Which
metanarrative is best?
Explanation:
Depending on the metanarrative you are taught you can be expected to follow a certain path. You will learn a role that you expect to play. If the metanarrative you are taught tends to be certain, the path you will take will take you towards fundamentalism. If the metanarrative you are taught tends to be uncertain, the path you will take will take you towards either neopragmatism or suicide. I place wisdom in the center. (Remember, this is my cognitive map, you can make your own as you go.)
Perhaps the happiest people live in communities that are fundamentalist. In a community of this sort, the community is most important for the most mature members. They are certain what is best for the community. It seems at a glance over history that societies that were most successful in increasing their power over other people were fundamentalists. This gave their community unity and direction. Those who were not members of the community were most likely to suffer, since the power of such a community was so strong. As the community incorporated more and more people of different and competing metanarratives, the conquering story led those non-members to desire membership. Always there would be gradual accommodation to foreigners (barbarians, gentiles), which would eventually weaken the strength of the community’s belief in their metanarrative. The community would then tend towards the uncertain and the focus towards the self.
On my cognitive map I have also placed Suicide. If a person believes in a metanarrative that tends too much toward the uncertain and also focuses on the self, the person will be most likely to seek escape from a lack of purpose and inability to choose a role to play in the story. To exit the "stage" suicide seems the only escape. It is for these kinds of cases especially that there is a movement to use philosophy as psychotherapy (care of the self). By realizing the danger is a lack of belief in a more successful metanarrative a person can save themselves by learning a metanarrative that is either more focused on the community or more certain so that the person may find a role that they should play and a reason to stay on the "stage."
On my cognitive map I have also placed neopragmatism. This is our contemporary postmodern American philosophy. I think it represents the most educated, elite, American metanarrative that successfully explains how we can be so uncertain about so many things yet still find the community interest more powerful than self interest.
The goal of studying philosophy and beginning the quest is to reach Wisdom. What this is for each of us may be something different. It will depend on which metanarrative we accept. You each may have to draw your cognitive map differently to place wisdom in the center. I like the center, but then, the center is where I am trying to reach from my point of view.