Purification Generator
Contextual Quote
"First we have the emergence of a new way of production and governance, a new “hard” Coordination Engine in your words—and then we have a critique of the new hard facts of life, which brings about a cultural revolution of sorts, the cultural superstructure or so-called “purification generator”, that manages to make life more tolerable, more fair, and a little less brutal, but without replacing the productive and governmental foundation of society."
- Hanzi Freinacht [1]
Description
Hanzi Freinacht:
"We could talk about a generator; something that is dependent on the power from the engine to “give birth” to something else (Latin: generō, same root as gignō, the noun “Genus”, “birth giving”!). And what is that something else? Coherence you say, or perhaps even better: purification.
From all the incoherences of the former metameme, all the impurities and pathologies, the type of cultural superstructure created by a soft metameme is, in essence, a purification generator aiming to address the entropy caused by the previous hard metameme’s engine of coordination. Humans are conscious agents. We don’t just follow economic and social structures blindly. We reflect on them, comment upon them, critique them, wrestle the cognitive dissonance that emerges. And sooner or later our conscience catches up, and we decide it’s time to come clean, to do the right thing, as far as we can imagine what that might entail. That’s the soft metameme taking hold.
We could call it a “coherence generator”, but let’s settle for “purification generator”—it sounds better, I think.
if the entrepreneurial third step of the hard metamemes is the coming online of the coordination engine, the corresponding step for the soft metamemes is the consolidation of the purification generator. This is when the ethos of the emerging soft metamemes make their way into new powerful institutions, which in turn begin reshaping norm systems, behaviors, and relations across society.
In the case of the Postfaustian metameme, this consolidation and institutionalization started happening towards the end of the Roman Empire with the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church. If you compare Roman times with the moral economy of the Middle Ages, for instance, it’s clear that the pre-Christian Romans were technologically comparable to the medieval period (give or take an aqueduct or a windmill), but their ethics were, shall we say, of a cruder kind. You can see a similar dynamic in non-European cultures, like the Islamic world and China, when these become permeated by postfaustian Axial Age religions and philosophies during the first millennium AD.
The so-called “righteous rebels” of the Axial Age enter the mainstream, to use a contemporary phrase, at a stage when civilization reaches a certain level of maturity (which is often followed by a collapse, as with the Roman and Han empires), and thereafter they move into positions of power. In and around the circles of power they manage to shape the instruments of governance to some degree, but they certainly also become shaped by the very same power structures that they initially rebelled against.
The Postmodern metameme follows a similar pattern. It’s when capitalism enters its late-stage form with the onset of modern consumer society during the second half of the 20th century that we see the rise of postmodernism’s righteous rebels and affiliated “churches” such as queer-feminism, post-colonialism, and environmental protection. These rebels can be said to constitute a new “priesthood”, also known as the inherently postmodern invention of the “intellectual”, whose mission it is to discipline and correct those unfortunate souls who still gravitate towards the earlier value memes (in this case the term “value meme” is more suitable than metameme).
Critics will point out that the “wokeism” and “political correctness” carried out by these so-called “social justice warriors” are elitist instruments of control, while advocates of anti-racism, feminism, and environmental protection will argue that “speaking out” against injustices is the only way to “raise awareness” around critical issues. But despite the “underdog” identity of most of these critics of modern society, it’s becoming more and more evident that the critical postmodern ideologies that emerged in the 1960’s and ‘70’s to a great extent have entered the mainstream and that governments, and even companies, have adopted many of these ideas, at least nominally.
The power pomos are here to stay, and they are becoming increasingly intimate with the governing control structures of Modern society.
...
With the Faustian metameme it’s clear that the predominant emotional regime to regulate people’s behaviors is fear—if you don’t do what you’re told, you get tortured or killed, as simple as that.
With the Postfaustian metameme a more subtle emotion takes the forefront, namely guilt—you owe it to God and the community and common decency to do what you’re told, otherwise you’re a bad person and you’ll be excommunicated.
With the Modern metameme the emotional regime becomes even more subtle as the emotion that’s manipulated to make people comply is shame—you can do what you want, but if you want certain things, and if you don’t do things in a certain way, you’re a disgusting person and no one’s gonna like you.
And finally, with postmodernism, the most subtle emotional regime of them all, slave morality—you can do what you want, want what you want, be who you are, be weird and kinky, unique and full of faults, but above all, do NEVER EVER believe you’re better than anyone else, that you’re the hero, that you have something out of the ordinary to offer the world. Be humble, or no one will take you seriously."