Emergentism: A Philosophy of Complexity and Meaning with Brendan Graham Dempsey

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This discussion, lead by author and thought leader Brendan Graham Dempsey, is about the meaning crisis and two ways of thinking about it: reductionism and relativism.

Brendan describes the meaning crisis as a collective existential crisis related to the issue of purpose and meaning. The prevalence of nihilism and the reactionary fundamentalism that follows are seen as part of this crisis. Reductionism is the belief that everything can be broken down into its parts, with the fundamental understanding that everything is made up of matter in space.

The Conversation

Reductionism has influenced the way people make sense of their experiences and reality, particularly in the context of mechanistic science and industrialization.

Relativism, on the other hand, is the belief that everything is socially constructed and conditioned, leading to a disorientation where people's sensemaking is solely based on subjective stories without any connection to reality. This perspective emerged from the postmodern turn and the recognition of the influence of social contexts on ideas and language.

The meaning crisis is a result of both reductionism and relativism. These ways of thinking about reality and meaning have had a negative impact on how people make sense of the world.

Brendan proposes two responses to the meaning crisis: relationality and reconstruction.

Relationality emphasizes the reality of relationships between entities and their environment. It challenges the reductionistic view by acknowledging that relations are real and have a significant impact on how things behave in the world. This perspective requires a shift in thinking away from purely objective or subjective views of meaning and recognizes the transjective nature of meaning, where meaning emerges from the contextual relationships between entities and their environment.

Brendan suggests that understanding the drive towards complexity and the unfolding directionality of increasing complexity allows for the reconstruction of a new grand narrative or framing of existence. This new perspective can contextualize various forms of knowledge within a larger picture and help address the meaning crisis.

About Brendan

Brendan Graham Dempsey is a writer who delves into topics such as the meaning crisis and the essence of spirituality within the context of metamodernity.

He pursued his undergraduate studies at the University of Vermont, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Religious Studies. Furthering his academic pursuits, he went on to obtain a Master of Arts degree in Religion and the Arts from Yale University.

He is the author of a number of publications including his recent book: Emergentism: A Religion of Complexity for the Metamodern World. The book explores how the new sciences of complexity have transformed our understanding of the universe and our position within it. In a time when many individuals struggle with nihilism and a sense of meaninglessness, Brendan presents a compelling argument that the story of complexification offers a profound revelation.

Currently residing in Greensboro Bend, Vermont, Brendan Graham Dempsey is actively involved in managing a holistic retreat center known as Sky Meadow. The retreat center serves as a space for individuals seeking spiritual growth and personal development.

You can learn more about Brendan and his work at www.brendangrahamdempsey.com

Excerpts from the conversation

What is the meaning crisis?

Brendan: "I think of it as a collective crisis that we're experiencing culturally and as an existential crisis, it's a catastrophe of the issue of purpose or meaning, the sense that nothing matters. We've become nihilists and seemingly had nihilism spread into the cultural fabric and what you might call collective representations in our society as a cultural default.

Then on top of that, there's also this natural response that occurs, which is reactionary fundamentalism, which is "Oh, man, this is not good. I don't like this, this doesn't seem to be calling me in any meaningful direction. And so let me hunker down into more traditional established forms of meaning making, even if they seem to be, I don't know, questionable in light of other advances in society."

So you get this mixture of collective nihilism and it's responsive kind of a reactionary fundamentalism. I think that that's a lot of what's going on with the meaning crisis."

What is reductionism?

Brendan: "Reductionism is this sense that basically everything breaks down to parts, ontologically everything is just about sort of matter in space. So everything comes from a bottom up approach. And everything is explicable through understanding of atoms and forces, right?

So my whole existence then is just a collection of atoms bumping into each other, and you lose everything from agency to a sense of consciousness and phenomenology, if everything is just a bunch of parts in motion in the void.

I think that this reductionistic worldview has certainly taken hold. It really informs a lot of the way that most people tend to make sense out of their experience and make sense out of reality

I think this is particularly associated with the modern turn, the advent of mechanistic science and industrialization, mechanisation. Everything's about we can all just track in a simple linear deterministic way, how all the parts will relate to each other and what the outcome will be. The idea that we can predict everything."

What is relativism?

Brendan: "Relativism, which is not necessarily a dirty word in its own right, but in a radical way can lead to a profound disorientation. Basically, there's nothing beyond context, that if every aspect of knowledge is socially constructed and socially conditioned, and there's nothing that we can compare that to, to have any sense of what might be real, and therefore, what is meaning? Well, it's just stories that we tell, and it might not have any bearing whatsoever on reality.

This also has a very dispiriting effect on people sensemaking. This particularly comes from a kind of the postmodern turn from the realisation that we live in contextual social contexts, and that we are the ideas and language that we use come from those contexts.

So the sensemaking that we're doing is happening through these systems that are conditioning our thought and has similar kinds of impacts."