The Artful Scaling of the Religion that is not a religion w/ Layman Pascal & Brendan Graham Dempsey
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- Опубліковано 12 вер 2024
- This is part 1 of series, Part 2 will be on Brendan's channel in which the three of us wrestle deeply within dialogos about how to implement the Religion that is not a religion in a way that is both viable and honourable.
Brendan's info: Brendan Graham Dempsey is a writer whose work focuses on the meaning crisis and the developing nature of religion/spirituality after postmodernism. He holds a BA in Religious Studies from the University of Vermont and a master's in Religion and the Arts from Yale University. He is the author of the Metamodern Spirituality Series, and the host of the Metamodern Spirituality podcast. His work can be found at www.brendangra....
Brendan's youtube channel: / @brendangrahamdempsey
Layman's info:
Integral Stage Link:
/ @theintegralstage8140
here's a link to the author interview series on spotify (which features Brendan)
open.spotify.c...
here's Layman's substack where he attempt sto answer questions people send him
laymanpascal.s...
You can support my work on Patreon, with the proceeds going into the research I do at the University of Toronto on the Meaning Crisis and the cultivation of wisdom here: / johnvervaeke
Join the Discord Server to discuss and reflect upon my work: / discord
Here's an attempt to chart the dialogos:
0:00 Introductions
5:16 Formulating the Problem
26:34 Bullshit spirituality vs. genuine wisdom: Spiritual bypassing as an example of the con
31:07 Typologies of religious engagement: Self-identification vs. functional subdivisions
32:11 A developmental typology? Pedagogy, the conveyor belt, and the problem of transformation
39:58 Transformation and deformation: Training vs. explaining
48:00 Ecologies of institutions for different types of engagement?
59:00 Finding the integrative "sweet spot" for facilitating growth
1:05:53 Institutions as regulators of integration: Designing zones of proximal development
1:12:00 Marks of trustworthiness: Seeking criteria for recognizing teacherly authority
Thanks Brendan!
That question of the success of scale is vital. I appreciate the frank way that John made it. It is the kind of thing that really stretches pastors and I think an area that can produce a lot of good dialogos.
Thank you Paul.
Scale comes in three flavors, solving the 'elitism' problem is scaling down (but there is another problem of elitism that has nothing to do with scale, so bad example IMHO), solving the problem of going from a simple explanation to a more complicated explanation is scaling up and the problem of reaching lots of people is scaling out. These are three distinct problems.
Most of what was talked about here could be nicely compressed into the problem of dogma (same as idol vs. icon) which was address in the three RNTAR conversations that Jules hosted on the AFtMC Discord UA-cam Channel: ua-cam.com/play/PLthDsam9tHNOq91KqPXUXU6_ETHBq_atE.html
Thanks Layman, Brendan and John!
Thanks Lee.
Love to see you two back at it.
Hi John, the idea of a new/collective/global religion of our time has been on my mind for a number of years. I find value in the way the guru’s run their gatherings in that the bulk of the time audience members get to ask questions for the guru to answer. This somewhat identifies the questions in the minds of that community in that time and location. The answer can then be specific as well as general and potentially a bridge to insert new ideas and increase perspective.
I am now practicing this in a participatory way in my everyday life, while being very careful not to sell anything but the ideas and not to seek validation from the process.
I would love to be a part of the dialogue.
Keep up the great work and best of luck.
I am reminded of the Indigenous Peoples met at a conference among themselves, years before the mainstream culture was thinking about the existential crises/ opportunities , and their resolution was VALUE CHANGE FOR SURVIVAL. Mainstream religions and mainstream journalism and everything else that is BUSINESS AS USUAL have basically failed to make a difference IMHO. So good on all of you for debating this with VanderKlay and Pageau! ✨😺💫
A deep and authentic dia-LOGOS, congratulations Brendan, Layman and John!
Taking in account that our current politic, economic, social and religious frameworks are collapsing, a transformation is needed. I believe that an evolutionary process won’t work in any of these areas because the system is broken and prone to a disruption.
Once society collapses, a revolution over the current religious system seems to be the way society can find its right way through wisdom, instead of man-made spiritual dogmas.
From natural altered states o consciousness through dreams, I can infer that a revolution is coming and people like you are planting the seeds of a better society.
Watching you guys I don’t see a wise man in a village, but a village with wise men. Thank you.
Wow 😮you guys are phenomenal. Now this is a conversation that connects the Big math to the Small math, finally the beginnings of one equation for everything. Thank You for raising the consciousness and knowledge of this planet.
☯️🕉️🖖🏽🙏🏻🥰
This really helps!
Thank you so much ❤️❤️❤️
I just want to echo my appreciation here!
