Metamodernism

[DrZoidberg]

Here's the new best thing since sliced bread, Metamodernism.

So what is it? It's the synthesis of modernism and post-modernism. It cherry picks the best from the two while mitigating the damage of the bad.

If this sounds abstract it might help to get an explanation of what modernism is. Another word for modernism is "positivism". Or "scientism". Everything is measurable. If it isn't, it's worthless, unimportant or doesn't exist. By measuring we can we can know objectively what is superior or desirable. Scientific racism (eugenics and Nazism) was part of this paradigm of thought, ie essentialism. Another aspect of this is "what is your true inner self". Utilitarianism is another type of modernism. We got technocracy where the idea was to take governmental decisions out of the hands of people and leave it to algorithms alone. This would lead to a more efficiently run economy.

But everything isn't measurable. And even if something is, doesn't make it a valuable measurement. We collected miles and miles of data on the shape of skulls. Turned out didn't correlate to jack shit, a phrenology. We built institutes to measure racial characteristics. Turned out that the tools we had to measure with 1870-1930 just weren't good enough. So all the research was pseudoscientific garbage. Science couldn't answer every question. What if somebody gets immense pleasure from killing others, should they be allowed to kill?

So we got post-modernism, which was a direct reaction to modernism. Post-modernism was great as long as modernism was the dominant school of thought. It could poke little holes in the assuredness of beautifully constructed modernist/positivist modes of thought. Slowly destabalising things we took for granted.

But after the 60'ies post-modernism became the dominant school of thought. No everything isn't measurable. Lots of things can only be subjective. Like human experiences. We have no way of knowing how other people feel other than through metaphors or other proxies. Ie, every idea is as good as any other. Ultimately, nothing is knowable in this paradigm. Every truth is as valuable as any other. Everybody is the same, reality is subjective and that we can't know anything really, so therefore we shouldn't have opinions about anything really. Anybody is taught that they can be anything when they grow up. Women shouldn't feel restricted by their gender. Anybody making a statement elevating anything above anything will be attacked. You have to respect me no matter what, and if you don't I will be offended and you should care just because.

The main problem with this is that it is impotent. You can't do anything in this mode of thought. Modernism at least had some balls to it. Say what you will about Hitler, but dress well he could. Nobody is going to build a monument over anything post modernistic. The art of postmodernism is cynical and ironic. It just makes fun of anybody who wants anything. It's not attractive.

The postmodernist thought is unattractive. That is why it's dying. And has been for about 20 years now. So what replaces it? There's no going back to modernism. That died for a good reason. We need something new.

Enter "metamodernism". I personally think this is where it's going now. It's not a rejection of postmodernism. But it aims to be a happy marriage of modernism and postmodernism. It's a bit like, if you don't measure you don't know where you're going. But truth is always temporary and always open to re-interpretation and change.

A nice image for it is to acknowledge that everything isn't measurable, but we can agree on that the truth lies within a range of options. And stay within these boundaries. Perhaps races aren't in an intrinsic hierarchy. But can we agree on that sexy people are better than not-sexy people and make a hierarchy of that? And leave it a bit open what constitute sexiness. Can we agree on that environmentalism is good, but leave it a bit open which way to pursue it is best?

Or perhaps there's discreet options. Like dressing like a hipster, having a suit, a burning man hippie, sporty/gangster or well manicured dressed down middle-class wear. And we have one of each in our closet and we switch depending on mood. We can identify with all of these. We don't need one single inner truth. We have a couple. But we also accept our limitations. Sure, a woman can dress masculine. But will then have to accept that the only people who will flirt with them will be lesbians.

We pick out a couple of disarable ideals who all share the top position. And arrange a number of hierarchies. Each hierarchy is as good as the other hierarchies.

I like it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamodernism

Anyhoo... while I'm a big fan of metamodernism, this will give ammunition/wind in the sails to white supremacists and scientific racists. It's going to rise. But I doubt it'll rise to the levels of the 30'ies. We've already tried that, and it didn't work.

