re: the crisis of meaning, postmodern social conditions, disruption, social atomization, cultural evolution and regression (Ghost in the Machine)
note: after entering "stage 4.5", it is estimated that young people on average can transition out of postmodernism in 2-3 years, with focus and hard work, middle age people will take 5-10 years,…
re: the crisis of meaning, postmodern social conditions, disruption, social atomization, cultural evolution and regression (Ghost in the Machine)
note: after entering "stage 4.5", it is estimated that young people on average can transition out of postmodernism in 2-3 years, with focus and hard work, middle age people will take 5-10 years, etc.
Jordan Hall's thoughts on postmodern social conditions, and the disruption of legacy "sense making" systems (hierarchies of curated expertise) by network technologies. (also see N.S. Lyons on "Virtuals vs. Physicals")
(also see Ken Wilber's "Tier 2" formulation, popular with Boomer counterculture types and some new agers)
]
excerpt:
For stage 4, stage 5’s tolerance of contradiction is indistinguishable from stage 3’s; both appear simply irrational.6
Lacking a clear presentation of stage 5, and particularly a clear explanation of how it differs from stage 3, it is inaccessible from stage 4 directly. At best, one can only reach it from
[->] 4.5, the gap of nihilistic despair. [postmodern awareness]
[->] This generally provokes anxiety, rage, and depression, and is not a good place to get stuck.
Many of the people I care about most, and find most interesting, are STEM-educated refugees from ideological rationalism. They’ve mastered rationality, they’ve seen through it—and many now are stuck. Systems cannot provide them with meaning; but neither, it seems can anything else. Many fall into crippling nihilistic depression—a characteristic of stage 4.5. This is awful.
4.5 is necessary en route to stage 5, but maybe it doesn’t need to be so horrible. One needs to become disillusioned and disappointed with rationalism, and then angry at it, and perhaps temporarily reject rationality altogether (in theory at least). Moving beyond any of the developmental stages involves a profound sense of loss: of one’s previously comfortable mode of making meaning. One’s meaning-making mode is always experienced as “the self,” and the new mode seems frighteningly alien—even though it is more powerful once mastered. The 4-to–5 transition is particularly difficult, as it appears no new meaning is possible even in principle, which implies you are nothing, and have no value.
However, if you understand that meaning re-emerges at stage 5—or can accept this, based on plausible testimony—then you need not descend into despair. Unfortunately, little or no support is available for the 4.5 to 5 transition. Mostly you can only get to stage 5 through a rare combination of luck, intelligence, and endurance.
... At first, when a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order, before it has additive effects that lead to a new order.
[->] Bad actors may prove initially more adept than good actors at using a new form
— e.g., ancient warlords, medieval pirates and smugglers, and today’s information-age terrorists being examples that correspond to the +I, +M, and +N transitions, respectively. As each form takes hold, energizing a distinct set of values and norms for actors operating in that form, it generates a new realm of activity — for example, the state, the market. As a new realm gains legitimacy and expands the space it occupies within a social system, it puts new limits on the scope of existing realms. At the same time, through feedback and other interactions, the rise of a new form/realm also modifies the nature of the existing ones.
... Societies that can elevate the bright over the dark side of each form and achieve a new combination become more powerful and capable of complex tasks than societies that do not. Societies that first succeed at making a new combination gain advantages over competitors and attain a paramount influence over the nature of international conflict and cooperation. If a major power finds itself stymied by the effort to achieve a new combination, it risks being superseded.
... A people’s adaptability to the rise of a new form appears to depend largely on the local nature of the tribal form. It may have profound effects on what happens as the later forms get added. For example, the tribal form has unfolded differently in China and in America. Whereas the former has long revolved around extended family ties, clans, and dynasties, the latter has relied on the nuclear family, heavy immigration, and a fabric of fraternal organizations that provide quasi-kinship ties (e.g., from the open Rotary Club to the closed Ku Klux Klan). These differences at the tribal level have given unique shapes to each nation’s institutional and market forms, to their ideas about progress, and, now, to their adaptability to the rise of networked NGOs.
note: Hanzi Freinacht is not a real person, "he" is two intermittently obnoxious european, white male post-Boomer philosopher-academics that collaborate on the "metamoderna" project.
