of threat of violence or monopoly.
The only thing that can stop liberalism from being eaten alive by metamodernism is authoritarianism.

Metamodernism vs. Ecologism

You cannot have a sustainable social system (economy-layered-in-biosphere) without a corresponding and matching sustainability in all fields of development: system, culture, psychology, and behavior. In other words, you can't have ecological sustainability without social and economic sustainability. And how do you get there?
You need to get people to a point in their lives where they genuinely understand and care about issues larger than themselves. That's Existential Politics (1). You need to make sure people have good enough social relations to not get stuck in prisoners' dilemmas that hold back our development and potential to care and not get stuck in materialistic status games. That's Gemeinschaft Politics(2). You need to see to it that the systems of governace can nimbly and effectively redesign themselves so as to deal with new environmental challenges when they become known, in a way that gains support and legitimacy. That's Democratization Politics(3). You need to make certain that all of society is aligned with what is empirically shown to create circular economies and cradle-to-cradle processes, and you need to make sure that you spot and correctly understand environmental threats such as climate change and that the public is well informed and has the ability to respond reasonably. That's Empirical Politics(4). And you need to make certain that ideas about ecology, sustainability and humanity's place in a larger context of nature permeate people's consciousness and all of our ideas about life. that's Politics of Theory(5). And unless you are an ecofascist and just don't care about the freedom of people, you need to make sure that all of these processes can play out without oppressing people, and that's Emancipation Politics(6).
So tell me again how you were going to create a sustainable society without a political metamodernism. Can you see how unrealistic any ecologist ideology would be without these (6 inter-related checking and balancing co-creating core) processes?

[Papers of Indenture]

Hanzi Freinacht is two people. Daniel Gortz and Emil Ejner Friis. Primarily Gortz. Gortz is a Swede and Friis a Dane I believe. They're open to being contacted on social media. Wouldn't be surprised if Gortz showed up if Jacob and others wanted to engage him directly here after reading the books.

[7Wannabe5]

@Papers of Indenture:

Shhhh! That’s part of the fun.

It would be very interesting to get their take on how/if notes for their upcoming book, “Beyond Capitalism”, integrates with ERE Wheaton Level 7 and up. I think their focus is more on “dematerialization” than overall spending. For instance, I believe that they would argue in favor of spending money on therapy towards reducing reflexive desire to gain status by spending money on flashy material goods.

[Slevin]

@jacob I was watching one of Daniel Görtz's metamodern deep dives on the Stoa and he argues against explicitly going for checklists in kind of the "integral" way when working on a piece of art or literature. See https://youtu.be/PAEubUB_oKg?t=4711 up to 1:21:35 (about 3 mins). He is arguing that the way to change the code of everyone is the insertion of a particular type of art with enough inclusive value memes that grabs those who are ready, but also allows people who aren't ready to come past without being disturbed, and don't need to include some checklist of every single value meme. The whole thing is an interesting talk to me, but since we had been explicitly talking about the checklist idea before in the ERE green origin thread (or maybe I was pushing it, I don't remember) thought you might get something out of it too.

Arguing from this perspective, if you have enough pull on enough different sectors of value memes that lead you to things that are metamodern ideas or perspectives (and there is an argument that ERE or at least ERE 2 is trying to be such a thing), you will pull the people who are ready without damaging the ones who aren't ready.

[jacob]

Alright, book 1 contained a rather above average number of thoughts I found interesting. Especially part 2 of book 1 which fit my brain better. I recommend it.

In particular, I think the map provided in part 2 would resolve a lot of the "eternal disagreements" we've had over spiral dynamics in particular insofar we---the discussion parties---could agree to be on the same map. I think we (humans) waste too much time defining our terms and reference points and this book would resolve it insofar we can agree on a common framework which also happens to resolve a few latent variables.

For example, thus far my mapping of the intersubjective/subjective has been an overlapping mish mash of themes from MBTI, Kegan, Cook-Greuter, Kohlberg, and eventually AQAL. I continuously find myself spending 50%+ of my effort explaining my framework/establishing the environment in order to make any conversational progress. I don't think I'm the only one. However, this waste of time needs to end ASAP. I accept that there's a risk of accepting a common framework (like using math to understand science) but I also think accepting a good risk is vastly better than the "the world is but a cafeteria of opinions and Imma make up my own menu" aka strong-postmodernism.

