At 1:00, Luke says that despite modern medicine, people in the US are becoming less healthy, and it seems that he believes that this circumstance makes him more sceptical of the utility of modern medicine. He thinks people are becoming less healthy despite "following the protocols of modern medicine." But, actually, those people who are becoming less healthy are generally not following medical advice! People are less healthy due to very high obesity rates, insufficient exercise, poor nutrition, drug and alcohol abuse, all of which American medical authorities warn against.

47:40 🎯 Took the words outta my mouth.

Very interesting discussion! At 9:30 James asserts that "we're not in the habit of talking about the politics of the baroque." In The Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure, José Antonio Maravall does just that.

This is probably quite irrelevant to the primary issues of the video, but I believe that early religions were not, necessarily, ethnocentric at all; that, in fact, what we think of as "tribal" groups were actually quite fluid. I come by this view from past reading, and I can't remember the titles now, but it is interesting.

Great discussion

A good dialogue, guys! My take (major caveats): Modernity emerged contrarian to what it emerged from, a progressive idea of pure rationality. Post-modernity is the fractured outcome, a transition without an imagined cohesive future, a stasis and decay. Meta-modernism is… well, can we even frame it beyond ideas emerging from the decay of what is? Isn’t our point in time a bit like for e.g. Hegel - change is ongoing, but seemingly hard to integrate and project into expectation? We seem stuck in a cultural stage theory, where no steps can “lead down” - only “up”. Difficult, when there’s no cohesive framework of what “up” or “down” even means, outside of our perceived economic models - demanding “growth” beyond ecological limits we DO know. OK, that’s my ontology messed up. I’m old enough to experience how a given reality wasn’t sustainable at all. My peers become conservative in the real meaning of it - violently holding on to what was. My path is lonely in that context. Realising change, accepting change, embracing change - and finally imagining _some_ future. That’s where meta-modernism emerges. And yes, nothing in this is linear. It’s complex, not complicated. Ideal and material. Hopefully holistic. Big unknown is the global scale, constraints and time window. Change against the implosion of what “is”, because it never was static, as “common sense” always imprints on us.

Prof. Hicks is a fascinating person. If I was a true intellectual I could listen to him for hours. But whatever I have listen so far is wonderful to my hears. I will continue to explore other video from him. Thank you to you Brendan also for posting this and asking many good questions.

I'm so happy James delved into this domain, I've had hives over it for years, and it is indeed hard to articulate a satisfying critique. None of these models or conversations will inspire the actions required to address the many ongoing catastrophes we've been addressing for decades. The plebs and proles lack the imagination and willingness to sacrifice to build organized resistance across cultures worldwide to take power away from the Players of "The Great Game 21st Century." We will have "the conversation" until circumstances dictate that we panic, and from there, all manner of violent chaos will emerge. Developing a new culture takes generations, and it's already past midnight. Let's enjoy our ponderances while we can. Much obliged.

I think you have up to much ground on the integration of past cultures and modes of thinking. Two arguments: technologies are rarely replaced rather the old continues along with the new or is integrated. The existence of a new development leaves many adherents to old modes of thinking. Second, we have individuals and subcultures that are clearly operating in a traditional Christian or modernist frame. We interact with these people, therefore we must be in part integrating their frame if not in the individual, in the culture. I don't think there is complete integration, but we are likely understating integration. Just as English is a mosaic of centuries of cultural influence there is major cultural strains where contemporary thinkers have access. These are not pure reproduction of historical thought, rather versions of those modes that have lived alongside the intermittent history creating some subsequent bias but also refinement.

On there being no cultural evolution since the axial age (later you say that the philosophers of 68 were in a transitional movement). It is often said that all of western philosophy are footnotes to Plato. But each and every individual 2500 years ago and now had still to work itself up to the quality of philosophizing that a Plato represents. What makes cultural evolution is numbers, density, availability of education, distribution, technology, demographics and many other factors.

I really appreciate this. It's really a breath of fresh air to see respectful critique when so few can do it well and without it turning into polemics and apologetics. Thank you 🙏

26:35 So have you guys (Brendan and James) ever heard of Ken Wilbers concept of „Ladder, Climber, View (Rung)“? There is a youtube video on the integrallife channel. It basically takes in account and answers this criticism you make here. You lose the view from lower stages in the course of development. The view from a higher rung isn't the same as from a lower rung, but you retain the structure or capability you gathered by climbing the ladder. Strange if you never heard of that concept. KW talks about it in the Course „Integral Spirituality - A deeper Cut“, also in the „Core Integral“ Courses One and Two. The Core Integral material is only available these days by semi-legal means on the Internet. Jeff Salzman has made a podcast on „Ladder, Climber,View“ and there is material on it on several sites like Integalpostmetaphysics. You really should at least look into all the advanced Integral Theory material and concepts before you write about it professionally.

