Systems Thinking Ep. 5 - Narratives and Metamodernism (Modern Philosophy)

good morning everybody David Shapiro here with another video so today's video is about systems thinking and specifically narratives and metamodernism so my systems thinking Series has been uh pretty popular so I figure let's double down on this and I'll take you to the next level so let's Dive Right In and talk about narratives first what are narratives narratives are stories that we use to make sense of the world that is the simplest most distilled definition that I could come up with narratives now that being said if you look it up you can probably come up

with a much longer definitions of narratives to talk about you know that have a rhetorical purpose and a cohesive structure and blah blah blah that's too complicated for the sake of Simplicity narratives are stories that we use to make sense of the world there are Mythic and religious narratives for instance the Bible is an example of a religious narrative there are cautionary tales and Parables which Many religious texts include cautionary tales and Parables that being said there are also plenty of movies that are cautionary tales like those about disaster movies uh The Matrix Terminator those

are examples of cautionary tales uh cultural memories and values so a cultural memory movie is an example of all the World War II movies that we've created World War II was this Epic awful event that we that the world went through and so we have this instinct to tell stories about traumatic events as a way of codifying those memories and so because of that and we keep telling stories about World War II because it is such a powerful event in human history so cultural memory and values so what I mean by values is that narratives

can be used to set and establish uh values it's a way to also discuss values such as through social commentary and political commentary and then finally there are explicative narratives and this is a very very distilled list of kinds of narratives so an explicative narrative is just an explanation as to this happens because that which is science there's also myths that kind of explain the world but anyways you can see that the common through line for all of these is that is it is how we make sense of the world whether it's uh ourselves Humanity

or the natural world that we find ourselves in or more existential questions now for the rest of this video to make sense you're going to need to understand the assumptions that I'm making and the timeline that I'm operating by so let's talk about the timeline of human cognition starting about 300 000 years ago phenotypically modern humans emerge so people that that physically looked like you and I uh the the current iteration the current Hardware looks like it emerged around 300 000 years ago uh so therefore maybe we had the intellectual capacity that we do today

starting about then however there is evidence of What's called the cognitive Revolution that happened about seventy thousand years ago and so there's a few things that happen but the I don't want to I don't want to dive into speculation I want to stick to the hard physical evidence so the uh two primary pieces of evidence that we have is artifacts and art so around 70 000 years ago the artifacts that humans started making our ancestors started making were much more sophisticated they're much more sophisticated tools and they also traveled much further sometimes hundreds or even

thousands of miles and so when you combine those two facts you say okay well what changed what what changed about our brains in order to allow us to make more sophisticated artifacts and for them to travel further so there's there's some different interpretations about how far they traveled either those are individuals traveling or there's trade happening there's evidence of both but it doesn't have to be either or and the other thing is is that art that we left on Cave walls got a lot more sophisticated and in this case more abstract and one of the

things that uh that people noticed is that we started painting things that didn't physically exist chimera's Gods hybrids those sorts of things and so the idea was rather than just saying like oh there's a bear let me paint a picture of a bear it's let me paint a picture of a bare Eagle hybrid and so the cognitive ability to imagine things that don't physically exist is also seen as a piece of evidence that our brains something changed in our brains gained more abstract thought and then finally about twelve thousand years ago near the end of

the last ice age we saw a huge number of changes and so there's some debate as to whether or not this was a genetic change or just an environmental change so for instance it might have been more difficult to establish Agriculture and permanent settlements during the Ice Age I'm not necessarily sure that's true there's also the possibility that the Ice Age itself was an evolutionary pressure that surviving the Ice Age was actually something that kind of forced us to evolve to be smarter so anyways the the pattern is the Ice Age ends and then very

very shortly after literally within a few hundred years we see the establishment of the first permanent settlements and within one to two thousand years we see the rise of Agriculture and domestication and so the ability to domesticate things is some of it probably happened on accident like we suspect that cats and dogs kind of domesticated themselves because that happened much much longer ago I think we've had domesticated dogs at least 40 000 years but domesticating sheep and food animals that requires a lot more pattern recognition and deliberate effort we also see mythology and religion really

become much bigger and so for instance gobegli Tepe one of the oldest religious sites in the world it's also entirely possible that civilizations started around religion and spirituality we also see more sophisticated social structures such as social hierarchies and writing systems and other formal systems all started around 12 000 years ago so again we don't have a whole lot more physical evidence than that and you know people are scraping together some genes but you know genotypes don't really last that long but the point here is that there seems to be a uh somewhat linear progression

of homo sapiens intelligence becoming more sophisticated and more abstract and more systemizing so abstract and systemizing are the two primary trends that I want to shine a light on here and you need to understand this to understand everything else that we're going to go over okay so why are those important there are three primary forces of human intellect one is curiosity now humans are not the only curious animal even goldfish can be curious to a certain degree so what is curiosity curiosity is merely an Impulse or a compulsion to gain more knowledge through exploration trial

and experimentation dogs are curious cats are curious bears are curious even sharks are curious sharks will take exploratory bites just to taste something to see if it's edible and so curiosity is highly adaptive for pretty much any animal that has a brain uh and even you could even argue that it's adaptive for single-celled organisms because they have to go in search of food so curiosity is very is not unique to us it's very commonplace in the animal kingdom uh now one thing that is more unique to us or at least the higher order primates is

systematic sense making so this goes beyond basic curiosity and it applies system rules and structure to rigorously make sense of the world this is the pattern recognition the pattern matching and the systematic approach to things like animal husbandry and building homes and the science of making tools systematic sense making also leads to narratives and then finally the third force is cognitive dissonance so cognitive dissonance exists in all humans around the world and it is an unpleasant Sensation that happens when we cannot reconcile two or more ideas facts or beliefs and so basically this is like

