MERC

Perspective matters because living systems do not observe the world in the same way. Sylvia Wynter identifies storytelling as uniquely human — naming us Homo Narrans. Our cultures are narratively created, and these narratives drive our behaviour as much as our genes. They add a second layer — a cultural fitness landscape — on top of the biological one. Wynter borrows the term sociogeny from Frantz Fanon for this concept.

This is why mainstream metamodernism has gone astray — it has no robust metamodern theory of culture, only a theory of metamodern culture specific to a western lineage of development. The answer lies in recognising that human cultures are not biological, not linear, not necessarily teleological. They are self-initiating, engaging in auto-poiesis.

Nora Bateson famously stated "Stage theory is colonial BS." Hanzi Freinacht defended developmental hierarchies. Both were partly right — what was missing was a nested meta-framework that could be both non-linear and genuinely non-moralising. MERC is that framework.

We are born experiencing ourselves purely as subjects. From an early age we learn to turn the subject into an object to form relationships. At some point we learn to see objects as part of interrelated systems. And further still, we come to understand that all systems have an inner dimension — that everything is also a subject. Each perspective depends on the previous but does not negate it. Earlier perspectives remain always available.