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Nordic Ideology by Hanzi Freinacht

8 min read

From: jimruttshow8596

Nordic Ideology is a book by political philosopher, historian, and sociologist Hanzi Freinacht [00:00:32]. It is the second book in a series, following The Listening Society [00:00:38]. Readers are advised to read The Listening Society first to grasp key concepts [00:01:26]. Freinacht’s work aims to articulate and guide a transition towards a “metamodern society” [00:32:52].

Foundational Concepts from The Listening Society

The core of Freinacht’s first book, The Listening Society, introduces the concept of the Effective Value Meme (EVM) [00:01:47]. This idea is a four-dimensional framework for understanding human adult development, building upon concepts like Spiral Dynamics [00:02:18]. EVMs recognize that individuals develop differently and learn worldviews from society, while also intuiting future forms of human life [00:04:32].

Four Dimensions of the Effective Value Meme

Freinacht proposes that individual development is not one-dimensional but comprises four interacting dimensions [00:08:35]:

  1. Hierarchical Complexity (MHC): This refers to the complexity of a person’s thinking [00:08:00]. It’s often highly correlated with innate mental horsepower and generally takes a lifetime of effort to significantly move up [00:20:01]. While the capacity is partly heritable, its achievement is a mix of innate ability and environment [00:20:12].
    • Example: A medieval genius like Thomas Aquinas might have higher hierarchical complexity than a contemporary 14-year-old, even if the teenager possesses more advanced scientific “code” from modern schooling [01:10:50].
  2. Code (Worldview/Culture): The collective, downloaded cultural understanding or worldview from one’s surroundings [00:12:13]. This is considered the most salient lever point for societal change, as it can affect the other three dimensions [00:39:11]. Changing one’s code, or fundamental assumptions about reality and society, can happen relatively easily by adopting new ideas [00:26:07].
  3. State: The emotional set point or general sense of being alive and existing [00:13:34]. States are not just emotions (which have directionality and impetus for action) but rather the felt sense of directness, openness, or crispness of being alive [00:13:55]. States can be temporarily modified (e.g., by psychedelics) [00:19:18].
  4. Depth: The integration of various states into a person’s traits and identity, leading to a profound, visceral understanding of life’s potential highs and lows [00:16:05]. It’s about remembering and embodying these states as recurring drives [00:16:22]. High depth often correlates with progressive ideas about complexity and multicultural perspectives [01:11:11]. However, high depth without complexity can lead to magical thinking [00:17:51].

While these dimensions are interlinked, Freinacht argues that Code is the most actionable lever point for societal change, as it can foster environments that support growth in hierarchical complexity, state, and depth [00:25:28].

Key Themes and Arguments in Nordic Ideology

Nordic Ideology elaborates on how societies can consciously evolve by addressing their underlying “code” and social structures [00:32:08].

The Ability to Change Society

A central theme is the realization that society’s social and psychological landscapes are not fixed but can be changed, just as humanity learned to change the natural world [00:29:52]. A metamodern society is defined as one that can “look inside the box” of modern society, analyze its constituent elements (norms, self-development, interactions, institutions, language), and begin to rework them [00:33:08]. This process creates a “strange loop” where society changes its code, which in turn modifies itself, and then uses that modified self to further modify its code [00:33:55]. This conscious restructuring of the “deep environment” is a tremendous task [00:34:27].

Reframing “Social Engineering”

Freinacht argues against the knee-jerk rejection of “social engineering” [00:36:51]. While acknowledging its dangers (e.g., Nazism, Marxism-Leninism), he points out that positive societal structures like the US Constitution and the tripartite division of powers were also products of conscious design [00:37:31]. The choice is not between social engineering and no control, but between conscious and unconscious design [00:42:00]. It is important to:

  • Understand the epistemological limits of complex systems; interventions should be seen as probes and tests with an experimental mindset, recognizing that emergent properties are difficult to predict [00:42:51].
  • Seduce rather than compel people to new systems [00:43:30]. If a new system has to be compelled by force, it’s likely working against natural “attractor points” [00:44:28]. A beneficial post-capitalist system, for instance, would need to out-compete capitalism on its own terms [00:45:19].

Emotional Well-being as a Political Issue

A key aspect of a more advanced society is to make the emotional well-being of people as important as their economic welfare [00:45:41]. This means treating issues like depression, stress, and alienation as political concerns, akin to security, jobs, and housing [00:45:51]. The subjective experience, including happiness, meaning, love, sleep, and beauty, is the most real aspect of life and should be central to how societies are organized, moving beyond purely quantitative economic measures [00:48:03]. While happiness cannot be legislated, politics can create “generative conditions” or “good soil” for it to thrive [00:48:20].