it's kind of an internal sense that's saying hey something doesn't make sense here you need to figure this out and so when you look at cognitive dissonance as an Impulse or a pressure kind of like hunger it is a pressure to figure things out and you combine all three of these this is why we have science and philosophy these three forces are the underpinning motivations behind all science all philosophy this is why as an animal if you take a big step back and look at Humanity from the perspective of an alien these are the three

characteristics of three intellectual characteristics that you would say hey this is why humans are science scientists this is why you humans are philosophers is because we're curious we have a natural instinct to explore and gain knowledge just for its own sake we are also systemizers now systemizing is exists on a very broad spectrum some people are not strong systemizers some people are naturally very strong systemizers and some people uh develop systemizing as a skill over time hence why I'm making these videos you're welcome and then finally cognitive dissonance which is just our brain's ability to

hold two or more ideas or beliefs or structures and then if it doesn't if it's not able to reconcile them we get kind of a negative stimuli which that is a signal that from within our brain saying hey there's something that doesn't make sense here okay so we talked about the evolution we talked about the human animal as an intellectual creature moving on so we already gave you a definition of narratives it's a set of stories to make sense of the world it's that simple now to teach you more about narratives there are two overarching

kinds of narratives first there are organic narratives and second there are constructed narratives organic narratives emerge naturally through experience observation reflection interaction and conversation organic narratives tend to be unstoppable and evolve naturally over time so an example of an organic narrative is just the Zeitgeist you're probably familiar with the Zeitgeist it is the spirit of the times this is just what we think and feel about being human about how the world works and this happens very naturally through conversation through film and media so for instance when Terminator came out that embedded something in the Zeitgeist

then it became part of our cultural conversation that is an organic narrative now you might argue well the movie was constructed yes but the movie didn't exist in a vacuum now constructed narratives are deliberately propagated through messaging usually by institutions such as governments corporations religions and Academia or universities so the idea is who is creating the narrative and for what purpose uh one thing that that about constructed narratives is they tend to be a little bit more fragile meaning uh they don't really stand up to scrutiny as well or they're rigid meaning that like well

this is the dogmatic way that the church views things or you're a company man or uh you know commies are bad or whatever you know those are examples of of constructed narratives and one thing about constructed narratives is they serve a rhetorical purpose there is a there is a reason that that narrative is being constructed whereas organic narratives have no purpose they are just merely a reaction or a reflection of the human condition of society of culture of our intellect intellectual state of being there are plenty of subtypes of narratives and many many subtypes of

narratives are hybrids because like I said Terminator was a constructed narrative by Hollywood but that spoke to the rest of the organic Narrative of fear of AI and machines and War and nuclear Holocaust and all that sort of stuff so some of the subtypes of narratives include personal narratives these are stories that you tell about yourself either to yourself or to other people to make sense of your own life historical narratives uh such as you know the the American Revolution and founding of the West and all that kind of stuff political narratives uh I'm sure

you can think of a few recent political narratives uh scientific narratives uh religious cultural economic social Universal narratives we'll talk about that uh and then finally human narratives what does it mean to be human uh you might remember in the 80s and 90s one of the human narratives was that love is just a biochemical reaction and we know better now but I remember watching some old episodes of Star Trek next Generation and even Q says love is no biochemically no different than eating large amounts of chocolate and I'm like yeah that's dumb we don't even

believe that anymore that was an example of an organic human narrative okay why are narratives important so we talked about Evolution and curiosity and all that stuff but why is it actually like what is the evolutionary pressure that gave us speech and stories and Abstract conceptual stories because take us take a moment to think about the fact that we have the ability to hallucinate entire universes for instance the MCU which is why I opened this with a poster of the Avengers you know so much about the MCU or Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter

or Star Wars these are universes these are entire universes that do not physically exist but you know about them why did our brains evolve the ability to hold so much information about things that do not even exist so like I said cautionary tales the ability to imagine alternate possibilities is incredibly adaptive because if you can say well remember that like time we had a storm what if there was a storm that was 10 times worse what would we do then and that's an example of a cautionary tale saying hey pay attention to these things because

they might end your life or they might kill your tribe resource coordination so this is one of the original reasons that people that scientists suspect that we developed a sophisticated language which is basically hey you know these berries are good to eat those animals this is how you hunt them that sort of thing uh the ability to collaborate with explicit language rather than just vocalizations or visual cues means that humans are the best hunters this is why dogs domesticated themselves to us because even though wolves are great pack Hunters all they can do is howl

humans with the ability to say hey there's a wolf over there and you know stab it we have much more explicit communication than any other pack Hunter on the planet except for probably Dolphins um Dolphins there's plenty of evidence that they can actually communicate with explicit Concepts there's a few other animals that are not necessarily Hunters I think uh prairie dogs there's some evidence that they actually use vocalizations to communicate mostly threats since they're not predators uh anyway so we're not the only animal that uses language but we see that other animals that do have

language it is incredibly adaptive and they they're either really good survivors or they're apex predators um social structure maintenance so this is one thing that's really interesting about narratives is that gossip actually serves a very important social uh purpose so here's an example a recent example from My Life um my friend group where you know we're all approaching middle age and so many of us have been friends since college and we've all learned to tolerate each other's quirks and flaws and one member of my friend group um was uh this is this is all hearsay

so I'm not calling anyone out but like he was like the perception was that he was trash talking someone else or like kind of putting them down and so then like but why did my friend decide to tell me about that and the reason that he told me about that is because this kind of Gossip is actually like hey there's something that's bothering me I want to voice it to the community to see like like am I off base here or was that okay or or that kind of thing and so gossip is actually a

really powerful way of establishing and maintaining group norms and also detecting when someone violates those Norms uh you know it's like hey do we believe that this behavior is okay yes or no or or it's also a way to invite reflection because it's like you bring something up um that that's bothering you then it's like well okay yeah let's talk about it so that is one of the there's several purposes to gossip another is a friend of mine that I used to date she's seeing someone else who doesn't want the same things that she wants

and so she'll gossip about that like well you know he's not into commitment and this that and the other and I'm like okay obviously this is bothering you uh memory preservation so as I mentioned earlier memory preservation is a really important reason for narratives such as World War II stories uh my uh my wife has this theory that this is actually one of the big reasons for a thing for epic myths um such as the destruction of Troy that basically Troy was the World War II of the Ancient World um I'm not going to get

too much more into that because she she doesn't want me uh fully sharing her theories until they're published uh anyways that's pretty easy connection to make uh values and Norms I already mentioned that and then understanding complexity the world is very confusing so just take a minute to put yourself in the shoes of someone 10 000 years ago you are as intellectually capable as you are today but there's no books there's no internet there's no Google all you have is you and your buddies out in nature and you have to make sense of the world

you are cursed with curiosity and you want to know how the world works because you have these instincts to systemize and understand and and rigorously make sense of the world and there's no obvious answers when you put yourself in that perspective the world is really really confusing and so understanding complexity link can cause and effect this is a really important uh reason that narratives exist and so what I want to talk about is uh truth today so truth is a narrative uh and this is one of the underlying points of this entire video is that

everything is a narrative everything that you know everything that you think you know is a narrative and what I mean by that is that your truth your narrative is based on these four ingredients evidence such as facts events principles and observations a set of interpretations or narratives to explain that evidence or to link it together with a coherent framework and then number three a set of generalized beliefs based on those evidence and interpretations and then finally consensus within an epistemic tribe you all talk about the same events and you make sense of them the same

way and so epistemic tribes we tend to pathologize those today and call them Echo Chambers which will unpack more in just a minute but when you look at truth today as the collection of evidence interpretations beliefs and consensus it is those four things evidence interpretations belief and consensus that is a truth narrative and so truth narratives when you when you remember that truth varies from One epistemic Tribe to another and I'll Define that more clearly in a minute by the way if you're saying like what is epistemic tribe I'm lost I got you hold on

if but if you remember that truth and is a narrative and that it is a narrative constructed of these four components the whole entire world will make much more sense to you for instance when you uh look at people who say well that's fake news and I operate by alternative facts this is exactly what's happening and we just unpacked all the evolutionary reasons why so gossip and epistemic tribes Also Serve very important evolutionary functions we'll get to the epistemic tribes in just a little bit okay so now that you've had the groundwork laid in terms

of recent human history uh as well as how our brains work and the importance of narratives let's talk about metamodernism all right so here's the definition of metamodernism that I came up with and if you look it up the definition is going to disagree with this because I think the current definition of metad modernism is kind of dumb uh that's my personal opinion meta-modernism is the inevitable result of globalism and internet it is characterized by several things systematic deconstruction and reconstruction of narratives bringing narratives from implicit to explicit or unconscious to conscious rigorously alleviating cognitive

dissonance namely through discussion and advancement of narratives and moving from an absolute or relativistic model to an emergent model of reality and finally the construction of hyper narratives now I just threw a lot at you and this is a very complex definition and we're going to unpack all of it in order to make sense of it though you'll need to understand the recent history of philosophy so starting with modernism modernism was a top-down model of reality that absolute truth came from on high truth is out there somewhere morality is out there somewhere it is above

us it is uh it is given to us by the universe this mentality of cosmic what I call Cosmic Fiat or Universal decree is very to me in hindsight very obviously rooted in judeo-christian Tradition basically the modernists as as enlightened as they thought they were they were still so deeply embedded within religious Dogma that they couldn't really imagine a universe where where like emergence happened because creation myths were so powerful that that is just how their brains work they said ah well maybe God didn't you know make all the rules but something else made all

the rules in it it comes down from on high so this resulted in what is what is uh remembered as Grand narratives they also use the term meta-narratives but when you look at the definition of metanarratives it doesn't actually make sense um so I say Grand narratives so Grand narratives basically say that all things are objectively knowable there are systemic rules and it is all external to humanity so this this mentality is still deeply embedded in science which science says it's out there it's outside of us um modernism said that culture and Humanity was objective

and that it was not necessarily something that was up to us ethics and morality the idea was that at the time of modernism ethics and morality could be discovered as something that is external to humanity Grand narratives the way that they're written tend to be poetic grandiloquent and hyperbolic um the way that like victorians used to write where it's just like ah I remember reading uh Tesla talking about the magnificence of the of The luminiferous Ether and I'm like wow this is some poetic this is some poetic nonsense but that's just how people talk back

then also the victorians uh put up put a lot more emphasis on rhetorical skill now one thing that you need to keep in mind and this is where meta modernism starts to come in is that we now in hindsight recognize that Western colonialism and imperialism also deeply colored modernism most modernists were either Europeans or Americans and almost all of them were white men so also at the time the Western World still had a civilizing mission and so this was basically seen as westerners had a Duty or or or or were responsible for the arbitration and

definition of what civilization meant and so remember at this time uh particularly the British Empire and to a lesser extent the American well maybe not a lesser extent because uh the Americans um intersection with the Native Americans was not good uh so yes these people had a very imperialistic Outlook where they said we are the core of civilization the rest of humanity is not civilized therefore we have to bring civilization to them and so that narrative that grand narrative is also part of Med of part of modernism which is why like yes you know science

and ethics and stuff but the idea that it could be an absolute thing that you could appeal to is one of the reasons that imperialism was justified it's like ah well we are the Arbiters of civilization we are the only ones that can discover the the objective truth of what civilization is and now that we you've got the right of it it is our duty to inflict it upon the rest of the world so you can see that uh modernism had some good parts and it had some bad parts post-modernism in a nutshell so post-modernism

