Nordic Ideology

by Hanzi Freinacht

  “But what about climate change! The runaway climate doesn’t have time to wait for generations of shifted human consciousness.”

  The transformation to meta­mod­ern pol­itics and a listening society can hardly be expected to suddenly get all countries of today to sign a satis­fying climate agreement. That work needs to proceed within the dissatis­fying boundaries of the here-and-now of international politics. But that does not mean it cannot get help from the emerging metamodern struct­ures. And if disaster does strike and we get a 5°C or more rise in global tem­perature or an AI or nanotech induced calamity in fifty years, we’re going to need every bit of the metamodern layer of governance we can get to handle the crisis at all. Regardless of how you look at it, meta­modern politics is what must be done. Also, the abovementioned trans­pers­onal swarms are needed to solve the climate crisis—so let’s create a society that empowers them in a far-reaching manner.

  Besides, do you really think you will get even the resemblance of good environmental politics without Empirical Politics? Think again. Do you think you will get biospheric and deep-ecological consciousness in the gen­eral population without Existential Poli­tics and Politics of Theory? That, my friend, is un informed naivety.

  “Elitism and arrogance! Self-flattery! Exclusive club!”

  You are right to worry there are some pitfalls here: If we think of our­selves as “the metamodern aristocracy” we may be deluding our­selves and falling for seductive self-flattery and pat­ting each other’s backs. It may even invite megalomania, undue imm­un­ity to the perspectives of others deemed “less developed”—and less-than-epic marathons of the Dunning-Kreuger effect may follow. [122]

  We do, how­ever, have a couple of safeguards against this. One thing is that the develop­mental models presented in Book One include at least some measur­able aspects. Hence, it is possible to check oneself and one another for realistic expectations in terms of our capabilities. People of very high complexity tend to have a rich hist­ory of groundbreaking inno­vations. [123] You can check if someone under­stands the meta­modern code or not by asking them probing questions: Either they can describe them corr­ectly and reason indepen­dently around them or they cannot. As for our­selves, we can check for inner states and depth and hopefully be able to assess ourselves realistically: If you didn’t have a cosmic full-body orgasm last night, you’re not that high state after all, etc. And then there’s always the general “know thyself”; we all have lots of weakness­es, even if we hap­pen to have this or that devel­opmental property. As long as humans are invol­ved, it is unavoidable that a certain degree of elitism and unproduc­tive arrogan­ce sneaks in.

  On the other hand, political metamodernism needs to be elitist in the sense that it has to target and engage highly competent people of high effec­tive value meme. This, of course, leaves out most of us. But it is, after all about “saving millions of lives”. And it doesn’t make sense to charge such a pro­ject with a demand that “everybody should feel welcome” and be in­clu­ded. At a mini­mum, you need to be able to read this book and critically reflect upon it, and you need to have the time and opportunity to do so. We’re doing serious and dangerous work here; we need to be relati­vely exclusive and hold ourselves and one another to high standards. If you want to play professional football or do heart surgery, you need great skills to do so—same goes for doing metamodern politics. What can and must be avoid­ed, however, is that unfair biases exclude people from taking part, or that people are un­necessarily alienated. Other than that, meta­mod­ern activists don’t owe it to any­one that they should be in­cluded. No apologies made.

  And then again, seeing as political metamodernism is a virus which aims to eventually infect the entire political spectrum and then nimbly surf the dialectics that flow from competing political parties, it does actu­al­ly include “everybody”. Metamodernism works by finding ways to in­clude the deeper partial truths of people’s perspectives and to have soli­darity with these: and in that sense it is not exclusive at all. This is true not least because, if people are empowered by a listening society and have much better rela­tions and inner development, they will be able to act freely in swarms. So it’s not elitist in that sense.

  A word of warning: If you commit to working with political meta­moder­n­ism, people will try to use the charges of elitism against you. Some of it may be warranted, but some of it is Sklavenmoral ; i.e. insincere calls for humility to stop you from making truth claims that conflict with their own ideas. It’s not always simple to tell the difference, and it takes prac­tice, and sometimes it may be a combination of both. Just be kind and pol­ite, don’t get derailed, go home and reflect and be kind to yourself and reme­mber you don’t owe them any excuses.

  “This is the ‘Nordic ideology’… What about the US?”

  Since many readers are from the US, this question comes up: As a coun­try, the US has the world’s largest metamodern population in absolu­te num­bers, a rela­tively dynamic market economy and a strong civil socie­ty—but unfortunately also a rigid two-party system, with wealthy special interests holding too great influ­ence over poli­tics. Arguably, this hind­ers any succ­essful execution of the “sinister plot” as outlined above. Besides, the US bureau­cracy as a whole has been on a steady decline for decades and it may be difficult to build a new layer on top of it: too much rotten wood. So you are right to wonder what could possibly be done to create a signifi­cant force of political meta­mod­ernism in America.

  Fundamentally, political metamodernism is a global project. It calls for, as argued by some political thinkers (such as philosopher James Tully), for an expansion of citizenship itself . So the main task is to make it take hold somewhere in the world and to begin to compete on the world market, leading by example. And that “somewhere” doesn’t have to be over the rainbow.

