Brendan Graham Dempsey was not one of my early discoveries in the SPACE. However, after he caught my eye he quickly became one of my favorites. I bought his new book as soon as it became available on November 1, 2023. Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics is not light reading but for me, it was well worth the effort.
I have written a lengthy summary and commentary on Dempsey’s book, partly to help me absorb its content and partly to share my thoughts with others. My book report is not a substitute for reading the book itself but I know people who may be interested but will not have the time to do so. Another aspect of my intentions is to contribute to the spread of these metamodern ideas to average and ordinary people.
I enjoyed this chapter and am thinking of purchasing your book. I got your “Oil and the Lamp” book a couple years back and enjoyed it -- time for a revisit probably.
Since you talk about self-reflection here, I’m choosing to take that as an invitation to reflect on these sentences of yours:
“We are the parts of the universe that have proven exceedingly successful at self-reflection. For that is what the universe seems to be doing at every level: recursively looping back on itself to generate new emergent levels, which move further and further away from the boring predictability of “natural kinds” towards the ever-more exciting dynamism and novelty of social kinds, cultural kinds.
That is what transcendence is all about. An infinitesimal progress towards greater and greater dimensionality. An endless decentration towards deeper levels of complexity. An eternal recursion of reflection, allowing us to toggle between more perspectives and vantages as we bootstrap our way to greater knowledge of the universe.”
Are we really the parts of the universe that have proven exceedingly successful at self-reflection or are we rather the parts of the universe that aren’t very good at this?
If it is the universe at every level that is recursively looping to generate new emergent levels, perhaps it is “the universe” that is exceedingly successful at self-reflection and we humans are in fact trying to play catch up with this process.
If a fractal perfectly reflects itself, the human style of reflection, by comparison, is only able to approximately self-reflect.
If the human has something to offer that a fractal patterning cannot, that would then be something like the ability to imperfectly reflect. When we enter into reflection, maybe there is an unavoidable skewing that occurs. In that sense, perhaps “imperfect” reflection is an advancement upon the perfect self reflection of a fractal pattern -- the “broken” aspect of our perception is a source of novelty. Where a fractal is a slave to its own recursion, what we can do is toggle between recursion and non-recursion.
Integral theory, as you know, emphasizes a principle of transcend and include. That suggests that failures of layers like modernism or postmodernism is a tendency to transcend and exclude other ways of perception.
A previous layer might be more “perfectly” valuable than an emergent one. Modernism fails to honor the perfection of magical modes of being. Postmodernism, at times, fails to acknowledge the methodical perfection of the rational mode.
Postmodern hyper-reflection may be completely perfect from a certain perspective. Certainly, from some perspectives it is not. I watched a couple “Daily Show” segments recently and lamented how banal they felt compared with the time John Stewart was hosting.
I’m sitting in a coffee shop where the walls are covered in mostly punk rock concert posters. While it’s probably a mega-oversimplification to say these posters are all the creations of “postmodernists,” it also seems obvious to me that at least aspects of these artifacts couldn’t exist without the deconstructive energy of the postmodern.
I love the postmodern, especially when someone else is “doing it” so I don’t feel so much that I need to.
If I’m at all embodying the “metamodern,” today I want to say all the other layers are so much more perfect than “me.” The integral may be great and necessary at this time, but I want to also hold a perspective that it doesn’t hold a candle to some of the artifacts of “perfect” self-reflection the magic, mythic, rational and pluralistic modes have achieved.
Just some thoughts. Anyway, thanks for the work you are doing!
Brendan Graham Dempsey was not one of my early discoveries in the SPACE. However, after he caught my eye he quickly became one of my favorites. I bought his new book as soon as it became available on November 1, 2023. Metamodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Cultural Logics is not light reading but for me, it was well worth the effort.
I have written a lengthy summary and commentary on Dempsey’s book, partly to help me absorb its content and partly to share my thoughts with others. My book report is not a substitute for reading the book itself but I know people who may be interested but will not have the time to do so. Another aspect of my intentions is to contribute to the spread of these metamodern ideas to average and ordinary people.
More at Metamodern Wannabes... https://johnstokdijk538.substack.com/archive
Hi Brendan, Brendan here!
I enjoyed this chapter and am thinking of purchasing your book. I got your “Oil and the Lamp” book a couple years back and enjoyed it -- time for a revisit probably.
Since you talk about self-reflection here, I’m choosing to take that as an invitation to reflect on these sentences of yours:
“We are the parts of the universe that have proven exceedingly successful at self-reflection. For that is what the universe seems to be doing at every level: recursively looping back on itself to generate new emergent levels, which move further and further away from the boring predictability of “natural kinds” towards the ever-more exciting dynamism and novelty of social kinds, cultural kinds.
That is what transcendence is all about. An infinitesimal progress towards greater and greater dimensionality. An endless decentration towards deeper levels of complexity. An eternal recursion of reflection, allowing us to toggle between more perspectives and vantages as we bootstrap our way to greater knowledge of the universe.”
Are we really the parts of the universe that have proven exceedingly successful at self-reflection or are we rather the parts of the universe that aren’t very good at this?
If it is the universe at every level that is recursively looping to generate new emergent levels, perhaps it is “the universe” that is exceedingly successful at self-reflection and we humans are in fact trying to play catch up with this process.
If a fractal perfectly reflects itself, the human style of reflection, by comparison, is only able to approximately self-reflect.
If the human has something to offer that a fractal patterning cannot, that would then be something like the ability to imperfectly reflect. When we enter into reflection, maybe there is an unavoidable skewing that occurs. In that sense, perhaps “imperfect” reflection is an advancement upon the perfect self reflection of a fractal pattern -- the “broken” aspect of our perception is a source of novelty. Where a fractal is a slave to its own recursion, what we can do is toggle between recursion and non-recursion.
Integral theory, as you know, emphasizes a principle of transcend and include. That suggests that failures of layers like modernism or postmodernism is a tendency to transcend and exclude other ways of perception.
A previous layer might be more “perfectly” valuable than an emergent one. Modernism fails to honor the perfection of magical modes of being. Postmodernism, at times, fails to acknowledge the methodical perfection of the rational mode.
Postmodern hyper-reflection may be completely perfect from a certain perspective. Certainly, from some perspectives it is not. I watched a couple “Daily Show” segments recently and lamented how banal they felt compared with the time John Stewart was hosting.
I’m sitting in a coffee shop where the walls are covered in mostly punk rock concert posters. While it’s probably a mega-oversimplification to say these posters are all the creations of “postmodernists,” it also seems obvious to me that at least aspects of these artifacts couldn’t exist without the deconstructive energy of the postmodern.
I love the postmodern, especially when someone else is “doing it” so I don’t feel so much that I need to.
If I’m at all embodying the “metamodern,” today I want to say all the other layers are so much more perfect than “me.” The integral may be great and necessary at this time, but I want to also hold a perspective that it doesn’t hold a candle to some of the artifacts of “perfect” self-reflection the magic, mythic, rational and pluralistic modes have achieved.
Just some thoughts. Anyway, thanks for the work you are doing!