Metamemes

Description

Brendan Graham Dempsey:

"Collective intelligence shapes meme networks — called “Metamemes” — which individual self-conscious minds “download” to better navigate their environment. Such metamemes serve to justify, legitimate, and explain human behavior and natural phenomena in their unique contexts—making them effectively equivalent to what we have been calling worldviews."

(https://brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com/p/emergentism-3-the-awakening-universe)

Typology

Epochs

Hanzi Freinacht on Metamemetic Epochs:

The Animistic metameme

Beginning with the “revolution of the upper Paleolithic” around 50 000 years ago. Characterized by animistic beliefs, totemism, shamanism, and ancestor cults that bind together larger bands of hunter-gatherers. This is also the metameme that gives rise to the first early art works.

The Faustian metameme

From the beginning of the agricultural revolution 12 000 years ago, blossoming with the great agrarian civilizations from around 4000 BCE. Characterized by notions of power gods, monumental architecture, and increased social stratification with privileged rulers on top with considerable means of organized violence. This is the metameme where we see the rise of powerful individuals.

The Postfaustian metameme

Beginning shortly before the axial age c. 800 BCE, in some aspects as early as 2000 BCE, but to its fullest extent only to blossom after 500 CE with the consolidation of the great moral religions such as Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. Characterized by transcendental ideas of salvation, literary traditions on ethics, and social critique. This is the metameme that gives rise to the so-called “righteous rebels”.

The Modern metameme

Beginning around 1500 CE, but in some aspects found in its proto-variant as early as 500 BCE. Blossoming only in the 19th and 20th century. Still the most prevailing metameme today. Characterized by rationalistic and scientific thought, notions of progress and material growth, and emancipation from arbitrary religious and political control.

The Postmodern metameme

Only to emerge in the 20th century, though some aspects appeared in the late 18th century. Yet to fully blossom. Characterized by a critique of rationalistic thought, established power relations and a greater concern with environmental and social issues.

The Metamodern metameme

Emerging as we speak.

Hard vs Soft Metamemes

Hanzi Freinachts:

"One metameme brings about new economic and political conditions, and then as a counter reaction, the next metameme brings about new cultural and ethical codes to alleviate the (mostly unintended) ills of the former.

...

I don’t mean to essentialize the terms “hard” and “soft”; they merely serve as short and practical ways to imply that some metamemes bring about “hard” technological and organizational changes, while others bring about “soft” ethical and cultural changes. Simply stated, even if Postfaustianism is a “soft” metameme, there was very little softness going on in its purest instantiation: the Spanish Inquisition. Likewise, Modernity is a “hard” metameme, but it got rid of slavery and corporal punishment, which arguably made the world a “softer” place.

On this more abstract level it makes perfect sense to say that:

• Archaic is a hard metameme, because it forms the basis of hunter-gatherer tech.

• Animism is a soft metameme, as it builds on the already-existent hunter-gatherer tech and generates the mythologies, stories, and spiritual and artistic animation of the natural world associated with the thousands of unique expressions of Animist cultures across the world.

• Faustianism is a hard metameme, as it’s associated with some technological advancement (typically, but not necessarily, agriculture, as we shall discuss later) that allows for larger populations to co-exist as one culture or social unit, one civilization.

• Postfaustianism is a soft metameme as it builds on the emergence of civilization, challenging and rearranging its social relations and ethical expression.

• Modernity is a hard metameme as it revolutionizes the economy and the sources of available power.

• Postmodernism is a soft metameme, because it critiques and remedies the injustices and inconsistencies of modern life, always seeking to establish that “another world is possible”.

• Metamodernism is a hard metameme, as it emerges only in fully post-industrial forms of life that are based around the Internet and its unique life conditions and social games."

(https://medium.com/@hanzifreinacht/the-6-hidden-patterns-chapter-1-4ed7bec011f3)

Characteristics

How Metamemes Are Deployed: "the full metamemetic sequence of development"

Hanzi Freinacht:

"Let me restate the old dictum: “Art always comes first!”. What this means is that art is always the first step in a new metamemetic sequence of development. The first elements of a new metameme always occur within the arts, so if you want to get an impression of what the next stage might entail, you should figure out what cutting edge artists are up to.

What fewer people are aware of is that morality, or norms, is always last. I’ll return to why that is in a minute. First I’d like to show you the full metamemetic sequence of development:

1. Art

2. Philosophy

3. Entrepreneurship

4. Politics

5. Morality

There’s a logical reason why art comes first, namely that it only takes one highly gifted person who’s ahead of their times to create an artwork that breaks with the conventional logic of the current metameme. What artists do, or more specifically, what some artists are talented enough to do, is to sense many of the yet-to-be-obtained potentialities of reality. They can, in a way, “taste” the future, or, if you’ve read my previous books and are familiar with the terminology, feel the “attractor points” and follow their direction further and deeper than other, less sensitive, and less attuned, individuals. And they do so without having a formalized language to describe what they see. They just do it. And exactly that’s why art is so important: Art can describe that which we’re yet to have a language for.

This is also the reason why philosophers come in second. They have to go through the trouble of developing a common, conceptual language to painstakingly describe all the things artists just feel. For philosophical truths to become established it also requires all the drama of scholarly peer review. Artists don’t need to bother with that shit.

And when the philosophers (and other thinkers who might not necessarily identify as such) are done with it, the new ideas start trickling down towards all those shrewd entrepreneurs and activists wanting to change the world.

And from these disruptions, politicians finally wake up and try to adapt society to the new conditions.