This conversation was a bit too abstract, conceptual, and, well, Meta for me. I wish there had been more specifics as, for example, the discussion beginning at around 1:52.00

What was the book James referenced at the end of the episode? He mentioned it was a French conservative look at "the philosophers of '68", but never mentioned the title. I'm interested in looking that one up.

Recursivity seems to be impcitly tied to more complexity. I also have an issue with linear model of complexity. Also, a model being more complex doesn't necessarily mean that it will fit the world better. A pragmatist critique here would be that the move towards simplicity/complexity is determined by the feedback from the world and cannot be apriori determined by the theory.

Great conversation guys. Was cool hearing James' perspective on metamodernism, and putting forth his critiques. I'm definitely more in the camp of grand narratives and wanting to build new cultural projects and institutions, but I think it is really important that people are refining the underlying structure and bringing as much rigor as we can bring to bare. I do think that at this stage, even with some fairly broad strokes, we can tell a story that is far closer to the reality of things compared to most of the other stories that might hold a similar spot in culture.

Do yous have an online forum?? (KZbin is the WORST place for discussion, as is Reddit and Twitter!)

Yes, it was a "delight" to listen to as well.

Edit: added explanation after the quote. KZbin comment: "So hold on :) If postmodernist says "there is no such thing as truth" - is that statement true? Because if it is, it is self contradictory. So it has to be false :)" Brendan Graham Dempsey: "That’s correct. That’s called the “performative contradiction” of postmodern relativism. A key insight that forces its own transcendence." 🙃 I think the conversation is interesting in points, but it's interesting to me that Dempsey implies sympathy for the critique of the 'postmodern boogeyman', but this is a boogeyman that he has been more than happy to employ when it has suited him. On a meta level, one might argue that it is more 'generative' to have an agreeable, civil conversation, & that entails Dempsey's own emphases from being deemphasised. I can see that view, but I do think that this can have the effect, inadvertently perhaps, of talking around a subject without really getting into the meat of it and I think that's what we see here. Iirc Emil, or Hanzi maybe lol, said something like 'modernists seek to minimise conflict, metamodernists seek to minimise resentment'. Now I think maybe there's room for a bit of both, but Dempsey seems very much aligned with the 'peace, brother' camp... probably James too but I think that's a choice with costs as well as benefits. I've seen at least one other example of Dempsey employing the boogeyman (one of the recent politics posts does it in a 'both sides' play) and I suspect I could find it elsewhere as well. Dempsey's strategy to avoid this accusation of boogeymanning seems to involve hiding behind the steelman of Storm....but there seems to be, putting aside that he has expressed views at least somewhat distinct from Storm (& significantly less circumspect), something quite uneven-handed about that strategy. I think its effectiveness also partly relies on ppl then having to do a close-read on Storm's text in order to debunk it. Anyway, I guess I will write more on this soon on my own blog. Probably next week....working title 'Dempsey & Makepeace'....iykyk.

Reality is always more complex than we can grasp, and scientists have job security. But the point is, complexifying at the level of science is not accessible to most people. You need a somewhat simplified meta narrative to unite a society in a way most people can believe, which is what a paradigm does. Otherwise, they will be alienated and uncomfortable with high numbers of strangers in metropolitan settings, which is conducive to paranoia and conspiritorial thinking.

I get it that there just happens to be a configuration around this conversation of people who are either ex Christians or moving back to Christianity. Nevertheless would be nice if a Buddhist perspective came in a bit now and again. So here we have a traditional spirituality that does not involve a creator god. It has many notions of spirituality involving both immanent and transcendent aspects, eg Buddha Nature. A sense of the unlimited evolutionary potential of human consciousness, figures ie Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who are imaginal forms of that taken to it's ultimate extent. Further so called Buddhist modernism has been an influential cultural factor for the last few decades. I am assuming all of this might have something to offer to the metamodern moment...

Modern science has reached adolescence and like all adolescents it has turned bratty and thinks its parent consciousness and religion is stupid. Give modern science a few more years until it gets past adolescence and it will be more mature, more bearable, less arrogant and respectable to its parent; religion.

