As far as I understand, being “meta” is not about doing the thing-in-and-of-itself, but instead describing doing the thing-in-and-of-itself. For example, instead of making a documentary, you create a documentary about creating documentaries.
Paradoxically enough, you end up creating a documentary. But not one that comes from your heart, inspired by your being in this world. Instead, you coldly deconstruct what it is to create a documentary, and render that analysis into a documentary.
I find all this meta stuff terribly confusing. There’s that paradox alluded to above. But also, the irony! Right now, I’m writing a piece that could be interpreted as being meta… about being meta. There’s this infinite regress problem. How do we know when to stop being meta about being meta about being meta… ad infinitum!
There’s paradox and irony, and also implied moral superiority. “Oh, you went meta, watch me go meta about being meta.” For some reason, in today’s Zeitgeist, anything meta tends to subsume the substantive content that belies it. This tends to suck people in, and reduce conversation to that which is meta. This is a problem for the following reason:
- Just as there’s a disconnect between the military officers who call the shots, and the soldiers who carry out those orders, so too there’s a disconnect between the mind that is too meta, and that same mind’s understanding of the subject about which they’re being meta.
The soldier on the ground knows some details that, were they to be factored into the officer’s analysis, could completely change his plan of attack.
We’re Too Meta
By “We” I mean young people in the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic) world today.
It’s not that being meta is a categorically bad thing. If you were meta enough, you’d know that!
But we’re too meta. We’re like officers without armies to direct. Stuck in eternal contemplation, tortured by the incessant chattering of our minds. We may even muster up the courage to bark out some orders, but they go unheard. At best, they fall on deaf ears. At worst, they get lost into the Dark Abyss of the Great Nothingness. No effect.
We’ve become too disconnected from what it means to be an earthly being. We forget how to take effective action. The allure of being meta lured us away from developing an embodied understanding of what it takes to execute, and act effectively.
We Live in the Best of Times, We Live in the Worst of Times
We live in an age of overly abundant information. Therefore, a priority skill to develop would be the skill of distinguishing between those ideas and concepts that inform the best course of action, and those that fail to do so.
Why don’t we become hyper-discerning, and learn how to distinguish between inhibitory and expansive ideas? Can we transform our addiction to being meta into an addiction to figuring out how to identify and live by the highest quality of thoughts?
If, in your officerial contemplations, you find yourself in a state of deeper confusion as opposed to clarity, consider this an indicator that the ideas you’re toying with are of the wrong kind. If, on the other hand, you find your ideas insightful and revelatory, figure out a means by which you can implement those in the real world.
If we can wed the officers in our minds with the soldiers in our bodies, we’re onto a winner!
Meta as the Pathological Version of Sabbath
Being meta is a pathological version of an otherwise healthy impulse. It’s about detaching yourself from the nitty-gritty particulars of your life, and the various different goals you’re striving to achieve, and asking “are my goals worthy goals?” This is a healthy impulse of the utmost kind.
Where we moderns miss the mark is in spending too much time asking ourselves that question. In fact, we spend so much time asking that question that it loses its meaning. Just as repeating the same word over and over again makes the word seem incomprehensible, so too being meta for too long becomes pointless after a while.
In the past, encoded in religious doctrine, there was the Sabbath. This was one day of the week where humans would step back, detach themselves from their day-to-day lives, and ask “am I spending the time I have each day wisely?”
With religion out the window, we’ve conjured up a modern version of this tradition. And as with most modern reinterpretations of traditional practices, we fail to acknowledge the traditional origins. And in so doing, fail to understand why we feel compelled to ask such questions.
I’m not advocating for the revival of traditional, organised religion. But we can certainly learn from that which worked for so long in the past.
Religions of the past made explicit the link between our earthly actions, and Sabbath day contemplations. Modern meta fails to explicate that link. And so, we get lost in the sea of endless thoughts, thinking for the sake of thinking. Without understanding that our thinking should inform our day-to-day actions.
Can We Get It Right?
I guess the goal now is to find the sweet spot between thinking and acting. How do we shed ourselves of all thoughts that fail to inspire action. And going forward, how do we avoid inhibitory thoughts in this world of overly abundant information?
This will probably look something like being meta, and something like the Sabbath of religious days gone past. It will be neither, but it will probably draw from both.
Obviously, this impulse is archetypal. That’s why it’s reared its ugly head in the form of being meta. It’s instinctive for humans to ponder in this way. And one of the worst things we can do is repress the archetypal. Another pretty bad thing to do would be to dismiss such an impulse as childish, or useless and unproductive.
Although this instinct to think on the goals you seek to achieve in your day-to-day life contributes very little to your achieving those goals, it goes beyond those specific goals and asks “are my goals even worthy?” This is a good way to be, because a life lived without ever having asked such a question is no life at all.