I think a lot of the prevailing [effective] narrative is held back by the [postmodern] idea "that we're all various instantations of the average human being and so we each have something unique to contribute. I call bullshit! That's green meme talking. Lets not confuse valuing all human beings (and other lifeforms) with the idea that everybody and their puppy dog all have equally interesting and relevant things to say.

I agree with Hanzi that humanity at large has installed a code (WLOG orangeish) that the majority of humans don't have the MHC or subjective depth to handle responsibly. Code orange came with technological comforts that 95% of users could never have made/recreated themselves (microwave oven, digital thermostat, chemotherapy, ... ), side-effects that 95% don't relate to (pollution, extraction, etc.), and a simplistic moral code that doesn't meet all humans needs (hence all the depression, nihilism, etc.)

This also makes me worry about any plans to install metamodern coding. I consider this the "greatest problem of the 21st century". Well, the problem has been formulated, but I'm more interested in solutions. Book1 does not really provide solutions beyond a framework wherein our collective intelligence may waste less time Coordinating them. Therein, I think, lies the real value of book1... or rather that's where I see the value from my particular perch... it's a lot of value.

IIRC almost every single butwhatabout objection I had was also mentioned in the book. However, it was only given a sentence or a paragraph's worth of acknowledgement that "yes, this is a possible problem". Well, yes, these are indeed the most import problems and where humanity is currently stuck.

These are the problems of the 21st century.

I think a pragmatic starting point for a Listening Society is to work on breaking down the preconception that human differences can be explained simply like "id, ego, superego" or "unique variations of bell curve averages" solved by increasing our collective kumbaya inclusiveness and instead move into something much more nuanced. The former was how I was educated in the Nordic school system of the 1980s and 90s (fuck you very much) whereas the later was something I had to stumble upon myself despite having installed the modernist middle school meme that "everything worthwhile to know would be taught eventually, except it never was.

(This might be my preference for complexity talking ... and I realize that this is not available to everybody... but OTOH, ignoring it also means those who potentially could understand it are lost. Such understanding is hard to come up with spontaneously.)

In conclusion: I think scaffolding is part of the problem rather than a solution. I suggest focusing [first mover solutions] on reaching those with the potential to understand the problem within the simplistic/cybernetic current modernist system despite postmodernist trying to hold back insight by applying value-driven constraints of their own. In practice, this means teaching this mapping to the public ... or rather teaching even simplistic fail-mode (see Stoa2) mappings. For example, in the past 10 years, there's been books like Quiet highlighting the introvert mindset as its own thing to a general audience rather than a shy dysfunctional kind of extrovertism. Imagine what a similar push/universal understanding of N/S (formal/concrete), T/F (oxytocin), or J/P (dopamine), or MHC and so on, might do for society at large.

[daylen]

The scaffolding is the problem just as the backbone of human civilization is the problem. Without the subconscious polarities that allow humans to differentiate and integrate.. society as we know it falls. Deconstruction without reconstruction will inevitably lead to unforeseen cascades. Though, yes I agree that perhaps the bar for what is considered a reconstruction should be lowered to enable more social liquidity in the form of small scale experiments. This will simultaneously be a very personal and impersonal process. We are indeed over our heads.

None of that should really take away from the innate worth of humans and the civilization they erected at every turn of the spiral. We cannot expect to hate ourselves completely and still appreciate where we are headed in the next turns towards whatever comes next.

[7Wannabe5]

In particular, I think the map provided in part 2 would resolve a lot of the "eternal disagreements" we've had over spiral dynamics in particular insofar we---the discussion parties---could agree to be on the same map. I think we (humans) waste too much time defining our terms and reference points and this book would resolve it insofar we can agree on a common framework which also happens to resolve a few latent variables.

Yes, the TLS framework resolves all the gripes I had about Kegan and spiral dynamics

I think a lot of the prevailing [effective] narrative is held back by the [postmodern] idea "that we're all various instantations of the average human being and so we each have something unique to contribute. I call bullshit! That's green meme talking. Lets not confuse valuing all human beings (and other lifeforms) with the idea that everybody and their puppy dog all have equally interesting and relevant things to say.