After all, accepting genetic changes in behaviours between humans does not automatically imply a hierarchy, or that either is superior. It's just flavours of human experience. Also, racial characterists map badly to genetic grouping. It's too shallow of a measurement to be a valuable metric. But the working class tend to be too stupid to understand subtle differences like that. So instead we get a rise of 30'ies style racism.

Here's some resources. The biggest shining stars of this is the Dutch philosophers Vermeulen and van den Akker

http://www.metamodernism.com/

http://metamoderna.org/?lang=en

Here's a short video with Vermeulen and van den Akker explaining what it is. Perhaps the best start.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH6zJULTVgQ


Note: Before modernism identity was more fluid. Duty and expectation decided what a person was. Identity wasn't something you had innately, it's something you had to aspire to achieve. Modernism was a reaction to this. So it's all a endless long string of dialectical reactions to whatever preceded it.


Thoughts? Do you think this is where it's heading? If not, why not? What are the risks and benefits of this way of thinking?

 

[bigfield]

I've read some of the material on the metamodernism.com but I'm still unclear on how this improves upon modernism. It seems as impotent as pomo.

Admittedly, I'm not entirely clear on what modernism encompasses. However, the description you've provided in the OP doesn't match up at all with the Wiki article, and your claim that 'Another word for modernism is "positivism". Or "scientism"' looks completely wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

 

[DrZoidberg]

I've read some of the material on the metamodernism.com but I'm still unclear on how this improves upon modernism. It seems as impotent as pomo.

Admittedly, I'm not entirely clear on what modernism encompasses. However, the description you've provided in the OP doesn't match up at all with the Wiki article, and your claim that 'Another word for modernism is "positivism". Or "scientism"' looks completely wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

The terms aren't synonyms. But they are all closely related and depend upon each other. They belong to the same world view. Modernism is the big tent which all of these words fit. But modernism is also art and such. So it's less specific.

Positivism, for instance is still valuable. For stuff like hard science, with little or no progress or change, positivism often works great. It's just that it quickly breaks down for the more soft sciences. Thomas Khun's 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions showed what was wrong with positivist science. Positivism hasn't recovered since.

Yes, metamodernism is nearly as impotent as pomo. It's still an improvement. And definitely an improvement above being disastrously wrong which was a big risk for positivism. Positivism has a tendency to push for upholding the best scientific theory as absolute truth. It's inbuilt. It makes people overly confident. That's what led to stuff like the Eugenics movement. With modernism we can have parallel absolute truths we can jump between.

If modernism was overly self-confident, and post-modernism overly insecure, metamodernism is the compromise.

And finally, it's not like we have a choice. Positivism doesn't work. The critique in that article against positivism is hard to explain away or reconcile. And post-modernism... I think we all agree that it's nonsense. That doesn't leave many options. No world view at all isn't an option.

Here's a good example of what I mean. I do a lot of yoga. My practice improved by leaps and bounds (all measurable) when I started to believe all the pseudo-scientific nonsense. The difference between me as a skeptic practitioner with me as a gullible hippie tool was like night and day. For whatever reason, believing the mumbo-jumbo put me in the necessary frame of mind for the yoga. But I'm also a science nerd.

The modernist mind needs to pick the one truth. The post-modernist can pick any truth. The meta-modernist can pick both truths, since they operate in different domains.

Stephen Jay Gould's Non-overlapping magisteria, is probably another good example. We can decide that religion's isn't about physics. Religion is only about managing emotions. It's ok that religious theory violates the laws of physics. Because they're not talking about that. We can believe in both, in parallel. Just make sure that we exchange the complete package when we switch hats.

 

[DrZoidberg]

It also fits nicely with Deleuze's idea of human identity.

We don't have a true self. We have several true selves. We also aren't masters of our destiny. We're shaped by our community(-ies) and context.

He argues against the individual, but instead for the dividual. We're all a bit schizophrenic. It's not that we have a true self that behaves differently depending on who we're around. But we really are different people. Which should be obvious, since it's only a persons actions that are a true gauge as to who that person is. We're all incredibly deluded regarding what we'd do given various hypothetical extreme scenarios. The truth is that we have no idea how we'd behave for situations we're not well prepared.