Nora Bateson, who is the daughter of Gregory Bateson (one of Margaret Mead's husbands) is a known Boomer-left opponent of "stage theories", but her criticisms sometimes/mostly arise from the "pathologies" that stage theories predict are typical of the counterculture-left.
According to Ken Wilber, developmental psychologists (one of the major types of stage theory) were viciously driven out of most of academia starting in the 1960s as the postmodern cultural-left began to get entrenched.
Here is an example of how the pathologies of the cultural-left ("woke" cancel culture, etc.) showed up in vicious attacks on biological and social scientists by the 1970s.
Another case is E.O. Wilson, as mentioned in the above article.
Robert Kegan and the other major developmental psychologists whose work undermined the cultural-left's basic beliefs were reportedly severely marginalized in academia.
More recently Bret Weinstein in the Evergreen College fiasco.
The list of scientists and others that have been viciously attacked by the cultural-left is long.
re: the crisis of meaning, postmodern social conditions, disruption, social atomization, cultural evolution and regression (Ghost in the Machine)
note: after entering "stage 4.5", it is estimated that young people on average can transition out of postmodernism in 2-3 years, with focus and hard work, middle age people will take 5-10 years, etc.
Jordan Hall's thoughts on postmodern social conditions, and the disruption of legacy "sense making" systems (hierarchies of curated expertise) by network technologies. (also see N.S. Lyons on "Virtuals vs. Physicals")
https://medium.com/deep-code/situational-assessment-2018-the-calm-before-the-storm-5a0bd014ec84
and
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/theory-knowledge/202005/the-hammer-the-dance-and-the-red-religion
-----
John Vervaeke's "Crisis of Meaning" Youtube video series is pretty good, as are his written materials.
Related to Vervaeke, "Stage theory" (evolutionary psychology, cultural evolution, systems theory) is one deep dive that some people find useful:
https://meaningness.com/images/metarationality/developmental%20landscape_999x383.png
the above graphic is linked from:
https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge
[note: developmental stages explained in depth*, this is the oversimplified version:
stage 3. premodern social forms: mythic (good vs evil), agrarian economy
stage 4. modern social forms: rational-systematic, industrial economy
stage 4.5 postmodern social forms: relativist, rejection of the "absolutes" of mythic and scientific cultures, "information economy"
stage 5.
post-postmodern / meta-modern: holistic, "fluid", patterned nebulosity, epistemic indeterminacy , post-capitalist network economy?
(also see Ken Wilber's "Tier 2" formulation, popular with Boomer counterculture types and some new agers)
]
excerpt:
For stage 4, stage 5’s tolerance of contradiction is indistinguishable from stage 3’s; both appear simply irrational.6
Lacking a clear presentation of stage 5, and particularly a clear explanation of how it differs from stage 3, it is inaccessible from stage 4 directly. At best, one can only reach it from
[->] 4.5, the gap of nihilistic despair. [postmodern awareness]
[->] This generally provokes anxiety, rage, and depression, and is not a good place to get stuck.
Many of the people I care about most, and find most interesting, are STEM-educated refugees from ideological rationalism. They’ve mastered rationality, they’ve seen through it—and many now are stuck. Systems cannot provide them with meaning; but neither, it seems can anything else. Many fall into crippling nihilistic depression—a characteristic of stage 4.5. This is awful.
