Nordic Ideology

by Hanzi Freinacht

  And then there’s always that distinct trait of totalitarianism: First you have a creative burst for a period in which the arts flower, then you con­verge around a massive repetition, a complete shut-down of all art. Scien­tology looks and feels exactly the same today as it did in the 1970s, except now in an ironic and more critically minded age, it all looks extremely kitschy and hysteri­cal. The same is true of North Korea: There are paint­ers, sure, but their skills are entirely tamed and employed on a producti­on-line basis, all in credit of the regime and its worldview. The same happened with nazism during its very short period of existence and with the “per­manent revolu­tion” in some commun­ist countries. If someone gets to you with the idea that they have a correct grasp of “the totality”, any divergence, even in your dreams, becomes a subject of great existen­tial terror. This adds another, and more terrifying, layer of mean­­ing to Orwell’s “boot stamping on a human face—for ever”. Personally, I would rather be gas­sed to death naked than to have someone convince me of an eternity of suffering for me and others if I don’t obey. Spiritual involve­ment opens the door to a whole new world of horrors.

  And yet, it would be wrong to think that universal love and high­er inner states have no place in the future of humanity. Again, it’s a matter of developmental imbalances; the spiritual and existential insights that infor­m­ed and energized the New Age movement in its many forms, and the pro­found and authentic experiences that gave it life, are not in them­selves false. They’re simply too big and too difficult to manage to fit into what­ever human relationships, social roles and symbolic universes we con­struct, and so these relation­ships and roles always self-destruct pretty soon after we start engaging with the highest (spiritual) subjective states.

  As society progresses and we reach deeper into ourselves in order to deal with the existential underpinnings of civilization as well as coordi­nating our streams-of-action on subtler and more complex levels, we are bound to come face to face again with these spiritual or cosmic peaks and abysses. Individually, many of us can ignore these issues and live “normal lives” and not be bothered, but transpersonally speaking, we as a global society and emerging posthumans cannot avoid it. We are going to have to deal with the terrifying depths and towering heights of existence, with the vast oceans of being, with the eternities of tragedy and suffering and the unbearable infinity of potential—sooner or later.

  If the present world-system survives and development continues to accelerate, consciousness is very likely to self-organize into posthuman stages mirroring the great existential depths intuited by the mystics. The New Age movements have given us a brief taste of these farther land­scapes of the soul, of the peaks—and the great abyss.

  The abyss. We then, collectively and transpersonally, encounter a more profound terror than has hitherto been experienced; a terror intuited only in madness and bad psychedelic trips. A terror beyond death: an experi­enced eternity of looped suffering. There is a towering challenge ahead of us; beyond anything yet experienced in the history of the known universe. The scale is of a whole other magnitude, the stakes of a cosmic kind. Sheer terror, pure emptiness—and a corres­ponding level of evil, always found, ultimately, within ourselves. The highest good—universal love and accep­tance—can only be attained by facing the greatest and purest of evils. Although this challenge lies outside the scope of the political metamoder­nism I have formulated, the latter can at least commence the needed pre­paratory work for this unavoidable challenge to our innermost being. Only an existentially mature civilization will be able to face the surmount­ing terror.

  You cannot gaze into the abyss without being moved. You cannot taste the heavens without becoming, at least in some abstract sense, a believer. And that’s what political metamodernism shares with the New Age: an acceptance of the highest subjective states, their ultimate significance and transrational truth; that of universal love and acceptance, the dissol­ution of our separate identifications, and the non-attachment to ideas and beli­efs. In brief moments, these higher potentials can animate us, “As spring sweeps uninvited into barren gardens, as morning breezes reinvigorate dormant deserts”, as one of the most celebrated poets of the Urdu langu­age, Faiz Ahmed Faiz once wrote. [149]

  These flowers of freshest hue must be met by an unequivocal commit­ment to deal with a corresponding level of existential terror. Unlike the New Ager, the metamodern mind is not a millenari­an one; we don’t bel­ieve that a wave of light will “come soon” and “wash over” all of us and this will make people “wake up” and that we are the carriers of that evan­gel (or some circumscription of the latter). We just recognize that there is such a thing as spirituality, yes, and we allow for faint glimmers of it to hint us about a potential future that is both incom­prehensively mag­nifi­cent and terrifying beyond imagination.

  We do, however, share the idea that inner transformation is an import­ant and essential part of societal transformation, and ultimately of socie­ty’s sur­vival. And we share the idea that self-knowledge tends to lead to greater universalism and love, however tortuous and difficult the path. And we believe this path is not laid down, but that it must be conti­nually paved and rediscovered as we interact with the open systems of the world as these open systems inevitably also change us.

  Here we return to the metamodern idea of proto-synthesis —we can­not just throw all maps of meaning and directionality overboard. We must see that spiritual insight and higher universal love are powerful futu­re attract­ors, but that they reside in the posthuman or transhuman realm of poten­tials, which means that we shouldn’t rush it. In this case, we must remain careful and conservative, as the sheer terror that can be unleashed under the auspices of a “metamodern totalitar­ianism ” leaves a heavy ethical bur­den on us. Imagine a world where dictators control your soul and the con­struction of your social universe and have a thousand social, psycho­logical, chemical and technological tools to control the structure of your mind. That would be beyond nasty.

