From: jimruttshow8596
The “effective value meme” is a foundational building block in author and thinker Hanzi Freinacht’s work, particularly in his books The Listening Society and The Nordic Ideology [01:15:17]. This concept describes overarching, deeper structures in how values are generated and evolve within societies [02:08:00].
Defining the Effective Value Meme
An effective value meme refers to a particular form of reasoning, morality, means (like genes in organisms but for cultures), and values that reproduce themselves within a culture [03:09:00]. The idea is that values can evolve with societies, adapting to different systemic challenges and putting new demands on human beings [02:11:00].
Comparing different historical periods, such as Roman citizens versus contemporary Swedish citizens, reveals fundamental differences in values regarding topics like slavery, punishment, or gender equality [01:50:00]. These differences are not arbitrary but follow a logic, suggesting that there are overarching patterns in how values develop as societies evolve [02:08:00].
Value memes as emergent patterns
Effective value memes are emergent patterns within four key dimensions: the model of hierarchical complexity, the code or symbol stage, emotional state, and emotional depth [03:37:00], [03:26:00], [03:28:00]. These dimensions dynamically interact, leading to non-linear and sometimes unexpected developmental dynamics [03:37:00].
Components of the Effective Value Meme
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Model of Hierarchical Complexity (Cognitive Stages) This component, formalized by mathematician Michael Commons, describes the different stages of cognitive complexity in human thought [02:34:00]. It’s based on the observation that individuals demonstrate behaviors and thought patterns of varying complexity [02:51:00]. Examples include:
- Abstract Stage: The ability to reason about things not physically present, common for almost all adults (reached around junior high) [02:26:00].
- Formal Operations Stage: The ability to formulate and test relationships between multiple abstract variables (reached by over half of adults) [02:56:00].
- Systemic Reasoning: The ability to create and understand whole systems of formal relations, including feedback loops. About 20% of the adult population reaches this stage [02:59:00].
- Meta-systemic Reasoning: The ability to recognize patterns within systems and compare their properties, understanding that different systems have different logics. This stage is reached by about 1.8% of the population [03:34:00].
- Paradigmatic Reasoning: A stage even higher than meta-systemic [03:06:00].
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Code or Symbol Stage (Cultural Evolution) Beyond individual cognitive development, culture itself evolves, embedding certain symbols or ideas of different complexity stages [03:02:00]. This suggests a non-arbitrary ordering in cultural evolution, where modern societies are more comparable to each other than to their own forms 500 years ago [03:20:00]. For a human being to utilize a culture’s code, it must be “downloaded” into them, and more complex thinkers are more likely to find code that resonates with their mental complexity [03:41:01].
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Emotional State and Depth These subjective dimensions refer to an individual’s momentary emotional state and their developed existential depth in relation to existence [03:57:00]. This relates to the concept of spirituality, where profound experiences of wholeness, love, or connection can lead to deep, unshakeable insights about reality and self [01:10:00].
Value Memes in Societal Evolution
Postmodernism as a Developmental Stage
Hanzi Freinacht views postmodernism as a developmental stage or sensibility that emerged after the 1968 revolution, breaking through in academia in the 1970s and 80s, and popular culture in the 90s and 2000s [02:26:00], [02:30:00].
Postmodern critique
“Postmodern ideas and value stand have followed modern society around for 200 years and that they have grown from a trickle to serious attempts to redefine modernity and for instance through socialist revolutions and recreate society and created at a new and higher stage” [02:30:00].
Postmodern values seek to create something better than mainstream capitalist society, critiquing the story of progress by shifting perspectives and including excluded voices, aiming for emancipation or redefinition of everyday life [02:50:00]. This can be seen as “a kind of religion, a critic of the religion of critique or the religion of criticism that has grown through intellectual practice of modern society” [02:54:00].
Approximately 20-25% of the adult population in rich Western countries are considered to be postmodernists, experiencing the world through a postmodern lens and expressing postmodern values [02:42:00]. These ideas, while complex to “download,” hold significant influence, particularly in media and academia [03:00:00].
A core utility of postmodernism is its capacity for detailed analysis of structural injustices and power structures, which is essential for identifying how society harms individuals through systems that are difficult to grasp [03:12:00]. However, a major critique is that postmodernism often ends in critique without offering constructive solutions or a “to-do list,” leading to an inability to make decisions and proceed [03:40:00], [04:47:00].
Metamodernism: The Next Stage
Metamodernism is presented as the philosophical base that follows modernism, including and transcending postmodernism [01:29:00]. It seeks to move beyond the perpetual dead ends produced by postmodernism and the reactionary neo-reactions it can generate [02:56:00], [03:03:00].