A further point if the Cosmos or God is Omniscient why would it want to know itself as Omniscience is knowing all including self which is the case of God who is all there is, or that exists. It is more likely that God wanted company of a Lila or play as they say in the East for entertainment and entities to return the love that exists and is given. The angels were first and God said to them: Let us create man in our image and here we are. -------------------- Ungrounded claims”. The human brain; reason, cannot contain the universe, no more than a cup can contain the ocean. Doesn’t the interviewer even comprehend that, as it is basic. Even using learning and reason when is all learned and experienced and even if it was, how accurate would it be. PLEASE put the adjective, MATERIAL in front of science: material science. What does material science (the study of elements) currently know, or understand, about consciousness; mind; even the elements; macro and micro, electromagne

“Ungrounded claims”. The human brain; reason, cannot contain the universe, no more than a cup can contain the ocean. Doesn’t the interviewer even comprehend that, as it is basic. Even using learning and reason when is all learned and experienced and even if it was, how accurate would it be. PLEASE put the adjective, MATERIAL in front of science: material science. What does material science (the study of elements) currently know, or understand, about consciousness; mind; even the elements; macro and micro, electromagnetism or magnetism; the latter is still a complete mystery. There are atheists and militant atheists and a little humility would go a long way. Consciousness is ‘the hard problem’ for today’s philosophers. In other cultures and times and even now in the East, consciousness is God; one and the same. In the West consciousness is ‘the hard problem.’ So if that is the case, atheists are busy studying and trying to figure out God,, or consciousness; the ‘hard problem.’ At least we can see the humor in it, if nothing else.

Post modernism will likely be more idiocy. Until people know that the nature of reality is triune (as Chinese philosophy has it nothing happens without three), idiocy will continue, unfortunately. We are no longer, or should not be, in a Darwinian world. Consciousness; Mind; Elements: three dimensions. Consciousness; fundamental. Mind; elemental. Elements elemental. The latter two emerging with quantum events. Consciousness is ‘the hard problem’ for philosophers. If we had a discussion on Post Darwinism and the idiocy of Darwinism that would count for something. Not that there is not evolution but why humans who as Da Vinci rightly saw it are the microcosm of the macrocosm did not have their own prototype but had to evolve from a different prototype does not make sense. Nature has come up with so much, why miss the mark when it came to humans. If we think that more than nature was involved and that consciousness is fundamental, it makes less sense. That some religious leaders have agreed to evolution of humans from a different prototype is a reflection of the state religion is in today. Science and religion should be equal partners; science investigating the material world and religion investigation the interior world. There is no reason why religion and science should be enemies.

Much better than your previous discussion on politics a lot of spot on remarks here I feel. We have indeed entered an era of politics as performative gestures designed to make you feel excited and heard. Earnest technocratic speak is right out... Magical thinking in... The Dems have just got to go along with this to some extent, but have policies that might actually work in the background...

Metamodernism is the lipstick on the pig of postmodernism.

What are the "hanzi people" (spelling?) that they reference several times? What does this group do?

i come back to several times .. great interview!

The music is extremely distracting!

I think healthy atheism is as valid as any form of healthy Christianity.

Yea I hate to hear how ppl will assume that western Protestant evangelical Christianity is all there is of the faith and when finding it lacking will turn against Christianity all Together. I suggest to anyone having doubts or sensing a huge lack in their current faith should look to the original church established by Christ and the Apostles. The Orthodox Church doesn’t have these same problems with doubt and questioning our faith. It offers us ways to verify the truth in the Christian claims. It offers us a true experience of Chris. Once you encounter the Christ in His essence, then all things are made clear. You will then know without a doubt that the teachings are true, that God the Father is real and that Jesus Christ is His son. You will Know all of this in your bones. It is just sad that so few in the West have discovered the Church that Christ made that will persist and even the gates of hell will not stand against it.

