Meta-

[peter]

.......Meta!]

This prefix seems to be popping up quite a lot both in my conversations and on the Watch of late - not to mention a constant appearence on tv and stuff in programs that use 'big words that I don't understand' [See Arcade Fire; Roccoco], so can we just have a look at it.

Of the top of my head I'd define the word as meaning something like 'beyond', so let's go see how close I got.

Well - there are a nuber of meanings associated with change or alteration etc [eg metabolism], but specifically the one I was after was the one of 'behind or above', given as no.4 and pertaining to philosophy. Another interesting one that might be relevant was 'concerned with the concepts or results of a named discipline'.

Ok. Well I always understood 'metaphysical questions' [because I have to start somewhere] as being questions that you couldn't answer. [eg Does God Exist?] Science questions, on the otherhand, could be investigated, subjected to scrutiny and [crucially] the answers gained thereby were falsifiable. Metaphysical statements couldn't be falsified - so they weren't scientific. Now recently I had cause to try to outline the various branches of Philosophy to a kid I work with [whose degree course in Sociology seemed incredibly lacking in having provided him with any understanding of the subject - unless he's just a piss-poor student] and realised I had no real understanding of what 'metaphysics' was [as a discipline] beyond what I've said above. So I Wiki'd it and found something I really like; that no-one else agrees what it really is either, but that it can be summed up by the following. Metaphysics is about the nature of 'being'. It asks two fundamental questions; "What is there?" and "What's it like".

But hang on - I thought 'Ontology' was the study of the nature of 'being'; and thinking about it so it might be. Is Ontology the name for the major branch of metephysics concerned with answering the 'What's it like?" question. If so, what do we call the "What is there?" branch of metaphysics?

Now lets get on to metanarratives. Wikipedia again describes this as 'A narrative about narratives.....' [Ok - so is The Oxford History of English Literature a metanarrative?] '...... of historical meaning, experience or knowledge which offers a society legitimation [sic] through the completion of a/n [as yet unrealised] master idea. Hmm - that's loosing me a bit.

Next we progress to metafiction. Well - Iv'e already demonstrated in a different place how shaky my grasp on this idea is - but essentially we seem to be in the terratory where the dividing wall between consumer [of a work] and the participants within the work is broken down. The third [?] or fourth wall is torn aside and the reader/viewer becomes part of the work more so than he/she already is. [Milorad Pavic's books don't seem to fit this bill but are still described as 'metafiction' so clearly there seems to be more than just this one criteria. I'd guess The Princess Bride is stongly within this catagory of works.]

Well that's about as far as I've got with it all, but for one additional point. This seems to be a thing, a part of a larger movement about which my education [essentially science based, from the age of 12 to Masters level in my twenties {long time ago } is completely lacking - the area of 'sociology'. 'Meta-' seems to appear alongside 'post-modernism', 'structuralism' 'post-structuralism' etc, a lot and it occurs to me that I don't even know what courses people study into which these words are given the bulk of their meaning. The closest I've come is Sociology, which seems to have some comment to make in respect of these areas. This discipline was somewhat looked down upon in my days of schooling, as being the one that people who couldn't get places anywhere else finished up [not by me I hasten to add; I was too addled with girls and booze to think much at all about anything academic], and the question was always asked "but what are we going to do with all of these sociology graduates? What will they do?" Well the answer now appears to be they will create a framework of understanding of our societies, entry into which the rest of us, locked in our traditional persuits of science and medicine and law etc, will be for the most part denied.

[edit; Not really satisfied with this post, but I'll leave it just in case anything comes out of it which arouses comment from which I can learn ]

[ussusimiel]

peter, the prefix, 'meta', as I use it, means 'beyond'. As in, 'metaphysics' means 'beyond the physical world', or in more modern terms, 'beyond the world of physics'. Thus metaphysics is concerned with questions that posit the existence of a 'supernatural' element e.g. 'God', 'soul', 'spirit' etc., because none of those things are directly amenable to rational interrogation.

In terms of fiction. 'metafiction' is any work that internally operates in the awareness of its own fictional nature. Thus, Kurt Vonnegut, Milan Kundera and Flann O'Brien, would be obvious exemplars of metafiction. Again the idea of 'meta' as meaning 'beyond' works here. The concept of 'fiction' allows us to write novels, once a certain point has been reached with that concept (I'm thinking of Joyce here), then the next stage is to write works that in some sense are 'self aware' of their own fictional nature.

