Metamodern Meaning

Brendan Graham Dempsey talks to Julyan Davey about his immensely prescient and rich essay, "Towards a Metamodern Spirituality," a must-read for anyone interested in the topic of religion and spirituality in metamodernity: https://medium.com/the-phoenix-project/towards-a-metamodern-spirituality-6d71f958a2e0. To hear more, visit brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com

Theory and ritual artist Scoutleader Wiley talks to Brendan about metamodern magick, a post-postmodern psychotechnology of re-enchantment that utilizes ironic sincerity and informed naivete to (re)connect us with meaning and the Earth. How can we engage with ritual and mythos beyond superstition and gullibility? What ends does ritual accomplish that a purely rational and objective stance to experience cannot? How can laughing at ourselves help us take the sacred seriously?0:00 Introduction1:36 A Need for New Rituals: Personal and Communal Meaning-Making9:05 Magic vs. Magick: Objective vs. Transjective Transformation15:26 Acausal-Representational Systems (ARS)18:52 Regenerative Reverence: An "As If" Spirituality35:09 "Make Coffee Like You Give a F**k": Creating Ritual and Living Mindfully44:23 Spiritual Vulnerability and Ironic Sincerity47:51 Necessary Subversion To hear more, visit brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com

Dr. Gregg Henriques talks to Brendan about his Unified Theory of Knowledge (UTOK) framework and how it promisingly contributes to the effort of articulating a sciency-friendly post-postmodern grand narrative for our confused and meaning-hungry times. Gregg helps clarify points of overlap as well as distinction between other post-postmodern maps, while zeroing in on the specific existential challenge of our day, which UTOK clarifies and contextualizes. Finally, the two consider how we might, through ironic sincerity, co-create a set of living symbols that can help teach the full "wisdom stack" we'll need to not only survive but thrive beyond the imminent transformations of the metaverse and the "digital identity problem."0:00 Introduction1:31 Overview of the Unified Theory of Knowledge (UTOK)7:18 UTOK and Metamodernism15:46 UTOK and Integral Theory28:08 Mapping the Complexification Domains38:09 Brendan: How the Metanarrative Answers the Crisis of Psychological Studies39:17 UTOK and the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness49:57 The "God" Question58:06 A Spiritual Omega Point or Posthumanist Singularity? The Need for a Wisdom Stack1:03:44 The Need for a New Mythology: A New Meaning amidst the Meaning Crisis To hear more, visit brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com

Joe Lightfoot talks to Brendan about the "Liminal Web," a term he coined for an emerging online community of metatheorists, systems poets, and sensemakers. Discussion quickly moves from mapping this online subculture to exploring its possible futures for deepening connection and embodiment. What are the potentials of purely virtual communitas? Are there in-person communal structures into which this online momentum might be transferred? What are the ingredients of successful communities more generally? What makes this loose network different than other would-be changemakers of the past? Where is it all going, and what is its significance?  0:00 Introduction 2:01 The Liminal Web 4:55 Mapping Mapmakers: A Perspective on the Perspective-Takers 7:48 A Certain Kind of Engagement 9:45 Materializing the Meta-Tribe IRL 25:38 Charitability, Development, and Exclusion 35:57 Post-Postmodern Systems Change 42:22 The Importance of Being Earnest: Heroic Humility and the Dao of Service 56:26 Dancing Dialecticians and the Ever-Receding Absolute 1:01:25 Sacred Simplicity Beyond Complexity To hear more, visit brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com

Feeling stuck in his meditation practice and looking for guidance from a 4th Path adept, Brendan talks again to Roger Thisdell, someone who has attained a new default experience of mind as permanently centerless and without the sense of a singly, positioned epistemic agent (i.e., what in traditional language might be called "enlightenment"). Both thought it might be helpful to explore some instructional guidance in a podcast setting, where the process could be shared for others' benefit. In this context, Roger asks some probing questions and offers some helpful tips and suggestions for cultivating awakening.   0:00 Introduction 2:54 Brendan Describes His Path and Motivation towards Waking Up 9:12 (Clarifying Nonduality) 12:22 Brendan Tries to Describe His Phenomenological Sense of Self 16:47 Shifting Perspective through Thought 21:50 Symbolizing Awakened Consciousness 29:45 Beyond Equanimity: Zeroing in on the "Self" 40:54 The Uses of Conception to Change Perception 42:39 Building Motivation 48:07 Fire Kasina 50:45 Being vs. Striving 54:52 Building Metacognition 59:11 Naming Our Motivations To hear more, visit brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com

