Brendan Graham Dempsey: Where's the Meta?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 เม.ย. 2024
- I invited Brendan Graham Dempsey onto Grail Country to talk about his vision for Metamodernism. I think Brendan and I will have to talk again, because this conversation was really just getting started when real life interrupted it and I had to cut it short. I found Brendan to be an excellent conversation partner, and I look forward to future conversations.
You can find Brendan's channel here: / @brendangrahamdempsey
Brendan also has a website: BrendanGrahamDempsey.com - บันเทิง
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Grail Country is a Castle in the Corner yahoo
FANTASTIC.
I want in on part 2.
Yessss
We want Luke!
Great discussion! Looking forward to follow ups 👍🏼
Can't wait!😊
edit* This was beyond fantastic!!!!
Nate was a perfect compliment and dialogos partner in this.
Stellar conversation.
35:00 when you see the gun on the shelf at the beginning of the play…
Halfway through. You guys are saying all my fav things.
Nate at around 57 minutes: "We don't know what it is yet" -- that is also important
Very much agree. Thanks for bookmarking that.
One of the things that I love where I didn’t comment.
Love is the Metanarrative that threads the paradigms. Why Christianity is the religion that's not a religion. And why MM and BGD were birthed from (even if only fumes) a Christian culture.
And BGD is the opposite of pretentious. I've been following him for 3 years-ish. That's hilarious and reveals much about the other to accuse such
Vervaeke and BGD expert 🥇
15:15 why your channel is key for me Nate. Beautiful
but here we see in getting it wrong we gain much much more than if we had gotten it right. we keep rolling the questions in our hand.
the Saint are known by the way they sit and the way they stand, the way they pick things up and hold them in their hand’s it is by their love
Same...I loved this moment
It also reminds me of what I call the "Modernist L-Brain Inversion"...
See, I believe the ancients (R brain harmonizing) knew all was all about the sacred mysterious Questions....
rather today's obsessive compulsively focusing only on the continuous demand for ANSWER!
@@matthewparlato5626 I like that framing. it seems our Lbrain plays tricks on itself that it cant even see, and the biggest trick to come in handing our agency off to ai to cap it off and say far well to any rbrain understanding left.
thanks for the reply and that insight
🍿
The section starting around 42 minutes is important. If we want to go "beyond the limits of our cultural paradigmatic forms of thought," why would we rely on modernist Biblical criticism as heavily as Brendan seems to?
You have to grapple with the frame before you can transcend it. If you're seeking for the telos beyond all cultural frames, it's incumbant upon us to grapple with the frames that move in the direction of that telos. You have to take each grade as they come. The 6th grader can't jump to the master's level, she has to move towards her destination. The learning process itself orients us towards the telos. So each grade has something to teach us. Modernist Biblical criticism is one of those grades.
@@BrendanGrahamDempsey "If you're seeking for the telos beyond all cultural frames"
I don't get this, nothing can exist outside it's context, there's no getting out of one's cultural frame. if a christian wants to transcend closer to go they don't go outside of their culture, they go further inside, you don't build a tower by putting each floor one besides the other.
"The 6th grader can't jump to the master's level"
frameworks are not grades, they each are a world onto themselves. there's nothing we know today that's outside the frame of the early Christians, they could understand everything we talk about, just read confessions, modernity has already happened before.
Great conversation! I have two disagreements with Nate. At 1:21:58 he says that the application of historiography to a religious text is monumentally inappropriate. I believe just the opposite, it is monumentally appropriate. By studying the historical/critical context of the New Testament I have found a way to separate the wheat from the chaff. An example would be the inauthentic letters of Paul, which attempt to roll back his egalitarianism and replace it with more patriarchal, put women in their place views.
Another point that comes to mind is when Nate claims that Christianity is the only, or best teaching that extols “transcendence “. Vedanta is absolutely based on transcendence, the goal of self realization, “thou art that “. Judaism also, and not just for the individual, but for the progress of mankind towards “ Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven “, Tikunn Olam. Thanks
That was something I didn't get a chance to nuance, but I do find it inappropriate as a primary way of reading. Why? Because reading a sacred text is a spiritual exercise, not an academic study.
@@grailcountry Right, as a first or primary reading it should be a spiritual exercise. IMO a second, third, fourth etc reading with historical context, and commentary by a learned theologian or elder is also a spiritual exercise, whether in the academy or not.
Now this was a truly FUN conversation! I was sad it ended so soon, it could have easily lasted another hour.
My hats off to ALL of the video makers of TLC, the content lately has just been *FIRE!* I feel bad that I do not have the time to watch it all. So much good stuff!
