What's Metamodernity?
Are YOU Metamodern?! Let's ask Brendan Graham Dempsey!
Good question!
It’s something I’ve wondered about since watching a presentation about Metamodern Spirituality on The Stoa a couple of years ago by
.I just had the opportunity to talk with Brendan for the first time and I told him a bit about the things I’ve been doing for the last 3 years in developing my Musicality of Being project and, more generally, how I see the role of embodiment practices in responding to the state of the world today.
You too might ask yourself:
Am I behaving in a way that could be accurately described as Metamodern?
Even if this question hadn’t occurred to you before - maybe you don’t yet know what the term “Metamodern” means - here’s why this inquiry might be important:
If you agree that human history can be described as a series of developmental stages and you know that there are already established terms for the two stages before this one - ‘modernity’ and ‘postmodernity’,
And if you heard that a bunch of people prefer the term ‘Metamodernity’ over the messiness of ‘post-postmodernism’,
And if it makes sense to you that, if each stage is different, you should understand the dynamics of the stage of historical development within which you find yourself if you want to live a good life,
Then you might suppose that learning about ‘Metamodernism’ is a useful thing to do if you want to skillfully orient through the chaos of this time period.
In particular, what I think is fascinating about the Metamodern concept - as I understand it - is the proposal that we can become more flexible in our views, learning to adopt different perspectives in different situations, and moving past narrow dogmas that seem to always put us all in conflict with each other.
This was a theme that Brendan and I spent a good amount of time on.
Also, on his YouTube channel, Brendan has initiated a number of conversations recently about Christianity in relation to Metamodernism - at a moment when a number of prominent public figures have recently converted to Christianity.
I asked Brendan about this topic as well, while tracing my own developmental arc in relationship to spirituality and outlining the connections I see between embodiment practices and the process of shifting our worldviews.
I really enjoyed talking to Brendan who had so many fascinating things to say and hope we’ll talk again soon!
If you have thoughts to share after listening, please comment on this post…
A couple of teasers: 1) Brendan talks about the dangers of coming from an atheistic background and converting to an established religious tradition. 2) I talk about Musicality of Being and how embodiment could be a common meeting ground for people of different faiths.
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