Brendan talks to Henry Andrews about the legacy of Clare Graves's work, which formed the basis of the Spiral Dynamics framework, which has in turn highly influenced the articulation of integral theory. After going over some of the history, the discussion then turns to the "Great Stage Theory Debate" (Henry's coinage) initiated by a comment by Nora Bateson on social media that re-ignited debate over long-standing critiques of stage theories in general.  0:00 Introduction 2:53 Stage 1: The Research of Clare Graves 12:53 Stage 2: Don Beck, Christopher Cowan, and Spiral Dynamics 20:01 Stage 3: Ken Wilber and SDi 24:46 Stage 4: Hanzi Freinacht and Political Metamodernism28:11 The "Great Stage Theory Debate": Seeking a "Both/And" Approach 46:04 Debate in the Social Media Landscape47:59 Transcending the Stage of Stage Theorization: Practice for Playing Jazz To hear more, visit brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com

Zak Stein is a writer and educator with a doctorate in human development and education from Harvard University. Working with Kurt Fischer, he helped further hone and nuance developmental stage theories as part of the neo-Piagetian consensus. Deeply influenced by integral philosophy, he has also articulated many crucial critiques of the movement in an attempt to emphasize the dynamical and contextual nature of stage assessments. Here Zak and Brendan discuss just what the science tells us about the reality of stages; the problems around their simplification, reification, and misapplication; the question of how well they map onto socio-cultural development; the importance of processual vs. categorical thinking; and what development can and can't do as part of a metamodern spiritual metanarrative.  0:00 Introduction 1:12 Static Stages or Dynamic Processes? A Metapsychological Clarification 10:18 Being "at" a Stage? Development as an Ecology of Skillsets 19:23 Non-Linear Growth and Ranges of Operation: Fractal Skill-Chunking across Domains 24:05 The Car Mechanic and the Quantum Mechanic: Transferable Skills and the Importance of Embodiment 28:55 Roots of Cognitive Complexity 1:57 The Recapitulation Theory: Does Phylogeny Map Ontogeny? 36:50 The Growth to Goodness Issue: Complexification and Pathology 41:31 Better Heuristics than Stages? Learning Processes, Capacity Asymmetries, and Dynamics of Teacherly Authority 48:18 Theory vs. (Mis)Application: Are Stage Theories Just "B.S. and Colonial as Hell"? 59:41 Generalizing Developmental Space 1:05:30 Development as Metanarrative? Stage Theories and the Religion that's not a Religion To hear more, visit brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com

This is Part 2 of the series (Part 3 will be on Layman's channel), in which the three of us wrestle deeply within dialogos about how to implement the religion that is not a religion in a way that is both viable and honourable.   0:00 Introduction 6:14 Stages of Faith? Development, Adjacency, and Trustworthiness 11:36 Mechanisms of Change vs. Maps of Change: Problematizing the Narrative Uses of Development 17:15 Traditional (concrete) vs. Modern (formal) Signs of Trustworthiness 20:35 Sequence, Movement, and Attraction: Trusting One's Future Self 24:38 The Normativity Problem 30:39 Complexification as Mechanism: Ecologies of Practice Give us Perspective 34:34 Religious Levels as Relevance Realization at the Scale of Distributed Cognition 49:39 Trust the Process: Organizing by Models of Successful Processing, not Pre-Determined Plan  LINKS Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAnLbaFHYWQ To hear more, visit brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com

Writer Sophie Strand discusses re-enchantment, the animist revival, ecological storytelling, and the meaning of death and change. They explore topics such as the connection between social strife and the split between matter and spirit, the conflicting views on the internet and technology, the role of the transcendent in the cycle of decay and renewal, and the importance of effective communication and storytelling.

Daniel Thorson and Brendan discuss the work of John Vervaeke, creator of the "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis" series, comparing and contrasting it to Daniel's own pioneering efforts to develop a framework and set of practices for training agents of healing and transformation in our disintegrating world. They also reflect on both the importance and the problem of creating "ontologically neutral" practices stripped of highly context-bound terminology and ideas, whether that be for a "religion that's not a religion" or the kind of framework Daniel is developing.0:00 Introduction1:50 On Entering Vervaekeland5:49 Transformation: Virtue as a Leverage Point for Meaning10:44 Vervaeke's Perennial Problems and His Proposed Ecology of Practices18:35 Thorson's Framework of Five Aspects (1. Energy System, 2. Psyche, 3. Relationship, 4. Ethics, 5. Perception)30:10 Thorson's Ecology of Practices: 1. Samadhi and Healthy Living; 2. "Focusing," Bio-Emotive Work, Internal Family Systems; 3. Circling and Intentional Community; 4. Human Systems; 5. Emptiness Insight36:29 A Vervaeke-Thorson Synthesis?39:12 Disenchanting Ecologies of Practice? The Challenge and Promise of Sacred Containers46:44 A Missing Metanarrative? Connecting Myth and Praxis50:39 An Ecology of Ecologies of Practices: Modular Methods, Local Color?54:27 Wisdom's Scaling Constraints: Seeking Integration in a Disintegrating WorldEmerge podcast:https://www.whatisemerging.com/emergepodcastThe Monastic Academy:https://www.monasticacademy.com/www.BrendanGrahamDempsey.com To hear more, visit brendangrahamdempsey.substack.com