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I've not really explicitly spelled out what this term means to me. I've allowed it to sit in my mind and percolate as a sort of conceptual-perceptual template-filter.
meta- because I do not believe in subscribing to beliefs or thought systems or paradigms. Buying into a philosophy always seems to be a Faustian deal. I believe instead in drawing inspiration from good ideas where you find them, and incorporating them into the structure of an existing ideo-construct. It is fundamentally an engineering approach: rather than accepting philosophies or paradigms as you find them, build with them, build upon them.
neo- because existing philosophies are artifacts of a time and culture and the individual idiosyncrasies of the people who articulated them. This affects their meaning, and shapes the agenda by which it was expressed, and these things cannot be fully decoupled from it. So when I do articulate an idea or conceptual framework I must be careful to understand that I am not taking an old idea, I am articulating a new idea inspired by the old one but shaped in light of modern culture and modern scientific and philosophical understanding. I must be especially conscious that I am not silencing dissent or misappropriating if I refer to an existing philosophy as inspiration.
ETA. There's a lot I could add to this, because a large part of why people *do* subscribe to religions and philosophies is because of community. To be a part of many communities, they often ask you to subscribe to a philosophy as well. For my dissent on this topic you can read what I've written about affinity politics and why I think it is preferable to identity politics.
Generally, the benefit of community is worth the trade-off you make when you accept the Faustian bargain of subscribing to a philosophy or converting to a religion. You can paper over, for a time at least, any cognitive dissonance by throwing a wall of words at it. Some people get to be very good at this.
meta- because I do not believe in subscribing to beliefs or thought systems or paradigms. Buying into a philosophy always seems to be a Faustian deal. I believe instead in drawing inspiration from good ideas where you find them, and incorporating them into the structure of an existing ideo-construct. It is fundamentally an engineering approach: rather than accepting philosophies or paradigms as you find them, build with them, build upon them.
neo- because existing philosophies are artifacts of a time and culture and the individual idiosyncrasies of the people who articulated them. This affects their meaning, and shapes the agenda by which it was expressed, and these things cannot be fully decoupled from it. So when I do articulate an idea or conceptual framework I must be careful to understand that I am not taking an old idea, I am articulating a new idea inspired by the old one but shaped in light of modern culture and modern scientific and philosophical understanding. I must be especially conscious that I am not silencing dissent or misappropriating if I refer to an existing philosophy as inspiration.
ETA. There's a lot I could add to this, because a large part of why people *do* subscribe to religions and philosophies is because of community. To be a part of many communities, they often ask you to subscribe to a philosophy as well. For my dissent on this topic you can read what I've written about affinity politics and why I think it is preferable to identity politics.
Generally, the benefit of community is worth the trade-off you make when you accept the Faustian bargain of subscribing to a philosophy or converting to a religion. You can paper over, for a time at least, any cognitive dissonance by throwing a wall of words at it. Some people get to be very good at this.
