“

The physicists are giving us an entirely new view of reality, called string theory, where poten­tiality is real and multiple universes may be possible. Fundamental notions such as caus­ality are being attacked as illusions of the senses and our living, partici­patory perspectives are proving to be ingrained into – entangled with – the very fabric of space, time and matter. The cosmo­logists are bending reality farther and farther beyond what we can recog­nize or may even compre­hend. The philosophers and myst­ics are tearing down the idea of a sepa­rate self, an ego at the center of existence, from all sides – leaving only a longing, empty space that needs to be filled with relations and partici­pation. Neuroscience is exploding, with its philoso­phical cousin cognitive science following suit and the strange next cousin computational neuro­science still being born. So-called posthumanist think­ers are radically challenging humanity’s biased view of herself in rela­tion to the other ani­mals and the rest of reality, taking us beyond the anthro­pocentric (human-biased) perspect­ives we have hitherto lived by. The mathe­matic­ians are teaching us that most things in reality emerge through chaos and com­plexity and that so many of our modes of thought are outdated and dangerous, since we are oblivious of the non-linear patterns and relation­ships that matter the most. Systems science and syst­ems perspectives are breaking through, from their home bases in com­puter science, informat­ion science, chemistry and ecology – to all aspects of life, includ­ing the interactions bet­ween physio­logy and psych­ology. The social scientists are tearing down the found­ations of the state, of the market, of money and of science itself as we have known them. Econom­ists are telling us that the economy we took so seriously was really a myth all along, just a story. Radically new spiritual movements are cropp­ing up, notably the ‘atheist’ practice of Syntheism. And music­ians are creating stranger and stranger electrical sounds and rhythms, mixing them with strained voices, as if to underscore just how mysterious, yet pecul­iarly fam­iliar, it all seems. And fashionable, tattooed young female DJs play that music on the dance floor, and we dance under flashing lights into the darkness and get high and drunk and make out, as the reality we thought we knew is being torn down and we plunge into the sublime and the unknown. And far out into the desert, under the clear skies of that luminous, open black­ness lit by perfect stars, we find each other in an intimate, loving embrace. Without the slightest effort we converse for hours and all of reality melts away as we let go of our inner shields and become one. In that timeless moment of for­giving embrace we lose our­selves and find ourselves, both at once.”

-Hanzi Freinacht (Emil Ejner Friis and Daniel Görtz)
The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics