Ep. 133 (Part 1 of 2) | Author, podcaster, farmer, and poet, Brendan Graham Dempsey, brings passion, dedication, clarity, and outstanding scholarship to the fascinating and enormously important study of cultural evolution, which operates on both a personal level and a collective one. He illuminates how, when, and why we shift from one cultural worldview to the next, using his own life’s journey through the cultural stages as a map and paints colorful portraits of the outstanding characteristics of each stage: traditional/premodern, modern, postmodern, and metamodern. Brendan enlightens us as to the tumultuous and often lonely and despairing time that occurs when our prior stage has been deconstructed and we find ourselves between worldviews in a liminal space where sensemaking fails. As he puts it, we live in certain worlds to help us navigate reality. But then things change, and we bump up against the limits of things. Now the time has come to update our sense of the world; we are invited to expand and grow.

We come to understand why it is necessary for cultures to evolve—to accommodate ever increasing complexity—and why culture wars and confusion result from misunderstanding a worldview that infiltrates your psyche before it’s ready. Brendan explains why postmodernism does not serve us now, introducing and inviting us to the new, emerging worldview of metamodernism, where there is hope in positivity, affirmation, and aspirational idealism. Hope, and the promise of coming together in a new understanding among peoples, a prerequisite for dealing with the challenges of the global crises that affect us all. Brendan brings a big heart, keen mind, and a lot of verve to these complex subjects, which come alive under his brilliant tutelage. As he points out, deconstructing the psyche can help save the world, adding, this is a lot of what the metamodern community is trying to get the word out about. Recorded May 1, 2024.

“It’s absolutely essential that some folks, anyway, try to break through to this other way of seeing that can get us beyond the limits of our worldviews at the moment…in a way that allows us to keep moving forward rather than back.“

(For Apple Podcast users, click here to view the complete show notes on the episode page.)

Topics & Time Stamps – Part 1

Introducing cultural evolution pioneer, author, poet, farmer, and spiritual podcaster, Brendan Graham Dempsey (01:35)
What are the stages our culture has been through? (03:13)
Premodern is the traditional stage, linked to the great Axial Age religions that started up around 500 BC (04:56)
Modernity was initiated with the move out of the Middle Ages into the Renaissance; postmodernity flowered in the mid 20th century; metamodernity dawned around 2000 (06:14)
What are the more subtle differences that constitute these shifts between cultures or worldviews? (07:19)
Language is the medium that shapes us individually and shapes how culture plays out: using a psychological lens to look at the complexification process of modes of thought (08:59)
The relation between metamodern and integral thought and the new emerging stage of consciousness (12:10)
Cultural evolution plays out at the individual level too (16:37)
Brendan’s characterization of cultural stages based on his own life’s development, beginning with his youth in a traditional household, where faith relates to day-to-day living and miracles happen (17:58)
Brendan’s...

Brendan Graham Dempsey (Part 1) - How and Why Cultures Evolve, and the Emerging Stage of Metamodernism

Deep Transformation

Brendan Graham Dempsey (Part 1) - How and Why Cultures Evolve, and the Emerging Stage of Metamodernism