This was highly enjoyable and I'm glad there's more coming!
Everyone involved is so thoughtful, respectful and deserves praise for this kind of exploration through communication!
True dialogos!
I am always bewildered with the massive amount of the explanation required of the already explained and embodied concepts. It feels like a self fulfilling process. By drawing bigger and bigger circles can we stop circling around, contain and explain everything or will it eventually implode?
Lol. I'm glad someone said this. I had to stop watching these because I don't have the inclination for it. It seems ironic that someone who promotes meditation would spend so much time in the world of ideas and concepts. Maybe going HAM in one direction balances and enriches going HAM in the other. Is this hyper conceptualizing a part of what comes from being in Academia? Fascinating material, but damn
Thanks guys,
While this is very different from the project I'm engaged in, I think I'll find this series highly valuable.
Would love to chat with you about this sometime soon! Manuel and I have lots of notes from this video that we could share thoughts on. What is your project, exactly? Did you get a chance to watch our RNTAR videos: ua-cam.com/play/PLthDsam9tHNOq91KqPXUXU6_ETHBq_atE.html
@@marklefebvre5758 Yeah that would be fun Mark!
I'm really just trying to be a good Christian hehe This implies helping Christianity grow
I've started and I hope to finish your trilogy soon. I'll reach out once that's the case 👍
Let’s leverage float tank centres all over the world to spread these ideas and conversations. We’re going to need multiple float sessions to tackle them!
Another key element of the institutional taxonomy: the gymnasium/dojo. Unsurprising both the Greeks and the Japanese had such an emphasis on martial arts.
Wisdom begins in wonder, and that was certainly wonderful!
This was a great way to spend my walk today! I think that trust is such a key component and I can't wait to listen to the next video to see where you take these ideas.
Although this seems to be an immensely complex subject matter, it must be elaborated upon. I admit, in the past, I feel we often just don't want to deal with many of these sticky issues, but rather that we just 'get on' with life and live it, but it's essential to ask on what ground are we standing on when we say this? Much respect and admiration from myself. I have been hearing the central questions of this series echoing around my mind during many of the other discussions you have had with others, John, and therefore I very much welcome it's open discussion and dia-logos. I really look forward to the next episode!
This conversation feels like Plato's Republic. So far I really appreciate it.🙏🏼👌🏼
Trust worthiness, history is a good place to start and welcoming inquisitive dialog, opening the door to where the information comes from so it's validity can be recognized by the individuals who are looking for another way to approach the future. I put my name on these posts to hopefully let people understand that I'm real and only looking to say my truth as it relates to the dialog I'm commenting about.
Peace
Ok, so this is what bugs me.
Most of my education is autodidact.. and most of it is just whatever I’m interested in. When I was 16 I decided I was interested in sex.. so I started reading Kinsey, moved onto Masters and Johnson.. then Freud, and I was deep into Jung before I got out of high school.. and I was probably not that far from being functionally illiterate at the start of this.
I’d want to look at Zack Stein’s work more.. but look, I followed, very much, what John was called “Socratic eroticism.” It’s very close to what Joseph Campbell meant by bliss..
Now I’m not exactly a normal person.. and I get that for most people.. my path doesn’t work… but thought I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m not prone to self deception.. in terms of my autodidacticism.. I don’t think I’m any more prone to it then groups are.
As an American.. all the founding fathers were autodidacts.. Lincoln, commonly known as our best president.. autodidact.. I’m a musician.. all of the blues is filled with people who taught them selves.
I don’t think you can look at autodidacts and a priori say there’s self deception at work there that’s more then another path.. or I’m just deeply critical of this position.. and I think the reality is probably just a lot more complicated then what we’ve gotten at yet.
Yes! exactly my thoughts!...
Cool chat, these things are tricky but we'll get there.
The biggest issue I see is "is there a spiritual realm (individual bodies of consciousness outside of the physical/material realm)". Otherwise you're just arguing about lenses through which to view the evolutionary material world. Symbols and concepts are meant to point to a truth not be the truth.
Edit: maybe Aquinas and Sunday school aren't a different God, maybe it's the same thing as kindergarten science class with paper volcanoes (Sunday school) vs chemistry 401 with a semester of molecular biology (Aquinas). Still science, different maturity of understanding.
Could be interesting to include someone like David Sloan Wilson in these discussions.
Sound like I am roughly on the right lines with the scalable platform I am building - really looking forward to more of this series for more ideas and hopefully soon will be pointing people back at this series, when it it is in their zone, and far more, from the platform
Hi Jon. What's your platform?
Look into the "Traditions" of AA, as they were originally instantiated. Seriously.
