I feel like as I go on writing my book about a world whose whole ideology has become post-metamodern, I'm changing. I'm defining using the superposition model -- in the metamodern epistemology model, you oscillate between different things being true, but in my superposition model there is no oscillation, it's a superposition where different contradictory things can be true at once and like doing superposition while calculating the current through a wire in a circuit with multiple voltage sources. Unlike Hagelian Dialectics, you don't start with a thesis and antithesis to get a synthesis, you instead have just multiple things that apply to the same spot and their influence over that spot is going to depend on a lot of things, and can change later.
This way of thinking superficially resembles current ideological warfare. For example, the taliban in Afghanistan were freedom fighters, and they were terrorists, and ideological warfare demands you "pick a side". I think the difference is that individuals would hold these truths within themselves. The afghans were violent terrorists *and* freedom fighters, and understanding the contradiction exists and isn't logically wrong is where the post-metamodernism comes in.
I think another important thing is that truths will be somewhat weighted, so accepting a thing is true doesn't overwrite another thing being true, but you can think of one thing as more true than others. For example, it's probably true that there are people whose minds wired themselves wrong in the womb and so trans people may exist, but that doesn't override the reality for most people that we're men and women, male and female, and that model is useful for most people. Gender is a social construct, but it's also a biological construct, and they feed into one another over time in ways that are infinitely complex. This means that postmodernists if they prove gender is a social construct don't get to treat biology as fake in the post-metamodern ideology, all they've proven is that there are elements of gender which are socially constructed, but they don't thereby prove that gender isn't also a biological construct.
Climate change is a good example where superposition needs to exist, because multiple things *are* true. It's true that burning carbon produces CO2 which we can prove increases planetary warming. It's also true that people need to burn fossil fuels to live and we can't just stop immediately. It's also true that there are short-term effects to climate change. It's also true that the real effects of climate change don't happen within one lifetime. It's true that to disregard it entirely is dangerous to mankind. It's also true that many people are histrionic and acting like religous nutjubs claiming the world is going to end tomorrow. All of them are true, and then understanding the superposition we can come to conclusions. Otherwise we end up arguing for our one truth among many things that are all true.
I really think that looking at the world through the post-metamodernist lens of superposition actually changes everything because it doesn't fall to pure relativism, and it means that the weighting of different facts changes and we recognise that. For example, on crime -- most people agree that police can be dangerous and corrupt. The same people would also agree that police are more or less mandatory in an urban society. Reality isn't 100% "thin blue line", and it isn't 100% "defund all police", it's complicated and depending on what's going on in the world the truths can rebalance. I'm sure people who admit that the police can be corrupt and dangerous don't want to see injustice from the state would also admit they don't want to be living the sort of hellscape we see in places like Oakland where until recently swarms of people would just walk in and steal from stores until the stores shut down.
This way of looking at the world also helps to explain but limit what's called "flip flopping" in politics. It can define, explain, and justify "flip flopping" because people realize their weighting was wrong or that circumstances changed. It also shows that if someone just completely changes their worldview without a reasonable justification in terms of new or different fundamental positions in superpositions or in terms of changing the weighting of the different superpositions, then that person's mind seems to have changed for reasons that aren't really justified. A far right anarcho-capitalist can't really change anything to become a far left tankie without fundamentally breaking their worldview.
I've said before that in 2015 I supported Justin Trudeau for PM even though I didn't vote in that election. Now the thing is, Canada was in a good place in 2015, and so it felt like we ought to be doing our best to try to address long-standing grievances because things were doing well and we had that leeway to do so, and the previous liberal government was fiscally prudent and produced like 10 years of budget surpluses. Ten years later, the facts changed a little. It turns out Canada isn't in a good place now so we ought to be doing our best to address our immediate issues rather than worrying about long-standing grievances, and it turns out Trudeau isn't like Chretien and did not balance budgets and instead doubled the national debt. I didn't really change, but in my worldview I went from liberal to PPC in 2021, and presently support the conservatives under Poilievre, though my superpositional framework recognises that there's a chance he won't do what he claims or will have problems himself.
