To Possess a Metamodern Heart

Evan Atlas
12 min readDec 6, 2023

As with one of my previous posts, which dealt with love as “madness” or being in a state of head over heels disorientation, this post will explore metaphysical principles of love, with some surprising conclusions. This will also loosely follow from my recent series of posts including: Anti-Anthropocentrism, No One to Love, and my Nihilism playlist.

So: What is “possession”? What do modern and metamodern worldviews say about possession in the context of romantic relationships? Is it necessarily a part of love? And is it a good or bad thing?

Art by Wombo

To begin, let’s give a definition of possession from the modern and metamodern standpoints. Modern possession can be thought of as: To own; to have in one’s control; to be an autonomous and conscious agent in a unidirectional, power-based relationship with an object, or an objectified person.

“1a: to have and hold as property : OWN

b: to have as an attribute, knowledge, or skill

2a: to seize and take control of : take into one’s possession

b: to enter into and control firmly : DOMINATE

c: to bring or cause to fall under the influence, domination, or control of some emotional or intellectual response or reaction.”

- Merriam-Webster

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Evan Atlas

Hey, I'm Evan! I'm a writer and philosopher. My work is aimed at confronting the challenges of our metacrisis, and building a theory of metarevolution.