I.
“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” — L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)
It can be difficult to fathom just how different the worldview and interiority of previous generations was from our own. And the farther back you go, the more this holds true. For example, in 2026 it’s difficult to read the beloved The Way of a Pilgrim as anything other than a fairy story, a Russian Orthodox fable, instead of a realistic account of a devout believer. Even though it dates from the 19th Century — post the Enlightenment, post the Industrial Revolution, and therefore by no means ancient history — a suspension of disbelief is required to accept that anyone could have the dogged and simple faith of the pilgrim described: a simple man trudging here and there with only a nine-word prayer, hard bread, and some salt to sustain him; the spiritual world as real to him as the physical. The vast majority of us are so far removed from that kind of living. We rarely see ordinary people who are totally devoted to their vows of poverty and discomfort, not as a temporary vocation but as a way of life, and who are awake to the spiritual aspects of existence.
Even in the first two decades of the 20th century, there were many people devoted to the lifestyle of ‘tramping’ — living outdoors, roaming between cities and villages, subsisting on the charity of strangers, devoted to a life spent on the road and in Holy Nature, singing songs and composing poems, loving God and their fellow man — a way of life which stands in opposition to the vagabonds and hobos of the Great Depression, the hippies of the 1960s and 70s, the homeless drifter of the 80s and 90s, or our 21st century’s opioid addict. Stephen Graham’s 1926 The Gentle Art of Tramping describes the best sort of tramp: a wanderer by choice not necessity, escaping the mounting machinery of the Industrial Revolution and WW1, hopelessly in love with creation, and opting to separate himself from the ways of the modern world — not by way of hermetic retreat, but by relentlessly pursuing a real life in the real world. His eyes were open to the terrible truths of the world, but were also open to the spirituality of every living creature. And he also knew his philosophy was nothing if it wasn’t applied through suffering and discomfort and the rediscovery of simple joys.
The main difference between us and the simple 19th Century pilgrim or the joyful 1920s tramp, is the gaping hole opened in our culture by postmodernism’s attack on meaning. The philosophical approach of postmodernism, developed in the 1960s and 70s and ascendent as the dominant school of thought over the past 50 years, teaches that there are no singular truths — everything is subjective, and what we call ‘truths’ are really social constructs, shaped by individual perspectives, surrounding culture, and power dynamics. The result of this approach is the destruction of grand narratives and simplistic faith. Instead, our worldviews are increasingly atomised and endlessly customisable, with no possibility for an overarching story, no purpose to seek, no goal to strive toward except for mind-numbing comfort. So it’s no wonder that in 2026, we live in a cynical and tired world. We’ve arrived at the logical endpoint of postmodernism, the inevitable result of tearing down the icons and statues and frameworks bequeathed by previous generations. And now, we have nothing left to admire or build upon. If, as Pontius Pilate once claimed, there is no such thing as truth, then life has no purpose.
So where do we go from here?
II.
“We see this manifest as a kind of informed naïvety… The metamodern generation understands that we can be both ironic and sincere in the same moment; that one does not necessarily diminish the other.” — Luke Turner, Metamodernism: A Brief Introduction (2015)
Metamodernism is a recent cultural development emerging from the black hole of postmodernism, building off the work of Dutch professors Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker’s foundational 2010 essay, Notes on Metamodernism, which describes metamodernism as a third way beyond old-fashioned grand narratives and ironic postmodernism, by way of oscillating between the two extremes. This ‘oscillation’ isn’t the same as compromise or even synthesis, but a constant and purposeful swinging between sincerity and irony; it’s the choice to take a leap of faith after every bout of cynicism.
As professor Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm outlines in his 2021 book Metamodernism: The Future of Theory, the metamodern traveller recognises the futility in seeking a singular meaning to give his life a purpose, and yet nevertheless strives towards such a narrative with a kind of ‘willed hope’. He isn’t a foolish idealist, but nor is he a nihilist. He oscillates between the two, and in this oscillation, in this refusal to fall for either blunt-force optimism or ironic depression, he charts a path toward the light.
III.
“And he said: ‘Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’” — Matthew 18:3 (ESV)
The man at the centre of The Way of a Pilgrim is guileless and hopelessly innocent — closely related to Don Quixote riding full tilt into a fantasy. Compare this to Stephen Graham’s tramp who is wise to the ways of the world — sly when he has to be, naïve when he can be; foolish in the eyes of many, but an object of envy in the secret hearts of many more. I think the ‘gentle tramp’ described by Graham is a model of the metamodern way of living, and a more realistic example for our times, because he is childlike without being childish.