  It is easier to imagine such trans­­formations occurring in small, nimble states with highly func­tio­n­al bureau­cracies. Metamodern activists who are US citizens may find it wiser to think transnationally and to help out metamodern activists in other parts of the world first . They may also focus on changing society within the boundaries of smaller progres­s­ive cities, such as Boulder Colorado or San Francisco. Simply buil­ding a trans­nat­ion­al net­work of metamodern activists can facilitate future en­trances of metamod­ern­ism into US politics. And surely there must be more pathways for the creative.

  “Democracy in China?”

  Yes, the question of democracy in China may be a fateful one for the direction of the world-system as a whole. The clock is ticking, “the count-down for democracy”, as discussed in Chapter 10. As American hegemo­ny is waning, Chinese pow­er seems to waxing and an increasingly con­fident Chinese govern­ment has begun to challenge democratic powers and values head on—for instan­ce by imprisoning a critical journalist and Swe­dish-Chin­ese citizen after arr­est­ing him in Thailand, charging him with fake crimes—and then telling the protesting EU countries to, more or less, go take a hike. At the same time, China is expanding its infrastruc­ture and foreign direct investments so as to inter­connect the Eur­asian continent around a central Chinese hub while boasting that they seek to spread their form of gover­nance in the world—all the while retracting on independent assessments scores of democracy and freedom.

  Even more fright­eningly, the Chinese government censors the inter­net—lately they got rid of Winnie the Pooh (true story, this was after peo­ple started using the yellow stuffed animal as a symbol for their leader XI Jinping) and, more tellingly perhaps, they have banned George Orwell’s books 1984 and Animal Farm . It is safe to assume that anybody who has some­thing to fear from Winnie the Pooh certainly has a lot to hide.

  China even has a surveillance system that scores citizens for their de­gree of complacen­cy, “Sesame Cre­dit”, affecting every aspect of one’s life and career opport­un­ities within the country. University professors in Au­stralia and elsewhere complain about the
easily hurt and offended Chinese stud­ents who will tolerate no slights against their coun­try’s government. And of course, Xi Jinping is breaking the tradition of passing on power by stay­ing in office for a longer period than what has been custom.

  And yet, this bold new China has a strangely alluring power, not least as its authoritarian system allows for holding back consumption in favor of investments; and these invest­ments can more easily take on more long-term goals such as large and admittedly dazzling infrastructure projects and transitions to sustainable energy (being the world’s greatest solar cell pro­ducer).

  Could then political metamodernism find its way to the Middle King­dom? Could it offer paths to democratize China? It is clear that Chinese society is pretty far away from anything like political metamodernism. But there is always a chink in the armor, always some unseen potential. If you think transnationally, it is possible to imagine that some lead-by-example parts of the world could inspire Chin­ese leadership and some of its popu­l­ation. For China, going directly for metamodern politics may be a more appealing route to create “a listening society” with all six new forms of pol­itics than first transition­ing to modern liberal dem­o­cracy. This, how­ever, can and would be very risky since Chinese society at large would be entirely unprepared. Hence crude and perv­erted versions of meta­moder­nism could turn into totalitarian nightmares and/or collapse. Re­member what causes pathologies above everything else, as dis­cussed in Book One: develop­mental im­balances. If you try to use meta­modern ideas from a, relatively speaking, immaturely mod­ern mindset, and you have the un­checked power to do so, it can get very ugly.

  Even as things stand today, Chinese authorities and its state-controlled media attempt to portray the Chinese system as a “direct and/or deliber­ative democracy” which they claim is more in tune with the cult­ural heritage of China—sometimes with the help of bought Western acade­mics. They try to hide the crude dictatorship behind the thin mask of “another system”, of supposed radical deliberative demo­cracy.

  On the one hand this suggests that Chinese intell­ectuals and leaders may want to take up political metamodernism in the future (they’re al­ready talking the talk, maybe that will lead to some attempts to walk the walk); on the other hand, it suggests metamodernism may find its most perverted expressions in China. Perhaps we will even live in a world ruled by a superpower that oppresses us with manipulative and intimate tech­nologies of surveill­ance and control.

  We have all the reason to shudder. I’m not optimistic about the matter, but the question about China’s role remains un­avoidable. The best way ahead is to try to see and affect the attractor points at the earliest poss­ible stage.

  “The economy! The economy!”

  A very important aspect of all this concerns the evolving econo­mic system and its changing characteristics at the centers of the world-system and the hubs where cultural development has progressed the farthest. Many readers will feel this analysis is incomplete without seeing how it relates to the economy and, to some extent, to post-cap­italism and the rise of cult­ural capital—and how all of this connects to the listening society and to increasing the average effective value meme. This will be addressed in my other book, Outcompeting Capitalism .

  Still, though, it should be underscored that the obsession with econo­mics can prevent people from understanding the main points of this book. And the ideas presented here do make up a coherent whole and they can be applied even without a fur­ther structural analysis of the economy of the internet age. Suffice to say here that the listening society transforms the eco­nomy across all six dimensions of inequality and thus brings about great­er agency in the world. This means that resources are used in more efficient ways in terms of happiness and ecological footprint. Hence, poli­tical metamodernism and post-capitalism are married to one another.

