Brendan Graham Dempsey (Part 2) - How and Why Cultures Evolve, and the Emerging Stage of Metamodernism

Deep Transformation

Ep. 134 (Part 2 of 2) | Author, podcaster, farmer, and poet, Brendan Graham Dempsey, brings passion, dedication, clarity, and outstanding scholarship to the fascinating and enormously important study of cultural evolution, which operates on both a personal level and a collective one. He illuminates how, when, and why we shift from one cultural worldview to the next, using his own life’s journey through the cultural stages as a map and paints colorful portraits of the outstanding characteristics of each stage: traditional/premodern, modern, postmodern, and metamodern. Brendan enlightens us as to the tumultuous and often lonely and despairing time that occurs when our prior stage has been deconstructed and we find ourselves between worldviews in a liminal space where sensemaking fails. As he puts it, we live in certain worlds to help us navigate reality. But then things change, and we bump up against the limits of things. Now the time has come to update our sense of the world; we are invited to expand and grow.

We come to understand why it is necessary for cultures to evolve—to accommodate ever increasing complexity—and why culture wars and confusion result from misunderstanding a worldview that infiltrates your psyche before it’s ready. Brendan explains why postmodernism does not serve us now, introducing and inviting us to the new, emerging worldview of metamodernism, where there is hope in positivity, affirmation, and aspirational idealism. Hope, and the promise of coming together in a new understanding among peoples, a prerequisite for dealing with the challenges of the global crises that affect us all. Brendan brings a big heart, keen mind, and a lot of verve to these complex subjects, which come alive under his brilliant tutelage. As he points out, deconstructing the psyche can help save the world, adding, this is a lot of what the metamodern community is trying to get the word out about. Recorded May 1, 2024.

“Metamodernism is a worldview of worldviews, a cultural logic of cultural logics, trying to expand beyond the frame we have been working in…to a framework where we can relate to each other in deeper ways, and find deeper modes of understanding, compassion, and empathy with one another.“

(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)

Topics & Time Stamps – Part 2

• How do the Civil Rights movement and other awareness expanding movements fit into cultural evolution? (00:57)
• Postmodernism in academia (06:21)
• Postmodern art, films, punk, grunge—a response to how superficial the suburban world has become (07:30)
• To move out of the cynical and skeptical, your critique can’t be all cynical too—you’ve got to start affirming things (08:22)
• Thus metamodernism: a turn to sincerity, earnestness, moving through irony (10:54)
• How metamodernism shows up in the arts—like with many worldviews, the artist often shows up as forerunner of the shift in stages (14:28)
• Metamodernism is a move towards hope, values, aspirational idealism—from negativity to positivity (16:23)
• Postmodern academia profoundly needs a paradigm shift because all categories of knowledge have been deconstructed (19:52)
• Culture wars and the confusion that results from misunderstanding a worldview that infiltrates your psyche before it’s ready to assimilate it (23:32)
• Metamodernism offers tools to help bring clarity to the above (26:20)
• Postmodernism as an intellectual toolkit is now being deployed by the political right, whereas it started in the leftist intelligentsia (27:14)
• Truth matters, grand narratives can bring us together, and power can work for the good (29:06)
• Complexity and finding an island of coherence in time of chaos (32:51)
• John on using a metamodern approach to look at science: “This meta stuff really works!” (35:38)
• The “meta move”: asking what it is we need to take into account that we are not taking into account; applying the logic of systems (37:51)
• Metamodernism is a worldview of worldviews, trying to expand beyond its frame and discover ways in which we can relate to each other with greater understanding, compassion, and empathy (41:05)

Resources & References – Part 2

• Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States*
• Robert Venturi, Learning from Las Vegas*
• David Foster Wallace, writer, professor, early forerunner of metamodernism
• Hanzi Freinacht, The Listening Society*
• Ken Wilber, founder of Integral Theory, What is Integral? (Integral Life website)
• Jason Storm, academic, philosopher, social scientist & author, The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences* (whom Brendan is working with on an academic journal called Metamodern Theory & Praxis)
• Complexity Theory Overview (Systems Innovation YouTube video)
• Cory David Barker, diagonal complexity
• Dr. Gregg Henriques, The Unified Theory of Knowledge
• Brendan Graham Dempsey, Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics*
• Brendan’s website: Sky Meadow Institute
• Brendan’s podcast: Metamodern Spirituality
• Brendan’s YouTube channel

* As an Amazon Associate, Deep Transformation earns from qualifying purchases.

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Brendan Graham Dempsey is a writer, poet, farmer, and the director of Sky Meadow Institute, an organization dedicated to promoting systems-based thinking about the things that matter most. He holds a BA in religious studies from the University of Vermont and a master’s in religion and art from Yale University. He is the author of the 7-volume Metamodern Spirituality Series and, most recently, Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics. His primary interests include theorizing developments in culture after postmodernism, productively bridging the divide between science and spirituality, and developing sustainable systems for life to flourish. All of these lead through the paradigms of emergence and complexity, which inform all of his work.

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Podcast produced by Vanessa Santos and Show Notes by Heidi Mitchell