I think this might be a bit of a hangover from the recognition of what you described as the benefits of REALLY traveling. Seeking out alternative perspectives hastens growth, but you are not necessarily going to find an interesting alternative perspective under each and every mushroom cap. Eventually such a practice is going to amount to something like unto tyranny of the majority but with customized name tags.

I suggest focusing [first mover solutions] on reaching those with the potential to understand the problem within the simplistic/cybernetic current modernist system despite postmodernist trying to hold back insight by applying value-driven constraints of their own. In practice, this means teaching this mapping to the public ... or rather teaching even simplistic fail-mode (see Stoa2) mappings. For example, in the past 10 years, there's been books like Quiet highlighting the introvert mindset as its own thing to a general audience rather than a shy dysfunctional kind of extrovertism. Imagine what a similar push/universal understanding of N/S (formal/concrete), T/F (oxytocin), or J/P (dopamine), or MHC and so on, might do for society at large.

Well, I even found that playing Name That Emotion with my veering-towards-Code-Red-while-varying-in-cognitive-state-students (successful gangsters are frequently more cognitively gifted than their similarly socio-economically disadvantaged peers) was helpful. What do you think about Hanzi's suggestion that metamodern society should focus on helping those with lower cogitive stage improve their emotional state towards relatively higher functioning? The woman at Concrete Stage who is happy restocking the muffins at the Days Inn breakfast buffet is not a big part of the problem.

[Slevin]

I think a pragmatic starting point for a Listening Society is to work on breaking down the preconception that human differences can be explained simply like "id, ego, superego" or "unique variations of bell curve averages" solved by increasing our collective kumbaya inclusiveness and instead move into something much more nuanced. The former was how I was educated in the Nordic school system of the 1980s and 90s (fuck you very much) whereas the later was something I had to stumble upon myself despite having installed the modernist middle school meme that "everything worthwhile to know would be taught eventually, except it never was.

(This might be my preference for complexity talking ... and I realize that this is not available to everybody... but OTOH, ignoring it also means those who potentially could understand it are lost. Such understanding is hard to come up with spontaneously.)

In conclusion: I think scaffolding is part of the problem rather than a solution. I suggest focusing [first mover solutions] on reaching those with the potential to understand the problem within the simplistic/cybernetic current modernist system despite postmodernist trying to hold back insight by applying value-driven constraints of their own. In practice, this means teaching this mapping to the public ... or rather teaching even simplistic fail-mode (see Stoa2) mappings. For example, in the past 10 years, there's been books like Quiet highlighting the introvert mindset as its own thing to a general audience rather than a shy dysfunctional kind of extrovertism. Imagine what a similar push/universal understanding of N/S (formal/concrete), T/F (oxytocin), or J/P (dopamine), or MHC and so on, might do for society at large.

Agreed. I'm also upset it took me nearly 30 years to find most of these (IMO) critical theories and tools of adult development (and thank you to a lot of people on this forum for introducing me to many of them).

As a comment on that last paragraph, I am in total agreement. I find myself more and more trying to explain my cognitive modes to those around me and understand myself in terms of the cognitive stack and functioning as well. Its baffling how much self-understanding and use I can gain from applying a simple cognitive stack model of cognition to myself and others (when they know what cognitive stacks they use generally). And I'm not even good at it yet (see post with @daylen trying to explain function pairs to me)! It has also become clearer to understand who might sit in different MHC stages (not exactly which but a higher-lower estimate) or who might have state >> MHC stage, or who might have really high state depth. I also feel... a lot less ... lonely(?) I guess when I hold this theory of development? I don't think I have an excessively high MHC stage, but I do feel that its high enough that a lot of the time the people around me will just 'miss me' (don't feel authentically interpreted) when I start trying to explain things in relatively high complexity (systemic+) or want to talk about complex ideas. It feels less bad in some way to just know they might not be able to understand it in the way I want to talk about... Though I definitely also probably just suck at communicating those ideas sometimes.

[Slevin]

I think a lot of the prevailing [effective] narrative is held back by the [postmodern] idea "that we're all various instantations of the average human being and so we each have something unique to contribute. I call bullshit! That's green meme talking. Lets not confuse valuing all human beings (and other lifeforms) with the idea that everybody and their puppy dog all have equally interesting and relevant things to say.

