Moving for the Sake of Moving

Metamodernism's telos problem

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

For the past year or so I have been reading largely encouraging articles about the movement that, according to some, comes after postmodernism, “metamodernism.” As opposed to postmodernisms skepticism of metanarratives and embrace of irony and pastiche and deconstruction, metamodernism is marked by “informed naivety, ironic sincerity, and pragmatic idealism,”¹ as well hope, romanticism, and the “potential for grand narratives and universal truths.”² The coiners of the term, Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, originally outlined their idea in a 2010 article, “Notes on Metamodernism.” Christians have picked up on the term and the movement as a positive sign for the church, as a part of a broader vibe shift that we can appeal to for the sake of the gospel. After all, if people are looking for sincerity and hope, the gospel is the place to look. We just have to be careful not to share the gospel like it was 1990 to a bunch of cynical and ironic Gen Xers. While I don’t disagree with this take, I do have some concerns about metamodernism. It seems to me that while a lot has been written about the resurgence of sincerity and hope, not enough attention has been paid to the absence of a telos in metamodernism. Hope without a telos is just optimism. It’s not a virtue. And it cannot sustain people. However we engage a metamodern culture, part of our attention needs to be focused on addressing empty optimism.

As both Vermeulen and van den Akker note in their article, metamodernism lacks a telos, and as such it “moves for the sake of moving, attempts in spite of its inevitable failure; it seeks forever for a truth that it never expects to find.” The authors believe this is because metamodernism takes its epistemology from Kant:

As Curtis Peters explains, according to Kant, “we may view human history as if mankind had a life narrative which describes its self-movement toward its full rational/social potential … to view history as if it were the story of mankind's development”. Indeed, Kant himself adopts the as-if terminology when he writes “[e]ach … people, as if following some guiding thread, go toward a natural but to each of them unknown goal”. That is to say, humankind, a people, are not really going toward a natural but unknown goal, but they pretend they do so that they progress morally as well as politically.

And so, in metamodernism, people lurch ever forward toward some “unknown goal” pretending, acting “as if” there were such a natural goal (a telos). Earlier the authors write, “Inspired by a modern naïveté yet informed by postmodern skepticism, the metamodern discourse consciously commits itself to an impossible possibility.” One might look on this as a kind of hope, a leap of faith for the “impossible possibility” of glorification or redemption, but it’s not. Remember, for Kierkegaard, even the leap of faith is grounded in the person of God (Abraham is the model of this).

Vermeulen and van den Akker explain this metamodern challenge with an illustration of a donkey and a carrot:

Like a donkey it chases a carrot that it never manages to eat because the carrot is always just beyond its reach. But precisely because it never manages to eat the carrot, it never ends its chase, setting foot in moral realms the modern donkey (having eaten its carrot elsewhere) will never encounter, entering political domains the postmodern donkey (having abandoned the chase) will never come across.

In the language of virtue, Vermeulen and van den Akker accuse modernists of the sin of presumption for having already eaten their carrot (I think this is a false accusation, on the whole, but let’s set that aside). And they accuse postmodernists of the sin of despair for not believing that political change can happen. But in the place of true hope, they have endless striving toward an unknown future based on nothing except the “as if” belief. We ought to act “as if” there is hope because we ought to act “as if” there is hope. That is not true hope. That is optimism.

The problem with optimism is that it is empty. It is based on nothing but feeling or inertia. As the authors say, moving for the sake of moving. And as a cultural analysis, I think this does ring true. I think it is the case that many people today move for the sake of moving. They have no hope but optimism. A belief in progress, personal or social, maybe, but nothing substantial. It is a sincere optimism, often. They get up and get moving because of work or jobs or their news feeds or new products. And if that sounds cynical and very un-metamodern of me, oh well. I think it’s baked into the description. They are chasing carrots for the sake of chasing carrots.

But what are carrots? Do they even exist? Who gives us the carrots? What, in other words, are our ends? What is our telos? What are we striving toward? Is there a glorification awaiting us? Is there a final judgment? Will the world be made new? I worry that under metamodernism these questions don’t need to be asked. Instead, one can simply keep striving forward. Because metamodernism has taken from postmodernism a “skepticism” about ever knowing or achieving or grasping our ends. The important thing is the movement. There remains, as one scholar put it, a “potential for grand narratives and universal truths,” but even under postmodernism there was always the potential for grand narratives, we were just trained to be incredulous toward them. And I suspect for many metamodern people, it’s not so much that they are personally incredulous, but that they are tired and overwhelmed by the idea of knowing their ends, of discovering the truth about reality, of learning their need for a Savior. Some, of course, will and have welcomed this. But many will find optimism enough, so long as they can keep moving toward that vague carrot in front of them (self-improvement, social progress, technological change, etc).

And that frightens me. It frightens me because it means people being in spiritual despair and emotional and cognitive optimism. Without discounting contemporary people’s desire for sincerity and hope, it seems to me that part of the mission of the church is to not allow people to be satisfied with the vague carrot of optimism that drives them toward tomorrow. Eventually, everyone driven by optimism will hit a wall, because optimism cannot carry you through suffering. It’s too insubstantial. It’s too vague and impersonal. You need hope for that. Hope in the promises of a Person who knows you and loves you and has a telos for your existence.

I’m still wrestling with the heuristic value of the term “metamodernism.” But I’ve written this assuming that it’s an accurate and helpful term. I think the term describes something that’s going on, even if it isn’t quite the break from postmodernism that some imagine. In any case, I do think it speaks to the optimism driving many people’s lives today, which they have confused for hope. The challenge of the church will be to gently invite them to see the emptiness of optimism and the beauty of true hope. A sober hope. One that allows us to keep moving forward and endure hardship courageously for the good of God and our neighbor, but always with a specific end in mind: our resurrection and glorification. It is an “impossibility” made possible by Christ, and so we hope with assurance. Not knowing the day or hour, not knowing the difficulties that will face us on the way, but knowing that the end is written, and it is glorious.

1. https://mereorthodoxy.com/preaching-the-gospel-to-people-sick-of-irony

2. https://www.metamodernism.com/2015/01/12/metamodernism-a-brief-introduction/