Christ taught his followers to adopt an attitude of childlikeness, not immaturity. The use of ‘turn’ in the phrase “…unless you turn and become like children…” comes from the Greek work ‘stréphō’, which is different from ‘metanoia’ or wholesale transformation. It’s not a change of our inner nature or a relinquishing of our adulthood, it’s simply a change in our approach. Christ knows we cannot become children again in our hearts — this would be stooping to childish immaturity — but we can be childlike in how we choose to live.
The tramp does not have a child’s mind filled with simple faith like the earlier pilgrims, but he nevertheless adopts a child’s way, approaching life with a cheerful openness and simplicity, despite knowing the horrors that lurk behind every corner. He wears the cloak of childlikeness as a covering over his cynicism, even as he oscillates, as we all must, between faint hope and weary realism. Ultimately, he chooses to have faith and to pursue meaning, while acknowledging that the old narratives may not be fully applicable, that there may be no real hope of success. His faith is not an impenetrable suit of armor; instead it is threadbare clothing, providing only a little protection against the sun, wind, rain, and frost.
IV.
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” —Dante Alighieri, Inferno (1321)
Dante’s Inferno visualises hell as a downward spiral. And doesn’t this aptly describe the state of our global culture, everything constantly getting worse than whatever bad thing preceded it? Paul Kingsnorth terms this being ‘trapped in the Machine’, Rod Dreher uses the word ‘disenchantment’, Catherine Shannon calls it the ‘Great Diminishment’, Cory Doctorow coined the awfully suitable ‘enshittification’, and academics may refer to it as ‘postmodern malaise.’ But whatever term you use, we all feel it. Every choice only seems to lead us to a further descent, like we are in the worst possible timeline of the supposedly infinite multiverse.
We are usually given two types of answers to the problem of the downward spiral, and I dislike them both. The first is to pretend it isn’t happening, that things are not so bad, that this diagnosis of hellishness is historically blinkered. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this answer because when people from all walks of life, across the entire political spectrum, all agree that our global culture in 2026 seems a lot worse than before and only likely to get worse again, we should sit up and take notice. I’m more interested in refuting the second category of response, because it seems enticing but it’s mostly unhelpful, which is that the only way out of our downward spiral is to rewind back to an earlier stage, somewhere further up the spiral itself. This is essentially the position of Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine and Dreher’s Living in Wonder, as well as the basis of the New Romantics’ passionate yearnings, the Ortho-Bro and Catholic-Bro desire to ‘RETVRN’ to former glories, and the glossy promises of the tradwife influencers. Everyone seems to have identified a former time where things were better, and wants to press the rewind button to get us back there.
But even if that kind of rewinding were possible (it’s not), then what? How do we avoid slipping back down again? To travel up from the 7th to the 3rd level of Hell isn’t exactly an improvement; you’re still in Hell. I would go so far as to say it’s pathetic to be aiming for stasis, wishing we could freeze culture at whatever moment seemed good to us.
Neither Kingsnorth nor the New Romantics nor the tradwives are suggesting a workable solution for the masses of normal people who work in multi-national companies, who live in cities, who need to earn a living, who like engaging with the internet and social media, etc. They may be adept at identifying the manifold problems with modernity, but a doctor who diagnoses an illness without prescribing a practical cure isn’t much of a healer.
V.
“...be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” — Matthew 10:16 (ESV)
The glaring problem for any of us who write about the harms of engaging with the Machine (myself included), which we tend to brush over, is that for all of our whinging about modernity and technology, we are all living in it, profiting from it, working for it. By any fair definition, we are hypocrites. The tradwives are wealthy entrepreneurs selling a reality TV version of their lives (they aren’t ‘trad’ according to their own definition); Kingsnorth makes his income from a Substack newsletter; the New Romantics are forming online communities and internet journals. And I am as guilty as anyone of posting pithy notes about the ills of phone addiction from the very mobile device I supposedly detest. In fact, probably the only person left on earth who can eruditely critique the modern machine world without being a hypocrite is farmer-poet Wendell Berry, and the man is 91 years old. Very few of us are going to be taking the Wendell Berry option.
What I’m more interested in is how to become the opposite of the hypocrite. If a hypocrite feigns innocence they don’t possess, then I want to be an informed naïve, living out an innocence I don’t deserve. I want to be the foolish-seeming tramp who oscillates between wisdom and innocence. I think this is our best hope for finding the way out of our current downward spiral and into an upward spiral, because there is no going backwards. We can’t LARP our way back to mediaevalism or pre-Industrialisation or whatever time period you personally feel nostalgic for. We can’t even go back to the 90s or 2000s (despite current fashion trends). No, we have to make something from this world deconstructed of meaning, and the answer can’t be limited to looking in the rearview mirror. Instead, in the wake of so much deconstruction, we must seek the journey of reconstruction.
