#30 - Dawn of the Meta-Modern Republic

Post-modernism was all about creating a flat moral landscape through deconstruction. Irreverence and ironic cynicism took aim at and demolished the ethical hierarchies that structured the cultural, economic, and political traditions of the West. Gone were the grand patriotic narratives and transcendent religious beliefs, our prior notions of progress were slammed into a brick wall, objectivity was torched and relativism turned honest communication into a dialectical circus, everything great was reduced and made small, all the glory contained within the human experience was unwound into a pathetic heap of trash.

Fortunately for us, the glory of post-modernism walks hand in hand with its doom. Post-modernism is a negative reactive force - it can tear down systems of belief but it cannot actively provide a solid basis for building new positive systems of belief. Now that post-modernism has largely succeeded in deconstructing hierarchies and flattening our moral landscape it has created a problem it cannot solve: What now? Are we just supposed to become sloths and accept a post-modern dead-end to our individual, cultural, and political development?

Of course not! The more post-modernism succeeds in tearing something down the stronger the reaction will be to build something up in its place. In this way, meta-modernism can enter the discussion as a positive reconstructive force:

"Meta-modernism stands in the rubble of all knowledge humanity had amassed over thousands of years of progress. The rubble created when postmodernism smashed our collective thought to bits in the name of intellectual emancipation. With this blank slate, meta-modernism [can select] from all human knowledge and begin to construct a new grand narrative, one subject to constant discussion and consideration. It will be honest and it will push itself forward by justifying itself, not attacking the thoughts and positions of others."