  Where does this leave us? At the spot where political meta­modernism seeks to carefully work for the relative utopia of a listening society—a soc­iety that has resolved the modern problems of sustainabi­lity, inequality and alienation; but it must always stop before any direct, pass­ionate and non-ironic utopianism.

  So fundamentally, whether political metamodernism becomes a force for good or evil in the world—or just another obscure cult-like group­ing—depends upon our shared ability to manage paradoxes and both-ands . And it depends upon our willingness and capacity to engage with the open systems of the world, and letting these systems change us, while still keeping some kind of shared map.

  It is okay to let glimmers of New Age spirituality—and traditional paths in general—inform and inspire us. They must, however, never go­vern us, lest we will inherit all their pathologies, albeit in a magnified and yet more toxic version. These are dangerous dreams.

  Political metamodernism is a bit like standing on the North Pole; if you go far enough north, so that you actually stand on the exact location of the North Pole, east and west and north all disappear; on that particular spot there is only south—in all directions. When you get really close to it, all directions become the opposite of what you want to achieve, and yet you have to keep trying to go “north of the North Pole”.

  There’s a koan to stay with: What is north of the North Pole?

  EPILOGUE

  “Watchman, what is left of the night? Watchman, what is left of the night?”

  The watchman replies, “Morning is coming, but also the night. If you would ask, then ask; and come back yet again.”

  —Isaiah 21:11-12

  Our journey together is drawing to a close. We began on the first page of Book One with a promise that political metamodernism—or its beginnings in the Nordic ideology echoing throughout the “most deve­lo­ped” parts of the world—is the most powerful ideology in the world today and that it beats all other ideologies on their
own terms. I also said that you would understand personal and societal development as well as free­dom.

  I hope you find the goods have been delivered, a vision to shine forth upon our clouded hills. If not, at least I hope you’ve had fun and that you can use this for something else in your life.

  I have put serious thought into whether I should conclude with a “power ballad” (unapologetically pretentious musings of political poetry) or with a conservative word of warn­ing, and I have decided to settle upon the latter. There are still some loose threads that can and will cause harm unless they are dealt with preemptively and continuously.

  One such issue that must be dealt with concerns the risk of creat­ing a cult-like community around political metamodernism. This one is sneaky—it really is—and it’s the one thing everyone thinks they them­selves are immune to; but nobody is. Cult-like social dynamics can and do show up in so many ways. Given that political meta­modernism includes some wide- and deep-reaching perspectives with high psycholo­gical, social and even exist­en­tial stakes, it should only be expected that they are difficult to fit in our minds without us becoming a bit feverish about them; let alone in our relationships without these becoming overburdened and unsust­ain­able; let alone in politics and organizations deliberately designed to gain power and to effect a fundamental shift in society.

  This hotchpotch has everything needed to make people’s emotions and imaginations soar, to fill us with meaning and high states and in­spir­ing horizons, and hence to make us really bitter if our expectations aren’t met and our hopes don’t materialize.

  And it relates to many transpersonal iss­ues where we can get stuck in quite complicated clusters of integrated personal-professional-political and even spiritual relationships that go sour and leave us shaken to our core and utterly confused. As people try to gather around these or similar ideas, the coordination of our minds and actions is difficult because it involves so many parts of us. It is more than a little tempting to give in to a totalitarian process that subtly pressures peop­le to comply and conform so that we can feel we have successfully come together and that decisive steps are being taken.

  This is a confusing and strange landscape to travel. It can lead to a sen­se of dark bewilderment and a subtle but profound sadness. It can lead to small cult-like enclaves and sectarian splinters and squabbles. It can even lead to new totalitarianisms at a soc­ietal—perhaps even global—level. And yet, I believe, it is the path that we have ahead of us: a path that involves getting over our blindness of dev­elop­mental stages and inner dimensions; a path towards an existentially mature and listening society.

  Our best defense against new totalitarianisms is to find ways of looking inwards to engage with our necessary but dangerous dreams in transpa­rent and demo­cratic ways where a multiplicity of perspectives (and pers­pectives of perspectives) balance out and dissipate their ex­plosive concen­trations of power . We must create institutions that supp­ort higher stages of personal development. And to do that without it being total­itarian, we need to im­prove the processes of democratic gover­nance.

  On a more personal day-to-day level, how do you prevent cult-like struc­tures from emerging, dragging the lives of the ones involved in the dirt? Here’s a bullet list.

  See to it that activities engage with the open systems of the world , i.e. that they never become closed in a loop around the (supposed) meta­modernists themselves. In other words, focus on politics, arts and scien­ces—not on workshops for personal development and experimenting with the process of meeting in new ways. If the setting you’re in doesn’t focus on politics, find a new one.

  Focus on scientific methods and methodologies , i.e. on understanding how development should be evaluated and measured. Otherwise people will just assume they are at the highest stages and begin to confirm one another in these beliefs, which sets you apart from the world around you and prepares the ground for a collapse of your relations. And then we go down together like a lead balloon.