I think that support for Trump makes the most sense through a post-metamodern lens as well. People know he's got all these problems. People know he's got things he ran on that they disagree with. People know that he's a "convicted felon". But they also know a bunch of other stuff that they're presently weighting more strongly than those things. If he really screwed everything up, the people who support him may be likely to change their weighting, and people who ignore those factors may start to be the loudest critics bringing them up.
Some potential issues people might see with this model and how to address them are:
1. Superposition's interaction with action.
At the end of the day you can have infinite positions, but you need to take one when taking action. I think the fact that you recognise there being many truths doesn't change the fact that you can use this model to determine the best course of action at the moment.
2. Unlimited superpositions and paralysis by analysis
If there's all these different things that are true, how do you stop from having to analyze every single potential position for your superpostional framework? I think the way you do that is by using a sort of "blurriness heuristic". As things become more important, you pay more attention to them, and as they seem less important, you spend less attention on them. In this way, there can be unlimited truths, but you might only pay meaningful attention to the ones you think are the most important at the moment. When you're driving a car on the highway, you can see thousands of rocks in the pavement, but all that really matters is that the road is there, you're not about to hit anything, and you're between the lines.
3. How can we make moral judgements?
This is one of the coolest elements of superposition -- our moral framework already requires it. In the bible, Jesus explicitly and repeatedly states that he does not come to erase the rules of the old testament. Instead, he demands people look at situations through multiple truths, such as where he admits that the adulterous woman sinned, and also asks people to ask if they don't sin too, but then tells the woman "go, and sin no more". Three different truths that need to be accommodated for. This isn't the only place he does this, often he compares God's law as enforced by the Pharisees with the need for love and grace, a superposition that can't be synthesized into a single answer that applies at all times.
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So yes, trying to wrap my head around a potential future way of thinking to develop my future society also is changing me. Modernism was certain of the existence and the power of a truth, postmodernism opposed grand narratives and objective truth, metamodernism oscillates between them, and my proposed post-metamodern superposition theory would be a realistic model of dealing with truth in a way that people actually have to.
This way of thinking superficially resembles current ideological warfare. For example, the taliban in Afghanistan were freedom fighters, and they were terrorists, and ideological warfare demands you "pick a side". I think the difference is that individuals would hold these truths within themselves. The afghans were violent terrorists *and* freedom fighters, and understanding the contradiction exists and isn't logically wrong is where the post-metamodernism comes in.
I think another important thing is that truths will be somewhat weighted, so accepting a thing is true doesn't overwrite another thing being true, but you can think of one thing as more true than others. For example, it's probably true that there are people whose minds wired themselves wrong in the womb and so trans people may exist, but that doesn't override the reality for most people that we're men and women, male and female, and that model is useful for most people. Gender is a social construct, but it's also a biological construct, and they feed into one another over time in ways that are infinitely complex. This means that postmodernists if they prove gender is a social construct don't get to treat biology as fake in the post-metamodern ideology, all they've proven is that there are elements of gender which are socially constructed, but they don't thereby prove that gender isn't also a biological construct.
Climate change is a good example where superposition needs to exist, because multiple things *are* true. It's true that burning carbon produces CO2 which we can prove increases planetary warming. It's also true that people need to burn fossil fuels to live and we can't just stop immediately. It's also true that there are short-term effects to climate change. It's also true that the real effects of climate change don't happen within one lifetime. It's true that to disregard it entirely is dangerous to mankind. It's also true that many people are histrionic and acting like religous nutjubs claiming the world is going to end tomorrow. All of them are true, and then understanding the superposition we can come to conclusions. Otherwise we end up arguing for our one truth among many things that are all true.
I really think that looking at the world through the post-metamodernist lens of superposition actually changes everything because it doesn't fall to pure relativism, and it means that the weighting of different facts changes and we recognise that. For example, on crime -- most people agree that police can be dangerous and corrupt. The same people would also agree that police are more or less mandatory in an urban society. Reality isn't 100% "thin blue line", and it isn't 100% "defund all police", it's complicated and depending on what's going on in the world the truths can rebalance. I'm sure people who admit that the police can be corrupt and dangerous don't want to see injustice from the state would also admit they don't want to be living the sort of hellscape we see in places like Oakland where until recently swarms of people would just walk in and steal from stores until the stores shut down.