4.5 is necessary en route to stage 5, but maybe it doesn’t need to be so horrible. One needs to become disillusioned and disappointed with rationalism, and then angry at it, and perhaps temporarily reject rationality altogether (in theory at least). Moving beyond any of the developmental stages involves a profound sense of loss: of one’s previously comfortable mode of making meaning. One’s meaning-making mode is always experienced as “the self,” and the new mode seems frighteningly alien—even though it is more powerful once mastered. The 4-to–5 transition is particularly difficult, as it appears no new meaning is possible even in principle, which implies you are nothing, and have no value.
However, if you understand that meaning re-emerges at stage 5—or can accept this, based on plausible testimony—then you need not descend into despair. Unfortunately, little or no support is available for the 4.5 to 5 transition. Mostly you can only get to stage 5 through a rare combination of luck, intelligence, and endurance.
...
---end excerpt---
* https://vividness.live/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence
a classic abstraction of cultural evolution and regression:
re: David Ronfeldt's TIMN model of social change
disruption -> disintegration -> regression to ideological tribalism -> reintegration at higher level / social form
https://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/02/overview-of-social-evolution-past.html
---excerpts---
... At first, when a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order, before it has additive effects that lead to a new order.
[->] Bad actors may prove initially more adept than good actors at using a new form
— e.g., ancient warlords, medieval pirates and smugglers, and today’s information-age terrorists being examples that correspond to the +I, +M, and +N transitions, respectively. As each form takes hold, energizing a distinct set of values and norms for actors operating in that form, it generates a new realm of activity — for example, the state, the market. As a new realm gains legitimacy and expands the space it occupies within a social system, it puts new limits on the scope of existing realms. At the same time, through feedback and other interactions, the rise of a new form/realm also modifies the nature of the existing ones.
... Societies that can elevate the bright over the dark side of each form and achieve a new combination become more powerful and capable of complex tasks than societies that do not. Societies that first succeed at making a new combination gain advantages over competitors and attain a paramount influence over the nature of international conflict and cooperation. If a major power finds itself stymied by the effort to achieve a new combination, it risks being superseded.
... A people’s adaptability to the rise of a new form appears to depend largely on the local nature of the tribal form. It may have profound effects on what happens as the later forms get added. For example, the tribal form has unfolded differently in China and in America. Whereas the former has long revolved around extended family ties, clans, and dynasties, the latter has relied on the nuclear family, heavy immigration, and a fabric of fraternal organizations that provide quasi-kinship ties (e.g., from the open Rotary Club to the closed Ku Klux Klan). These differences at the tribal level have given unique shapes to each nation’s institutional and market forms, to their ideas about progress, and, now, to their adaptability to the rise of networked NGOs.
...
---end excerpts---
a post-Boomer, post-faddishly fadish version of the above that drips with irony, post-truths and post-relativism (!!!)
https://metamoderna.org/metamodernism/
note: Hanzi Freinacht is not a real person, "he" is two intermittently obnoxious european, white male post-Boomer philosopher-academics that collaborate on the "metamoderna" project.
Noice noice
Nora Bateson, who is the daughter of Gregory Bateson (one of Margaret Mead's husbands) is a known Boomer-left opponent of "stage theories", but her criticisms sometimes/mostly arise from the "pathologies" that stage theories predict are typical of the counterculture-left.
According to Ken Wilber, developmental psychologists (one of the major types of stage theory) were viciously driven out of most of academia starting in the 1960s as the postmodern cultural-left began to get entrenched.
Here is an example of how the pathologies of the cultural-left ("woke" cancel culture, etc.) showed up in vicious attacks on biological and social scientists by the 1970s.
https://quillette.com/2019/10/05/the-dangerous-life-of-an-anthropologist/
The moment I saw that, I knew it was going to be about Chagnon.
Another case is E.O. Wilson, as mentioned in the above article.
Robert Kegan and the other major developmental psychologists whose work undermined the cultural-left's basic beliefs were reportedly severely marginalized in academia.
More recently Bret Weinstein in the Evergreen College fiasco.
The list of scientists and others that have been viciously attacked by the cultural-left is long.
Not the slightest doubt — totalitarian instincts.