Not sure if exactly what you were referencing, but from Hanzi on his democracy-green-ness:

“The majority is wrong. Always were. Then again, what else should we expect? The point with democracy isn’t that the majority is always right. The point is that there is a process of free and sufficiently systematized truth-seeking and dialogue going on for small groups to be able to prove the rest of us wrong, again and again, so that values, opinions and laws can evolve and adapt. That’s how democracy works—you can’t “vote” about the truth; the idea is that the truth offers a powerful attractor point so that, in the long run, more truth than falsehood will win out, and that this, on average, will have better consequences.”

[jacob]

What do you think about Hanzi's suggestion that metamodern society should focus on helping those with lower cogitive stage improve their emotional state towards relatively higher functioning? The woman at Concrete Stage who is happy restocking the muffins at the Days Inn breakfast buffet is not a big part of the problem.

Do you mean the suggestion (made early on in the book) to teach meditation in primary and secondary grades along with e.g. gym, music, math, literature, language, religion, ... classes?

Sure, why not. But I think it will be tricky to do in practice. Speaking for myself, I'm sure much such teaching would have sailed right over my immature head. I experienced meditation during karate class as sitting in seiza and simply closing my eyes not much different than waiting with my eyes closed when playing hide and seek. OTOH, if something like MHC (or MBTI or Kegan) had been part of it, I might actually have enjoyed literary analysis instead of seeing them as a 12 year sentence in listening to each other bullshit about "what we thought about the main character's superego".

Another issue is of course what form such meditation takes. I see praying as but yet another form of meditating. Some [parents] might object. Eventually "development" might be taught academically more like wissen than kennen. Alternatively, it could turn into a giant time waster much like gym class where people fart around playing volleyball instead of actually getting in shape. Meditation could become the new "nap time"---some people, like me, would have been sitting with my eyes closed trying to solve calculus problems---this is pretty much what I did in lit. class, except eyes open---because I didn't appreciate the value back then.

Are 11 year olds ready for this? What about 15 year olds?

If you were queen of the educational system what would you teach people?

[jennypenny]

IMaybe I misread her though. I'm still reading the book so probably shouldn't be commenting yet.

[7Wannabe5]

If you were queen of the educational system what would you teach people?

I would SO not want that job. Like most people, my default plan for an educational system would be the one I would have liked, which would have simply been an open space library with lab and arts supplies, surrounded by a park with nature trails, where I could create and follow my own course of study/activity with a loosely moderated tiered gold star/skill badge counseling/coaching and reward structure. Some of the better schools in affluent districts, those where most of the students are already meeting state/federal standards on basic skills, approach this model of a smoothly self-regulated system. By contrast, in the worst districts, creative instruction and independent learning can only occur in the brief intervals between utter chaos and rigid lockdown.

I think the genius of Hanzi's work is his recognition that the flows from Zone 000 (the space in between the ears of society's dividuals) is the most likely and efficient realm in which to develop the levers that will best serve to promote positive change in our systems towards solving the biggest problems of the 21st century. Teaching meditation in schools, providing universal therapy to adolescents, or teaching theories of personality and development, are all examples of potential "levers" that are not unlike "educating females" at Stage Orange. I think the focus on interiority within social context also comes into play in the ERE model at the level of improving quality of lifestyle at given standard of living. IOW, the simplified model in my not-super-high-cognitive-stage braincase is that as societies develop through the various code levels, it is always the case that more of "whatever" was previously only available to the highest echelon becomes available to most everybody, and accelerating this process whether within your own individual lifestyle, or society in general, creates leverage.

It's not that I am suggesting that ideal society would have every dividual spending $40,000 on grad school (to achieve Kegan 4/5), $30,000 on therapy (to achieve maximum depth), and $20,000 on environmental aesthetics analysis and tantric sex coaching (towards maximum state), but furthering the societal valuation of dematerialized services such as these (which can be decomposed into much less expensive forms through mechanisms of frugality), seems like a way forward.

[guitarplayer]

From 'Development Matters' (ch. 18) table of differences between modern, post-modern, meta-modern populations, second row metamodern:

Thinks that you must integrate the perspectives of all earlier stages, but not let the earlier stages gain power.

