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Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 26, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

Still on Freinacht's 12 Commandments. I think I have my answer as to what post-metamodernism looks like. Metamodernism claims to be both sincere irony and ironic sincerity, but I wonder if it isn't lacking the latter in practice.

Star Trek SNW seemed to me from the start like an ideal example of both metamodernism and its failings. Pike is a Nice Guy not because he sees through your resentment and learned a better lesson than you, but because he's already decided what box he wishes to live in. As much as I loved the show, one looks in vain for a sense of actual conviction.

It runs instead on a fait accompli which says "there are Thoughtful People who won't be hypnotized anymore." I imagine people will be shocked if the general populace once again willingly chooses to be dupes of obvious frauds rather than to be this kind of Thoughtful. Something is still attempting to be expressed, and spirals of complexity and sophistication can also be used as tools of suppression. The trick would be to ironically tease out what is actually being expressed and suppressed without being duped oneself, and to derive enduring principles stated in simple, effective forms on which a new sincerity can be built.

I recently read "The Old Axolotl" by Jacek Dukaj. It reminds me a great deal of rationalist fanfics (for good and for ill), though given the subject matter and the ending I think that is to a fair degree intentional and critical of such modes of thought.

But I have repeatedly charitably interpreted things as ironic that were in fact unironic, so I don't trust myself on that. Picking up one of his other books, "Ice", partially because I did enjoy "The Old Axolotl" and "Ice" has reviewed well and partially to get a better sense of his writing.