'Post'* has similar connotations of a concept reaching full development and the next stage being 'after' that. 'Post-modern' is the stage of society after 'modernity' (which can be seen as having a starting point around 1789, and being directly related to the Enlightenment, the rise of science, the decline of religion etc.). So, to understand 'post-modern' one must have a good concept of what 'modernity' entails.**

Similarly, 'post-femininsm', 'post-colonialism', 'post-communism', etc. indicate the next stage in the development of a concept, ideology, phenomenon. Sometimes this is called the next 'wave' of a theory e.g. third-wave feminism.

The centrality of Sociology in the development of many of these 'post' concepts is that Sociology is a cross-discipline by its nature (it came into being as a defence of the 'soft-sciences' from the process of 'rationalisation'). Sociology draws on the disciplines of Anthropology, Philosophy, History, Economics, Psychology (to name the main ones) and in so doing is always reaching for a more overall (holistic) conceptual framework for society. In this it is very often working at the 'meta' level. Pushing to perceive where the development of a concept will lead and what the implications of that are for society.

The main thing that I learned from studying Sociology is that every social phenomenon that is currently attracting my attention has a meaning and implication beyond its currently perceptible effect. For me this is not a 'meta' analysis, but rather a form of analysis that can only take place once I have disengaged from an attractive energy and taken a more considered approach.***

u.

* I found this introduction to a book, The Post-Marked World: Theory and Practice in the 21st Century. I haven't read all of it, but you might find it interesting.

** Other terms, such as 'post-industrial', 'digital age', highlight different aspects of contemporary society, and help contextualise the concept of 'post-modern', showing how it is another way of looking at contemporary society rather than the only way.

*** Donald Trump is the latest such phenomenon in the US

[Vraith]

Meta, like many words/prefixes has become dilute and diffuse through usages. That isn't necessarily bad---such transformation can also be called "richness" and "depth" and other good things.
Also such expansion is often the result of actual usefulness/applicability.

When I come across such and don't get it, I go back to the, for me, simplest model/analogy and work my way up to understanding.
And that, for me, connects to thinking in terms of games.
Every game depends on rules. Absolutely depends. Works within and because of them.

Meta works by "playing" with the rules, instead of playing by/within the rules.
[[sometimes this is simple, and called cheating. Sometimes it is far more complicated]]

Anyway, starting with that, I can usually work my way up to what a particular meta is about.

The "beyond" and "above" kinda bugs me, because it sometimes gets sloppy and seems to imply something else...it leaves out "and contains."
I mean Kepler-somenumber is an earth-like planet in a different system.
Does that make it "metasolar"---heck no, that's just wrong.
Metaphysics isn't ONLY above/beyond physics, it is above/beyond AND CONTAINS physics.

And, of course, there are layers/levels. Godel is most famous for proof that is meta, in its way. It contains knowledge about a whole field, and how it works [and where/how it falls short]. But it also follows the rules of that game AND is probably contained in a larger meta.

The "contains" may seem a quibble---but in assorted contexts, it can lead to terrible places. For instance, much of what people call "metaphysics" isn't so at all. What it is is "magic," "fiction," "imagination." Unreal.

How can we tell, given the limits on testing, what is actually metaphysics and what is a load crap [even if it is a spectacular, fine-smelling, beautiful, or even merely somewhat useful, load of crap?]
Sometimes we can't---at least not now/yet, and perhaps not ever. But sometimes we can. And that is where my quibble about "and contains" matters.

Did God create the universe? may well be a real metaphysical area. At this point, the physics indicates a Creator is probably unnecessary. But lack of necessity isn't proof of non-existence.

But a claim like "God created the universe on December 12, 1989." [[so that Taylor Swift could be born the next day---so it was revealed to me]].
That isn't metaphysics...because it doesn't "contain" physics---it makes physics impossible and/or false.
Not just the physics "as we understand it," but all physics of any kind...and every other kind of "knowledge."

Some would say it's just our ability to comprehend, the limits of being physical in a physical [and bounded] universe, the perspectives we're trapped in. But it isn't "just" that [as if that would be a "just"].

It doesn't make knowledge false in the good way---we come up with a better, more complete, more accurate, explanation.
It would mean that something completely, 100%, beyond any understanding, even in principle, for us---the metaphysics---is the literal and real "truth" and every single thing that we think we know about every other thing, EVERY thing, from smallest to greatest, is literally 100% false.