  “Wait! Please, again . And how did all of this stuff about six new forms of politics relate to the development of a new layer of governance called ‘the listen­ing society’, to raising the average develop­mental stage of the pop­ulation, to higher freedom, deeper equality and the develop­ment of ‘better’ norms in society come about? And how will that ‘save’ us?”

  Okay, you just summarized the entire book in one question. The point is that if all of these six forms of politics are instituted and affect people for decades, they will together, in many and complex ways, change us as hum­an beings and change our relations to one another. They are develop­mental forms of politics, each aiming at dynamically changing subtle parts of what it means to be a human being. Hence, the human life-course will change in its entirety, and new patterns will emerge throughout all of so­ciety. As psy­chology, behavior, culture and system develop, humanity will self-organize in new manners, and all of life will be recreated. Maybe that won’t “save” us. But it might give us a flying chance. And that isn’t so bad.

  “And how does all of that connect to general cultural metamodernism? Mag­ical real­ism, pragmatic romanticism, informed naivety, proto-synthesis, tran­scend and include, both-and thinking, reconstruction following de­con­str­uc­tion, relative utopia, transpersonalism, dividualism, the view from com­ple­xity and attractors, fractality, the death of the liberal innocent, super-secular but radical spirituality, the expansion of arts into all realms of life, a non-deter­ministic, self-critical develop­mentalism and sincere irony?”

  Nice punch. The point is that if you have this cultural background un­der­­standing, this kind of embodiment, you are capable of planting meta­modern seeds throughout society. Without this battery of breathed and lived understanding you can still play a part, but you cannot be that real chan­ge in the world because you’ll get stuck in the contradictions of mod­er­nism or postmodernism. Ultimately, you need to be metamodern to do poli­tical metamodernism. Even if the metamodern emergence is tran­sper­s­onal and can consist of patterns of a lot of different bits scattered over many different people (like a “bit torrent” download), there still need to be some central actors that act more deliberately and consciously. A meta­modern society cannot emerge without meta­­modernists.

  “Lastly, then: How do we get to a transnational metamodern world order?”

  Again, I’m glad you asked. This dialogue is promising for any future co-creative collabora­tion between us.

  The goal here is to hijack governance structures of nation states, city admin­istrations and perhaps companies or the UN and use them to build a trans­national layer of governance while competing on the world market by culti­vating a listening society. The nation state is slowly transformed into a part of a transnational meshwork and people’s need for belonging and meaning are fulfilled in other ways than through nationalism: Gem­einschaft Politics, Existential Politics and so forth. If you lose the control of some areas, go elsew­here, keep playing, help each other.

  Basically, we need to found something like The Transnational . Much like the communists had the International (there is and have been a bunch of them, including socialist and anarchist ones). And then we conspire (the literal meaning of which is: breathing together) openly and trans­parently to change the world with transnational, transpartisan, non-linear, co-devel­op­mental politics with a view from com­plexity. We im­prove upon the code, strengthen the network, gather key competences as we sensitively try to under­stand the twists and turns of the world-system. We look for places of opportunity, globally. We look to places to act, for ways to engage—for “pressure points” we can work on; for the right mo­ments. We work on our relationships to each other and we help one ano­ther out.

  With sincere irony, we work and play pat­iently to increase the poten­tial­ities and like­lihoods of radical metamodern emerg­ences in the world. There’s always a glimmer somewhere.

  —

  And that concludes this second part of the book. That’s the Master Pattern of the Nordic ideol­ogy; the seeds of which can bloom into trans­national pol­itical metamodern­ism re
sonating throughout the world.

  PART THREE

  The Proof: Nordic Ideology

  Chapter 19:

  REQUIEMS FOR MODERN IDEOLOGIES

  “Soon to fill our lungs the hot winds of death

  The gods are laughing, so take your last breath”

  — Fight Fire with Fire , by Metallica

  Remember what I promised on the first page of Book One? I con­ten­ded that poli­tical metamodernism beats all the modern ideo­lo­gies on their own terms: It is more egalitarian than socialism (and social democracy), freer than libertarian­ism and classical liberalism, more sustainable/resil­i­ent/regene­ra­tive than ecologism, more sensible and prudent than conser­v­atism, and more radically rebellious than anarch­ism. Now it’s time to deliver on that promise.

  This third and last part of the book is, by the way, much shorter. It only has two chapters, one on mainstream modern ideologies and one on the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century—and then an epilogue that closes both Book One and Two on this metamodern guide to politics.

  Subtle Memetic Revolution

  The main work of this book is done.

  Now that you have learned what the Nor­dic ideology is, and how it aims to construct a listening society with six interacting, ongoing politi­cal pro­cesses, we can look at each of the modern ideol­o­gies and see how they don’t hold up against political meta­modern­ism. Defeating them in theory is one thing, but outcompeting them in practice may of course be a more com­pli­cated affair. At least we are given valuable hints about how it can be done. And we get to pan out some ideas about this “Green Social Liberalism 2.0” in the process.