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

Hanzi Freinacht:

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.

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."

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