Regen

Political metamodernism;

Freer than libertarianism, more regen than ecologism, more egalitarian than socialism, more prudent than conservatism and more rebellious than anarchism 👀

In short, political metamodernism should help us transcend the left/right political divide to finally build well-functioning societies without biases.

In this post:
- Problems
- Six New Forms of Politics
- Memetic Revolution
- Towards a Sustainable Future

Implementing these six new forms of politics should lead us to less pollution, less destruction, less mindless consumption; and at the same time - surprisingly, more freedom 👀👀👀

Problems

For the most part, issues like people suffering from a lack of basic resources & easily preventable diseases, have been resolved.

Alas! New problems emerged:
- Global issues like ecological unsustainability
- Extreme inequality, money extraction & housing crises
- Alienation & lack of meaning leading to all kinds of crazy shit happening

The DAO '16 survivor, Summoner of DAO Accelerationism & MetaGame

Emotions run the world

Avoidance of negative emotions makes up the invisible machinery that lets everyday life in any society run smoothly and not descend into chaos.

Exclusion & rejection activate the same brain patterns as physical pain - pushing people to bitterness & vengefulness. Happy people make more people happy and angry sad people make more people angry and sad.

In a sense, there’s an economy of emotions underlying all societies. How other people feel affects us whether we like it or not.

6 New Forms of Politics

Metamodern politics are about building frameworks that that consciously evolve culture itself, shift the games of everyday life, and verify.

- Democratization Politics - Updating systems of governance
- Community Politics - Improving the quality of human relationships
- Existential Politics - Supporting people’s life journeys & mental health
- Freedom Politics - Protecting people from all forms of oppression
- Empirical Politics - Evaluating policies & institutional practices
- Politics of Theory - Co-developing the narratives societies rely on

Will these new forms of politics rely on state bureaucracy, nonprofits or the market?
All three, actually!

Democratization Politics

The word “democracy” mostly came to mean “representative democracy” where we vote once every 3 years. But really, democracy is a spectrum based on the level of collective intelligence present in the system of governance.

Improving it would mean:
- Higher transparency, volume & efficiency of information processing
- Increased accountability & verifiability
- Increased participation of the public in opinion & policy formation

State of the Art

In the civil & the professional spheres, we see a crazy growth of facilitation techniques: Art of Hosting, Deep Democracy, Theory U, Sociocracy etc.

Along with these, we see more & more digital technologies - new voting systems, deliberation apps, feedback systems etc.

Overall, shitloads of tools & techniques to improve quality, efficiency, transparency & fairness of governance.

But we aren’t seeing any adoption by governments, are we?

State of the State

We went all the way up to Web3 but the political system got stuck in pre-internet era.

Social science shows institutions impact societies more than anything. Why is Costa Rica doing ok & Venezuela not? Denmark competitive & Greece not? Institutions.

Is it a bad idea to spend like 0.5% of GDP on improving governance? 🤷‍♂️

Threat of Global Governance

Most pressing issues are at the global level. This means global governance is growing and we’ll likely see more & more layers of top-down governance at the supra-state level.

If we don‘t improve democracy, we’ll be living in a global non-democracy. All accountability & transparency will be lost.

Community Politics

“Today we are faced with the preeminent fact that, if civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together and work together, in the same world, at peace”.— Franklin D. Roosevelt

In postindustrial societies with annual per capita GDP above $25k, the reasons for suffering are no longer material - they’re behaviors, psychologies & social relations that aren’t functioning properly.

We‘d start worrying about questions like:
- Whats the distribution of social capital & status?
- Interpersonal trust, kindness & willingness to help strangers?
- Do people have the resources for conflict resolution?
- How many perceived enemies do people have?
- How good are we at perspective-taking?
- How lonely are people?

In societies where people communicate better, there’s less resentment, hence less reason for discrimination.

Existential Politics

In short, the goal of Existential Politics is lowering the number of broken  souls and increasing the number of phoenixes rising.

Moreover, exclusion & rejection activate the same brain patterns as physical pain, pushing people to bitterness or vengefulness - and nothing is a better predictor of what we do, than our relationship with existence.

People with stunted development remain at low value memes - where you find most criminals & homeless. It’s hard to become a reasonable person if you feel miserable.

Stunted personal growth makes its way into crime statistics & suicide rates; your car gets broken into, your neighbor’s daughter ODs on Fentanyl. There‘s another mass shooting, more angry & sad people, higher police & medical spending etc. etc.

We need to be asking questions like:
- How many people follow their dreams?
- How many suffer from existential crisis?
- How many feel a lack of meaning?
- How many are stuck in traumas?

Helping people develop healthy habits like exercise, body postures & body language, sharpen their social skills & emotional intelligence, learn the benefits of exercise & healthy food - all of which are scientifically proven to reduce depression.

Skills for dealing with inner demons, learning new life philosophies, practicing meditation, forgiving others, sorting ethical dilemmas etc.