This way of looking at the world also helps to explain but limit what's called "flip flopping" in politics. It can define, explain, and justify "flip flopping" because people realize their weighting was wrong or that circumstances changed. It also shows that if someone just completely changes their worldview without a reasonable justification in terms of new or different fundamental positions in superpositions or in terms of changing the weighting of the different superpositions, then that person's mind seems to have changed for reasons that aren't really justified. A far right anarcho-capitalist can't really change anything to become a far left tankie without fundamentally breaking their worldview.
I've said before that in 2015 I supported Justin Trudeau for PM even though I didn't vote in that election. Now the thing is, Canada was in a good place in 2015, and so it felt like we ought to be doing our best to try to address long-standing grievances because things were doing well and we had that leeway to do so, and the previous liberal government was fiscally prudent and produced like 10 years of budget surpluses. Ten years later, the facts changed a little. It turns out Canada isn't in a good place now so we ought to be doing our best to address our immediate issues rather than worrying about long-standing grievances, and it turns out Trudeau isn't like Chretien and did not balance budgets and instead doubled the national debt. I didn't really change, but in my worldview I went from liberal to PPC in 2021, and presently support the conservatives under Poilievre, though my superpositional framework recognises that there's a chance he won't do what he claims or will have problems himself.
I think that support for Trump makes the most sense through a post-metamodern lens as well. People know he's got all these problems. People know he's got things he ran on that they disagree with. People know that he's a "convicted felon". But they also know a bunch of other stuff that they're presently weighting more strongly than those things. If he really screwed everything up, the people who support him may be likely to change their weighting, and people who ignore those factors may start to be the loudest critics bringing them up.
Some potential issues people might see with this model and how to address them are:
1. Superposition's interaction with action.
At the end of the day you can have infinite positions, but you need to take one when taking action. I think the fact that you recognise there being many truths doesn't change the fact that you can use this model to determine the best course of action at the moment.
2. Unlimited superpositions and paralysis by analysis
If there's all these different things that are true, how do you stop from having to analyze every single potential position for your superpostional framework? I think the way you do that is by using a sort of "blurriness heuristic". As things become more important, you pay more attention to them, and as they seem less important, you spend less attention on them. In this way, there can be unlimited truths, but you might only pay meaningful attention to the ones you think are the most important at the moment. When you're driving a car on the highway, you can see thousands of rocks in the pavement, but all that really matters is that the road is there, you're not about to hit anything, and you're between the lines.
3. How can we make moral judgements?
This is one of the coolest elements of superposition -- our moral framework already requires it. In the bible, Jesus explicitly and repeatedly states that he does not come to erase the rules of the old testament. Instead, he demands people look at situations through multiple truths, such as where he admits that the adulterous woman sinned, and also asks people to ask if they don't sin too, but then tells the woman "go, and sin no more". Three different truths that need to be accommodated for. This isn't the only place he does this, often he compares God's law as enforced by the Pharisees with the need for love and grace, a superposition that can't be synthesized into a single answer that applies at all times.
---
So yes, trying to wrap my head around a potential future way of thinking to develop my future society also is changing me. Modernism was certain of the existence and the power of a truth, postmodernism opposed grand narratives and objective truth, metamodernism oscillates between them, and my proposed post-metamodern superposition theory would be a realistic model of dealing with truth in a way that people actually have to.
@sj_zero what this really feels like to me is just the reality and loved experience of trying to be moderate and independent in a polarized society. It's a reality that a lot of people struggle with daily, but rather than being part of the modern discourse it's relegated to a fringe worldview, so we mostly suffer in silence and isolation. Sadly, there are probably more people who truly fit in this camp than the two artificial camps most modern societies force upon us.
I tend to agree, I think we have a lot of people who are advanced thinkers relative to the institutions, and that's part of the problem with the civilizational model we're in, that it's far behind the reality of most people's way of thinking today. That's why people end up just posting memes about the obvious hypocrisies today, because the politics of the day and most of the discourse of the day haven't caught up to people's thinking. Even academics are arguably stuck 50 years in the past in some ways, and so people come out of academia trained in that way of thinking, and get thoroughly mocked by the common folk who are already past the point of rejecting the current dominant paradigm.
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@sj_zero speaking as a 48 year old college sophomore, you nailed it on the head in regards to academia. There's a whole conversation to be had about that subject.