Attractor Points

Societal systems tend to gravitate towards “attractor points”—highly likely outcomes that stabilize given certain conditions and enough time [00:50:58]. Examples include the global proliferation of electricity and the internet [00:53:51]. Future attractor points include:

  • Proliferation of intelligent machines and designed biology, fundamentally changing labor markets and human relationships [00:56:55].
  • Increased data gathering and predictive algorithms, leading to power struggles over control [00:57:58].
  • Worsening environmental issues [00:58:08].
  • Demand for “co-developmental politics” or deeper democracy in developed nations [00:58:25].
  • The breakdown of national wealth distribution pyramids into one global pyramid [00:59:15].

However, there are also “bad attractor points” or basins of attraction that societies could fall into, such as neo-feudalism, a neo-dark ages of religious fundamentalism, or a neo-fascist global dictatorship (like an advanced digital autocracy based on the Chinese model) [01:00:26]. The goal is to steer towards a “good basin” that is both ordered and free [01:05:07].

Game Acceptance, Game Denial, and Game Change

These are three approaches to societal engagement [01:06:05]:

  • Game Denial: Characterized by idealistic, utopian impulses that refuse to accept inherent limitations or “games” (e.g., competition, power relations) within reality [01:06:19]. Policies based on game denial often lead to impractical or self-defeating outcomes [01:09:40].
  • Game Acceptance: The opposite of game denial, where individuals or groups (e.g., conservatives) defend existing injustices, arguing that life is inherently tough or that certain structures are immutable and fair [01:10:00]. This position often resists positive, radical changes [01:10:42].
  • Game Change: The recommended metamodern approach [01:11:00]. It acknowledges that a “game” (with rules, winners, and losers) always exists [01:11:46]. The goal is to learn the game, play it lovingly, understand its rules, and actively work to change those rules for the better [01:11:54].

Relative Utopia / Protopia

Freinacht defines a “relative utopia” (or protopia, a term also used by others) as a qualitatively different and preferable future state, rather than a static, perfect vision [01:14:37]. This concept suggests that just as current society would seem utopian to someone 200 years ago, a future society could be a “relative utopia” for us today, with unimaginable improvements [01:15:32].

The Master Pattern: Six Forms of Politics

To move towards a relative utopia and address the increasingly complex and subtle issues of life, Freinacht proposes a “master pattern” of six interconnected forms of politics [01:17:11]. These new forms of politics expand beyond traditional governance to include domains of life not historically considered political [01:18:38]. They are designed to balance each other out and triangulate on complex issues [01:21:09].

  1. Existential Politics: Focuses on the meaning, purpose, and inner freedom people experience [01:21:53]. It considers how society can support individuals in living fulfilling lives and addressing issues like death and anxiety [01:22:01].
  2. Gemeinschaft (Mineshaft) Politics: Deals with the quality of human relationships and togetherness—ethnic, familial, local community, civic engagement, and inter-group relations [01:24:10]. It seeks to foster social skills, perspective-taking, tolerance, and empathy [01:23:41]. The aim is to create generative conditions for good relationships [01:25:26].
  3. Emancipation Politics: Acts as a check against the first two, protecting individual freedom, rights, and the space for conflict, pushing back against potentially over-integrative or intrusive processes in personal lives [01:26:46].
  4. Empirical Politics: Aims to make society more scientific [01:27:39]. It ensures that policies and interventions are based on strong, validated knowledge and have intended effects, providing an “objective reality” pushback against subjective forms of politics [01:27:51].
  5. Democratic Politics: Focuses on deepening the legitimacy, participation, and humanization of the democratic system itself [01:28:44]. It aims to improve governance modes, making decisions more transparent, participatory, and felt as their own by citizens [01:29:22].
  6. Politics of Theory: The most difficult but foundational form of politics [01:31:51]. It addresses how society describes reality, how it “brainwashes itself” through its cultural code, and how these interpretations affect everyday life and agency [01:29:50]. This political form makes the cultural code itself an object of change, aiming to improve and bridge stories about reality [01:30:13].

These six forms of politics interoperate; performing one in isolation is unlikely to be effective, but working on all six creates a balanced and effective path towards a more metamodern society [01:31:21].

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