The dichotomy isn't the individual vs the collective. There are no individuals. Instead we have a fluid assortment of various collectives we pop in and out of. Depending on which collective we exist in at each given moment we will behave differently, and therefore be different people.

 

[PyramidHead]

I find this interesting but I'm not sure where I come down on it just yet. Basically, it still seems to me that although we may lack the ability to measure certain things, in a counterfactual scenario in which we HAD that ability, it would still be better if we measured it. It also comes down to defining terms properly and being honest with concepts. For instance, you say:

Stephen Jay Gould's Non-overlapping magisteria, is probably another good example. We can decide that religion's isn't about physics. Religion is only about managing emotions. It's ok that religious theory violates the laws of physics. Because they're not talking about that. We can believe in both, in parallel. Just make sure that we exchange the complete package when we switch hats.

What religion is about varies from person to person. For many, perhaps the majority in the US anyway, religion is about much more than managing emotions. It may have the function of managing the emotions of even the people who take it literally, but an objective picture of the situation would say the literalist is simply mistaken about the way the universe actually is, regardless of the emotional solace his belief may bring. This "switching hats" seems at first glance like a concession to postmodern pluralism about truth, but it becomes boring modernism when one accurately describes what's going on. A religion is a set of statements that can be interpreted as saying something about the world, saying something that resonates with people emotionally, or both. Inasmuch as it makes claims that aren't consistent with our best models of the world, those are regarded as false, although they may still be emotionally impactful. The positivists said the same thing about much of continental philosophy: just think of it as poetry and you'll be fine.

Here's a good example of what I mean. I do a lot of yoga. My practice improved by leaps and bounds (all measurable) when I started to believe all the pseudo-scientific nonsense. The difference between me as a skeptic practitioner with me as a gullible hippie tool was like night and day. For whatever reason, believing the mumbo-jumbo put me in the necessary frame of mind for the yoga. But I'm also a science nerd.

That intriguing. I should try that with meditation. Currently, I'm struggling with the fact that all of the techniques I read about seem well-researched and empirical at the outset, but devolve into new age mysticism the deeper I dig. I can't really imagine myself pretending to believe the stuff they say about "universal bliss consciousness" without feeling silly and losing grasp of what I'm trying to get at with meditation. It seems antithetical to the overall project of gaining some kind of self-awareness that can inform everyday life, when I have to act as though I believe something I know is false in order to do it. How do you approach that conundrum?

 

[J842P]

It also fits nicely with Deleuze's idea of human identity.

We don't have a true self. We have several true selves. We also aren't masters of our destiny. We're shaped by our community(-ies) and context.

He argues against the individual, but instead for the dividual. We're all a bit schizophrenic. It's not that we have a true self that behaves differently depending on who we're around. But we really are different people. Which should be obvious, since it's only a persons actions that are a true gauge as to who that person is. We're all incredibly deluded regarding what we'd do given various hypothetical extreme scenarios. The truth is that we have no idea how we'd behave for situations we're not well prepared.

The dichotomy isn't the individual vs the collective. There are no individuals. Instead we have a fluid assortment of various collectives we pop in and out of. Depending on which collective we exist in at each given moment we will behave differently, and therefore be different people.

As usual, most Pomo, when stripped of the obscurantist, polysyllabic argot, consists of sophomoric truisms.

 

[LordKiran]

It also fits nicely with Deleuze's idea of human identity.

We don't have a true self. We have several true selves. We also aren't masters of our destiny. We're shaped by our community(-ies) and context.

He argues against the individual, but instead for the dividual. We're all a bit schizophrenic. It's not that we have a true self that behaves differently depending on who we're around. But we really are different people. Which should be obvious, since it's only a persons actions that are a true gauge as to who that person is. We're all incredibly deluded regarding what we'd do given various hypothetical extreme scenarios. The truth is that we have no idea how we'd behave for situations we're not well prepared.

