Technological development, climate change and globalization are challenging the national institutions and modes of governance we created during the industrial era. Our old knowledge and general understanding of the world do not provide sufficient answers anymore. In order to maintain meaningful lives, social calm and liberal democracy, we need to upgrade our meaning making to match the complexity of the world we are creating.Metamodernity is an alternative to both modernity and postmodernism, a cultural code that presents itself as an opportunity if we work deliberately towards it. Metamodernity provides us with a framework for understanding ourselves and our societies in a much more complex way. It contains both indigenous, premodern, modern, and postmodern cultural elements and thus provides social norms and a moral fabric for intimacy, spirituality, religion, science, and self-exploration, all at the same time. It is a way of strengthening local, national, continental, and global cultural heritage among all and thus has the potential to dismantle the fear of losing one’s culture as the economy as well as the internet and exponential technologies are disrupting our current modes of societal organization and governance.Metamodernity will thus allow us to be meaning making at a deeper emotional level and a higher intellectual level compared to today; it will allow us more complex understanding, which may match the complexity of the problems we need to solve. Appropriate meaning making is the best prevention against the frustrations that generally lead to authoritarian ideologies and societal instability.Using metamodernity as the filter through which we see the world and as a template, we can create, among other things, new and appropriate education, politics and institutions for our societies of the 21st century. A vision such as this may even give hope.

Metamodernity: Meaning and hope in a complex world

Politics & Social Sciences

Andersen, Lene Rachel

Philosophy

Nordic Bildung

Bildung is moral and emotional maturity. Bildung is also to have the education and knowledge necessary to thrive in your society; bildung is to be deeply embedded in culture and community while having the autonomy to carve your own path in life. Bildung is always personal and unique.Bildung is a German word that has no word in English. Beginning in the 1770s, German philosophers explored bildung as a secular form of inner development and it became popular among the bourgeoisie.In Denmark, a pastor realized in the 1830s that the peasants needed bildung too, and he envisioned a new kind of school: the folk-high-school. In 1851, a Danish teacher, Christen Kold, figured out how to teach in such a way that young farmhands learned to think for themselves: he told them moving stories and let them ask questions. Once he had their attention, he could teach them new farming techniques, science, philosophy, history, religion, literature, art, economic theory, and political science. Norway, Sweden and Finland copied the folk-high-school concept in the 1860s and by 1900, a critical mass of youngsters in the Nordic countries had upgraded their skills and their thinking, and the Nordics had gone from being among the poorest countries in Europe to being among the richest. This development and the bildung that carried it also meant that the Nordics made the transition from agricultural feudal societies to modern, democratic, industrialized nation-states peacefully.As we are facing new challenges from digitization, globalization, a pandemic and environmental changes we need bildung for the 21st century and the book concludes by exploring what that might look like.

Bildung: Keep Growing

What kind of future would we like? Freedom, security, prosperity, lush nature, and meaningful lives for all? Or a tech defined world where a handful of people own the algorithms and do not care about the planet and the well-being of the many? As humans, we live in several systems: some are natural, some are human-made and cultural. The systems of nature we cannot escape or change, such as the forces of gravity and electromagnetism; the systems made by humans we can design as we please, such as the economy and the internet. Libertism is about knowing the difference and choosing what to do with it. How do we harvest the most sustainable prosperity from the natural systems without ruining them, and how do we design the most sustainable cultural systems so that everybody can enjoy a prosperous and meaningful life in freedom and peace?

Libertism: Grasping the 21st Century

History

World

The Nordic Secret: A European Story of Beauty and Freedom

Historical Study & Educational Resources

What it Means to Be Human: Bildung traditions from around the globe, past, present, and future

Frost, Adam

Norren, Dorine van

Stein, Zak

Rømer, Thomas Aastrup

Mesker, Peter

Drop, Hanke

Joordens, Steve

Social Sciences

How do societies go through major technological, economic and structural changes peacefully? The Nordic Secret explores how Denmark, Norway and Sweden went from poor feudal agricultural societies to rich industrialized democracies thanks to the German educational concept of Bildung. The book also investigates the close relationship between Bildung and contemporary developmental psychology, i.e. the concepts of "ego-development" and "transformative learning". The Nordic Secret concludes with a discussion about what we can learn from this positive transformation and how to apply it in the current global crises.

The Nordic Secret: A European story of beauty and freedom

Education & Teaching

Björkman, Tomas

Higher & Continuing Education

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Books by Andersen, Lene Rachel