Hello. I became collapse-aware at the age of 20 (1989) having concluded there was no political solution to climate change, which led to a complete psychological breakdown (hospitalised) and nihilism. I was an evangelical atheist-materialist who experienced an extreme transition to a mystical worldview in 2002, at a time when I was the forum admin for Richard Dawkins (and the internet was a much smaller place in those days). I subsequently abandoned a software engineering career and went to university (Sussex) to study philosophy and cognitive science. After that I became a professional foraging teacher and the author of two large reference books on that subject, including the most comprehensive book on European fungi foraging ever published in English (now a bestseller). I have spent that last 16 years working on a book trying to explain the need for a new paradigm – something which combines both collapse/transformation and the science/spirituality conflict in the West. After numerous failed attempts, it is now finished and I will independently publish it this summer. It is called “The Real Paths to Ecocivilisation”, subtitle “From collapse to coherence: integrating science, spirituality and sustainability in the West.”
The book is a novel defence of realism, combined with what is effectively a new cosmology. It combines insights from Nagel’s “Mind and Cosmos” and Henry Stapp’s “Mindful Universe” – which are about the evolution of consciousness and quantum metaphysics respectively. Ultimately I am proposing a “New Epistemic Deal”. We need to figure out how to build a Western version of ecocivilisation, and unlike China we do not have authoritarian Marxism and Taoism to use as a foundation.
Three things need to go:
(1) Growth-based economics (which includes capitalism as we know it).
(2) Metaphysical materialism (because of the hard problem).
(3) Postmodern antirealism (because structural realism is true).
None of these things belong in the new paradigm. I do not call myself a metamodernist, because my limited experience of real people calling themselves metamodernists leads me to believe metamodernism is an attempt to retain antirealism even while it claims to be moving beyond it. I don’t think this is going to work. I call myself post-postmodern.
Welcome Geoff - look forward to the book, sounds really interesting. Feel free to post any excerpts you have here in advance! I’m in agreement with the main theses you outline above- though I don’t know Henry Stapp’s work, will check that out. Do you know Bobby Azarian’s work? For me he provides the best current synthesis of non-reductive, non-materialistic realism based on complexity theory - and he calls himself a metamodernist by the way! Brendan Graham Dempsey is another metamodernist who takes a similar realist approach but links it more to spiritual practise. I see Jason Storm’s metamodernism, with it’s theory of process social kinds, basically providing a bridge from postmodern anti-realism to realism.
I had not heard of Bobby Azarian until very recently, but the name keeps popping up. I recently met Brendan – I spent a week or so posting in his metamodernism facebook groups. My position is in many ways very close to his, though we differ on the details of realism/meta-realism. From what I saw, the views of the membership of his groups diverged somewhat from his own – the general position was much more pro-postmodern than his.
I am aware of Jason Storm’s views, and those are not realistic enough for me either. I think we need full-blooded structural realism, with no ifs and buts. I don’t think the scientific community will ever accept anything less, and I don’t think they should be expected to either.
I don’t see enough attempts to build bridges in that direction. For example, where does Thomas Nagel fit in? There is a person who is, more than anybody else, trying to drag the whole of that “side” of western society into the future, but he’s not even on the map here. I think he needs to be on that map – and not just at the edge. I think the whole map needs to move in that direction somewhat. Or it needs an extra section added.
Yea agreed about the membership of his facebook groups, but Brendan and Storm’s views seem fully aligned with structural realism to me - my first take would be that since Storm for instances focuses more on social science than natural science he’s quite reasonably pointing out that the relevant structures are themselves in flux, which applies less to the natural sciences.
But totally agree there are a lot more bridges to build, as with Nagel, that’s something I’m very much trying to do in my own work.
It is possible that I don’t yet understand metamodernism enough to know whether my own views should be classed as that or not. I do not use the word in my book. But if a metamodernist is willing to accept structural realism then they’ll probably not have too many problems with the rest of my position.
How does your own work relate to Nagel? Are you talking about Mind and Cosmos or other aspects of his work?
I wasn’t really talking about Nagel, more others in the analytic tradition, e.g. Peter Godfrey-Smith, Daniel Dennett and David Deutsch for instance, but will try to look at Nagel more closely based on your recommendation.
Dennett isn’t part of the solution. Materialism is incoherent.
This is directly connected to the discussion we are having in the other thread. I did assume you aren’t a materialist – I assumed I would not run into any materialists here. Was I wrong? Are you a materialist?
I’ve just had a long chat with @Asimong on the phone. He’s made me see that perhaps I’m not a great fit with 2R right now, and as a result I’ve decided to move on, at least for now.
There are two main reasons for this, as I see it.
The first is a difference in approach. I have approached it as an individual – finding a way to make everything fit together was hard enough on my own. Even trying to co-ordinate that with one other person’s ideas would have been impossible. Trying to co-ordinate with a whole group, as is the strategy here, would have been completely impossible.
The second is even more important and that is my beliefs about the fate of civilisation as we know it. I am absolutely certain it is going to collapse, and everything I believe follows from that. This doesn’t just involve an acceptance that the world needs to change, but that radical and undesirable change is coming whether we like it or not. It involves a major shift in psychology which has nothing to do with any voluntary desire to grow or change. That is my domain – that’s my audience. But I do not think it is an accurate description of most people involved with 2R. Here, it seems to be more that people are acutely aware of the urgent need for change, but are not resigned to (or from my perspective have not fully accepted) collapse.
I wish you all the very best with this project, and I’m not saying I’ll never post here again. Just that I’ve realised that however much we might have in common, at the moment I don’t really belong here.