This reminds me when @jacob was writing about joining a board of directors of a charity after ERE1 and then sometime after quitting realizing that a variety of people was important in its structures, but not necessarily in the decision making section.

[jacob]

How does book 2 (Nordic Ideology) compare to book1? [Do I need to get it?]

I notice that the Danish party (Alternativet/The Alternative) was mentioned a couple of times in book1. In reality, that party didn't age well. After eventually gaining 5 seats (out of 179) in parliament, it fractured completely under supposed leadership conflicts. This is obviously not a great look for a party based on listening. As also noted in the book, the party was formed by mostly SD:Green people (who are generally found on the classical left side) who had previously made their mark in other parties.

That is to say the Nordics aren't all that Yellow, but the Green/Orange/Blue tilt is more like 70/30/0 whereas in the US, it's more like Green/Orange/Blue is 20/50/30. As such a Yellow faction is more likely to emerge in the Nordics, but as The Alternative showed, politics as usual is not quite ready. [Always be careful to judge the quality of a new idea by its prototype.]

FWIW, I just came across https://www.youtube.com/c/RobeTrotting who have published a lot of Denmark/US contrast and compare videos. Not only have they made a lot of videos, but the depth is also Kegan4/5 which is unusually high. Having emigrated from Denmark to the US I can almost take all their cultural advice/insights and apply it in reverse. This might be semi-helpful in grokking the contrast between Orange-dominated and Green-dominated once idiosyncratic differences (like herring vs turkey) have been filtered out.

[7Wannabe5]

@jacob:

"Nordic Ideology" is mainly concerned with metamodern concepts applied to politics, whereas "The Listening Society" was primarily about models of personal growth. I found the first book more stimulating, but the second book is also interesting.

I think most Americans could most easily grok the difference between "mostly Green" vs. "mostly Orange" (without having to correct for other cultural differences) by comparing liberal cities centered on universities vs. typical moderately affluent suburban community. For instance, Ann Arbor would likely be the Yellow-emergent* locale in my neck of the woods. However, I would note that I recommended "The Listening Society" to my youngest sister who grew up very politically-active Green in Ann Arbor, and her only comment so far has been a rather surly "I read the first chapter of that freak-ass book.", so I don't think she is entirely on board with it.

*Especially since Ann Arbor has to do a lot of business with other communities in the region which are much more Orange/Blue/Red.

[daylen]

I have been reading parts here and there of Nordic Ideology, and I would be curious to hear more counter-analysis. It seems to describe a subtle strategy for what yellow can aim towards on the political fringes to nudge the overall game dynamics towards metamodernism. With whatever that means exactly being explored in depth. The general motto of the first book being "ironic sincerity" and the motto of the second book being "freedom obsoleted". Something like.. more egalitarian than socialism, more liberal than liberalism, more sustainable than ecologism, more prudent than conservatism, and more radically rebellious than anarchism. Interesting setup of apparent paradoxes to be unraveled. May seem far-fetched, then again, that may be exactly what is required. All of this being etched slowly with the emergent AI layer potentially adding the necessary strain for systemic transformation.

[daylen]

Sincere irony is a way to compact/compress arguments into an authentic expression that passes as in/out group dissolution.

[7Wannabe5]

@daylen:

Very good synopsis of "Nordic Ideology." I wish I could offer up some counter-analysis, but I am lacking the necessary level of code and/or stage of cognitive development.

Sincere irony is a way to compact/compress arguments into an authentic expression that passes as in/out group dissolution.

Yup, I've been thinking some about another meta-modern theme which is the constructive pastiche:

Constructive (metamodern) pastiche, on the other hand, combines disparate elements in order to build a space inhabited by a felt experience that is not at home in either element on its own. And/or maybe this: constructive pastiche allows a work of art to bring into it the kinds of cultural combinations that people experience in real life, in spite of conventional divisions between them.

https://medium.com/what-is-metamodern/a ... 7f7b646cae

The trend might be something like parody-> pastiche -> constructive pastiche or "making fun of"->"having fun with"-> "experiencing of serious/fun with." Dunno.

[Stahlmann]

...and a simplistic moral code that doesn't meet all humans needs (hence all the depression, nihilism, etc.)...

Care to paraphrase?