Cultivating Metamodernist Courage and Optimism with Brendan Graham Dempsey

NitN 89 - Queen of Wands

Metamodernism! Integral Theory! The limits of postmodern pluralism and the teleology that our civilization needs to acknowledge and integrate that is pulling us closer toward an ever-retreating horizon. Brendan provides some comfort for those who are miffed that the Modernist promise of future utopia and the Postmodernist promise of a return to anarcho-primitivism both are unlikely to meet all our needs or even ever truly be actualized.

He beautifully articulates the Metamodern vision that arises via reflection on those previous movements: one of forever improving the world, helping everyone as much as we can, and pitching in however possible to just make the world a slightly better place.

Connect with Brendan Graham Dempsey!

Listen to his podcast, Metamodern Spirituality!
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Buy his book, Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics

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Intro: Emptying Myself of Evaluations

My conditioning’s thesis is that I am not achieving enough, therefore inadequate, therefore unworthy of love, and tangentially even a little bit bad for the world. My adopted antithesis is that I am Word; I am Free; I have Come; I am Source. What synthesis arises from the conversation forced by locking these poles in a room together? I can’t really be infinitely bad or infinitely good, right? So what do I need to know about this internal tension?

I journaled that, then left for a walk.

I sometimes call this technique, cribbed from the writers of Macgyver, Dog Walkin’ Shamanism. Steven Kotler and Rick Rubin have each advocated for employing subtle distraction like gentle exercise or taking a shower when approaching a difficult problem. The key is to mix in highly receptive attention to whatever messages arise from your environment. When I’m doing Dog Walkin’ Shamanism, I wait for my mind to get snagged by something, then orient toward it and mine for an answer to my journaled question.

So, what felt significant?

Here’s one observation: Knowing the path that traffic will take after a light changes color allows you to cross busy intersections safely without getting a walk signal. 

Do the left-turners go first? You can probably feel safe walking slowly halfway across the intersection, then. Given some high school kids didn’t follow me off the curb, maybe you can only know this if you have been driving for a while?

The point? If you know your own patterns as well as you know stoplight sequences, you can predict them, adapt to them, and navigate them without concern. You’re not running erratically across the street and creating even worse danger, you’re working effectively within your unavoidable limits. Then, as Ram Dass says, you can love those broken bits. Maybe this seems like a tenuous connection, but that’s the fun of the technique.

It always manages to call to mind the wisdom that you already possess—the wisdom you’ve absorbed through research and experimentation—but which might not have risen into consciousness without clearing the way via distraction.

Said simply, what was the take-away from my safe but unconventional jaywalk through the intersection?

The “bad” you do is still worthy of love.

Next, an empty storefront caught my eye. A Team Human episode from a few months ago raised the issue that landlords now have access to an app that allows them to determine when it’s most profitable to quietly evict the tenant because their neighbors started paying more. 

This tenant was never late on rent and was self-reliant regarding building maintenance? Who cares?! The app’s creator says that human landlords are too sentimental so we need an algorithm to maximize a property’s value.

In other words, Moloch the money god may overrule sentimentality. Essentially: the nature of capitalist civilization is that even virtuous behavior might not earn the protection of your local tribe. 

The simply said conclusion of this second observation?

The good that you do may not be rewarded with love.

I kept meditating on it as I continued my walk. What’s the synthesis I was after, between my instilled programming of torturous self-hatred and my more recently adopted ideology of grandiose self-love? 

I was inspired to take a totally different angle on the same thought about landlords: sometimes a house is more valuable empty… maybe a person is the same way. 

Perhaps I should be emptying my mind of cutting but pointless self-evaluation and going full yogi by surrendering my Will and actions to Source. Can I allow myself to recognize the “shameful” mistakes that might once have inspired self-loathing as the knocks necessary for others’ growth? Can I simultaneously embody the love that most often joyously lifts others up? 

By stilling the voices saying I am infinitely bad or infinitely good, those totally untrue and downright impossible mental modifications of reality, I am Love. 

Whether I do “good” or not.