All those things would also be false allegorically, analogically, metaphorically, and in every other way.

It doesn't make our explanations false---it makes the very idea that there IS any knowledge, ARE any explanations, of anything at all, false.
All that COULD be true, I suppose. But it would make the whole universe meaningless suckage.

Meta may well be above/beyond in general, but it must also "contain" some portion of what we do/can know...so some particular meta can be ruled out [in the large]. And particular meta can be...at least in part/some ways...defined/described/examined by what they contain [and what it contains is nearly equivalent to "what game?" in my "process."]

Heh...more blather.
That' a bit longish, isn't it?

[peter]

Two fine posts, U. and V., for which you have my gratitude. [U. - I'll follow the link from my Hudle later.]

Can I badger you briefly for your observation on the 'metanarrative' Wikipedia entry [which I'll repeat below for the sake of ease] which, I confess is beyond me. Can you make any sense of it?

A metanarrative in critical theory and particularly in post-modernism is a narrative about narratives of historical meaning, experience or knowledge, which offers a society ligitimation through the anticipated completion of an [as yet unrealised] master idea.

Quick point of interest; I think I may have come across my first 'metaphysicist' in the real sense - Nobel Prize winning physicist Frank Wilczek whose [beautifully bound] book A Beautiful Question; Finding Natures Deep Design [a meditation on the question Does the World Embody Beautiful Ideas] I began reading last night.

[ussusimiel]

peter, there's a fairly lucid explanation of what a 'metanarrative' (also called a 'grand narrative') is here. Essentially a 'grand narrative' is an overarching story about where human society is headed. Marxism would be such a narrative, as would the 'belief in progress' (which is an extention of the Enlightenment).

Part of the notion of postmodernism is that people have stopped believing in such grand narratives, which (in the absence of religion) leads to a consequent loss of meaning.

u.

[Vraith]

peter, there's a fairly lucid explanation of what a 'metanarrative' (also called a 'grand narrative') is here. Essentially a 'grand narrative' is an overarching story about where human society is headed. Marxism would be such a narrative, as would the 'belief in progress' (which is an extention of the Enlightenment).

Part of the notion of postmodernism is that people have stopped believing in such grand narratives, which (in the absence of religion) leads to a consequent loss of meaning.

u.

Hey, that's a pretty good summary of the major points and some of the criticisms and paradoxicals.

The only thing I miss from it is the other direction [though it is hinted at]

---it points that metanarrative can go all the way up, and all the way sideways [distrust of metanarratives and the loss of meaning and such is a metanarrative itself].
---but neglects a bit that, like being stacked on turtles, metanarrative goes all the way down, too.

I mean, that bully you stood up to [or failed to stand up to] in second grade, you tell yourself and everyone, grounded and influenced your whole life.
And that's likely true in traceable and untraceable ways. But that story is an element in the metanarrative of your life. And it is bounded, incomplete, malleable.

The story you tell about the incident is dependent and entangled with the rest of the story you tell about you.

It is almost certainly different in small and large ways when you tell it to yourself, tell it to your buddies, cite it when arguing about violence in society, or are slightly tipsy and telling it to the cutie you just met at the bar and are regaling him/her with the tale of how you got to be the man/woman you are today.

When you tell the story, it is metafiction---you telling it are in it, but you telling it were not there. Depending on the authorial stance you adopt, you can make the meta explicit or implicit, but that's just technique. [[another layer---either horizontally meta, or vertically meta, depending on your mode/means.]]

Every particular is meta, every meta is particular.
Every bottom-up, self-organizer creates a top-down metanarrative/ideology, and those in turn generate bottom-up, self-organizing oppositions/alternatives.

My own meta [one of them], connected to another thread, is that this all is intimately bound with the fact that we are capable of abstraction. The fact that we can do it at all...and, more importantly, the fact that we can base actions on it.
Any monkey can tell the difference between one banana and two bananas--and even "decide" that sometimes it is better to have them both, and sometimes better to save one for later or share it with another monkey.
Only peeps [as far as we know so far] can separate the numbers from the bananas, then use the numbers to build a whole new world, and the bananas to create agriculture to feed all the peeps to live in that world.

[[Heh...apparently I'm a blathering idiot lately...at least a bit more so than usual.]]

[ussusimiel]

I would have always held you were a meta-idiot, Vraith, but now I see that you are also a fool for meta.

Or at least that's the narrative I like to tell meta-myself!

u.

[Vraith]

Or at least that's the narrative I like to tell meta-myself!

u.

Me[ta] and u.
and u. and me[ta]
No matter how they tossed the dice[ta]
It had to be
The only one for me[ta] is u.
And u. for me[ta]
So happy together

BAH BAH BAH BAH
B-B-B-BAH B-B-BAH
B-BAH BAH BAH

[peter]

And only humans can create a beautiful idea - and see that it is so.



That was cleverly done U. your explanation and examples have immediately pulled the quote into a place where I can grasp what it's actually trying to say. I'd offer the French Revolution as another example of a meta or grand narrative. Is it ever going to be possible to see your societies grand narrative [from inside that is]; the answer [he said answering his own question ] is yes - but only when it is drawn out and given iteration by the kind of deep insight which Marx demonstrated in his exposition on class struggle and the rise of the proletariat etc [but you will work within and toward the culmination of the 'master idea' nevertheless, even in the absence of awareness of it's 'pulling power' [or something ].

[Vraith]

Is it ever going to be possible to see your societies grand narrative [from inside that is];

You may or may not be aware that there exist thousands [at least] of papers and hundreds [at least] books, ranging from pure intellectual/theoretical academic work across almost every genre through hyper, meta, and magical realism, exploring that question.

My answer, similar to yours, a qualified yes. One will always be only partly successful...you better try and figure out what the sound of one hand clapping is, because you will always have only one arm free at a time.
In my world, the most important role of the thinkers/insights you mention is to understand them then do your damn best to rip them apart, tear into all the things that are wrong, and find all the things they missed.

[[despite my monkeys and bananas thing, I think there are some critters who have some capacity for the abstract, for creating a beautiful idea, and seeing it so.
That we are an exponential leap or several better at it isn't really debatable, though]]

[peter]

Yes, those birds that build great big over the top nests to attract a female probably stand back and say "By 'eck - that's a good'un!" - But I was thinking more in terms of a beautiful idea that can never really exist beyond that: say for example the 3, 4, 5 version of Pythagoras theorem. It's only real beauty is in the mind: on the page its just lines and squares. It's beauty is that it works at a deep and fundamental level.

[Vraith]

It's beauty is that it works at a deep and fundamental level.

Are you sure?
As far as I can tell, it really "works" at a deeply non-existent level.
Everywhere else it only works cuz it is "close enough."
There's this myth around the pi has a set value everywhere.
But it is a myth. It only has that value in perfectly flat spaces.
But as far as we know, there aren't any perfectly flat spaces...except abstractly.
Our space is pretty damn close to flat...so pi is very useful for doing things other than abstract thinking.
If space were tightly curved [which it may well have been at some point], pi and that theorem would have been exactly the same in every way but one---it wouldn't be "close enough" to the space that actually existed. Would that make it less beautiful, less fundamental, or not? [[and even on the existing level, our scale, adjustments have to be made to account for the error/difference. People rarely mention that when mentioning how perfect math is, how astonishing it's "fit" is.
The superiority/power/purity/etc. of math in the current world is a perfect example of a metanarrative...a controlling structure that pretends to cover reality and determines perspectives/stories within it.
But, just like all the others, it ain't all that.

[ussusimiel]

Is it ever going to be possible to see your societies grand narrative [from inside that is]

As I understand it, the postmodern idea is that there is no such grand narrative (which in itself cannot be a meta-narrative), and whenever you see someone presenting one keep looking at it until you see the cracks.

In many ways this fits with the existential idea that we live in a universe that has no guiding hand behind it and thus has no interest in what human beings do. It's not that we are on a road to nowhere, it's rather that what we know for definite is that we are on a road. Accepting that we have little or no idea where that road is going may be part of this generation's challenge. Learning that it is possible to live well without there being any destination may be the next generation's challenge.

u.

[peter]

Funnily enough U., I have been mulling over your sugestion of 'belief in progress' as a metanarrative and it seems [or seemed to me until the further illuminating influence of your last post] that the Apotheosis of Man has to be the ultimate 'omega point' of this. [The as yet unrealised Master Idea perhaps which 'legitimises' our pillage of the planet etc...] At this point we [perhaps] become 'the beautiful idea' - the form of which shadows are cast onto the wall of Plato's Cave.