  Don’t go on witch-hunts. In other words, don’t try to use Jungian analysis or any other forced therapy session on folks who don’t agree with you. Don’t blame “their shadow” and don’t make hypotheses about their hidden motives. Just meet their arguments, if you can. And demand the same respect from others. Otherwise you very easily get stuck in an eternal trench war, each trying to “out-Freud” one another and gathering others to your side by effectively back-talking other people.

  Don’t label people by stages and developmental traits. Speculate a bit about people’s developmental stage, sure, talk about it when mutual trust is there, but never ever use stage as an argument against anyone, and never ever try to discredit anyone on account of the developmental stage you perceive them to embody.

  Don’t be puritan. In a metamodern political movement, like The Transnational, people should be somewhat in agreement about the general direction, but only somewhat—say about 70% or so. Any puritan reading of metamodernism can lead to new “Jacobins” forming or to other forms of sectarianism. Metamodern­ism is about taking and holding many perspectives and dealing with the very substantial likelihood that we ourselves don’t have the best perspective or knowledge at any one given time.

  Let go of relations gone sour. If you ever find yourself having a vendetta, try to go home and take a few deep breaths and really meditate on it. Do loving-kindness meditations to get over it, even if they won’t be nice to you. Or shout into a pillow (or beat up a punching bag if that’s your thing), if folks make you mad. Let the wound heal and avoid the person and keep it cordial. Don’t go after them on social media. Forgive them if you can.

  Continuously reexamine your networks and social settings. Check and double-check if there is anything going on in terms of development of original arts, philosophy and scientific findings in your meta­modernist circles. If not, that’s a huge warning sign. As we have seen, totalitarianism always begins by closing down art and creativity.

  Take it easy. If we rush things or get evange­lical, we can be sure things will backfire. If things start moving too fast, you can be sure they will crash and you are going to be the bad guy. These are slow and huge processes, not a wave of goodness that will overturn the bad in the world. What we are offering here is, after all, not the radical revolutionary path, but one of measured, boring, long-term processes that need to be defined and refined until they actually work. And that, ironically, is why we can be truly revolutionary.

  If you get involved in starting a transnational organization for political metamodernism or something similar, please come back to this list and read it again from time to time. Add your own points. Be sincerely ironic, mag­ically realistic, pragm­atically romantic, informedly naive, relatively uto­pian.

  After all, we should get this party started; if we don’t, it’s probably only a matter of time before someone else does without all the safeguards and scruples I have listed above. Bad, bad things can and will follow.

  On a last note, here’s one from me personally to you. I do believe poli­tical metamodernism can be a great adventure in our lives; in yours and mine. I know it can be a source of meaning. But here’s a big but: I’m not promising you wellbeing and happiness by engaging in it. Political meta­mod­ernism is a project for the long-term goal of increasing happi­ness and wellbeing in the world, yes, but it is not in itself a tool to make you happy, highly functional and fulfilled. It’s just one thing out of many in life, and sometimes a com­plicated and messy one at that.

  The sociologist Lewis Coser coined the term “greedy instit­ution”. It built on the sociologist Erving Goffman’s “total instit­utions”. Total insti­tutions are settings in which you are literally locked up and all aspects of your everyday life are controlled: prisons, psychiatric wards, labor camps, large ships with long-serving crews and so on. Coser’s greedy institutions instead denote social settings which aren’t obviously enclosed, but still eat away at the rest of your life and snatch more and more of it—
like the communist party or certain forms of club life, or a line of work that requ­ires you to sign in blood. An increasing share of your time, effort and atten­tion is taken up by it.

  If political metamodernism speaks to you and you commit to it, it can rather easily become this kind of greedy institution, and that can be detri­mental both for you and the cause you serve. So it is important to keep it in its place and at all times make certain you keep in touch with other parts of life and society.

  Remember, those who hold the most perspectives when they die, win.

  —

  Kidding. You didn’t really think I would let you go without a proper power ballad, did you? What kind of Hanzi would I be?

  Many observers of our day—perhaps especially among metamodernists and adult development researchers—claim that we must help humanity grow up. Some even say that boys have to become men. And that’s a lot of what I have been saying as well; we need to create institutions that are deli­berately geared to supporting the intermeshed development of psych­ology, behavior, culture and systems.

  With that in mind, I have suggested that we navigate history, as flies buzzing through the enchanted meaninglessness of the cosmos, with our con­trols set for the heart of the sun. We are destined to be more than jani­tors, programmers, nurses, office clerks and consumers. We are, funda­mental­ly, gods with anuses. Our everyday lives are pale reflections of our true selves. We have divine potentials and utterly pathetic hidden sides, and all of this glitter and grime will surface through us as we grow into an exist­en­tiall­y mature civilization—as multidimensional beings developing in a chaotic dance with reality itself; a journey into the open vastness and terrifying mystery of the clear night sky. “Surrounded, detached, in meas­ureless oceans of space, ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them”, as Walt Whitman once said it. [150]