And finally, long after the first artist and philosophers discovered the new metameme, new values and moral codes, a new system of norms starts propagating throughout the wider population. This is, by comparison, a very slow process that always faces the inertia of the old ways: people hold each other back, the habits and customs of one sets limits for the expression of another. You can be as gay as you want; if every sibling, cousin, friend, uncle, aunt, teacher, and colleague you’ll ever meet hate gays, you won’t be able to go very liberal on that issue. Norms can change like avalanches, yes, but they by definition follow the crowd.

Morality, or more specifically the common average morality of a population, is last exactly because it requires so many more people (who generally don’t care about art and philosophy) to subscribe to the ethics of a new metameme in order to change the norm system of a society. A new morality cannot really be said to have taken hold if only an elite minority of intellectuals subscribes to it. It needs to be shared by the majority. And when that finally happens, artists and philosophers have already discovered the next metameme, and entrepreneurs and activists are already starting to disrupt the world once again.

As such, there will always be a metamemetic lag, or developmental imbalances, between different parts of society, with many negative consequences as a result. That imbalance, in turn, actually explains “what’s wrong with the world”, and what will keep being wrong, better than any other theory I’ve ever heard of. We will return to this tragic state of affairs many times throughout this book."

(https://medium.com/@hanzifreinacht/the-6-hidden-patterns-chapter-1-4ed7bec011f3)

Discussion

Why the Metameme is not linear nor western

Hanzi Freinacht:

"It’s not linear. The whole point of the model is that each stage is a qualitative shift, breaking the apparent “line” of the former metameme and taking a fundamentally different direction.

And it’s not the Western mainstream story, either. Because the Western mainstream would not admit that the postmodern minorities that emerge to critique it are absolutely right that the modern project is both tragic, doomed, and not a simple form of progress. And it would not admit that Animism was perhaps the best way for humans to live, nor that Postfaustian religions were in many ways a greater achievement than modern science, Modern Western mainstream historiography could even have problems admitting that colonialism was fundamentally a crime against humanity — and that global and big history must be released from the shackles of Western-centric parochialism, thereby honoring indigenous traditions as well as balancing the six, not one, mutually independent birthplaces of civilization: China, Indus River Valley, South America, Mesoamerica, Egypt, and Mesopotamia (where “Western civilization” is nothing more than a grandchild of the last two).

Postmodern historiography does see and admit these things. It does challenge the Western mainstream and its thinly disguised roots in 19th century colonialism, nationalism, and male-centrism. And my point is: Metamodern historiography entirely agrees, and seeks to proceed in this endeavor! We just want to do it better and more holistically, producing more useful theories for actually reducing the suffering of the world.

But the problem in our days, if you ask me, is that the postmodern mind cannot tell the difference between Modern historiography (yes, linear, Western, mainstream, apologetic for colonialism, blind to issues of gender and environment, reproductive of arbitrary power relations, and so on) and a Metamodern historiography, as the one in this book.

Understanding the metamemes, as the hidden patterns of history, is not the Modern mainstream history. It’s an expression of a Metamodern view of history, and as such it goes beyond Postmodern critiques of everything that moves (or everything that moves in what looks like a line).

...

What I am saying is that they must first emerge sequentially. There’s just no way for a band of twelve people in the desert foraging for roots to invent Newtonian physics and then to critique its implications on how it makes for a mechanistic cosmology and thus an alienating and anti-ecological worldview with a Cartesian ghost left echoing in the machine, feeling lonely. It just doesn’t happen. You don’t get Modernity and Postmodernity directly from Animism."

(https://medium.com/@hanzifreinacht/the-6-hidden-patterns-chapter-1-4ed7bec011f3)

Details on the Archaic Metameme

Hanzi Freinacht:

"The Animistic metameme obviously didn’t appear out of nowhere, but emerged from a more rudimentary stage of development.

This more rudimentary stage doesn’t contain any of the Animistic metameme’s typical features such as spirit beliefs, mythological narratives, and works of art. I have refrained from dedicating a chapter to it since there really wouldn’t be much to say, and since most of it would be based on speculation anyway. The main way in which this — let’s call it the Archaic — metameme, differs from an “animal” condition to use a clumsy term, is in its technological features. It includes spoken language, domestication of fire, and tool use. These are the innovations that initially made humans, or more specifically hominids (since there were several subspecies of humans at this level of development), so different from other animals.

But, tellingly, the Archaic metameme left little to nothing in the way of art.

It had been around for over 300 000 years, maybe even more than a million (a group of archaeologists just unearthed the remains of what they believe is a one million years old campfire), since “the dawn of homo sapiens as a species”. It clearly encompassed other species of homo: homo habilis, homo erectus, Neanderthals, and Cro-Magnon. If we study the period of about 70 000 years ago, there were at least six different human species on earth.

It’s old. It’s Archaic. Hundreds of millennia of ongoing human life, and no art. That very fact should make us pause. It’s on the very edge between biological and cultural evolution, which is also why it encompasses different species of hominids.

...

The Archaic metameme entails the beginnings of “culture” that accumulates learning in a way that makes culture come alive as its very own form of evolution. It is thus not only the first metameme, but also the first “hard” metameme. It established the foundational material conditions, or the “coordination engine” if we are to use my terminology, of the first human societies; a way of life that on a fundamental level remained the same until the agrarian age. But in between, with the emergence of animism, a new cultural superstructure was created on top of this hunter-gatherer coordination engine. But, in spite of all the cultural advances that animism brought about, the “hard” material conditions remained the same: people had to hunt and gather to get food, they depended on open fires for cooking and keeping warm, and they used language to coordinate life in small groups of wandering bands."

(https://medium.com/@hanzifreinacht/the-6-hidden-patterns-chapter-1-4ed7bec011f3)