Philosopher Jonathan Rowson discusses metamodernism, calling for expert generalists to bridge disciplines and achieve a holistic understanding of reality. The podcast explores meta and poly crises, climate change perspectives, and strategic thinking for a post-growth world.
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insights INSIGHT
Expert Generalists
Modernity fragments and organizes knowledge, leading to overspecialization.
Expert generalists, possessing deep expertise in one area, are crucial for synthesizing knowledge across disciplines, especially during times of change.
insights INSIGHT
Metacrisis vs. Polycrisis
Polycrisis describes multiple failing systems, while metacrisis considers the internal human element.
Metacrisis encompasses the multifaceted delusion of our worldview, impacting consciousness, emotions, and purpose.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Chess and Worldview
Jonathan Rowson's chess background shaped his worldview by emphasizing the opponent's perspective and humanizing adversaries.
Chess taught Rowson to consider others' constraints and motivations, fostering empathy even for opponents.
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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.
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