Metamodern Values Explained | Dr. Daniel P. Görtz | TEDxTUBerlin

I'd like to talk tonight about values

and I'm guessing most people in the

audience are gonna have values it's not

a far stretch it's a pretty safe bet

that pretty much everybody in the

audience has values things you think are

really important things you think are

central life ideas about what is really

real in this universe in reality and

here's another not very far-fetched

guess all of us are gonna have somewhat

different values and if you take the

people who are farthest from one another

in terms of values they're going to be

quite different so people in this room

would have different core values and of

course a bunch of the core values that

we might even be prepared to die for if

we need it to values that are more

important to us than life itself and

then we have lots of other values less

central one's more debatable one's

values we might even trade so if we zoom

out a bit we can see that if we look at

this group as a whole the people and

gathered in a place like this in a time

like this and we compare it to people

let's say 300 years ago also in Berlin

maybe or maybe five hundred years ago a

gathering like this let's say in a

Cathedral would have completely

different values it would have I guess

you could say medieval values and people

in this room would have well what values

do we have really and another question

that presents itself how do you know if

you have the right values

how do you know if you have good values

if they make sense

it's an important question because look

at it it's how absurd it really is that

all of us have the values we have

because we think those are the right

values so we believe that out of all the

100 plus or I don't know how many people

are in the room you have the best values

and we all believe that and we can't all

be right well maybe we can in some

deeper sense and and that's part of what

we're gonna talk about so we need

sometimes some ways to approach sets of

values or families of values groups or

values

structures of values or bigger stories

as a former speaker told us about and

I'm gonna talk then about three very

different families or sets of values and

some of these values grow on the

shoulders of others so what I'm

proposing then is a developmental view

of value systems I'm gonna talk about

modern values about postmodern values

and about meta modern values and meta

modern values being the ones that I

personally subscribed to and I believe

are a bit more the values of the future

and the developmental view then one way

of looking at it is that you compare

sets of values by looking at what builds

on what if you if you were really

consequential with the modern values

they will lead you eventually by the

crude necessities of logic they will

lead you to postmodern conclusions and

if you really imbibe the postmodern

values and you really embody them and

you go through them for decades or

that's a big culture you work through

them again and again you twist them and

you turn them and use them and churn

them

you end up at a new position you end up

at the meta modern position right up

with meta modern values and each of

these sets is a big family or if you

like you can think of them as castles

because the modern values then have so

many different a thousand different

assumptions that are made a thousand

different assumptions that strengthen

one another and they form a coherent

system a system that coheres and on the

ruins of that Castille is where you

build your postmodern worldview and you

build your postmodern life and your

postmodern relationships and your

postmodern identities and institutions

and laws and your postmodern art and

then there is a third step the meta

modern castle which is only beginning to

to be built as I and many other

observers believe so what our modern

values let's begin there I'm guessing

everybody in this room gonna know them

by heart more or less there is a belief

in rationality there is a belief in

science there is a belief in progress

there is a belief in the dignity of

humanity or us the modern values

classically put it the dignity of man

even these are of course the the values

of the Enlightenment and there is a

connection then between the belief in

science and rationality and the

democratic project just as we use each

of us use our individual senses and we

look together at at nature and we use

the Saia

the methods of science and science gives

us the answers and we can use these

answers to create progress in the same

way we can do it in our political system

we can use our votes we can use our open

discussions we can use our free speech

we will find by means of with a bit of a

technical term inter subjective

verification I check facts I check your

facts you check mine I check your

theories you check mine and together

then we create we approach the truth and

together we create progress and progress

then creates an improvement like an

accumulative improvement upon human life

and if we look back 200 years since

since the Enlightenment and we look at

let's say the French Revolution the

Conservatives at that time they didn't

turn out to be right you can see that

the most radical minds of that time won

out in the long run sure the French

Revolution itself collapsed but if you

look at the the values of the

Enlightenment they inform every aspect

of our societies and every aspect of our

lives we're almost brainwashed by this

stuff since we're little kids so we all

believe in human rights and we all

believe in in science and progress and

these things and we view ourselves as

rational citizens and we relate to a

world out there nature but the problem

is then that modern life itself has

produced a bunch of problems it resolved

many problems yes it resolved maybe wars

between democratic countries that's not

really happening anymore it resolved

poverty it resolved deprivation of

different kinds epidemics also more or

less stopped there's no more starvation

we aren't oppressed by our governments

in the same not for the time being at

last at least and but it also then

produced a bunch of new problems and

these problems have to do with actually

all three have been mentioned two of

them quite quite explicitly and one a

bit less more implicitly the first is

sustainability that

modern project isn't sustainable it's

going to crash sooner or later and

everybody can tell and it's not very

difficult to tell either and that's what

the sciences themselves are telling us

and the second big problem is of course

of the rampant inequality of the world

so if this is such a rational world why

is it distributing the wealth and the

abundance and the securities and

opportunities so unfairly and so

rationally and the third one is a bit

more subtle and it has to do with this