Academic heresy
Freinacht describes his work as “academic heresy” because it challenges the postmodern sensibility by advocating for “growth hierarchies” – a concept that is empirically observable and logically definable but forbidden within the deeply egalitarian and relativistic postmodern mindset [03:48:00], [04:03:00].
Metamodernism proposes that while modernity is insufficient and unsustainable, and postmodernism offers valuable critique, the path forward requires a “revolt against the revolt” – a move beyond postmodernity to achieve actual change [04:49:00]. It aims to develop a “harsher or an more direct logic or dynamic or a kind of mechanism or sequence that can lead us to through crude logic lead us through this developmental phase until we have a new equilibrium state of the world of politics of the economy of our personalities and ways of viewing the world” [04:19:00].
Challenges and Dangers of Higher Value Memes
Current societies face increasingly complex challenges like climate change, global governance, migration, and existential risks from technology [02:50:00]. Existing values, adapted to an expanding industrial welfare state (modern) or critiquing it (postmodern), are insufficient for these complex issues [02:52:00].
A key concern is that only a small percentage of the population (e.g., 1.8% for meta-systemic reasoning) possesses the cognitive “hardware” to successfully operate with meta-modern concepts [05:01:00], [05:12:00]. When complex ideas are popularized or “flattened” for broader political use, they can produce pathologies and perversions [05:22:00]. Examples include:
- Misinterpreting “listening to others” as indiscriminately taking in crazy perspectives [05:50:00].
- Believing higher stages grant moral privilege and justify authoritarian decisions (“fascism”) [05:56:00].
- High-stage individuals, due to depth and state but low complexity, becoming “hippies who believe in magic” or “new Nazis” [06:12:00].
Dangerous Dreams
The concepts proposed by Hanzi Freinacht are acknowledged as “dangerous dreams” because their misinterpretation can lead to negative outcomes like totalitarianism or fascism, similar to how ideas of social change can be twisted into “1984 plus plus” [05:52:00], [05:18:00]. However, avoiding these dangerous ideas entirely by not trying to solve societal problems would lead to collective failure [05:47:00].
Spirituality and Value Memes
Spirituality, in Freinacht’s context, refers to aspects related to higher subjective states and existential depth [01:10:00]. These are profound experiences of wholeness, love, or connection that can be deeply transformative [01:10:00]. While not reducible to metaphysical truths (like seeing angels or proving external realities), these experiences offer vital insights into the “enchantment of existence” and the nature of being [01:21:00], [01:24:00].
The meta-modern mind, unlike the modern mind, acknowledges the validity of these experiences without necessarily adopting religious dogmas [01:12:00]. It recognizes that inner development pushes individuals into “farther stretches of existential development” and “unusual or altered states of awareness” [01:14:00].
Avoiding Extremes: Essentialism and Reductionism
Two “sins” related to spiritual experiences are:
- Essentialism: Ascribing objective depth onto a subjective surface (e.g., “I saw angels, so angels are there”) [01:20:00]. This is common in individuals high on depth and state but low on complexity, leading to beliefs in magic [01:27:00].
- Reductionism: Reducing everything to its objective, third-person correlates (e.g., intense spiritual experiences are just neural fireworks and confabulations) [01:27:00]. This is common in individuals high on complexity and code but low on depth and state, leading to a “disenchanted” view of reality [01:31:00].
The ideal is a dynamic balance between these extremes, allowing for appreciation of the world’s “enchanted, awesome, super cool” nature while maintaining a critical mind and avoiding manipulation [01:35:00], [01:36:00].
Strategies for Societal Transformation
To address complex global challenges, Freinacht argues for a “deliberate institutional change” that acts as a “conveyor belt” to elevate populations to more complex value memes, beyond modern and postmodern levels [02:50:00].
This requires a focus on influential core groups, like the “yoga bourgeoisie” (Silicon Valley types), who have gone through modern success, experienced spiritual insights, and wish to do good [01:32:00]. They possess financial, informational, and emotional capital, but often lack a “revolutionary faith” and a proper “map” (meta-modern code) to consciously change societal structures [01:33:00], [01:34:00].
The strategy involves an “open conspiracy”: operating transparently and legally, but with a focus on subtly affecting knowledge generation and influencing informational architecture (e.g., the internet’s structures), political games, and markets [01:07:00], [01:10:00]. The goal is to align human agency towards shared common goals, deepen democracy, and fulfill the promises of the Enlightenment, addressing both modern and postmodern critiques [01:08:00]. This “Wizard of Oz” approach seeks to move society forward without necessarily making the underlying philosophy overtly popular, allowing individuals to maintain their own stable value memes while contributing to a shared, more complex future [01:04:00], [01:06:00].