comes after modernism so for uh for perspective modernism started around the turn of the century late 19th century early 20th century post-modernism came about 50 years later in the mid 20th century so modernism rather than a top-down model uh was it adopted a relativistic model and so basically the relativistic model was the was the intersection of Western ideas with the uh intellectual and philosophical and cultural values of the rest of the world couldn't be reconciled because surprise surprise people from India and China and you know Africa and South America they their values did not jive

with modernist values and so the idea that there are Universal truths was just kind of thrown out it it just didn't work and so this uh the reaction was a categorical sorry categorical rejection of absolutes and Grand narratives this was a very lazy way of reconciling cognitive dissonance and so what I mean by that is the post-modernists said well you know maybe the westerners maybe we don't get to be the Arbiters of Truth and civilization so we're just going to throw everything out and say maybe truth just doesn't even exist period end of story maybe

civilization doesn't even exist period end of story uh Margaret Thatcher famously said that Society doesn't exist only families exist so for people who said that Margaret Thatcher wasn't a post post-modernist in another video you are wrong um Okay so the here's here's the cognitive dissonance of post-modernism though post-modernism is a counter narrative they said that they just wanted to reject all narratives but that is just a counter narrative they were not self-aware enough to realize that they're just cooking up another narrative so some of the post-modernist narratives is no one knows anything truth or moral

morality is relative no one can Define anything or you need to define something in order to use it but the thing is is humans have never needed good definitions to use stuff so that's a total red herring that's one of my most irritating things if you if you demand that I Define something before it can be used I'm going to like lose my cool um and then also it's about rejecting gatekeeping so therefore since we can't reconcile things we have an intellectual temper tantrum and throw the baby out with the bathwater um now that's the

bad side of post-modernism obviously you can tell I'm very salty about post-modernism but the reason that we have tattoo acceptance today in the workplace is because of post-modernism um the reason that hippies exist in the Beatles and long hair and all sorts of other stuff is because post-modernism shattered all of those rigid assumptions about what civilization meant what good behavior meant that sort of thing that's why we had the sexual revolution in the 60s that was a direct result of post-modernism saying maybe our really stuffy Victorian ideals around sex are not ideal so there are

some good and bad of post-modernism and modernism now what are some of the characteristics of post-modernism uh nascent self-awareness about privilege and dominance again post-modernism was the beginning of what we now today call decolonization uh however the way that post-modernism is communicated it's communicated with a lot of insecurity irony sarcasm dismissiveness bitterness low effort arguments and cynicism and so this is an example of post-modern art where you just tape a banana to a wall that is what I mean by low effort so if you see a lot of low effort art and theater and stuff

that is a direct result of postmodernism but it's basically just thumbing your nose at the Academy saying you pretentious Schmucks you don't get to Define what art is I get to Define what art is and this is Art which again it's just low effort now what you'll see is that is particularly the insecurity irony sarcasm dismissiveness and bitterness you will see this primarily coming from establishment types namely Jordan Peterson now that I've pointed out those emotional characteristics you will see that Jordan Peterson exudes all of these post-modernist traits and he professes to hate post-modernism but

the just the level of cynicism and and insecurity and irony and and and sarcasm that he uh espouses at all times he is a hundred percent uh mired in post-modern rhetoric um it is also rooted in anger and resentment at losing power uh and so this is why I characterize post-modernism as an intellectual temper tantrum typically by Western white men I mentioned hyper narratives moving on what are hyper narratives hyper narratives are uh more sophisticated layered models of reality that go beyond singular Grand narratives or mere uh counter narratives and so here's here's one way

to think about it modernism had Grand narratives and post-modernism sought to subsume those with counter narratives which post-modernism thought that it was just rejecting all narratives but again that's just a counter narrative so post-modernism didn't really have the self-awareness to realize that it was just another narrative and so metamodernism subsumes all that and looks at it and says okay there are narratives and there are counter narratives there are organic narratives there are constructed narratives there are true meta-narratives which are narratives about narratives and there are hyper narratives that include everything and try and make sense

of it um So Meta modernism is about embracing the complexity where post-modernism categorically rejects complexity and nuance meta-modernism and Hyper narratives except excuse me accept Nuance accept sophistication and the full spectrum of Human Experience rather than saying well nobody gets to keep anything and so when you see that categorical rejection that is post-modernism which is one thing that really drives me up the wall and so now hyper narratives or true meta narratives this is what we're moving on today this is an evolutionary step Beyond modernism and post-modernism and so if you look up at the

definition of metamodernism it says it's an oscillation between modernism and post-modernism no it is not metamodernism is moving beyond it so whoever says that it's an oscillation they don't know what they're talking about true metanarratives and Hyper narratives are more mature more inclusive and uh more understanding of The Human Condition part of this is the ongoing influence of globalism now globalism arguably started a while ago but the internet didn't and so we were mired in post-modernism in the 50s 60s and 70s and 80s but then when the 90s and 2000s and particularly in the last

decade when internet saturation went up globally and the amount of information that we are exposed to and the amount of ideas that we're exposed to from around the world has just skyrocketed particularly over the last five to ten years this is where we start to recognize the interconnectedness of all narratives and the development of hyper narratives because it's a part of ongoing discussion so hyper narratives today so here are some examples of hyper narratives when I say like okay I'm referring to these things but what are they intersectionality is a very good example of uh

uh this is this is a real-time example of a hyper narrative that is being discussed and created and so intersectionality if you're not familiar with it it is the recognition that identities and narratives are all intrinsically composite so here's a graphic uh gender race class nationality sexual orientation abilities there's a lot more that goes into it but basically it views every individual as the intersection of numerous narratives and identities and so this also uh the intersectionality can go beyond identities it can go to um uh belonging so epistemic tribes so basically people can belong to