[Consequent to V.'s spot-on post I find now that I can no longer understand how, in the absence of 'flatness' anywhere in the Universe, we managed to concieve of the idea in the first place [still - some would say we managed it with God so 'flat' should not be a problem ]. Still we now have the 'beauty of math' removed absolutely into the realm of ideas {unless perhaps 'actualised' by music or architecture or whatever ala Godel, Escher, Bach type relationships in some places}.]

[Vraith]

Still we now have the 'beauty of math' removed absolutely into the realm of ideas {unless perhaps 'actualised' by music or architecture or whatever ala Godel, Escher, Bach type relationships in some places}.]

The math is in that realm. The beauty is in the grasping, reaching, actualizing. [If a circle is in the Ideal realm, and there is no one to perceive/conceive it, is it beautiful?]
One problem with the Master Idea [and most of the Platonic/Ideal]:
It is very difficult [maybe impossible] to really, completely understand a perfect circle. Many of its properties aren't amenable to our material existence. [which may be a limit inherent in us, the cave-trapped].

But there is another kind of thing/problem, if we shift to other kinds of "entities." Say a horse. The problem with the Ideal Horse isn't just that we're cave-bound and can't see it. It's that the Ideal Horse's "properties" [unlike the perfect circles] are mutually exclusive/self-contradictory.
It's not a concept that can't be instantiated due to the material world's rules/limits, it's a concept that can't be "real" even conceptually, according to itself. Like a square circle.
So...how do we know if the Master Idea is a Perfect Circle, with some kind of "reality" even if non-material---or if it is a Perfect Horse, which cannot be "real" even in its own terms?
There's a silly-ish way around that: every particular material horse is an imperfect reflection of the Ideal form of that particular type of horseness.
There's an even more useless way round it: none of the things that we think of as properties of horses and/or horseness are really essential, accurate, or real properties of the beast or Idea.

u.---Post certainly wants to say it isn't a meta itself, but it does run into problems keeping itself separate/free of the taint.
So/and eternal vigilance/wariness/doubt is necessary---but many in the game, especially those with psycho/social ties, doubt that anyone anywhere can really be free of the constructs/structures of the meta.
Especially when that doubt/vigilance---the primary tool for "looking for the cracks," criticism,---is also, to some degree, incorporated in and essential to things that are explicitly meta.

[ussusimiel]

u.---Post certainly wants to say it isn't a meta itself, but it does run into problems keeping itself separate/free of the taint.
So/and eternal vigilance/wariness/doubt is necessary---but many in the game, especially those with psycho/social ties, doubt that anyone anywhere can really be free of the constructs/structures of the meta.
Especially when that doubt/vigilance---the primary tool for "looking for the cracks," criticism,---is also, to some degree, incorporated in and essential to things that are explicitly meta.

I agree. Some of the limits are inherent in the medium we use to talk about the reality/truth/metaness/postness of things. Language being necessarily the medium for reason and rationality is also implicated in those very things, so vigilance/doubt needs to operate at the very basic level of the words we use (which I don't believe it does for most (if not all) ideologies). Thus the necessity of art and poetry (and its consequent co-option/degradation/dismissal in the contemporary era).

The argument that I see for the non-metanarrative nature of the postmodern position is that in the absence of language there can be no narrative. So, the attempt is made to address that reality. If there is a grand narrative nothing will stop it. In the meantime, in the absence of evidence of such, let's act as if there is none. And then we can more freely operate at the level we do know something about, the local, the human, the personal.

u.

[Vraith]

so vigilance/doubt needs to operate at the very basic level of the words we use

(which I don't believe it does for most (if not all) ideologies).

Thus the necessity of art and poetry (and its consequent co-option/degradation/dismissal in the contemporary era).

in the absence of evidence of such, let's act as if there is none. And then we can more freely operate at the level we do know something about, the local, the human, the personal.

u.

First---Yes, I agree.

Second---I think that's correct.

Third---Agreed, and is it weird, or to be expected, that when we've reached a time when we can more than ever show the value of such, and have more access to it than ever if we want it, is when our systems do those things to it?

Fourth---Agreed. But we also have to be wary of that. Just because some [even the vast majority of] things are not grand/universal doesn't mean that nothing is.
Peeps can go too far---for example, I saw an argument that no one anywhere in any modern civilization could possibly be "authentically" heterosexual. Linear nonsense and circular nature and self-contradiction are just the minor/obvious problems. What a complete pile of horseshit [both ideal and Material horseshit, metaphorically speaking. ]

For some things "everywhere" IS a particular somewhere. "The Universe" IS "local."