Before I say anything more, let me just say that I absolutely hate modernism in all of its forms, and I really, really hate postmodernism. It's my contention that modernism, in all of its various guises, has done far greater harm to humanity than good, and it may be the worst worldview ever devised by man. And yes, I can back this up with real history and real data, it's not even hard or difficult to do.
But I really like Brendan, and like hearing what he has to say. However, when he gets down to "brass tacks" when talking about the tools and techniques of metamodernism, it's all just modernism and postmodernism. There's literally nothing new here, other than a name. Yes, I get what Brendan _is trying to do_, but I literally don't see anything the least bit "meta" about it.
Nate says that modernism failed to account for tradition, but that is simply not true. Modernism hates tradition as much as I hate modernism, and the _telos_ of modernism is the total, complete annihilation of tradition. See Mao's "Cultural Revolution" for proof of that, but there's hundreds of other examples throughout the reign of modernism.
Getting back to the subject at hand....
There are many loose strings in metamodernism for one to pull on, rendering the entire project undone in a second. Let me just select one of those strings....
If we played a drinking game where everytime Brendan mentions the word "text" or "texts" you would have to down a shot, you would be dead of alcohol poisoning ten times over.
So let's take a very critical look at the way modernists, especially post-modernists, play with "texts", shall we???
One of the most fascinating and perplexing questions in all of Christianity is this simple question: _Why didn't Jesus leave us any texts written by his own hand?_
Jesus didn't leave us with any writings at all. Nothing. Not even a thank-you note, or a shopping list, or a "Get Well Soon!" card. He left us with absolutely nothing. Sure, the disciples later compiled _some_ of his teachings and dialogues, but it's fairly obvious that we are only getting a tiny sampling of all he did and said. And Jesus seems to leave it to Paul and the Apostles to figure out the theology for the new pagan believers in Jesus....he left no instructions about these converts at all.
Honestly, when God comes to earth in the form of man, and leaves the planet with no written instructions at all, you have to wonder what he was thinking! Why leave your life and legacy in the hands of a bunch of bumbling fisherman, when you could have written it yourself??? It makes no rational sense.
So basically, Jesus comes to earth _to do things,_ not leave a pile of writings, and chief among the things for him to do, is to die on a cross and then resurrect from the dead, and show himself to those who he hung out with. As for his eventual followers, his only real instructions is that when they eat bread and drink wine, they should think of his sacrifice, and if they want to join his new club, they need to be baptized with water. And that's about it.
You might think that as God looked down through the ages, and saw the coming of modernism, he structures the New Testament in such a way that it acts as a honey pot for those who want to play the textual criticism game: they end up straining out gnats, and swallowing camels. Instead of salvation unto life, the NT becomes the La Brea tar pits of great literature, trapping unweary modernists into a blob of goo that they are unable to escape from. Even though a fundamentalist with a basic education can do a "literal" reading of the NT and come away with a path towards salvation, the PhD's in the academy, with all their textual sophistication, are only able to see texts that have a lot of issues, historically speaking. If there's anything that has to do with a path towards salvation in all those words, they can't seem to find it.
It's as if Jesus, knowing full well what the future of man held, intentionally refused to write things down, so as to say "Screw ya' all, I'm not going to be a participant in your stupidity. Have fun critiquing what I did not leave behind on paper!" Yet being a merciful kind of guy, he eventually relents, has the Holy Spirit inspire a few disciples to scribble down a few things, so that the modernists can play Pharisee with _something_ . All the while, the whole point of Jesus's life really has nothing to do with creating more texts! And yet here we are, with more ink spilled and paper made for the study and critique of Jesus than all other men who have walked the earth combined. The irony is so delicious as to be delectable.
How to apply modernist methods to someone who gives you _nothing_ to critique directly?
Gosh, how did this happen? But you know who else "forgot" to write anything down? That Buddha guy never wrote down instructions for his followers on how to get enlightened, he only gave them _verbal_ instructions. Oh yeah, that great Greek philosopher, Socrates, forgot to give us a nice book of his writings....his buddy Plato had to take care of that. Oh, and The Prophet (PBUH!), who was a messenger for that Arius inspired religion of the middle-east....he was illiterate, and only ever recited his "book" *verbally.* It took quite a while for a written version to appear, well over a hundred years at least.
( You want to live a truly frustrating life? Try being an academic who tries to apply textual criticism to that book that the Prophet never wrote down! )
You would think these great men of history were far more concerned with their teachings being *embodied* than studied in the great halls of the academy! How dare they!!!!
There is a lesson in all this for us to consider seriously.
1:34:30 - 1:35:02
“The problem is that the logos can be thought of as dis-incarnate.”
🎉
1:13:43 I’m completely with you on this answer, Nate.
It’s again a conflation of knowledge as Polanyi’s modernist assumptions of knowledge: focal, articulable, exhaustively explicit.
