Lene Rachel Andersen
[10] They are written as a dialogue between the retired television producer Cornelius Magnussen, who is highly erudite and currently admitted to the psychiatric ward, and a lifestyle journalist, Tenna E. Rasmussen, who interviews him for five days.
In the Wednesday-part, the protagonist Magnussen formulates a declaration of "global existentialism" which departs from the old perception of the world characterized by the linear, absolute and inflexible.
Instead, the proposed new world view takes into account relativity, complementarity, and quantum theory, posing that everything is unpredictable, complex, and cannot be described in absolute terms.
[11] In order to preserve the rule of law, humanity, democracy, and pluralism, approaches that embrace "both and" are needed for global and complex solutions.
The Nordic Secret: A European Story of Beauty and Freedom, which Andersen wrote, edited by Tomas Björkman, was published November 2017.
The three titles in the series are Metamodernity: Meaning and Hope in a Complex World (2019), Bildung: Keep Growing (2020), and Libertism: Grasping the 21st Century.
Andersen asserts that by integrating both indigenous, premodern, modern, and postmodern cultural elements, metamodernity provides social norms and a moral fabric for intimacy, spirituality, religion, science, and self-exploration, all at the same time.
The book makes the case that metamodernity is more inclusive than just culture—that it can also protect the economy from the internet and exponential technologies that are disrupting humanity's current modes of societal organization and governance.
[21] Among the models used as analytical tools in the second half of the book are the cultural codes explored in metamodernity, Circles of Belonging and The Bildung Rose.
[23] The Bildung Rose explores how societies evolve, grow and become more complex across seven domains: 1) production; 2) technology; 3) knowledge/science; 4) ethics; 5) narrative; 6) aesthetics, and 7) power.
Next, it makes bildung tangible and applicable for ALE educators by explaining the aspects of transferable knowledge and understanding (illustrated by the Bildung Rose), non-transferable knowledge and understanding, expansion of the sense of responsibility (illustrated by Circles of Belonging), and civic empowerment that comprise it.
Andersen presents libertism as a broad framework for understanding the contemporary, complex world—its systems, ideologies, potentials and dangers—and the specific kinds of freedoms humanity needs to make the most beneficial, meaningful existential choices it can in the century ahead.
[16] The first chapter is a condensed big history course outlining the 18 basic systems that define the universe and the patterns they produce that frame existence.
[26] Reaching the present day, Andersen introduces some of the most significant dangers humanity now faces, and then begins narrating how to proceed by delineating and reconstructing the concept of freedom.
According to Andersen, libertism will work because it proposes considerations within four dominant memeplexes in our current civilization and includes tenets for new ways of thinking.
Libertism also culls still-useful aspects of current systems in order for humanity to rethink its choices moving forward.
Rather, they are an interplay of collective narratives, personal emotions, societal institutions, rules, regulations, responsibilities, temptations, consequences, and natural boundaries.
