(Article) The Dangers of Going Meta in Politics

[Virtually]

http://www.zakstein.org/be-careful-going-meta-metapolitical-practice-ii/

 

Great article on the dangers of (improperly) going meta in politics, by Zak Stein. The guy is well aware of Wilber's work

 

I say "improperly" because, as Zak argues, going meta (or, more precisely, thinking  you are going meta) doesn't necessarily imply becoming more conscious. Nor does it imply moving towards a perspective that allows for the integration or communication of lower perspectives. Rather, it can often lead to an acknowledgement of the limitation of another person's perspective, for the only purpose of making their assumptions explicit (which not bad per se) and classifying them as "one of those kind of people" while simultaneously thinking you're actually above them and are justified in holding their perspective as lower. Ofc you already know what ends up happening when all parties think this way.

Such dynamic has negative consequences for a polarized political discourse, as it brings conversations to a halt by transforming them into a game of "who goes meta the most"; btw, it often turns out to be a sneaky self-deceived way of being ideological, too -- just in disguise. 

This is different than actually inhabiting other perspectives, while remaining grounded in some higher overarching framework. There's a cute praise of ""metaphysics"" towards the end of the article as well.

 

Here's the tldr, though I personally suggest reading it from start to finish:

Quote

TLDR Summary: “Going meta” is only a moment in a larger process of reconstruction by which the old is able to make way for the new via reflective human practice. Vast and complex processes such as “global warming” are sometimes called hyperobjects, which are multiplying and forcing us to “go meta” more then we should. We ought to know meta! Metapolitical practice today should be about arranging new ways for people to meet “outside” the “political,” in a new place, a “meta place,” where a future and truly new politics can be built. Among other things, this involves knowing when and how to stop “going meta” in order to simply meet. This requires a return to metaphysics as a practice of creating a shared world.

 

Edited April 25, 2022 by Virtually

[Virtually]

Here's another highly worth read: https://consilienceproject.org/challenges-to-making-sense-of-the-21st-century/

[Leo Gura]

The bigger problem I see with going meta is that it can create a sort of relativism or false equivalency and also inaction.

I noticed this happening in myself for example with the Russia/Ukraine war. When it first started I was focused a lot on seeing both sides and going meta. But then it became increasing clear that action was needed, not more meta. So it's important to go meta but then you also gotta balance it out with pragmatism otherwise some evil force will exploit your meta navel-gazing.

[Virtually]

Funny enough, society is filled with races for who stops going-meta first, though not too prematurely

[Leo Gura]

@Virtually It's a good article. Thanks for sharing.

[zurew]

19 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

The bigger problem I see with going meta is that it can create a sort of relativism or false equivalency and also inaction.

This is really true. Being highly fixated on being meta cause inaction,being indifferent to the situation, being really fluid about taking positions, not being able to provide concrete, tangible, pragmatic solutions. 

Sometimes i catch myself doing this too. I think part of the reason for this, is having a more philosophical mind.

Which is better? 

1. Going from meta to concrete
2. Starting from different concrete positions and going more and more meta

 

 

36 minutes ago, Virtually said:

https://consilienceproject.org/challenges-to-making-sense-of-the-21st-century/

This is a really good source, article.

[Leo Gura]

44 minutes ago, zurew said:

having a more philosophical mind.

This would be my fundamental critique of the whole Ken Wilber Integral movement and what stuff like Conscilience project is doing. They are being super abstract to the point where it has no real-world impact.

You can do all the meta-theorizing and integral-mapping you want, but at the end of the day in 2024 people just gotta go and vote against Trump. It's not that complicated.

Even reading the above article it was so abstract and philosophical that I had a hard time seeing how it would apply to current politics and solve anything. It's like being a philosopher in the middle of a prison brawl.

In the domain of politics you need to be very practical, otherwise it ends up just being empty talk. But at the same time you cannot be purely ends-justify-the-means oriented. You still gotta have principles and integrity and operate with consciousness.

The biggest takeaway for me here is that going meta can be weaponized by the ego-mind. This is a very important point to never forget, and check yourself if your ego is using going meta in that way.

[zurew]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

It's like being a philosopher in the middle of a prison brawl.

This is a really funny and good way to put it.

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

This would be my fundamental critique of the whole Ken Wilber Integral movement and what stuff like Conscilience project is doing. They are being super abstract to the point where it has no real-world impact.

You can do all the meta-theorizing and integral-mapping you want, but at the end of the day in 2024 people just gotta go and vote against Trump. It's not that complicated.

Yeah totally, the only thing i would add more is that we tend to build this big picture so large and so forward in the future, that most normal people can't really relate to it, because it is so unnecessarily future-forward built.

So putting much more emphasis putting your ideas in a way where people can relate to you and to your ideas is one of the most important things imo one can do.

Also we could say that these models and systems and thinking is much more focusing on the top and on the end  rather than on the base and the beginning. For instance:  Going forward 50 years in vision is great, but going forward 500 years into the future with ideas is just entertainment and mostly mental masturbation. We could spend that mental masturbatory time on thinking about the baby steps that needs to be taken.

Daniel Schmachtenberger said in one video, that im paraphrasing: "Can we find an example of a society who didn't hurt bugs? Yes we can (Buddhism and Jainism). " This is great, because he found a real world example of an idea, but we still lack how that can be put into a larger system where society don't have the same structure as the buddhists did.

So we have a concrete idea from a larger system and we want to  put that little part into a different larger system  and just assume that it will work fine.

Also i don't want to take it too much out of context, because he said that example to show that it is possible, but regardless that example with the buddhists in an of itself is way too unrealistic. In my opinion, after we can find a very extreme example the next step should be cooling it down and putting that cooled down example into our larger system.

Knowing the structure and our values and where we want to go is super important, but once we have our solid meta vision where we want to go,we need to find concrete, real world examples and think about how those examples can be put into our larger system, and how well those examples will work once they are part of that larger system.

So:

1. Find a concrete applicable example or create one
2. Think how that will correlate with other pieces of the large picture and the whole

Edited April 25, 2022 by zurew

[DocWatts]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Even reading the above article it was so abstract and philosophical that I had a hard time seeing how it would apply to current politics and solve anything. It's like being a philosopher in the middle of a prison brawl.

Brings to mind what someone like Marx intuited more than a century ago, and why a 23 page pamphlet he wrote was able to reshape the world's political landscape.

"Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it."

Not that Integral should seek to emulate Marxism, whatever critiques that can be made of the meta-ideology Marx tried to articulate, he was wise enough to keep his theory integrated with the day to day concerns of the 'normies' of his era.

Edited April 26, 2022 by DocWatts

[Happy Lizard]

On 4/25/2022 at 5:23 PM, Leo Gura said:

The biggest takeaway for me here is that going meta can be weaponized by the ego-mind. This is a very important point to never forget, and check yourself if your ego is using going meta in that way.

It was also educated and un-biased (referring to how you talked about the Russian & Ukraine war.) I think going meta requires one to be more conscious than whats mainstream. so I think you should just balance by speaking  about the more mainstream and relevant problems more.