multiple epistemic tribes what is an epistemic tribe you might be a Republican and a Christian or you might be a Democrat and you know this other thing uh now that's one example of hyper narratives another example is decolonization so decolonization as I mentioned earlier is the recognition of the western dominance of science Academia culture and economy and it is a deliberate attempt or a deliberate effort to deconstruct those narratives and reconstruct these narratives with a little bit more nuance and understanding now one thing that I want to point out is that some people try and

weaponize decolonization this is something that often happens with new narratives is that often the most hard-line people use it first so that leaves a bad taste in people's mouth particularly with decolonization um but I Having learned about decolonization I am on board but I want to also um encourage some moderation let's say but yes you take a big step back with decolonization you look at a global POV so you look at all Races All Humans you look at all of history to recognize what ideas and narratives are embedded in which aspects and where it comes

from and also part of decolonization and metamodernism is to do it with dignity instead of cynicism and hyperbole this is one this is one reason that I uh have a really hard time reading post-modern academic literature is because it is so cynical and so self-loathing that I like you just get like the message actually gets lost in it um and so yeah I I uh yeah uh and then finally transdisciplinarity this is something that is really big to me lately so transdisciplinarity is goes beyond interdisciplinary so if you're transdisciplinary you deliberately cross-pollinate with multiple disciplines

and you deconstruct the silos you deconstruct The Gatekeepers you take off any blinders so that you're not you don't have tunnel vision and then you sent this so trans being transdisciplinary yeah sorry being transdisciplinary is actually about synthesizing entirely new disciplines to address increasingly complex problems so these are three examples of hyper narratives today okay so what is an epistemic tribe I've mentioned these a few times an epistemic tribe is a group that is uh United by shared knowledge beliefs values and cultural norms uh so you can extrapolate that out to whatever you um one

thing is that epistemic tribes used to also be geographically constrained so this is another thing that is functionally different about narratives today is that you interact with people that are all over the place many of my friends are all over the world so I get you know especially as a YouTuber and influencer I have friends in Australia Europe um you know West Coast uh all over so part of metamodernism is recognizing that these tribes exist and so rather than pathologizing them and calling them Echo Chambers we just recognize that this is a natural way that

information flows you have people that you know and trust you have sources of information that you trust and people in your tribe have certain values and beliefs and spread certain kinds of information yes you can pathologize this and call it an echo chamber but you know what epistemic tribes have always existed and probably always will so rather than pathologize it let's just look at this thing as a natural phenomenon of humanity so some of the characteristics of of tribes is that um the uh the the epistemic tribes kind of establish distinct relationships to yourself others

Humanity truth morality and sources of information so this is why you might see some partic some hard-line ones will say that's fake news they say we as a group we as an epistemic tribe have decided that mainstream media is completely untrustworthy and again that's one of the purposes of Gossip gossip is there to establish trustworthiness and tribal values so when you see people categorically reject mainstream media as hey this is not a value this is not a valid or useful source of information this is how humans actually coordinate uh you know trust and that sort

of thing um yeah okay so I don't probably don't need to to go through all this but you get the idea meta-modernism in film so this is why you have noticed probably have noticed that films are kind of changing lately one of the big these are some of these are some of the biggest movies that have come out in the last couple years so everything everywhere all at once this is an example of a meta modern film because it deconstructions deconstructs and challenges narratives about meaning but moreover it uses a mechanism the Multiverse to look

at The Human Condition in lots of different uh possible permutations which is about adopting different narratives and you say okay let's look at this version of the universe let's look at this version of the universe let's look at this version of the universe and so then you're looking at meaning in The Human Condition trauma and abandonment all from different angles and so this is a more inclusive way of looking at narratives so this is an example of metamodernism in film more recently is the Barbie movie so Barbie it was like one of the highest grossing

movies of the summer I think um and this was really interesting because it was a deliberate deconstruction of four narratives not one or two but four different narratives and it wasn't doing it cynically or sarcastically it did it very deliberately so feminism patriarchy toxic masculinity and capitalism all deconstructed and synthesized and discussed and they talked about cognitive dissonance on screen great movie asteroid City however made me really salty because asteroid City wanted to be something else it thought that it was being very profound um it was self-aware but it was very much anchored in post-modernism

and so if you go in if you look at asteroid city either whether or not you've seen it yet or if you did see it and look back on it or see it in the future basically the underpinning theme of this is that all life is but a stage uh and we're but the actors upon the stage Shakespeare said that 500 years ago uh so asteroid City uh did not impress me so I say that it is a failed attempt at metamodernism or maybe it wasn't even an attempt at metamodernism but it is a perfect

example of a post-modern film where it's like ah look we're being very self-aware of the fact that we're all just actors and we're playing roles yeah nobody cares anymore okay so metamodern is an in a nutshell here are some characteristics of metamodernism uh that go beyond the definition one de-pathologizing things like I said depathologizing Echo Chambers uh and the reason that depathologizing is part of metamodernism is because pathologizing and gatekeeping are tools of control that are tools of the establishment and it is also ways to um imply normativity which intrinsically promotes one correct view and

this is just not the way to look at things uh when so deep pathologizing is also part of uh decolonizing so basically with decolonization you say hey maybe the Victorian model of mental health is not the only model of mental health maybe the things that that Psychiatry pathologizes today maybe shouldn't be pathologized at all maybe in fact they're a good thing and so by challenging those social norms by de-pathologizing things you're looking at things that are more uh more objectively because the modernists claimed to be objective you know objectivism empiricism all that fun stuff post-modernists

rejected all that stuff um but they still cast a lot of value judgments and so rather than you know being uh uh uh rather than being preoccupied with value judgments and and Discerning what is right and wrong and truth and you know let's just look at everything truly objectively which means de-pathologize things uh number two is nuance and sophistication over time narratives have become more nuanced and sophisticated that doesn't necessarily mean more complex in some cases they get simpler but rather than reacting to cognitive dissonance with categorical rejection we react by creating more sophisticated nuanced

models that are better at explaining the world because again post-modernism said just throw the whole thing out and that's the end of it but that's a really unsatisfying result because if you just categorically reject something and then ignore it that's not actually an explanation and this is why I say post-modernism is intellectually lazy uh so again increasingly sophisticated models and Frameworks um I am personally anytime that I see someone who is bitter or appeals to power or the status quo Jordan Peterson being a primary example or people who use cynicism or thought-stopping emotional language again

