Poetic Meta-Naturalism: A New Philosophy of Reality for the Metamodern Age

Metamodernism is an emerging cultural movement that recognizes the insights of postmodernism while also acknowledging its mistakes. Now there is a scientific and philosophical paradigm to guide it.

The scientific landscape has long been dominated by reductionism, a methodological approach that seeks to understand complex phenomena by breaking them down into simpler component parts. While this perspective has undeniably fostered significant advances in our understanding of the natural world, it has also contributed to a fragmented and disconnected view of reality that implies that life is accidental and meaningless. In recent decades, the nihilism of postmodernism has added another layer of complexity and confusion to the scientific discourse, casting doubt on the very foundations of knowledge and truth. As we grapple with the challenges of the 21st century, a new scientific and philosophical paradigm is urgently needed—one that transcends the limitations of both reductionism and postmodernism, while retaining their contributions to our understanding of the world. In this essay, a “metamodern” philosophy is proposed that will be used to weave together various meta-concepts in a series of articles, including metamathematics, metasystem transitions, metacognition, and meta-awareness, to create a more dynamic, integrated, and holistic approach to understanding reality.

The R2O project is based on a multifaceted paradigm with numerous names that capture its various aspects, but we may use Unifying Theory of Reality as an umbrella term since it is sufficiently vague. At its core is the Integrated Evolutionary Synthesis, a scientific framework that merges traditional evolutionary theory with the principles of thermodynamics, information theory, and cybernetics. Poetic Meta-Naturalism represents the natural philosophy that underpins this theory, focusing on more abstract concepts that touch on existential and metaphysical issues. It also emphasizes that reality can be understood in terms of “loops and levels,” and uses these concepts to structure the philosophy itself and shape its aesthetic. The Cosmic Perspective is the name given to the "cosmic religion" that springs forth from this new framework and philosophy, and it instills life with significance and purpose, while illuminating our relationship to nature. Finally, the Teleological Stance is a practical living strategy that emerges from the Cosmic Perspective. It takes the mechanisms described by the Integrated Evolutionary Synthesis and Poetic Meta-Naturalism and transforms them into practical living strategies and optimization principles for our social, political, and economic systems.

While all these different names can be confusing to the new reader, they allow one to talk about the same core idea in a number of different contexts in the most appropriate way. For example, a straight-forward scientific lecture on the evolutionary mechanisms that drive the universe toward higher complexity could raise some eyebrows at a technical conference if the theory has the word “poetic” in it. Similarly, people looking for a self-help system or a spiritual worldview might find the “Integrated Evolutionary Synthesis” too technical and dry. But if you learn about the Teleological Stance, you are learning the science of the Integrated Evolutionary Synthesis, and you are learning the philosophy of Poetic Meta-Naturalism. So, if you are ever feeling overwhelmed by all the different labels, just know they are all threads of the same tapestry.

That being said, I am now going to throw out another label, because the concepts underlying the Unifying Theory of Reality are part of an emerging cultural, artistic, and philosophical movement that I believe will define the 21^st century. That is, we are transitioning into a “metamodern” era, and I predict that this transition will happen within the next decade. Metamodernism is worth talking about explicitly because it provides a cultural context for the science and philosophy presented at this Substack, and allows us to tie together the many “meta” concepts that form the foundation of Poetic Meta-Naturalism. In fact, one could say that the primary goal of the Road to Omega project is to make the world “go meta,” because doing so will prove to be the key to self-optimization, self-actualization, and enlightenment (or something like it). With this goal in mind, the aim of this article and the next is to introduce the core concepts that are needed to catalyze a “meta revolution.” This post will focus on defining metamodernism and laying out the core features of Poetic Meta-Naturalism, while the next post will describe the two core meta concepts, the metasystem transition and metacognition.

To understand what metamodernism is, we must first understand the philosophical eras that came before it and their evolution. They are premodernism, modernism, and postmodernism.