I love the idea of existential health as a goal for all spiritual investigations. Perhaps eternal investigation and exploration is the proper approach to a continuously emerging state of existence? To transcend and embrace as opposed to transcend and disassociate or annihilate.

postmodernism is not leftwing politics, it's a neutral philosophical inquiry effectively it's the "age of rethinking" nothing more nothing less, now he's trying to teach his poisonous misinformation and villainize 'philosophy', just change your TERM from postmodern to something accurate and the whole issue is corrected, maintain your false attribution, and thwart historical and philosophical progress that much more

My conclusion is that Jim stopped believing in North American Evangelical Christianity - and I have never found that approach to religion appealing. I have been a follower of Jesus since my late teens. You present a curious version of Christianity. The danger is that we reject the warm milk version of Christianity and have not tried the strong black coffee. We should neither deconstruct nor reconstruct - we encounter Reality in the silence. We encounter the I AM - the One without a name. We leave Joel Olsteen but never find Meister Eckhart. We get so used to milk we never desire the meat.

That was really good ! Thanks for highlighting Jim. I love this internet and you tube. I see & feel it as the Noosphere. I don’t feel so alone in my lifelong fringe Faith, progressive Christianity, human religiosity (planetary meta) Holistic Oneness. I will look for Jim’s work. Keep up the good work Brendan, we need you ! Thanks Jim !

I am getting frustrated listening to this, like I walked into a conversation that began an hour ago. It seems you are both dancing around a central point that is not being made, at lease clearly and directly. But shouldn't you be talking about the idea that deconstruction is looking at your spoon-fed belief in Christianity (for example) and Jesus, and then putting aside all that you have been taught, using logic, and resoning, and critical thinking, by questioning all the components that make up Christianity and then breaking it down? For example, the crucifixion story: why would a loving Father (God clealy would be sadistic) deliberately send His Son to earth to be savagely and horrifically beat up and murdered, as an act of atonement for the sins of all of mankind? What sense does that even make? And then, mankind has to accept Jesus as their personal savior first, because His brutal murder wasn't enough and people are now required to believe this insane story to be saved. I think stating this clearly and directly would make a huge difference. Maybe I am missing the point.

Hans von Urs Balthazar is a wonderful source of theological aesthetics.

42:50 "Do you think Christ came back to life?" "I think that thomas touched his wounds" I want to hear PVK order at McDonald's "Do you want fries?" (long, reflective pause) "we are ALWAYS representing the world with SYMBOLS"

Such an amazing conversation here in the midst of so many completely irrelevant bursts of racket all around. Thanks, yous guys! . . . William . . .

They call him stephen hicks because only a hick would buy a self published book claiming to explain post modernism which actually just creates a grand narrative out of lies about how liberalism is good.

This is a great talk and I agree with a lot of it, but I’m having trouble with some Jason’s conversions of is to ought. He says that if the tea has poison then he ought to know that it has poison. Why? Is this just because it affects his physical health and we are prescribing value to that? If it is about his health, why? People cannot agree on the nature of life, many argue that it is arbitrary. I do not hold this belief, but I do not see it as obvious or matter of fact either. It is not an axiom-free claim. Is it a more general claim about the value of knowing truth? How would we compare the value of obtaining truth to other activities, should we forgo them to focus on obtaining truth, which we have in this case diagnosed with intrinsic value? Why does this have value? Just trying to figure out what he means branches it out into two possible paths, value in health/life or value in truth. So the follow up question also becomes what is a life more worth living, a life of finding truths or a life of saving lives? How do we assign value amounts to these things? Jason also says that calling something a valid argument says something about what arguments should be. I fail to see this. In a valid argument, if the premises are true then the conclusion has to be true. But even ignoring the fact that the premises of valid arguments aren’t necessarily true, I don’t see how this says anything about how arguments ought to be. I don’t understand his argument about value judgements based on facts (when he talks about minimum wage or the Catholic Church). Further, he talks about the claim that if you don’t want cancer then you should quit smoking. This is an if-then claim more than an is-ought claim. The value judgement is packed within the statement of not wanting cancer, this is normative in itself, it is not a normative-free claim about the state of the world. Therefore it is a normative claim that leads to another normative claim. I do think we should discuss our values, but I just don’t think we have axiom-free claims to these values, and that just has to be okay.

LMAO Metamodrenism is a process of indoctrination in which subjects are expected to simultaneously accept two conflicting beliefs as truth, often at odds with their own memory or sense of reality

you lost me with the Trump BS

the fact theres a "McBuddhism" under the post-modern column thrills me to no end

Normal... ill pay my tribute and leave :)))))))

Thanks for the great content ! U two got got good dynamic please keep it up!

