Thread by @Meaningness, on recovering meaning in postmodernity, with implications for social structures and policy.I [...]

on recovering meaning in postmodernity, with implications for social structures and policy.

I think this is *the* most important question, period. Postmodernity is the biggest risk we face globally: https://twitter.com/palladiummag/status/1316151875402493952

https://twitter.com/palladiummag/status/1316151875402493952

By comparison: We know how to solve climate change; we don't know how to solve postmodernity.

Postmodernity makes it likely we won't act to solve climate change, because it has destroyed the necessary institutional capacity.

This

summarizes long-form discussion on this web page. It suggests implications of the _Meaningness_ analytical framework for upcoming social change. (Disclaimer: not an area in which I have any particular expertise.) https://meaningness.com/fluidity-desiderata

Desiderata for any future mode of meaningness

A positive and realistic vision for the future of society, culture, and self, drawing lessons from recent history.

https://meaningness.com/fluidity-desiderata

Three conceptual tools, which I apply to everything:

The pattern and nebulosity of meaningness are inseparable

Particularly, all boundaries & distinctions are nebulous but patterned

So system function is inseparable from context and purpose https://meaningness.com/big-three-stance-combinations

The Big Three stance combinations

Dualism, nihilism, and monism are the three main approaches to fundamental questions of meaning. This book proposes a better, fourth alternative.

https://meaningness.com/big-three-stance-combinations

Palladium asks key questions. As stated, I have to answer “yes” and “no” respectively—not what they want to believe. But I can affirm what I imagine is the question behind the questions, with answers that may align with their vision. https://twitter.com/palladiummag/status/1316148814198185984?s=20

https://twitter.com/palladiummag/status/1316148814198185984?s=20

Modernity is an “eternalism”: an attempt to fix meanings on solid foundations. Meanings are nebulous, so they can’t be fixed. Eternalism is mistaken and harmful. https://meaningness.com/eternalism

“Postmodernity” just means that, by now, pretty much everyone realizes—implicitly or explicitly—eternalism is wrong, and meanings can’t be nailed down.

Monotheism is also an eternalism. God is indeed dead. I don’t believe He can be shocked back to life

America’s loss of Christianity has been somewhat disastrous, just as its loss of modernity has been. The replacements we’ve created so far have been, on balance, worse. https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/1298684845199986689?s=20

https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/1298684845199986689?s=20

Having collectively believed that meanings were guaranteed by God and/or Newton, then realized they aren’t, the natural alternative is nihilism, the denial of meaningfulness. Postmodernity strongly tends toward nihilism… https://meaningness.com/nihilism

Nihilism: the denial of meaning

Nihilism is the wrong idea that nothing is meaningful, based on the accurate realization that there is no external, eternal source of meaning.

https://meaningness.com/nihilism

Fortunately, meaningfulness is obvious everywhere, so you can’t actually be a nihilist. Instead, we tend to flip back & forth between nihilism & eternalism. This is characteristic of postmodernity.

Its simplistic ideologies combine certainty & incoherence https://meaningness.com/preview-eternalism-and-nihilism

Can we recover notions of higher purpose, teleology, and even theology in a postmodern world?

No, if “postmodern” means “rejecting rationality, universality, and coherence.”

Yes, if it includes all possibilities for a future after modernist eternalism… https://meaningness.com/fluidity-desiderata

“Metamodernity” is sometimes used to refer to a hypothetical social and cultural mode which recognizes that meaning is real and displays relatively reliable patterns, but also that it is nebulous, variable, interactional, contextual, purpose-dependent. https://meaningness.com/preview-eternalism-and-nihilism

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