word alienation that in the most modern

countries where modernity has progressed

the most you find also a very high

instance of mental health issues are

young among young people a lack of

meaning lack of faith in life a lack of

direction and and people take all sorts

of drugs for these things and and it's

just a growing issue we don't know what

to do with it and from these late modern

societies when this has progressed a

long time you see a subtle revolution

happening often around humanities

departments and in universities around

the counterculture of the u.s. around

critical media around investigative

journalists around sophisticated artists

and philosophers and around maybe

importers of Eastern religion into into

Western society and this is where the

postmodern values

enter there's a sense that we have

imbibed so much of the modern world and

we and we actually make us makes us a

bit sick and we no longer it doesn't

ring true when it says what this is this

is progress well wait a minute say says

the postmodern mind if you're so

rational how come we can make it

scientific study of let's say medical

sciences and we will find all sorts of

economic interests Steve

during which which questions are asked

in the first place or how about the

exclusion of minorities and the

exclusion of many other narratives or

stories from the big story of progress

and how about the destruction of small

cultures that touch upon this big

behemoth of global modern culture and

can't really take it and are destroyed

as they touch them for instance

Greenlanders when they were colonized by

the by the Danes yes they got modernity

but they become they became many of them

alcoholics at the bottom of Danish

society and was a great tragedy as the

that society was ripped apart so the

postmodern project is a project of

critique the postmodern mind says even

if I look at this human being that

you're telling me is at the center of

the universe even if I look at it with

the very methods you're telling me to

look at it with with methods of science

and the methods of experimental

psychology and so forth and there's not

a shred of rationality there and there's

no individual the person is steered by

the language structures they're part of

the culture they're a part of the

context they're in the narratives and

these are usually invisible to us as an

earlier speaker also talked about so so

there's a resistance but but where does

the postmodern critique lead in late

modern societies you have a growing

minority of postmodern populations in

places like Denmark and Sweden

and these populations even perhaps

dominate to some extent that political

and at least the media life of media and

politics and the dull debate and

discourse so doesn't really take us

anywhere specific we kind of lose our

direction because if if the modern

postmodern mind says wait a minute I can

you can't say there is this big story of

progress you can't say that modern

society is better than Greenland society

in its tribal form or better than the

medieval society in Europe that came

before it

well how then can you how then can you

justify your own position how then can

you say that a feminist gendered

anti-humanist critique of of modern of

modern thinking is better so we you kind

of lose direction you develop a kind of

irony a kind of distancing from the

sincerity of the modern project the

postmodern says mind says I don't want

to be the sucker I don't want to be at

the short end of the stick I don't want

to be fooled by some by some structure

or power relation that is beyond me and

all of this then leaves out the belief

in progress the sincerity that was there

in the modern project we don't have

anywhere to go

enter meta modern values madam our

values then represent a marriage of two

worlds rather than a culture war that we

see today rapidly we see a rampant

culture war and pretty much all Western

societies us being the prime example

between modern values and postmodern

values and the meta modern mind says

actually I'm gonna say you're both right

and then I'm gonna synthesize it and I'm

going to go ahead and build something

from there so it says yes there is a

direct direction of directionality of

progress and this progress is not so

much one of science and objectively

seeing the world but a progress of

perspective a progress of the

if you like a progress of human

emotional and personal development and

that of course is a controversial thing

to say because then you're saying that

people with pote with modern values have

not yet developed to have postmodern

values and you're saying that people

with postmodern values have not yet

developed to have meta modern values but

I think it is a less judgmental position

for this reason in the postmodern mind

if you look at the modern at modern

society without a developmental lens you

can't really say you can't really look

at it non-judgmentally you can't really

say what does this person lack to become

more postmodern what is this person lack

to take more critical stance and not fly

all around the world for no good reason

or not want to to to redistribute wealth

and so forth so the more complex

worldviews require more subtle fuels

they require us to think more subtly

they require us to feel more subtly they

require stronger healthier selves they

require more abstract and more profound

senses of solidarity and identification

and how do you create that this in

itself this developmental path becomes

the center or core of the metamodel

value system so you begin to value

things that would help populations

develop into later stages of ethical or

value development and what what can

those state changes be well for instance

you can support projects such as

meditation in schools what

helps us calm our own minds and develop

empathy compassion you can have support

structures psychological support

structures because everybody is going to

be wounded as the child and sooner or

later later they're going to need some

kind of support or help to not have

their trajectory messed up to not get on

the defensive to not get over invested

in ideas and so forth and you need to

use the methods of science to find out

how to support such inner growth in

wider populations and if we don't we

cannot expect in scientific behavioral

terms we cannot expect people to have

values that are going to match the

complexities of the transnational global

post-industrial digital age so it is

only if we outgrow modernity if it's

only if we outgrow the modern values

that we have been taught to live with

that we can resolve the modern problems

again these be sustainability inequality

and alienation the hole in our soul that

modern life produces this is a path that

is offered uniquely by the meta modern

set of values and is not offered by the

postmodern set of values thank you very

much

you