Freedom Politics

The idea is to create a permanent framework for ongoing debate about freedom and oppression, a “Human Rights 2.0”. Monitor trends of experienced oppression, publicizing and discussing data etc.

The 4 categories of oppression:
1. Oppression by state or market structures
2. People ignoring or downplaying your perspective for being a part of a minority
3. People directly standing in your way or forcing you to do something
4. Our own oppression of ourselves, due to societal norms or skills to act freely

If people are failing to find inner voices of conscience or develop their talents because they are pressured or systematically ignored, this can be made visible for the public and measures can be taken.

Empirical Politics

Empirical Politics is about creating an ongoing process for making society more scientifically driven and empirically tested. With our level of technological power, failure to upgrade the level of scientificness in society is borderline suicidal.

We got peer-reviewed science, peer-reviewed open-source code development - why not a peer-reviewed society? 🤷‍♂️

It wrestles questions like:
- What level of social welfare optimizes security while staying financially viable?
- How do we improve democratic deliberation & political engagement?
- How do we increase people’s ability to critically evaluate sources of information?

The biggest terrors of human history were born from blocked feedback systems, where truths were suppressed & ignored. Communism & fascism are direct consequences of unchecked hypotheses & lack of proper truth-seeking processes.

To avoid running our societies into the ground, we need to know how to double-check suppositions, claims & ideas of one another.
We increase our collective capacity for crosschecking, and over time, the self-organization of society stands on a deeper web of verifications and falsifications.

(Ahem, this is also where Web3 plays in)

Politics of Theory

Recognizing all societies rely on shared narratives, its time they are brought to continuous scrutiny. The idea of Politics of Theory (or Narrative) is to observe & steer our shared narrative & worldviews.

We should create places where different worldviews meet and argue about the balance between them. Frameworks for our stories to come together and for the best narrative or meta-narrative to be explored, developed & memed.

Politics of Theory would gather expertise in:
- Worldviewing
- Study of value memes
- Social constructionism
- Mythologies & archetypes
- Narrative analysis
- Discourse analysis

There are methods for studying “theories of reality”, we just need to start doing it at scale and link it to the world of politics & democratic governance.

Recap

We just covered six new forms of politics that will be actively creating and maintaining resonance throughout society:

Existential Politics - my relationship with existence
Democratization Politics - my relationship with society
Freedom Politics - freedom & oppression
Community Politics - relationships within societies
Politics of Theory - relationship of self & society to reality as a whole
Empirical Politics - testing and analyzing all of the above

Implementing these would start generating a self-aware, self-organizing political culture, a society that looks deeply into its own structure, its own becoming and its people.

Developing all 6 in balance should result in a fairer & freer world for all. You may think this would be expensive - but ultimately, it would result in lower security, medical & insurance costs.

The Process-oriented Party

For those who dare to try to change the system from within 👀
The ultimate goal is to hijack municipalities, nation states & companies under co-developmental leadership of the process-oriented party to build a transnational layer of governance.

"Process-oriented" parties and organizations play a key role here, those focused on having the best process for debate, dialogue & deliberation.
They won‘t be most popular, but they will be most trusted & least hated. No strong alliances but many weak ties - in network terms, you reach the highest centrality/power; you are more connected than all others.

Perspective-taking is key. The purest heart wins because it judges others less and hence understands them better, then defeats them more easily. 👀

Memetic Revolution

All six forms of politics have natural allies that want to implement them. Democratization Politics gets pushed by centrist & leftwing parties, Emancipation Politics gets pushed on by libertarian & rightwing parties etc.

Ultimately, metamodernism beats modern ideologies in their own games. Its freer than libertarianism, more egalitarian than socialism, more sustainable & regenerative than ecologism, more prudent than conservatism & more rebellious than anarchism.

...the sinister plot for metamodernism to take over the world 😱

The good news is, you don’t have to do anything evil. No coups, no lies, no deceptions and not even low-blows in debates!

Towards a Sustainable Future

Unfortunately, the world-system simply isn’t functioning in a socially, economically or ecologically sustainable way. Call it late stage capitalism, we just call it outdated systems.

In an ironic twist of fate, to solve hard problems of the world-system, we need to look inwards, into our emotional lives and the nature of our intimate relationships with ourselves, each other and the world.

As psychology, behavior, culture and systems develop, humanity will self-organize in new ways and the way we play life will be changed. If a society is doing well & the games of everyday life are fair, people are able to think in more far-sighted ways.

Positive feedback loops and butterfly effects all around!
- Got anything better to do? 🤷‍♂️

No?

Remember, almost any of the above can be pushed through politics, governmental organizations, NGOs, nonprofits - but also startups and corporations if you prefer the pure market route.

Also, here are many useful links:

No?

Remember, almost any of the above can be pushed through politics, governmental organizations, NGOs, nonprofits - but also startups and corporations if you prefer the pure market route.

Also, here are many useful links:
https://arc.net/folder/ABE60E88-5D37-4EF6-BB6A-6CB05EC9D052