Brendan, you are assuming egoic intellect as “knowledge”.
The comparison btw 12th graders and 6th graders is presuming the intellect and knowledge as academic/propositional.
Wisdom and the fullness of knowledge is lived, applied proper knowledge in the right way at the right time. And a 6th grader can do that just as well as a 12th grader. Maybe better more often. Idk.
39:34 “All models are false. Some are useful.”
All the codes are wrong.
Great talk so far; I have a lot of sympathy with Brendan, coming from Vervaeke's corner of the corner. I think reading David Bentley Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite would be a great recommendation for Brendan; it was really helpful for me in situating the postmodern and its (along with perhaps some versions of meta modernism) subtle imperialism of neutrality, as well as approaching religion and theology and Christianity from an aesthetic view with an appreciation for the particular without being straightforwardly "premodern" or nostalgic of course.
BOI is a masterpiece. DBH is friendlier toward the historical critical method than I am too.
17:24 Here it comes…
How do you avoid radical relativism?
The person is the nexus/locus of all meaning.
Isn't that insight also the basis of all radical relativism?
@@BrendanGrahamDempsey no. I would say it is the basis when someone means an *individual*. I make a very specific distinction between a person and an individual. A person is a unity of relationships or a multiunity. An individual is the isolated, autonomous, autonomous individual who lives in the divided world of the subject-object distinction. Who ultimately has no existence and therefore nihilism.
@@BrendanGrahamDempsey "persona" is Latin for the role an actor plays in a play. Many individuals have played the "persona" of Hamlet.
The religions aren't the same. Christianity, rightly understood, is more transcendent than Judaism and Islam, though those faiths are Biblical in broad terms. Buddhism competes in a way that Hinduism does not. But the metaphysics of Buddhism is built on Hinduism, as Christianity is built on Judaism. Metaphysical reductionism can go to far ... it is all just Ommmm ;-)
Modernity is an Existential Stance. So is Pomo. So is Love. And they're all Symbolic worldviews wether one gets that or not
0:17:40 Neo-modernity
Say more
55:57 the first time I heard the term "meta modern christianity" was when Brendan got here, what is he talking about? isn't that his invention? I have heard about Meta-Morern outside the TLC, but it was this little thing nobody was talking about. As far as I know meta modern christianity is brendan's invention that he evangelizes about, half his latest videos have meta modern christianity in the title. looks to me like a foreign insert to the TLC, I dunno, maybe I missed all of the meta modern christian discussions in the TLC.
Since the metamodern conversation got started over a decade ago, there have been various Christian thinkers engaging with it here and there. More recently, TLC member Paul Anleitner began making videos on metamodern Christianity. I went on Paul's channel to discuss. Then metamodern thinker Jordan Hall converted to Christianity and came on my Metamodern Spirituality podcast to discuss. Then Paul VanderKlay began talking about metamodern Christianity in his videos. Then people started discussing it in livestreams based on PVK's videos.
What I saw being discussed as it entered TLC bore little relationship to my sense of metamodernism, which I've been writing on for 10 years, so I reached out to PVK to have him on my podcast to chat. Since then it's been a generative discussion as more and more people from TLC have reached out to me to have me on their podcasts and I've asked to chat with TLC folks on mine.
I think it may be starting to die down now as more people get familiar with the broader metamodern conversation that's been going on and see how it doesn't actually fit so well with the forms of Christianity primarily activating TLC. If so, I expect it to fall out of favor with TLC audiences. At which point I will diminish and go into the West. ;)
@@BrendanGrahamDempsey XD to the undying lands? you'll be in good company XD, jk.
no but, seriously, so it was the jordan hall guy, I remember PVK talking about that, I missed the part where he was a meta-modern christian, there's a strand in the TLC that's a bit anti-label, doesn't surprise me that they butchered your neat category XD, they have an approach of mystical discovery to these things, unlike your philosophy academic approach, but finding the answer to your own questions is exactly what the TLC is about, most have yet to find the answer.
I don't think you'll find many willing to play the academic game with you, maybe Grail Country, but if you ditch the label and stick to topics I think you'll get people to engage with enthusiasm.
About the last 15 minutes. In the end it's all relativism and the only way around it is to take BDG's meta position? Which is a will to power as pointed out earlier correct? Which is a view that is not God but above God? Which is integral theory with modern and postmodern critiques? Which is really nothing new. I just want to make sure I'm getting this.
Nate doesn't want to get into esotericism? Deep fake?
I didn't want to scare him
38:28 Good Postmodernists - honest PoMos. Bad - mofo PoMos
1:01:42 “inclusion and love”
Exclusion for inclusion.
Identity is embodiment. Identity involves exclusion.