The dichotomy isn't the individual vs the collective. There are no individuals. Instead we have a fluid assortment of various collectives we pop in and out of. Depending on which collective we exist in at each given moment we will behave differently, and therefore be different people.

I would argue that you cannot have more than one 'true self' because that would defeat the core concept of truth. Furthermore, I reject the notion of a true self to begin with. I'm of the mind that we all inhabit a 'default' state, that we aren't defined by our choices inasmuch as we define and contextualize our choices or the choices of others. Sorry but I think post-modernism stands on this one.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I find this interesting but I'm not sure where I come down on it just yet. Basically, it still seems to me that although we may lack the ability to measure certain things, in a counterfactual scenario in which we HAD that ability, it would still be better if we measured it.

Yes, humans are notoriously unreliable in their judgements, and we need a way to measure. But without putting all our eggs in just one basket.

What religion is about varies from person to person. For many, perhaps the majority in the US anyway, religion is about much more than managing emotions. It may have the function of managing the emotions of even the people who take it literally, but an objective picture of the situation would say the literalist is simply mistaken about the way the universe actually is, regardless of the emotional solace his belief may bring. This "switching hats" seems at first glance like a concession to postmodern pluralism about truth, but it becomes boring modernism when one accurately describes what's going on. A religion is a set of statements that can be interpreted as saying something about the world, saying something that resonates with people emotionally, or both. Inasmuch as it makes claims that aren't consistent with our best models of the world, those are regarded as false, although they may still be emotionally impactful. The positivists said the same thing about much of continental philosophy: just think of it as poetry and you'll be fine.

I think you made a metamodernist statement here.

I think the core of metamodernism is that humans like to get excited about stuff. We like the feeling of being passionate about something. The lack of passion is death. Positivism was great for generating passions. Hitler's army was super passionate about their cause. Following a discussion with Mao Zedong where Mao told Pol Pot that communism didn't work, Pol Pot's response was, "Mao just didn't go far enough". America has been really passionate about spreading capitalism, while sacrificing democracy. Passions are nice. But they can, and often do, make us headless.

Metamodernism is a way to retain the postmodernist cynicism and distance without making us completely paralysed. We need both passion and distance.

That intriguing. I should try that with meditation. Currently, I'm struggling with the fact that all of the techniques I read about seem well-researched and empirical at the outset, but devolve into new age mysticism the deeper I dig. I can't really imagine myself pretending to believe the stuff they say about "universal bliss consciousness" without feeling silly and losing grasp of what I'm trying to get at with meditation. It seems antithetical to the overall project of gaining some kind of self-awareness that can inform everyday life, when I have to act as though I believe something I know is false in order to do it. How do you approach that conundrum?

I totally get that. I was exactly you before. I think, mentally, it's about control vs letting go. The skeptic mindset continually evaluates and filters incoming information. It's great if you want to be a information gathering and efficient human machine. But it's also stressful. Doesn't make you look good or healthy. Hippies look great. I think it's connected. I think they sleep better than skeptics.

I think you are making a mistake trying to gain self awareness while you are meditating. When you are meditating you are only supposed to be an observer of your mind. The trick is to place yourself in an altered state of mind where you are not trying to understand. Just observe. The self awareness comes afterwards, during analysis. When meditating, allow yourself to be silly. Be a gullible idiot. Then scrub it from your mind afterwards. Once I started doing it, I got so much better results.

The idea that two distinct personalities and world views can exist within the same person, is a metamodern idea.

Fun fact. Last weekend I had a friend visiting me. She's a neuroscientist studying exactly this. She'd also done the same journey. First pure mathematics, mathematical research and neurology. Then she discovered psychadelic drugs, delved deep into New Age and hippiedom and now she's trying to make sense of the New Age bullshit.

 

[DrZoidberg]

It also fits nicely with Deleuze's idea of human identity.

We don't have a true self. We have several true selves. We also aren't masters of our destiny. We're shaped by our community(-ies) and context.