VI.
“The man you tramp with is not a foreigner… as you may discover before you discover he is kindred. You are thrown into intimate contact with him. Even if the two of you are a couple of egoists strongly self-centred, something is bound to get across in a long tramp. That is one reason why tramping is such a healthful spiritual experience.” — Stephen Graham, The Gentle Art of Tramping (1926)
I want to live as one of Graham’s gentle tramps. Not hard-bitten and cynically detached from the world, but moving through the world with an open-hearted love for my fellows. To act with sincerity while knowing my acts are partial; to commit to meaning while admitting the possibility of emptiness.
Storm, in describing metamodernism, goes so far as to argue that the ‘myth of disenchantment’ is itself a modern construction, that we have never been purely disenchanted, that we are inherently spiritual creatures who constantly reinvest the world with meanings, rituals, and tacit metaphysics. The question then is not whether our age can believe again, but whether we will choose wise forms of belief — habits that convert longing into love, skepticism into service, and individual ideas into shared projects of reconstruction.
What does this look like, practically? I think it must begin with travelling light, stripping down your life to one of fewer possessions and more hospitality. Does it matter that the traveller at my campfire tonight doesn’t share all of my opinions, eats my dinner, drinks half of my coffee, and is seeking a different road than the one I’m on? Of course not. Besides, what am I so afraid of? Sure, we may have an uncomfortable conversation, I may find him impolite and selfish, wrong-headed and foolish. But haven’t I also been the same? Can we not help each other despite these issues, overcoming or overlooking what are really, in the scheme of things, small obstacles?
We must approach people and projects with the spirit of ‘as if’. Building groups, communities, third spaces, projects, and institutions ‘as if’ the common good is still possible, ‘as if’ grander narratives still apply, ‘as if’ others have our best interests at heart. We won’t build anything worthwhile out of mean-spirited or fearful cynicism, and we will trip over our own feet if we remain blind optimists, but by oscillating between serpentine wisdom and dovelike innocence as the circumstances require, we can overcome our fearful inaction. By expecting the best of people, you open up a space for them to step into, you invite them to rise to the occasion, as opposed to boxing them in with your pre-conceived nihilism.
None of us are escaping the Machine, not totally. Most of us can’t even quit social media, and we rely upon our phones and the internet to engage with the global economy, to perform our jobs, to communicate with our family and friends. So I reject the reactionary approach, the ‘pilgrim aesthetic’ of seeking to escape technology and the internet, of declaring oneself too holy for such devices. The tramp knows better, he appreciates the value of tools without allowing them to master him. To use a tool so far as it serves your purpose, but to not become enslaved by it, is the way to freedom and human flourishing. So thread your way through the internet, through the modern economy, through the machine-world. Do not cease to look upon it all as a tool, a way to connect and discover and learn and get things done, but nothing more. The tramp knows his tent is but a thin barrier separating him from wild creation and his fellow man. The tent is useful just as the internet is useful, but we must never forget that neither of them are the sum total of the world.
VII.
“The first tramp left Eden many years ago… it was the only place in which one could feel at home forever and ever. And outside of it one must wander. Life is a wandering and a seeking where it was once a sitting still and an adoring.” — Stephen Graham, The Gentle Art of Tramping (1926)
I don’t envision tramping as the end point. Drifting impermanence is ultimately antithetical to building anything worthwhile. But I do think we need to become nomads again — mental, spiritual, emotional, cultural nomads. We are locked in a downward spiral which needs to be left far behind, not rewound. Instead of focusing on what is wrong and distasteful about our postmodern world (there is an endless supply), focus on what you want your life to be about and move doggedly in that direction. Find out what small, achievable, tangible steps you can take today which move you toward a life of loving your fellow man and your God.
Instead of wailing about the poisoned fields and rotten fruit of our current age, let us set off into the world and allow those destitute fields to lie fallow. By doing so, we may gain the wisdom that only comes with departure from the known and contact with real people and moments requiring real faith. And upon our return home, we’ll see what has survived the oscillations of the journey, the sifting and unburdening of a period spent on the road.
The tramp is a discerning creature, seeking to be as innocent as the pilgrim while remaining as wise as the cynic. He is more mature than either the pilgrim or the cynic, for he has learned how to be childlike without being childish. I think if more of us were engaged in this kind of discernment, we would stand a better chance of exiting our current hellish spiral and building something new and better. Something more befitting our metamodern age.