Jordan Peterson anytime I see that I realize that what they're doing is they are this is an emotional uh ego appeal just basically saying I want control it is it is a very childish reaction to cognitive dissonance and so it's like ah well if I can just be sarcastic and get someone to shut up then I win the argument and my world view is preserved but if you throw power around if you use cynicism if you weaponize your emotional language then you are basically doubling down in post-modernism uh number three adopting an emergence model so

remember that modernism was top down so Cosmic Fiat and post-modernism was relativistic which is basically throw out all structure and everything is equally valid no not everything is equally valid that's a very silly belief to have but again if you if you think that just throwing everything out and category categorical rejection is an intellectually rigorous position to have then you can also believe that a relativistic position have is valid but I don't think it is um and so the relativist again anything goes model also not good so what we're moving towards is a bottom-up emergence

model which will unpack a little bit more in just a moment and then finally hyper narratives which I just uh just characterized okay so emergence understanding the emergence model view is one of the primary things to understand the difference between modernism and post-modernism and specifically the emergence of narratives and seeing that all narratives emerge from underlying systems okay so what do you need to know about the emergence model uh there is a there is a term that uh I don't know if I coined it or not but I call it ontological strata so ontological strata

is layers of being so there are hierarchical layers of existence and complexity each building on and transcending the underlying layers for instance life emerged from emerges from the underlying systems of matter and energy mind and intelligence emerges from the underlying systems of biology and life so this is one model of emergence that I don't particularly like because this is not aware enough it's not zoomed out enough so the model that I use of of emergence is layer one is primordial substrate so this model of emergence says that there is something that underpins everything whether that

underpinning substrate is consciousness or strings or some kind of simulation or quantum gravity or even a dreaming God I don't know but this model allows for all of those possibilities so at the at the foundational layer of reality there is some primordial substrate upon which everything else exists Layer Two is matter and energy so from the primordial substrate which provides the Baseline of energy and everything else matter and energy as we know it emerges this is the lowest level that we can observe and measure uh today and so this is Newtonian physics quantum physics and

chemistry that sort of stuff gravity planets stars all of that exists at the layer at Layer Two of this emergence model Layer Three is biology and life so biology and life are systems of matter and energy that run contrary to entropy and so what I mean by that is that life forms and organisms are more organized than they should be they run contrary to entropy because they reproduce because they heal because they grow and so by running contrary to entropy this this definition of life also will include machines in the future so any system that

runs contrary to entropy is life in this model and so this is a different view of what life is from a philosophical from an emergence model and then layer four is cognition so this is the information that is coursing within and through and outside of these systems so these layer 3 systems that may or may not have minds or Consciousness but this is the cognition that can happen so thought memory self-awareness subjectivity Consciousness these are all layer four that can only occur in systems that run contrary to entropy and then finally layer five is what

I call Collective constructs so Collective constructs are are things that exist in multiple mines that's why I mean Collective so things like Society culture science religion narratives truths morality democracy for instance these are all things that you will say absolutely exist they just don't physically exist democracy democracy doesn't physically exist there's nowhere in the world that you can point and say that's a democracy democracy only exists in the minds of people uh and but you'll say that it actually does exist it emerges from the collective uh Consciousness or Collective uh awareness of many Minds working

together and so this is an example of the emergence model that I abide by okay so metamodernism and emergence uh you see in some of these models there's like physics chemistry biology psychology culture pretty similar uh but what's the intersection here what does meta modernism have to do with emergence other than metamodernism kind of is moving in this direction uh we deconstruct and reconstruct narratives around this view rather than a relativistic view rather than around a top-down view by seeing that everything that we believe and think and think we know as emergent that means that

truth emerges from underlying systems it is not out there truth is a human construct and Truth is personal and it is cultural and so by by viewing that as a narrative and by viewing all narratives as uh Collective constructs as layer five you see that's why we have so much variability and so much debate is because there is no top-down uh you know like Royal Decree or Universal Fiat rather all these things emerge from underlying systems now just because they emerge from underlying systems doesn't mean that they are fully independent of those underlying systems for

instance human culture only exists because human biology is capable of supporting it that makes sense so that's why it's a hierarchy it is it is a stack that where each layer yes it is more increasingly more abstract and sophisticated than the underlying layer but it is 100 dependent upon the underlying layer another thing is taking it from implicit to explicit so rather than just allowing narratives to kind of implicitly convey these ideas one of the things that we're doing is that we are rigorously and systematically bringing all narratives from unconscious or implicit to explicit consciousness

another thing is that we are using this to alleviate cognitive dissonance again post-modernism reacted very poorly to cognitive dissonance and threw the baby out with the bathwater so rather than doing that we're saying let's actually pay attention to cognitive dissonance and instead of people like instead of just accepting cognitive dissonance as like oh well you know that's fake news so I'm not going to engage with this or I don't like how that makes me feel I'm just not going to engage with this that's no longer a legitimate reaction to anything so if you have the

