On the History of Worldviews: Part 2

As promised in my previous post, here's the rest of those thoughts on the emergence of modernism and postmodernism. Plus some extra thoughts on metamodernism, for good measure.

Originally this was going to start out with a description of the ways in which the various post-modernisms (i.e. postmodernism, futurism, realism) responded to and approached WWII, but the arc the first and last of those traced over the past century seemed a lot more relevant to readers today. So I'll start there after a couple of short definitions based on that previous post, for continuity's sake:

Postmodernism

Postmodernism, emerging from the liberal democracies of the world (regardless of how many asterisks the words 'liberal' and 'democracies' might have needed...), answered that the cornucopia of grand narratives that were fundamental to the modernist worldview were ultimately meaningless. And not just that, but furthermore that such grand narratives fundamentally can't have meaning in the first place and the idea of a "universal" narrative is nonsense.

In summary, postmodernism held that there's never such a thing as a "true narrative", and that trying to construct such narratives is where modernism went wrong.

(Soviet/Socialist) Realism

Realism is an extremely overloaded term, obviously, but in this context refers very specifically to what's also called "Soviet realism" or "socialist realism", as it was promulgated and upheld by the Soviet system throughout the 1900s. The answer provided by this movement was that the failure of modernism was in its individualism, in that it produced a society of millions of conflicting "protagonists" rather than getting everyone to cooperate in supporting a single common "protagonist", represented by the State as a whole and the Party in particular.

Just look at how disconnected from reality the self-described geopolitical "realists" are...

In summary, realism held that the purpose of grand narratives was to unite people behind a common cause, which by the 1920s had been cemented into the inevitable march of society towards a predetermined future state at the direction of the Party. Thus where modernism went wrong was not in the construction of grand narratives but in the proliferation of competing narratives.

The degree to which this description is confusing the centralism of the post-Lenin Soviet model with an actual aspect of the Soviet Realist worldview is something that can be debated pretty endlessly. But given how closely the two became tied to each other over the course of the 20th century the specific place where the dividing line goes is something of an academic question.

The Two Left Standing: The Cold War

On a philosophical level one could read the outcome of WWII (the complete destruction of the Axis) as the fatal discrediting of fascist futurism in a similar way to how WWI fatally discredited classical ("late", technically) modernism.

In the years that followed, it was a pretty widespread assumption that the same thing would inevitably happen between the remaining two superpowers-slash-worldviews. And once both sides of the standoff had nuclear weapons, it seems that the further assumption was that the only alternative was for neither to win due to inevitably mutually destroying each other and the world at some point.

Exploring the exact ways in which that standoff manifested itself would be a very rich topic to explore. Especially the ways in which both liberal postmodernism and soviet realism simultaneously fossilized in some ways while mutating in others throughout the period. But for now I will jump ahead to the most significant event of the entire Cold War. An event that almost nobody saw coming until it was already in progress.

And Then There Was One: The Collapse of the Soviet Union

I'm talking about 1991. Almost overnight (relatively speaking) the USSR disintegrated and collapsed. I expect more ink has been spilled analyzing just why and how that happened than has been for the histories of entire countries, so I won't belabor those points here more than I need to.

I do, however, need to talk about the last General Secretary of the Soviet Union: Mikhail Gorbachev. Not for the purpose of connecting or separating the events of 1991 to his particular choices, but to use him as something of a microcosm of the whole arc that the Soviet Union in general and the soviet realist worldview in particular wound up following. And to do that I'll need to break with the mostly-chronological flow I've followed thus far. Specifically I'll step back a couple hundred years to suggest that General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev was something of a Soviet equivalent to American President John Quincy Adams.

I would hardly be the first to observe the parallels between the founding of the USSR and the USA insofar as they were both founded as ideological states in contrast to the ethno-states that emerged in the 1800s and still define much of the world to this day. Even today, much of European nationalism is far more ethnic than it is civic. The result of this shared aspect of the USA and the USSR was that their early years involved their societies really sorting out who and what they wanted to be and forming cohesive worldviews to underpin their systems, as they didn't have the ability fall back on vague gesturing at "people like us".