He argues against the individual, but instead for the dividual. We're all a bit schizophrenic. It's not that we have a true self that behaves differently depending on who we're around. But we really are different people. Which should be obvious, since it's only a persons actions that are a true gauge as to who that person is. We're all incredibly deluded regarding what we'd do given various hypothetical extreme scenarios. The truth is that we have no idea how we'd behave for situations we're not well prepared.

The dichotomy isn't the individual vs the collective. There are no individuals. Instead we have a fluid assortment of various collectives we pop in and out of. Depending on which collective we exist in at each given moment we will behave differently, and therefore be different people.

As usual, most Pomo, when stripped of the obscurantist, polysyllabic argot, consists of sophomoric truisms.

Since this goes against the core of liberalism (as well as American conservatism, which technically is liberal) which is what defines the entire western world, I'd argue it's not a truism. I think it's a dramatic shift of focus.

 

[DrZoidberg]

PyramidHead, a good trick is one given to me by the neuro scientist. We have bits in our brains specialised for face recognition. When we enter a meditative state that function in the brain is switched off.

So if you sit meditating face-to-face with someone, when the other persons face starts morphing and going weird then you know you are in a deep meditative state. If not, you're not doing it right. This is also a good idea since it's always easier to reach a meditative state when meditating together with others than alone. I don't think science knows why. But science can measure that it works.

 

[PyramidHead]

PyramidHead, a good trick is one given to me by the neuro scientist. We have bits in our brains specialised for face recognition. When we enter a meditative state that function in the brain is switched off.

So if you sit meditating face-to-face with someone, when the other persons face starts morphing and going weird then you know you are in a deep meditative state. If not, you're not doing it right. This is also a good idea since it's always easier to reach a meditative state when meditating together with others than alone. I don't think science knows why. But science can measure that it works.

I'm not sure if that last part is true for everyone, or even if there is a such thing as a singular, defined "meditative state" common to all practices. The purpose of the type of meditation I do is to cultivate a free and open mental attitude, letting the mind do whatever it wants while simultaneously not indulging or dwelling on any particular thought. It's not supposed to induce any kind of state, but it's usually very relaxing. There are certainly close variants that do emphasize a state, again something along the lines of oneness, bliss consciousness, equanimity, universal love. None of which sits well with me intellectually or with my natural pessimistic temperament. I tried suppressing my skepticism in this morning's session and while it did feel a little goofy, it didn't make anything worse. I'll keep investigating it.

 

[DrZoidberg]

PyramidHead, a good trick is one given to me by the neuro scientist. We have bits in our brains specialised for face recognition. When we enter a meditative state that function in the brain is switched off.

So if you sit meditating face-to-face with someone, when the other persons face starts morphing and going weird then you know you are in a deep meditative state. If not, you're not doing it right. This is also a good idea since it's always easier to reach a meditative state when meditating together with others than alone. I don't think science knows why. But science can measure that it works.

I'm not sure if that last part is true for everyone, or even if there is a such thing as a singular, defined "meditative state" common to all practices. The purpose of the type of meditation I do is to cultivate a free and open mental attitude, letting the mind do whatever it wants while simultaneously not indulging or dwelling on any particular thought. It's not supposed to induce any kind of state, but it's usually very relaxing. There are certainly close variants that do emphasize a state, again something along the lines of oneness, bliss consciousness, equanimity, universal love. None of which sits well with me intellectually or with my natural pessimistic temperament. I tried suppressing my skepticism in this morning's session and while it did feel a little goofy, it didn't make anything worse. I'll keep investigating it.

Good point. Meditation is a wider term than how I used it. It can also mean any introspection. I didn't mean that. I meant the Buddhist type of meditative altered state, such as is attained from Zen. And nowadays we have miles and miles of scientific studies on it. So it really is an altered state.

There's also active meditation. Which undoubtedly leads to altered states. But I'm not at all well read on the research to say much on that. This looks like a hoot.

 

[bigfield]

Positivism, for instance is still valuable. For stuff like hard science, with little or no progress or change, positivism often works great. It's just that it quickly breaks down for the more soft sciences. Thomas Khun's 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions showed what was wrong with positivist science. Positivism hasn't recovered since.