impulse to categorically reject something or appeal to power or appeal to emotion those are not going to really cut the mustard anymore because what you're doing is you're reacting poorly to cognitive dissonance uh and so then again you adopt the emergence model and construct hyper narratives I've already talked about those so I don't need to rehash that what are the implications of emergence though so here are some examples morality emerges from underlying systems morality emerges from uh from the principles that are laid down by matter and energy morality emerges from the requirements of biology morality

emerges from the from the use of individual minds and then finally Collective Minds uh interconnected layers so while each layer is distinct there's you know there's obviously some boundaries between the primordial substrate and modern energy and then biological systems and mines they are still interconnected like I said they're not independent of each other uh narrative construction by recognizing that that one everything that we think we know is a narrative and that narratives are layer five constructions we are able to reinterpret all human interactions and all in uh and all interpretations of these things and it's

like oh well if you're only looking at layer five you could see why everything is relative because then there's just narratives everywhere who knows what's real but then you say no it's not that simple reality is actually more complex and nuanced let's look at the underlying reasons that all these different narratives exist uh challenges and observation so this is something that's a little bit harder to articulate imagine an electron an electron exists at Layer Two of this emergent model so Layer Two is matter and energy electrons are required for democracy democracy to exist but electrons

will never interact with democracy so if you're too many layers apart in the ontological strata and the emergence model you're not really going to be aware of something even if you're participating in it and so in this respect many humans may not be aware of their role as participating in society which is why people like Margaret Thatcher were able to say plausibly Society doesn't exist you can't look at something and say ah there's a society um but and that's because Society is a layer five phenomenon and families are physically exist right there are people that

you are physically related to and that goes down into the biological layer so that's layer three um and so basically she was appealing to very concrete experiences and and saying these more abstract things they don't even exist likewise if there are things much further above us layer five layer six layer seven I don't know whether or not they even exist like an electron might not be aware that democracy exists so is that the realm of Souls and gods or something else I have no idea maybe we'll figure it out in time but it's also with

this view of reality it's also entirely possible that we will we are just intrinsically incapable of figuring out what layer six is or layer 7 if they even exist because again just by with this emergent view of reality we can't tell but we can look down we can look down and see electrons uh but that's about it uh yep so humility and understanding when you take this view of reality you are able to see yourself um more as an agent within the universe but also a reflection of the universe yada yada don't want to get

too mystical there okay so wrapping up the video let's talk about some current narratives just to put a pin in this and start practicing your hyper narrative and meta modern chops okay so the anti-communism narrative communism is bad uh narratives tend to become distilled and simplified over time and so all of the Cold War you know capitalism versus communism has been distilled and simplified down to Communism is bad this makes it simple compelling and memorable um now whether or not this is an oversimplification it becomes a shorthand uh and so this is why narratives are

useful is because as narratives get distilled over time I'm not making any comment on whether or not this is accurate or true or right I'm just characterizing this narrative the origins of them of the narrative ultimately don't matter so this is called a facsimile or what they called and goes in the Shell a standalone complex narratives can emerge from underlying reactions and they seemingly come out of nowhere now in this case the communism is bad narrative is a constructed narrative it was propagated very deliberately by American Media and American government um of course it came

from the Cold War but the origins of it like we've lost context because the cold war is well not entirely over but mostly over likewise you can see this more clearly in Many religious texts because the geographic context of for instance the Torah and the Quran and the Bible most people that abide by these religions have never visited the original Geographic context and it's lost all meaning but those narratives are so powerful that they are retained um there are economic components about the the communism is bad narrative such as Central management is evil and always

fails so if you ever see someone just say ah well I'm skeptical of the government running things because that is a short path to authoritarianism so that that linkage that connective tissue is because of the communism is bad narrative um but the the truth is is that America has big government and the Soviet Union had big government they're both States both are very statist um and by statist I mean like uh that they they appeal to big government we have big government but the belief the paradoxical cognitively dissonant belief that Central management is bad and

always fails like okay but we still have zoning laws that's that's Central management um another belief is that the free market is superior and is always efficient and so in this case you actually have to double down hyperbolically to say well the free market actually is magically the most efficient which is not true um but you know again that's part of the narrative because narratives get simplified and distilled and refined over time and another thing is uh all of this connective tissue basically says that redistribution inevitably leads to genocide this is where that connection makes

is because we look at the people's revolution in China we look at pole pot we look at Stalin and so the idea is that any kind of economic redistribution is associated with Communism which is also associated with the extermination of millions of people and so there is no logical connection between redistribution and genocide this is a narrative connection this is a story a set of stories that say if you do redistribution it means these other things about government and it means these other things about the direction that's Society is going and so therefore that is

a cautionary tale that is the particular kind of narrative to say communism is bad don't do anything like communism uh the narrative is evolving we are using communism less and less because people realize communism has never actually physically existed neither has socialism uh all of these other things they were basically different flavors of authoritarianism dictatorships totalitarianism totalitarianism sorry and fascism uh but again historical context with distillation over time is changing the narrative another narrative neoliberalism so neoliberalism is an example of a counter narrative against embedded liberalism so embedded liberalism was uh basically from World War

ii-ish to um well I actually I would say embedded liberalism was from the 1930s until uh neoliberalism took over in the 1980s so strong unions labor rights welfare state state intervention managed services and goods that were provided by the government or at government Direction class solidarity and National autonomy those were the narratives of embedded liberalism um which prevailed uh particularly during the 50s and 60s now the characteristics of of the neoliberal narrative is that unions are bad it was a complete reversal unions are bad deregulation is good small government is good which again we kind

of failed at that because we have big government anyways taxing business and the wealthy is bad because of trickle-down economic theory privatization is good globalism is good Society does not exist only individuals and families see Maggie Thatcher and then finally people are fundamentally self-serving rather than people are fundamentally good so the neoliberal counter narrative is basically a reversal on most of embedded liberalism with the only thing that they hold in common is that individual liberty is good so neoliberalism is more about let's focus on free market theory and individual liberty and everything comes from there