In the case of early America the connecting thread was pretty unarguably modernism - liberal modernism, to boot. The Founding Fathers were quite uniformly men of the Enlightenment, after all. Even when there was very little else they could agree on, they could generally be said to agree on the principles of the Enlightenment. The first five American Presidents were all from that group, and that continuity was probably very helpful for a country just finding its feet. Time moves on, though, and 1824 saw the election of John Quincy Adams to the office of President. While he was technically born before the Revolutionary War (in 1767, to be exact), he was far too young to really have taken part in it meaningfully. Or even really remember a world before it, by the time he was President. In effect he was born into a post-American Revolution world, with all its impacts on the way people thought of how government and society could function. He grew up in a world where America already existed, rather than needing to be part of causing it to exist.

Somewhat similarly, the USSR's first six leaders were also all involved in their founding. The last of that group, Konstantin Chernenko, was only 11 when the Soviet Union is conventionally defined as being "founded". But given how foundational WWII wound up being to the Soviet Union, the fact that he was already involved in politics before that point qualifies him well enough, in my book - WWII was arguably more foundational to how the USSR would develop than the events of the 1920s, in a lot of ways. He was followed by the 20-year-younger Gorbachev, finally breaking the "gerontocracy" as the Soviet leadership had been mockingly called. Which, importantly, made Gorbachev the first leader of the Soviet Union to have lived his entire life in the Soviet Union, including growing up there.

Gorbachev, as far as I've ever been able to tell, truly and genuinely believed in the righteousness of the Soviet system and the correctness of that "soviet realism" worldview. He felt that the Soviet way, at its most fundamental, was the most effective way to promote human flourishing, even if he also acknowledged there were major issues with the system that urgently needed major reform. But that could also be said of John Quincy Adams, given his embrace of the doctrine of "internal improvements" (as he described it) over "strict construction" and his acceptance of the reemergence of parties which culminated in the Second Party System.

Ultimately, America thrived amidst its changes while the Soviet Union... didn't. The modernist worldview became further entrenched in America during the Second Party System, while the soviet realist worldview can only be said to have fallen apart in the Soviet Union during perestroika and glasnost.

The classic example always given for the latter is Yeltsin's visit to America in 1989. Later on, he commented in his biography:

When I saw those shelves crammed with hundreds, thousands of cans, cartons and goods of every possible sort, for the first time I felt quite frankly sick with despair for the Soviet people. That such a potentially super-rich country as ours has been brought to a state of such poverty! It is terrible to think of it.

There is no such quote to be had for Gorbachev, as far as I'm aware. He tried to the very last moment every possible thing to keep the Soviet Union together. But eventually he gave in, realizing he had no more options that wouldn't be far worse for everyone involved in the long run. To quote his resignation speech given on December 25th, 1991:

"Mikhail Gorbachev’s Resignation Speech," in World History Commons, https://worldhistorycommons.org/mikhail-gorbachevs-resignation-speech [accessed July 28, 2025]

I am making this decision out of considerations based on principle. I have firmly stood for independence, self-rule of nations, for the sovereignty of the republics, but at the same time for preservation of the union state, the unity of the country.

...

the society was suffocating in the vise of the command-bureaucratic system, doomed to serve ideology and bear the terrible burden of the arms race. It had reached the limit of its possibilities. All attempts at partial reform, and there had been many, had suffered defeat, one after another. The country was losing perspective. We could not go on living like that. Everything had to be changed radically.

That is why not once - not once - have I regretted that I did not take advantage of the post of (Communist Party) general secretary only to rule as a czar for several years. I considered it irresponsible and amoral. I realized that to start reforms of such scale in a society such as ours was a most difficult and even a risky thing. But even today I am convinced of the historic correctness of the democratic reforms which were started in the spring of 1985.

...

The process of renovating the country and radical changes in the world community turned out to be far more complicated than could be expected. However, what has been done ought to be given its due. This society acquired freedom, liberated itself politically and spiritually, and this is the foremost achievement which we have not yet understood completely, because we have not learned to use freedom.

However, work of historic significance has been accomplished. The totalitarian system which deprived the country of an opportunity to become successful and prosperous long ago has been eliminated. A breakthrough has been achieved on the way to democratic changes. Free elections, freedom of the press, religious freedoms, representative organs of power, a multiparty (system) became a reality, human rights are recognized as the supreme principle.