I've gone over the Wikipedia synopsis of Kuhn's book but it isn't apparent what flaw it finds in Positivism. Can you elaborate?

Positivism has a tendency to push for upholding the best scientific theory as absolute truth. It's inbuilt. It makes people overly confident. That's what led to stuff like the Eugenics movement. With modernism we can have parallel absolute truths we can jump between.

What is a contemporary example of this?

Here's a good example of what I mean. I do a lot of yoga. My practice improved by leaps and bounds (all measurable) when I started to believe all the pseudo-scientific nonsense. The difference between me as a skeptic practitioner with me as a gullible hippie tool was like night and day. For whatever reason, believing the mumbo-jumbo put me in the necessary frame of mind for the yoga. But I'm also a science nerd.

That is suspension of disbelief, but applied to yoga instead of fictional stories. You don't believe the "pseudo-scientific nonsense" and "mumbo-jumbo" otherwise you wouldn't label it so.

The modernist mind needs to pick the one truth. The post-modernist can pick any truth. The meta-modernist can pick both truths, since they operate in different domains.

Stephen Jay Gould's Non-overlapping magisteria, is probably another good example. We can decide that religion's isn't about physics. Religion is only about managing emotions. It's ok that religious theory violates the laws of physics. Because they're not talking about that. We can believe in both, in parallel. Just make sure that we exchange the complete package when we switch hats.

As far as I can tell, you are suggesting that someone can choose to toggle their beliefs, including their religious convictions, on and off as needed.

 

[Kharakov]

I lean towards a postpositivemetakleptomodernistic philosophy, but some people feel that a human can't steal ideas from the public sphere, and the whole premise of postpositivemetakleptomodernism is based on the assumption that humans can steal ideas from the public sphere.

 

[Speakpigeon]

The modernist mind needs to pick the one truth. The post-modernist can pick any truth. The meta-modernist can pick both truths, since they operate in different domains.

Stephen Jay Gould's Non-overlapping magisteria, is probably another good example. We can decide that religion's isn't about physics. Religion is only about managing emotions. It's ok that religious theory violates the laws of physics. Because they're not talking about that. We can believe in both, in parallel. Just make sure that we exchange the complete package when we switch hats.

As far as I can tell, you are suggesting that someone can choose to toggle their beliefs, including their religious convictions, on and off as needed.

No, I think he is suggesting that people are doing one thing while pretending they are doing something else, possibly even that they are themselves so confused about it that they don't realise what the situation is.

I think it makes sense. It's even reassuring as to the mental health of believers. If they read the Bible as a means to massage their emotions then it's more acceptable that they should pretend to take it literally than it would be if they took it as the literal truth.

Then again, maybe it's just a case of Gould trying to reassure himself than so many people can't be complete nutters.
EB

 

[PyramidHead]

As far as I can tell, you are suggesting that someone can choose to toggle their beliefs, including their religious convictions, on and off as needed.

No, I think he is suggesting that people are doing one thing while pretending they are doing something else, possibly even that they are themselves so confused about it that they don't realise what the situation is.

I think it makes sense. It's even reassuring as to the mental health of believers. If they read the Bible as a means to massage their emotions then it's more acceptable that they should pretend to take it literally than it would be if they took it as the literal truth.

Then again, maybe it's just a case of Gould trying to reassure himself than so many people can't be complete nutters.
EB

I would accept metamodernism's/Gould's version of events if it weren't so viciously opposed by religious people themselves. Regardless of why they are actually religious, it is still definitely the case that virtually NO religious people will straight up admit they pretend to believe for emotional reassurance.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I would accept metamodernism's/Gould's version of events if it weren't so viciously opposed by religious people themselves. Regardless of why they are actually religious, it is still definitely the case that virtually NO religious people will straight up admit they pretend to believe for emotional reassurance.

Personally, I've always thought that most believers were only pretend ones. Many if not most people join religious congregations not because they approve of the religion but because they feel better inside a congregation. It's really like animals keeping close to each other in big herds to limit the risk to themselves of being grabbed by a predator.

