| Mode |
Choiceless |
Successful systems |
Systems in crisis |
Countercultures |
Subcultures |
Atomization |
Fluidity |
| Era (all dates
approximate and are for leading-edge societies) |
Over by 1700 |
1450-1914 |
1914-1980; native for those born before WWII |
1964-1990; native for Baby Boom generation |
1975-2001; native for Generation X |
2001-?; native for Millennials |
Hypothetical present or near future |
| Problems this mode addresses, created by the previous one |
[None] |
Challenge of alternatives. How do we know our way is
right and all others are wrong? |
Failure of all foundations. Nihilism:
meaninglessness, materialism, disenchantment of the world |
Failure of mainstream culture, society, and self to
provide meaning; disgust at hypocrisy, business-as-usual, and moral breakdown |
Countercultures deny diversity, are revealed as
idealistically impractical, fail to find new foundations; mass movement
cannot provide community |
Subculture does not provide adequate breadth or depth of meaning; exploitation/parasitism relationship with mass-scale culture and society |
Overwhelming ocean of meaning; triviality
(distraction from value judgement); perceived tensions between internet and
“real life”; collapsing legacy systematic-mode institutions |
| Attempted solution |
[None needed] |
Supposed foundations for certainty: scripture, rationality, science, personal or collective revelation. Rational, universal, coherent |
Totalitarianism (attempt to force systems to work); existentialism (attempt to create personal meaning out of nothing) |
Alternatives (monist and dualist). Universalist (supposed to be right for everyone).
Explicitly anti-nihilist. Draws heavily on 1800s Romanticism; abandons rationality |
Subcultures provide diverse bodies of meaning, without attempting foundations. Exclusivity
limits group size to provide community. Abandons universality |
Global consumer culture provides
conveniently-packaged morsels of meaning to cover all eventualities. Abandons coherence |
Watercraft on the sea of meanings. Meta-systematic, complete stance: reinstates rationality, universality, coherence, but recognizes their nebulosity |
| Culture |
Incoherent traditions, accepted without question |
Attempts to formalize/ rationalize/ systematize
culture. Classicism followed by Romanticism. |
Development of avant-garde; beginning of the
“culture war” |
Development of new cultures as self-conscious,
positive mass alternative. Collapse of high culture/pop culture distinction |
Repeated fissioning of subcultures. Genre obsession.
Hipsterism. Quest for “authenticity.” Postmodernism. |
Universal soup of tiny culture-bits. Kaleidoscopic,
hypnotic, senseless reconfiguration. |
Groundless creative production; awareness of the intertwining of nebulosity and pattern; synergistic remix. Collaborative, improvised, intimate |
| Society |
Unquestioned, simple social structure |
Complex, rationalized social structure; bureaucracy |
Social structures increasingly diverse and
problematic; competing political theories; world wars and clash of
civilizations |
Brotherhood of all counterculture participants |
Subcultural tribalism: communities based on narrow
but innovative shared values/interests. Rituals replace belief systems. |
Global society moves into interactive media; virtual
communities; social networks enable larger, geographically dispersed
communities |
Transitory organizations spontaneously assemble within a durable social infrastructure matrix. Ongoing meta-systematic re-negotiation of individual/subsociety/superstructure interfaces |
| Self |
Person fixed by unquestioned social role; no awareness of inside/outside distinction |
Self as unitary, rational individual, with an “inner life,” and an explicitly-defined relationship with society |
Age of anxiety: growing awareness of internal incoherence. |
Self defined by membership in one counterculture (and rejection of the other counterculture) |
Identity derives from subcultural allegiance. Integration of personality a receding ideal. |
Atomization of self due to always-on internet: massively more interruptions, entertainments, relationships, tasks |
Self explicitly accepted as fluid, nebulous assembly, inherently in dynamic interaction, with transient characteristics but no essential nature |
| Music |
Traditional forms; community production; no sense of
authorship |
Self-conscious art music (“classical” in
the broad sense). Cult of the composer |
Crisis in classical music; nihilistic atonality. Serialism. Jazz. |
Everyone in Boomer generation listens to all countercultural music, regardless of genre. In dualist counterculture, attempts at Christian alternative |
Punk as first mass subculture. Not intended as a
universal alternative; explicitly nihilistic. Repeated fragmentation of
genres into sub-sub-genres. |
Ludicrousness of genre leads to mash-ups.
Run-DMC/Aerosmith “Walk this way” video collaboration as early explicit
example. |
Genre as musical element, like melody and rhythm, to
use and play with. Democratization of music production and distribution as
computer tools (DAWs, Soundcloud) improve. |
| Sex and gender |
Unquestioned sex roles |
Sex roles reinforced by systematic ideologies |
First wave feminism |
Second-wave feminism in the monist counterculture. Moral Majority & “family values” in dualist counterculture |
Fragmentation of feminism: pro- vs. anti-sex, egalitarian vs. essentialist.
LGBTQ, Quiverfull, men's movements, orthosexuality, Bears, PUA, NoFap, Rules Girls, furverts, … |
Intersectionalism. Jagged, incoherent, decontextualized political and
ethical claims about sex and gender that have escaped from subcultures |
Whole-hearted ironism; recognition that there is no
fair system and conflict is inevitable; passion & compassion together |
| Buddhism |
Miscellaneous practical superstitions; karma, merit,
and auspiciousness; monastic economics. Entirely unknown to Consensus
Buddhists. |
Scriptural Buddhist theorizing |
Buddhist modernism: importation of new,
rationalizing foundations from West, as a response to cultural breakdown in
Asia |
Consensus Buddhism: hybrid of Asian Buddhist modernism with American monist counterculture |
Diverse Western Buddhist subcultures, mainly
developed by charismatic Asian modernizers. No serious attempt at
universality. Spurious rhetoric of traditionalism (usually actually Asian
nationalism). |
McMahan: “Global folk Buddhism.” Dharma burgers.
Vapid @DalaiLama tweets. Fake Buddha quotes. McMindfulness. Eckhart Tolle.
SBNR. |
Buddhism as amorphous assemblage of means for
transformation of culture, society, and self by uniting spaciousness and
passion to unclog energy and empower nobility |
| Vampires |
Considered a realistic physical danger |
Symbolize incoherence as challenge to the system
(Church, Nation, and/or rationality) [Bram Stoker’s Dracula] |
Monstrous Other as Romantic anti-hero [Ann Rice; Dark Shadows] |
Monstrous Self as Romantic anti-hero [Laurel K.
Hamilton's Anita Blake books] |
Monstrosity (incoherence) of the self as a practical
hassle that can be managed [Kim Harrison] |
Trivialization of no-longer-threatening incoherence
[Twilight as first attempt]. But
fails until we have fully digested shadow |
Nobility of vampires as creative, benevolent
appropriation of personal incoherence |
| Food |
Mythological food taboos; pre-systematic practices
of hunting, gathering, growing, harvesting, cooking, sharing, and eating it |
Mainstream state/academic/industrial food
ideologies: Domestic Science, Home Economics, Nutrition |
On-going; the mainstream is still strong in this
domain, oddly enough |
Hippie health-food culture; macrobiotics;
vegetarianism |
Subcultural food ideologies: proliferation of
variants of vegetarianism (vegan, fruitarian, etc); Slow Food; locavorism;
raw foodism; paleo; etc. |
Commercial diet fads; magic ingredient of the week;
proliferation of decontextualized health/nutrion claims in food marketing;
soylents |
??? [Current paucity of knowledge makes future
inconceivable] |