neoliberalism became the status quo because of a response to things like oil shocks inflate repeated inflation uh and recessions and then labor strikes um when Ronald Reagan fired all of the air traffic controllers for going on strike that was Peak neoliberalism saying actually you're not allowed to do that we're just going to fire you and hire people that one are not unionized and we're going to pay them less um in England there was actually quite a few like the coal strikes they basically brought the country to its knees and so the government and the people

were like you know what we want the power to stay on regardless of your labor rights so we're going to get rid of unions so skepticism of unions is actually very well earned because unions um they will disrupt productivity quite a bit now that being said um if you read stories about the oil and Rail and steel tycoons of the late 19th and early 20th century they were even worse which is why unions existed so it's about strike taking a balance between business and labor but of course with AI and post labor economics it's not

going to matter we need a new story speaking of AI um the AI will kill everyone that is a narrative it is a fictional narrative uh AI hasn't really killed anyone at all yet you will say that like okay yes AI is being put into some drones um AI like there's the story of like a chat bot that told someone to commit suicide okay yes so the AI has technically participated in the loss of life but the AI didn't pull the trigger on the person that that killed himself um likewise AI That's being put into

military drones they're as far as I know they don't have lethal discretion on their own yet um and to take it even further there are some people that argue that AI doesn't even exist yet this is a fictional narrative granted as a cautionary Tale But it exists only in fiction because of stuff like Terminator AI as as an Extinction risk has no physical evidence so again this is this is a layer 5 construct the idea that AI will kill everyone is a prediction it is and it is a fictional narrative so who benefits from these

narratives businesses seeking regulatory capture AI is so dangerous you need to license it and regulate it ah and guess guess who's I volunteer as tribute guess who can license and regulate this me who invented the thing who Bennett who else benefits people who make a living extolling the dangers of AI trust me AI is going to kill everyone uh Now give me money for speaking engagements um who else governments seeking excuses for more surveillance and control well and this is why this is why I suspect that the US Congress had that big dog and pony

show of uh you know bringing the the businesses to say ah see you told us AI is super dangerous so we got to crack down for the sake of freedom and safety um so again the AI will kill everyone narrative is very convenient and very useful but it is a pure fiction now that's not just I'm not saying that I disagree with some of the predictions AI could be dangerous I'm not saying that AI is an existential risk I'm not saying that AI will kill everyone I'm not even saying that it's likely I'm just saying

that as as all Technologies go AI is a dual use case but AI has net has not come anywhere near uh like existential threat the opposite narrative so again narrative and counter narrative AI will fix everything the doomers versus the utopians right uh the AI will fix everything is also a fictional narrative it is entirely fabricated is it is a layer five construct um AI has really only changed a few things so far now that being said I will say that you know mid-journey and chat GPT and Claude those tools have objectively helped and improved

my life so it has fixed some things it hasn't fixed everything but objectively speaking you could also make the argument that AI has done a lot of harm look at Cambridge analytica for instance so AI might do a lot of good if we use it correctly it also might do a lot of harm it might do a lot of both so the idea that AI will fix everything is a hope we hope that it will do good we hope that like many other Technologies the net effect will be a net positive but it is not

a fact you cannot you cannot say AI will fix everything trust us so who benefits from this narrative businesses seeking deregulation and acceleration they promise AI is going to fix everything trust us Full Speed Ahead you know throw caution to the wind people who make a living extolling the values of AI including myself um here's 4.89 million ways to make a billion dollars with chat GPT right plenty of people make a living just saying AI is going to fix everything let's Double Down On It and then finally governments seeking new tools and weapons you mean

we can automate drone strikes and get rid of employees and automate Mass surveillance great let's do it and uh China's doing that America is doing that uh so again these are two counter narratives and you can't have both in your head at the same time if you believe AI will kill everyone and AI will fix everything that is cognitive dissonance and part of meta modernism is one labeling that cognitive dissonance pointing it out and saying hey this cognitive dissonance is there let's try and reconcile this let's try and alleviate this cognitive dissonance not by rejection

but by creating a more nuanced model of reality and finally The Meta crisis narrative so the meta crisis narrative if you're not familiar with it is the the assertion is that all calamities are interconnected uh uh and and correlated and that they are also caught in a vicious cycle and it's all about to spiral out of control uh the environmental crisis with a collapse and climate change and economic crisis of wealth inequality and Technology crisis of AI and bio weapons and the meaning crisis and patriarchy and alt-right and social media polarization and just human nature

all of these are all interconnected and they're uh they're driving us inevitably towards collapse and dystopia this is not a new narrative and as I as I started becoming aware of narratives I realized that the meta crisis thing is just a narrative again this is a completely fictional narrative that is an interpretation of evidence remember the uh remember what truth is it is uh evidence interpretation beliefs and consensus so the evidence is climate change is happening there's wealth inequality so you you pick up all these pieces of evidence you craft a narrative as a way

of interpreting it you extract beliefs from that and then you promulgate those beliefs that narrative to create consensus but why uh The Meta crisis narrative is particularly potent because it is very spooky and scary spooky language as George Carlin said people use spooky language to get control of you um this also is codified in the media with if it bleeds it leads if you say that everything is about to spiral out of control and we're heading towards a level of Calamity that you can't even dream of then that's going to get people's attention and then

finally using demonic iconic iconography uh adoption of the moloch narrative in hindsight and as someone who has uh promulgated that myth um yeah I can say like I was probably wrong about that using spooky Mythic demonic iconography is hands down like the the the the piece the resistance of this narrative The Meta crisis is a failed attempt at creating a hyper narrative The Meta crisis is a constructed narrative that uh is it is it is a cautionary tale and it's an interesting narrative but it is just a narrative okay thanks for watching I hope you

got a lot out of this cheers