...

Economic freedom of the producer has been legalized and entrepreneurship, shareholding, privatization are gaining momentum. In turning the economy toward a market it is important to remember that all this is done for the sake of the individual. At this difficult time, all should be done for his social protection, especially for senior citizens and children.

...

All these changes demanded immense strain. They were carried out with sharp struggle, with growing resistance from the old, the obsolete forces: the former party-state structures, the economic apparatus, as well as our habits, ideological superstitions, the psychology of sponging and leveling everyone out.

They stumbled on our intolerance, low level of political culture, fear of change. That is why we lost so much time. The old system collapsed before the new one had time to begin working and the crisis in the society became even more acute.

Those don't strike me as the words of one who thought himself as abandoning the principles he felt underpinned the country, only the ways in which those principles had to that point been implemented. And yet he is more or less explicitly acknowledging that support for his position had dried up, and that the system(s) replacing the one he was trying to reform were poised precisely to abandon those principles.

Which, I don't really think I need to spend too much space to convince anyone of, was exactly what happened. For better or for worse, and I'm sure plenty of people on either side of that particular argument can be dug up to this very day. In either case, at that point it was finally the case that a single post-modernism remained. This was accompanied by all sorts of proclamations of it being "the end of history" and similar, which obviously looks very silly three decades later.

The Question of What Comes Next: Metamodernism?

So if 1991 wasn't "the end of history" then what was next? An eternity of postmodernism even as the world moves on after all? I don't really see how that could even be within the realm of possibility. If nothing else, humans just don't seem to be that static.

I'm sure the number of people who have written out treatises and essays and novels espousing what they insist will be the definitive post-postmodernism is at least in the hundreds, and I'd frankly be surprised if it wasn't in the thousands. Most of them, as one would predict, are complete nonsense. Which ones are complete nonsense is, as always, much harder to see except in retrospect.

I would personally describe myself as a "metamodernist", for what it's worth. If, as I described earlier, modernism is an embrace of narratives as the foundational unit of society and postmodernism is the complete rejection of the truth and coherency of narratives due to their fundamental subjectivity, then I'd describe metamodernism as something akin to the idea that the mere subjectively of narratives doesn't necessarily mean they don't have utility.

It's entirely possible I'm projecting my own biases with that, I suppose. But for all the fact that I doubt one person in a thousand has ever heard the term "metamodernism", the concept of it seems to be out there. Which is what matters, at the end of the day, not that some particular term is used to describe it.

As an example of this, I'd suggest that Undertale is just about the most metamodernist video game to yet exist, with the possible exception of Deltarune, which I'm only excluding from that evaluation due to it being only half-released at time of writing. One of the fundamental themes of Undertale is that it's a good thing to allow yourself to sincerely and genuinely engage with fictional worlds. Not just that it's an acceptable pastime, but that it can be actively beneficial to do so. That's a metamodernist position if I've ever heard one.

Ironically, despite the "meta" in "metamodernist" having a completely different origin than the "meta" in "metafiction", a lot of metafictional works are pretty metamodernist. OneShot and Slay the Princess to name a couple more games, and I'd also point to the web animation series Murder Drones as a non-game example. The Amazing Digital Circus also seems to be shaping up that way to some extent, though the last episode of that has yet to air and there are plenty of ways it could instead be modernist in outlook or even something completely different.

It's a reference to the Platonic concept of "metaxy"

Expressing the common thread in a more standalone way, one could say that the core metamodernist concept these works share is the idea that the stories we tell to others - and which we choose to retell in turn - are important. That those stories have meaning, even when they're fantastical. That just because a character in a story isn't real doesn't mean we cannot feel a sincere connection and by so doing refine our selves to be closer to who we wish to be.

Not to immediately revert back to talking about Deltarune after explicitly saying I'm excluding it since it's not done yet, but Chapter 4's Gerson is extremely worth quoting here:

* Ain't no better story than one told with sparkling eyes.

* She ain't got no fear, that one. Doubt, irony, that's what poisons your story...

* That, and too much predictability.

"New sincerity", it's sometimes called, though I'm not sure why. Seems to just be the same thing as normal sincerity. Pile on some optimism and I'd say you're a good part of the way to metamodernism as a whole.

