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To Possess a Metamodern Heart
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?
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.”
Similarly, “possessiveness” is often characterized as a negative trait of relationships in our current menagerie of worldviews. It seems to float in a word-cloud which contains others like “jealousy”, “codependence”, “control”, and “distrust”.
“The quintessentially individualistic act…[is] the claim that one has, by ‘possession,’ separated for oneself property from the great commons of unowned things.”
We are going to focus on possession in a romantic context. But it is, undoubtedly, a concept contextualized by our ideas about possession in other areas, along with adjacent “modern” ideas — namely those involving power, freedom, and property. Let’s explore why that is, and how it contributes to an unfavorable attitude towards possession in romantic…