We already know that people are much more likely to become Muslim if people close to them are Muslims themselves and Christians if people close to them are Christian themselves, so the specific religion doesn't matter much.

The common factor is the congregation. People join congregations because we're a gregarious lot.

If so, then, don't expect people to admit to it.

Real believers can only be a small minority.
EB

 

[PyramidHead]

I would accept metamodernism's/Gould's version of events if it weren't so viciously opposed by religious people themselves. Regardless of why they are actually religious, it is still definitely the case that virtually NO religious people will straight up admit they pretend to believe for emotional reassurance.

Personally, I've always thought that most believers were only pretend ones. Many if not most people join religious congregations not because they approve of the religion but because they feel better inside a congregation. It's really like animals keeping close to each other in big herds to limit the risk to themselves of being grabbed by a predator.

We already know that people are much more likely to become Muslim if people close to them are Muslims themselves and Christians if people close to them are Christian themselves, so the specific religion doesn't matter much.

The common factor is the congregation. People join congregations because we're a gregarious lot.

If so, then, don't expect people to admit to it.

Real believers can only be a small minority.
EB

I'm inclined to agree. It's just surprising how few people admit it, and I wonder what the motivation is behind refusing to admit it. Is there some fear that they are the only ones pretending? A fear that saying it out loud will spoil the illusion?

 

[bilby]

No, I think he is suggesting that people are doing one thing while pretending they are doing something else, possibly even that they are themselves so confused about it that they don't realise what the situation is.

I think it makes sense. It's even reassuring as to the mental health of believers. If they read the Bible as a means to massage their emotions then it's more acceptable that they should pretend to take it literally than it would be if they took it as the literal truth.

Then again, maybe it's just a case of Gould trying to reassure himself than so many people can't be complete nutters.
EB

I would accept metamodernism's/Gould's version of events if it weren't so viciously opposed by religious people themselves. Regardless of why they are actually religious, it is still definitely the case that virtually NO religious people will straight up admit they pretend to believe for emotional reassurance.

It's still definitely the case that virtually NO people will admit to masturbating regularly; It is also pretty much a certainty that most people actually do masturbate regularly.

People lie. A LOT. About trivial things, but even more about important things - and most of all about things that effect their social standing with their in-group.

I can see many good reasons not to believe, and few good reasons to believe, the things that religious people report about what they themselves actually believe. They are liars - you can tell, because they are Homo Sapiens, and almost all Homo Sapiens are liars.

It is certainly possible that not one single religious person actually believes what they preach, and that they all think that they are part of a tiny minority and live in fear of being discovered. If anyone does speak up, then most of the rest will turn on him, lest they be accused in their turn. This is the same effect that makes closeted homosexuals the most vicious homophobes.

Of course, it is likely that there are a few simpletons who really do believe, in most major religions. But my guess is that they are a tiny minority - and amongst the least evangelical. People who think that they know something to be true (even if they are wrong) don't generally get so worked up about ensuring that everyone else agrees with them.

 

[DrZoidberg]

No, I think he is suggesting that people are doing one thing while pretending they are doing something else, possibly even that they are themselves so confused about it that they don't realise what the situation is.

I think it makes sense. It's even reassuring as to the mental health of believers. If they read the Bible as a means to massage their emotions then it's more acceptable that they should pretend to take it literally than it would be if they took it as the literal truth.

Then again, maybe it's just a case of Gould trying to reassure himself than so many people can't be complete nutters.
EB

I would accept metamodernism's/Gould's version of events if it weren't so viciously opposed by religious people themselves. Regardless of why they are actually religious, it is still definitely the case that virtually NO religious people will straight up admit they pretend to believe for emotional reassurance.

Yeah, but that's not a problem. I don't think metamodernism is interesting for religious people. I think we can all agree on that theistic type religion is intellectually and emotionally shallow. I think metamodernism is only interesting for spiritually curious secular people who find theistic religion unconvincing and skepticism/postmodernism emotionally unsatisfying.

Metamodernism is a way for skeptics/atheists to have their cake and eat it to. I like cake. So I'm all for it.