Im a postmetamodernist
Thats when you wake up from the enlightenment and realize it was all a dream
1:12:35 no to this
I’m 3/4 through and I’ve probably already seen…5 or 6 ads. A MUCH higher rate than usual. Why…?
why I've had a premium account for years🤣 (I absolutely hate ads!)
Mammon lol
you don't have youtube premium????? what torture, it's like two bucks
1:25:30 on…Catherine pickstock on…👏🏼🥳
Read the Quran and Richard Dawkins in logos/love.
Amen.
Calling the move from pre-modern to modern an example of "recursive self-reflection" seems forced. What's "recursive" about it exactly? Or are you saying the whole process, from pre-modern to metamodern is one of recursion?
"Epistemic bootstrapping refers to the way human knowledge has transformed over countless generations of cultural reflection. Through it, not just what we think but how we think has shifted. Reflections build on themselves until they force a total restructuring of knowledge, leading to a punctuated equilibrium of paradigm shifts. These occasional ruptures produce new “epistemes” (as Foucault called them) at higher levels of reflective decentration. So, for instance, after the invention of literacy (which brought language and thought to deeper reflective awareness), we see the emergence of abstract literary philosophy, the rise of science out of natural philosophy, and then the inquiry into the very process of linguistically-mediated knowledge formation itself. Simply told, ancient mythologies yielded to Axial Age thought, which then yielded to modernity-while modernity, of course, yielded before postmodernity, which in turn has recently passed the torch to metamodernity. Each one of these shifts represents a decentration to a higher vantage, a going meta on what had come before."
(Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics, pp. 74-75)
I'd recommend the chapter "Complexity" in particular on this framing.
@@BrendanGrahamDempsey Metaphysics has been in decline over the last 500 years. Enlightenment thinking has been collapsed by reductionism in general and materialism particularly. You seem you are just trying to recidivist into Hegelianism? The ideas that percolated from 500 BCE to 1500 BCE seem to be fulfilling for me ;-)
1:30:15
No BGD...Tradition is handed down and participated in...not chosen after analysis
Agreed. But the awareness of other traditions different from one's own relativizes one's own tradition's truth claims. Trying to argue that "one just needs to participate to see the truth" is true of the other traditions as well. So far, I've not heard anyone fully address this issue, which is important given how fundamental this framing is for folks in TLC.
@BrendanGrahamDempsey hm.
How I square this is a pinch of perrenialism, that all truth and all goodness is God's.
And Love allows the other to exist, without coercion, subversion or dominance. The great traditions are looking at God from different standpoints(actually) and they gesture in their own way towards The Divine Pattern that Humanity participates in.
Nate actually made it quite clear imo...with inexhaustible illusion(the east) and inexhaustible transformation(the west). As an entity transforms the prior thus was inherently "illusory" (inexhaustible). Both are true and as it lands for me, both are pointing at The One.
Cards on the table. I fell into Zen Buddhism practices after my Deconstruction only to journey all the way back home to Christianity (with so much credit to JVvk and JPageau) and without philosophical contradiction or stressful dissonance. It was a seamless journey...for me
Bless you, this convo was a beautiful dance of dialogos
@@matthewparlato5626 That makes a lot of sense. It sounds like your spiritual journey has included deconstruction and deep engagement with multiple spiritual traditions. I think those sorts of experiences are really important for the sort of sensibility and orientation I'm trying to communicate. They will inform and inflect wherever you land, including returns to your home religion. But, of course, the journey changes the traveler. The one who returns home is not the same as he who never left. "Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own." - Goethe
@BrendanGrahamDempsey Indeed and your comment reveals my affinity for you and your work...aka I totally see your value here and have followed you and MM for years now
And I think 2 big points in this convo were ..
1)pure Humility to explore and engage (Christ's arms open vulnerable) ...you both acknowledged that
2) MM (and Chrisitian Love) not as a period or lens, but as an Existential Stance(JVvk), an orientation in your words, and one that affords Valuing and wielding the various relevant lens(s)
Sam Tiddeman got so much good out of you but that's the magic of persons, of TLC. This convo was fantastic and in radically different ways.
(P.S. you and MM inspired me to write a tiny commentary on Everything Everywhere All At Once as a MM movie, only to find out later that some in MM community proper had converged on the same! Life boy! What a gift!)
whatismetamodern.com/film/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-metamodern/
-- June 27, 2022
I wrote my commentary a month later...lol
@@BrendanGrahamDempsey " is true of the other traditions as well" you'll know them by their fruit, the best tradition will win in the end, just let destiny take it's course. and also, that's irrelevant, you're assuming that you yourself chose the tradition, this is false, the tradition chooses you. usually your dad gives you that tradition.