It should be split into how they're enchanted. There is no “pre-modern” and modernism started in the early 20th century, maybe earlier idk but definitely by the decadent stuff. Before that was romanticism. Modernism takes romanticism as man within nature but Modernism has the man not connecting to nature but instead cultural narratives. This means the universals that the romantics felt they had epistemic access to (and they did to some degree) weren't available to modernists outside their cultural narratives making the universals not universals right? From romanticism you have things like traits of a people are from the land they're from. This is sincere and ties into political destinies and even anti germ theory like terrain theory. This is a whole worldview. Modernism takes that same approach in nature but then doesn't have access to anything but that cultural narrative. Postmodern reapplies modernism to modernism to the point where you don't even technically have access to the cultural narratives. Keep in mind this is necessary to seek these cultural narratives from modernism who takes from romanticism. It follows the same path. This makes Baudrillard’s matrix seem all the more encompassing. As was said for romanticism there is explanatory power for pomo as well. It can't be dismissed entirely. Metamodernism does come next but something else important to note here is this a hegelian unfolding or dialectic or historicism. The negation is already within it. You don't see this from enlightenment reasoning which gives us access to nature to romantic aesthetics which gives us access to nature. To clear out the premodern a bit, there was access to the previous enchantment or whichever. Before the enlightenment was what the enlightenment continued off of which was the Renaissance. The distinction is in sanctification for rcc Renaissance which saw people grow upwards into other fields where the enlightenment was more about equal salvation and equal access to everything by reason. For the enlightenment if you could put something into reasonable terms then there was instant access to it which was anything in nature. Today we still do follow that in that we think a reasonable debate will connect us with each other but even the strident enlightenment advocates will still talk about controlling a narrative which is obviously a postmodern concept. So the Renaissance I'm not super educated on but they were very conscious of a want to supersede scholastic enchantment. This brought in neoplatonism and neoplatonist alchemy which was a big thing in England with some people as a means to counter the scholasticism. Scholastics were still big in unis in England after the church split but you have Francis bacon, Newton, Galileo etc all very invested in alchemy. So that was the English response. It wasn't an empirical one fundamentally but that was eventually how it was considered. They made a science like that. Before that, enchantment was scholastic. There were no doubt subenchantments or even extra enchantments but I'm not sure how much of that bubbled up. You can look at the other mendicant orders or whatever kept bringing up protestantism but Renaissance was consciously reacting to scholasticism. Scholastic is an enchantment of God through nature in simple apprehension into syllogistic reasoning about actualization. Metamodernism then follows the hegelian dialectics. It's simply taking narratives in sort of an abstract sense and dealing with modernist narratives as narratives that can be used in a postmodern sense so not genuinely. You have on the “left” people arguing against the cisheteromale western pro life whatever appendations because they see them all as one and they'll say that so they're dealing with the same postmodern conceptions of narratives in that they're just power imbalances. They have postmodern political or ethical narratives or units like neogenders or whichever and they give it a modernist narrative in a consciously postmodern sense. They had animalkin when it was starting. These aren't sincere things but they do tie in as narrative additions against a power imbalance. Maybe they're even consciously aware of derrida's binary aspect. I'm not really sure how they end up forming them into this big tangle but they do that for both sides where pro abortion is pro Palestine etc and all that. The “right” does the same as well. I can't think of any postmodern units created but meninist, incels, it can be religious etc these get tied into some same narrative tangle which operates in the same sense by “metanarratives” I suppose. Some maybe interesting points, early 20th century governments were very modernist and you see that in things like Soviet science, Aryan science, a criticism of “Jewish” science. You have new Soviet man, new Aryan man, fascist man, Jewish masculinity, Christian masculinity etc. These are reducing universals into narratives. You see in the literature etc like Joyce, they are tied necessarily to these cultural narratives even if they put effort into undermining that narrative more so out of frustration with seeking universals or meaning within cultural narratives and never finding it. You can see it with Kafka or any modernist. This differs from the “this is what a feminist male looks like” or whatever that was. Another important point is these are natural developments and I mean while academia was sorta just cleaned out romanticism entirely and were engaged with existentialism, keep in mind modernism still underlies from ww1 to ww2, pynchon and maybe even Borges from before ww1 were writing extremely postmodern books. So this is before foucault and before derrida, lyotard and everyone. It's not before lacan but I highly doubt pynchon was reading lacan and Borges certainly didn't.

This was a great discussion! Thanks to both guest and host for an awesome topic.

This makes out to be a great Unitarian Universalist sermon Brendan! If I could get them interested, would you be willing to speak to my church sometime? They pay a little speakers fee. 😊💓