Abramson’s ninth phase is “an optimistic response to tragedy by returning, albeit cautiously, to a romantic response to tragedy” and is referred to as thinking in an ‘as if’ mode (strangely reminiscent of Vaihinger).It is not a blinkered view of pretense. It is a view that an optimistic outlook is, in spite of hopelessness or disarray, a viable option for no other reason than it can’t make anything worse, dispels despair, and that ‘inevitability’ may be an incorrect assumption. It presumes a default position that we do not have all the information, that missing and yet to be discovered information may undermine present conclusions.

The tenth and final characteristic of metamodernism is “interdisciplinarity”. There is an assumption that the proper response to the present crises is not the discovery of something new. A new solution is a fruitless endeavour. The metamodernist position is the arrangement of priorities needs to be reassessed. “To be clear, this is not an anarchistic opposition to structure, but rather a thoughtful and civic-minded interest in the radical reevaluation of structures, with an eye toward progressive change.

My own thoughts on all this is that although much thought has gone into metamodernism, it is almost all sociological in nature. Very little of it is philosophical. Perhaps, this is legitimate. Perhaps in its early stages, it is too much to expect but if metamodernism is to be a philosophical response to modernism, it needs to be conceptually ironed out. Simply leaving the conceptual trend as a social phenomenon renders it without lasting strength and leaves it vulnerable to eclipse. I see metamodernism as having broad appeal as a fundamental starting point. I also see it as fairly disorganized.