The Arguments of Today, Not Just Last Week

It's not as if metamodernism is universal, obviously. Society has very much explored the newly unopposed primacy of postmodernism over the last 35 years. I'd feel pretty secure in saying that metamodernism seems to be the furthest developed of the various would-be post-postmodernisms, but there are plenty of alternatives. That lack of development rather hinders attempts at formalizing those alternatives to at least some degree, but a postmodernist lens of analysis actually rather helps here: we can indirectly explore what those alternatives are by examining what they aren't from the metamodernist perspective. This results in an obviously deeply biased analysis, of course, but that still can be useful in surfacing useful details.

And from that we can observe that we are seeing some manner of coalescing of sides in whatever this new clash of worldviews is.

Consider just what the raging debates of today are. "Woke" versus "magat", "compassion" versus "cruelty", what's "right" versus what's "strong", a culture highlighting its own faults in order to enable it to improve itself rather than creating a vision of the past and attempting to return to it...

As in, what the sides would call each other, to be clear...

For all the way in which these flashpoints can seem to be symptoms of a bunch of individual issues, when listed out don't they kind of seem to group together a bit? One side that's idealistic, compassionate, and committed to doing the right thing even if it's disadvantageous in the short term, and the other... not, and proud of it. Cynical, cruel, and obsessed with power, often by their own admission.

On the global stage, it's easy to slot figures into one camp or the other. Putin has spoken at extreme length about his bizarre view of Russian history that he uses to assert wildly irredentist claims. He claims to not believe that Ukrainians exist, even as they have taken back a fifth the territory Putin managed to seize from them in 2022. Xi Jinping pursues his "wolf warrior diplomacy" to push claims in the seas around China. And Trump... well, there's hundreds of quotes that make obvious how little he values truth compared to an easy-to-sell line. The bit about pets being eaten in Ohio was pretty big, to pick a random example.

I don't want to verge too deep into contemporary politics on this blog, really. But given those seem to be the open positions of the figures described I doubt any objections will be too strenuous.

The reason I bring these positions up, though, is that in the same way the metamodernism I described above is still distinctly descended from the postmodernism of the 20th century, so are the commonalities in these. Postmodernism, for all that it is a genuine response to the failures of modernism and the last post-modernism standing after the collapse of both fascist futurism and soviet realism, does have issues of its own. And there are plenty of ways to respond to those issues, as evidenced by the wide variety of post-postmodernisms.

The vague grouping I'm drawing here... seems almost be a sort of anti-modernism, for lack of a better term. Perhaps counter-modernism, to try and at least use a name that seems less negative? Once again, the name ultimately doesn't matter so much as the concept it's describing.

And that concept is... odd, at least to me. All the rejection of objective truth that postmodernism can fall into is there, and there are even parallels to my own metamodernism's acceptance of the utility of subjective statements. But rather than accepting their utility as subjective statements, it's almost more like an insistence of a superiority of the subjective statement over the objective. Or worse, a denial of the ability of one's subjective experience to meaningfully impact objective reality altogether.

All of the post-modernisms that emerged in the interwar period agreed that at least a goal of human existence was to produce a better world than the one being lived in. Even the horrifically militaristic "fascist futurists" had the twisted idea that violence begat dynamism. From the metamodernist perspective, that is still the case - it's simply also observed that the way we interact with the objective world around us is in very large part by filtering it through our subjective observations of that world. The useful approach winds up being a metaxy between the subjective and the objective, to tie it back to the naming of the whole thing.

This "counter-modernism", then, winds up in continuity with late postmodernism by raising the reality of the subjective over the objective. Which seems to just be a doubling-down of the flaws of postmodernism, when put that way. And even beyond that, the "counter-modernism" I'm describing here seems to outright reject the main component of modernism that postmodernism retained: the belief in the possibility that human structures be incrementally improved towards perfection, in the long term.

Again, all of this is speaking from an explicitly metamodernist perspective - it will take time for the groups I clustered together to define this to cohere their worldviews into an aligned whole. If they ever do. It could also be that they will fissure into entirely separate schools over time. Either course would certainly be interesting in a historical sense, regardless of what one thinks about the specifics involved.