Sorting them out, putting them in the proper category/context/story---messy.

[ussusimiel]

That's an awful lot of agreement for two people, Vraith, are you certain you're not just a meta-version of me?

Just because some [even the vast majority of] things are not grand/universal doesn't mean that nothing is.

Can you give some examples of what you mean here (so that I can agree with you!)

Peeps can go too far---for example, I saw an argument that no one anywhere in any modern civilization could possibly be "authentically" heterosexual.

I can see how the argument might be made, but I can't see any reason to make it.

What a complete pile of horseshit [both ideal and Material horseshit, metaphorically speaking. ]

I thought for a moment that you had slipped up in your language here, and was imagining a person looking at the steaming pile they had actually made with their argument. I must say that it would be quite funny to live in such a universe

For some things "everywhere" IS a particular somewhere. "The Universe" IS "local."

Sorting them out, putting them in the proper category/context/story---messy.

I want to agree with you here, but if you could be more specific then I'd be sure of what I was agreeing to

u.

[Vraith]

That's an awful lot of agreement for two people, Vraith, are you certain you're not just a meta-version of me?

Just because some [even the vast majority of] things are not grand/universal doesn't mean that nothing is.

Can you give some examples of what you mean here (so that I can agree with you!)

Peeps can go too far---for example, I saw an argument that no one anywhere in any modern civilization could possibly be "authentically" heterosexual.

I can see how the argument might be made, but I can't see any reason to make it.

What a complete pile of horseshit [both ideal and Material horseshit, metaphorically speaking. ]

I thought for a moment that you had slipped up in your language here, and was imagining a person looking at the steaming pile they had actually made with their argument. I must say that it would be quite funny to live in such a universe

For some things "everywhere" IS a particular somewhere. "The Universe" IS "local."

Sorting them out, putting them in the proper category/context/story---messy.

I want to agree with you here, but if you could be more specific then I'd be sure of what I was agreeing to

u.

First--heh, that's just a new version of the myth that we're the same person...which we are supposed to be DENYING, in case you forgot.

Second--Very briefly, and not totally accurate or fully developed: take morality. We get in big, big trouble when meta-tizing it, one grand good/evil/ideology. It has to be contextual to the local for many reasons.
And yet---the "property" or "capacity" of morality IS present in beings. And not just in humans [though we're a different level]. And it appears to be evolution-positive, it is selected FOR.
But that creates the problem [noted at the end of messiness and sorting]:
Does it belong in Philosophy? Or in something akin to mathematics? Or one, or several, sciences [biology, neurology, psychiatry...]

Third--you can see how an argument could be made---but would it be a GOOD argument? I don't think you could do that [the paper took some other people's ideas---Monique Wittig in particular---and twisted them beyond all sense and recognition.] I'm not at all sure why the person felt the need to make the argument. Or why anyone felt the need to publish it.

Fourth---glad you were amused by my piling on. Sometimes it seems we DO live in a universe like that. Then I just cackle hysterically for a second, and lure my sanity back with false promises.

The last---I just refer back to what I said about morality as a possible example.
It may well be [speculation/intuition] that:
"For any local environment [i.e. any particular Universe] capable of sustaining intelligent life, such life will necessarily evolve the quality designated "morality."
[[[the expressions/results should, if I'm correct, be species and even individually variable/particular---but the concerns, approaches, etc. generally applicable.....SAAAYYYYY---what if morality is quantum mechanical?
A quark named Qood and one called Qevil. [and remember quarks can never be alone, and quarks are the only things subject to all the known forces...hmmmm]]]

[peter]

I find it hard to accept that the 'idea' of a perfect horse cannot exist just because the physical reality cannot; surely that is not what you are sayng V? I must be missing something - I'll go back and re-read.......

I don't understand why the Ideal Horses properties are 'mutually exclusive' - self-contradictory'; surely they are but extrapolations of all the properties we know to be 'of the horse', but elevated to the perfect level. Why the impossibility of thier existance at the conceptual level? [I'll read on.] Horses aren't a reflection of their perfect idealised form - they are a yearning toward it!

Can a society have more than one meta-narrative opperating in it at a time [if we can get all pre-post-modern about it ]; If it is a Grand Over-arching Narrative [a narrative to contain all other marratives] - then how could there be more than one [It's like having more than the One-Ring in TLOTR ].