Show Summary
Engaging with the human predicament requires new ways of understanding the world – novel perspectives that are rooted in a more holistic and interdependent mindset than those dominant in the industrialized society of the past few centuries.
Today’s conversation with philosopher and social scientist Jonathan Rowson dives into the emerging ways of being that could serve us as we move toward a post-growth world, including what he has found particularly helpful in his decades of work studying the metacrisis.
In a world of (often siloed) hyper-specific experts, how would valuing the role of the “expert generalist” both change the face of academia and help us understand the world from a more holistic systems perspective? How does metamodernism merge the best of modernism and postmodernism to create a more comprehensive and constructive view of reality? How do we find and embrace our calling in the context of the metacrisis in order to take purposeful action forward?
About Jonathan Rowson
Jonathan Rowson is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive of Perspectiva, a publishing house and praxis collective based primarily in London. Perspectiva describes itself as an urgent one-hundred-year project to improve the relationship between systems, souls, and society in theory and practice. Jonathan is a philosopher and social scientist by academic training and has degrees from Oxford, Harvard and Bristol Universities. He has written extensively on the idea of metacrisis as our multifaceted delusion, and he is increasingly focused on experiments in community and spiritual praxis to help shift socio-economic immunity to change. He is an Open Society Fellow and a Fellow at The Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity at the University of Surrey. In his prior role as Director of the Social Brain Centre at the Royal Society of Arts he authored influential research reports including A New Agenda on Climate Change, Money Talks, and Spiritualise. He is also a Chess Grandmaster and three-time British Champion (2004–6) and views the game as a continuing source of insight and inspiration. His book, The Moves that Matter – A Grandmaster on the Game of Life was published by Bloomsbury in 2019.
In French, we have a motto that says that a simple drawing is often better than a long explanation. Jean-Marc Jancovici Carbone 4 President
That’s very understandable because with left atmosphere thinking, one of the problems is that you see everything as a series of problems that must have solutions. Iain McGilchrist Neuroscientist and Philosopher
We can’t have hundreds and hundreds of real relationships that are healthy because that requires time and effort and full attention and awareness of being in real relationship and conversation with the other human. Nate Hagens Director of ISEOF
This is the crux of the whole problem. Individual parts of nature are more valuable than the biocomplexity of nature. Thomas Crowther Founder Restor
Show Notes & Links to Learn More
00:00 – Jonathan Rowson works + info, Perspectiva and Perspectiva’s Substack
02:05 – Tasting the Pickle: Ten flavours of meta-crisis and the appetite for a new civilisation
05:34 – Tomas Bjorkman, TGS Episode
05:53 – Perspectiva Press, The Matter with Things by Iain McGilchrist + McGilchrist on TGS
06:50 – Realisation Festival
07:55 – Academic Specialization
15:09 – Metacrisis vs polycrisis
16:50 – The links between education, healthcare, and economics
18:38 – History of the prefix meta-
25:08 – Rowson twitter, Grandmaster, chess rating
25:40 – The Moves that Matter
28:04 – Relativism
29:37 – What is Metamodernism
30:11 – Metamodernism and the Perception of Context
30:19 – Modernism, Postmodernism
30:26 – Habermas
31:04 – Pre-modernism
34:20 – Umberto Eco
38:46 – Don’t Look Up
40:41 – Jason Josephson Storm – Metamodernism: The Future of Theory
44:15 – Constellations therapy
47:15 – Anti-debate
48:20 – Thomas K. Metzinger – Spirituality and Intellectual Honesty
51:30 – Daniel Schmachtenberger and Consilience Project
55:30 – Collective Individuation, Carl Jung, Elinor Ostrom
56:28 – Carl Rogers
56:45 – Moloch, Collective action problems, Game Theory
1:03:09 – Marc Gafni, Zak Stein, Post-tragic
1:10:24 – Third Horizon
1:12:04 – Robert Pirsig
1:12:46 – Frankly Series, 7 Thought Experiments for Earth Day | Frankly #62
1:14:16 – Ivo Mensch
1:15:22 – The 17 Things I Am 100% Certain About | Frankly #60
1:17:35 – Perspectiva in 10 premises
1:17:41 – Education in a Time Between Worlds
1:19:45 – The Flip, The Formation, and The Fun
1:20:07 – The Flip, Jeffrey Kripal
1:23:34 – Peter Svidler
1:27:55 – Bonnitta Roy – C-Labs | LinkedIn
1:28:59 – Margaret Mead, Culture and Commitment: A Study of the Generation Gap
1:29:15 – Prefigurative Culture
1:29:34 – Francis Fukuyama
1:34:11 – Animal Industry
