This is the second post regarding the major objectives of metamodernism. The first, on the political stance of Game Change , was a political follow-up on the post ‘ 5 things that make you metamodern ’. This post will introduce the major underlying philosophical concept behind the metamodern project: Proto-Synthesis.

The Philosophical Goal of Metamodernism: Proto-Synthesis The major overarching intellectual goal of metamodernism is the attempt to construct a unified overview of all knowledge in a cosmological context, a grand narrative of everything – while knowing full and well that the synthesis produced can never be final or absolute.

“The mantra of Metamodernism is: Reconstruction must follow deconstruction.”

Reconstruction The mantra of Metamodernism is: Reconstruction must follow deconstruction. This is to be seen as a reaction against the postmodern aim of deconstructing everything. But Metamodernism is not the same as modernity. The grand project of modernity was based on the belief that given enough time, rational thought and careful objective analysis, science would reveal the secrets of existence. Metamodernists are aware that creating a new grand narrative of the world is a never ending endeavor and only Proto-Synthesis is achievable. The grand narrative of Metamodernism can be described as a meta-narrative, a modern mythos of creation. Metamodernists are aware of the postmodern insight that knowledge can only be transferred through narratives. Metamodernism is concerned with creating a meaningful creation myth for our time. The message is stated in mythic form; it is not to be taken as absolute truth. Metamodernists strive towards the most comprehensive narrative presently available, but do so through the study of both large and miniscule phenomena combining the modernist grande histoire with the anti-narrative and petite histoire of postmodernism. Where modernism was concerned with design, postmodernism emphasized chance. Metamodernism includes both of these perspectives and perceives the world as emergent phenomena and patterns of self-organization. It studies how remarkably unlikely events and processes happen despite the odds. How many factors come together and self-organize into new, more complex orders. Instead of only looking at what’s present (like the modernists), or the absent (like the postmodernists), metamodernists emphazise the process and have a keen eye for emergence. The grand intellectual aim of Metamodernism is to order reality into coherent and hierarchically organized, interdependent patterns, thus creating a new map of reality, but without mistaking the map for reality. The postmodern insight, that we are just dealing with models or representations of reality, but not reality itself, should be kept intact. What is not postmodern about it is the lack of irony and complete sincerity in this apparently impossible endeavor.

“Metamodernism includes many of the substantial wisdoms of postmodernity.”

Transcending postmodernism Metamodernists agree with postmodernists that there is no possibility of a creation myth to be neutral, since all knowledge arises from a relationship between a knower and an object of knowledge. But the metamodernist does not agree that we should just relax and give up on metanarratives after realizing that all of our ideas about the world were merely constructions of the mind reflected by the discourse of our surroundings. Metamodernism includes many of the substantial wisdoms of postmodernity, but at the same time transcends this paradigm without being reactionary. With ‘reactionary’ I mean turning against postmodernity, refusing its insights by going back to the perspectives preceding it. Since our knowledge about the world can only consist of narratives, structures of the mind, I say: Let us construct the best available narrative of our age! It is not enough to continue making new differentiations, to notice differences and contrasts and contradictions. We must pick up the pieces of our fragmented world and build a new narrative – but not by going back and do what was done before everything got deconstructed.

“Metamodernism has a ‘non-oops’ explanation of creation – shit doesn’t ‘just’ happen.”