History can be divided in pre-classicism, classicism, modernism, and postmodernism. Pre-classicism is a collection of knowledge accumulated over hundreds of thousands of years until Greece, classicism over few thousand years since Greece, modernism over a century or so since 18th century, and postmodernism over few decades in the second half of 20th century. Classicism, modernism, and postmodernism removed some knowledge from previous periods, causing a drastic contemporary reduction in knowledge and increase in risk and values.

Metamodernism, coming after postmodernism, aims to restore the lost knowledge from each period making it available for contemporary use. This is enriching knowledge from each of the periods making it safer and more valuable. Modernism and postmodernism especially had little time to develop knowledge yet have great power and are therefore very unsafe. Their risks and quality would be lowered by adding pre-classical and classical knowledge.

Mass media – a necessary component of hyper-centralized system – must produce substantial amounts of content to maintain the centralization. This content must not contain any values and can not oppose any truth.

Therefore it is empty content – content which does not develop consciousness and is not entering in conflict with any established truth. Purpose of this content is to exist and spend the limited cognitive resources of system members. It is not engaging members on the level of intelligence or consciousness, but on the level of instinct, or is avoiding any engagement.

Manufacturing of empty content is the result of a closed system which is not capable to create values and change, but focuses only on managing risk – avoiding conflict with truth and avoiding radical unknown incontrollable change.

To add values to content it is necessary to open the mass media and switch to open decision making in the centralized system. Once values are added to the content and mass media, intelligence, and – more importantly – consciousness will start to develop.

Otherwise empty content will continue to regress consciousness and intelligence of its members.

Grand narratives, mass media, and hyper-centralized power can not exist without each other. Their total opposites are personal experiences, personal connections, and small group cooperations, such as family. They are extreme sides of the spectrum with many more options in-between.

Our fulfillment requires participation in both extremes and all options in between. We understand the world in narratives and we need all types of narratives – small and grand – to understand our function.

While all narratives can be wrong, grand narratives, mass media, and hyper-centralization are too complex to fix quickly and damage they cause is great. Damage from great narratives is caused by the conflict with personal stories, and between the grand narratives competing for power.

The expansion of mass media is forcing generalization of grand narratives and creating bigger conflicts between personal and grand, and also between different grand narratives. The speed of change is also accelerating and does not allow time for adaptation.

Without hyper-centralization and such high reaching mass media, individuals required much less energy to balance the grand narratives with more personal ones. Changes and conflicts were slower and smaller giving us time to adapt and repair. Now extreme generalization and speed of change are creating internal individual conflicts which do not have the time to be resolve.

Solution to this is openness, which reduces the conflict between grand and personal, but also slows down generalized changes and conflicts. This will give more time to individuals to process the changes and minimize damage.