I always thought the Unitarian church is an ideal place, but it's been a while since I experienced it. Did you know Frank Lloyd Wright designed a Unitarian church in Madison, WI. That to me is science/engineering, together with God and Art.
There are many Jacobs and many ladders; they all work, sort of, and they all fail for the same reason. Our bias toward the industrial assembly line model of education and ascent seems most problematic to me. People don't trust (have faith in) a conveyor belt because they didn't build it, and they don't know where it is taking them and have no say in what it might do to them. "Ascent" can't be straight or narrow, or only up, because the movement of Reality and our ways of being aren't. For most "seekers" the challenge has been to find the "perfect" ascending ladder or conveyor belt. There isn't one. And committing to one reduces us to being a part on an assembly line. In our authoritarian assembly line systems of education and ascent we must learn what is taught, in the way it is taught; we must do as we're told and stay on the belt, which steals our ability to navigate and kills our curiosity and wonder (making real wisdom impossible). Ask any dropout or "none." The "sweet spot" is knowing you have the agency (and permission!) to hop from one belt to another (the ecology of practices and institutions), at least long enough to recognize whether it's moving you toward food or teeth. Becoming wise is more like gathering than ascension. I sure as hell don't know how to diagram that. Maybe one that looks less like a ladder or belt, and more like a road map with intersections of converging and diverging roads. Trust comes from knowing that all of the good stuff we want is there to be found (not force-fed), and that you will find it if you keep looking. I think a wise guy said that once. :-)
Thank you all, such a valuable project a very relevant to my world!
I keep thinking that some of the insights from complexity management/facilitation from Dave Snowden's Cognitive Edge would be useful at this formative stage.
Some sample guiding quotes I have found useful (Dave Snowden):
"Scaling a complex system works by decomposition and recombination not aggregation and imitation...
You cannot understand complex adaptive systems through modeling or analysis, only through interacting with real time feedback loops from multiple agents to avoid cognitive bias...
Run safe to fail experiments around every coherent option and see what happens...Whatever I do I will have unintended consequences which I will be responsible for ethically."
In India traditional training emphasised dharma. Dharma is an eternal principle....that which holds things together...from the laws of the universe...to nature to society to family to individual.. Dharma is eternal also because as epochs change so must dharma adapt...but the principle of what brings harmony in every individual being and setting...in each action or task...is said to underpin everything else. Also the Sanatana Dharma is not a religion but a family of religions...a menu...from non duality...to qualified monism...to full duaity...to non theistic and even materialists. Even now, after thousands of years it is the task of of those who care to keep tuning this flexible blending harmonic of dharmas. But the underlying principles from ancient times are unchanged. Flexibility afforded by dharmic principles and open spiritual menus seems key...
Dear John.. and all of you ..may you blessed in your humungous task...this was amazing.
Hopefully this will be helpful: I am an interested lay person. Lower SES. Auto didactic. have watched the entire AFTMC series. The exact portion which afforded the transformation I had been seeking was the description of parasitic processing.
When I listen to this conversation, I feel so unbelievably grateful that I found the practice of Nichiren Buddhism with the SGI, which, to my mind, meets all of the requirements that were laid out here. It really strengthens my faith that I'm on the right path.
I imagine it could be bewildering or desperate to get really turned on by this conversation, but then not see any of it being embodied in any practices or communities or institutions when you go back to your daily life?
So I'm not a natural evangelist but I would suggest checking out the SGI for a case study of a modern, rapidly growing worldwide religion that seems to me to provide a solid answer to all of this problematization.
I'd like to hear someone like Agnes Callard talk about collective transformation. What would it be like to aspire as a group in the dark towards something paradoxically quantitatively unknowable but desirable in some way? It's easy to imagine a person naively, or through will and aspiration, changing. But at a larger level, it's hard to find good examples or imagine what a sequence of actions looks like that sets up the initial conditions for a collective leap which has some enduring impact on the group or team.
Maybe a dysfunctional family that becomes prosperous and happy or a city that beautified itself in a decade or two. There was a brightly lit carnival on my drive home yesterday that certainly grabbed my attention. Maybe we need more statues of Socrates with neon lights up in our market places and downtowns.
I guess that's why hyper-objects are deservedly hard to fathom even if you can get a vague notion of their existence. Really engaging and stimulating talk!
Thank you Robert for your thoughtful comment!
Very cool, on behalf of concerned lay people with non-philosophical day jobs and kids, thanks for doing this work!! But can y’all hurry up and figure shit out already and let us know when u do!? 😂😛
Thanks for doing the most important work in the world right now.
I listened, with great enthusiasm, to the Awakening series, and I am especially interested in your concept of a religion that’s not a religion, but I’m sure I may have missed some of the conversations along the way. Was there one in which a working definition of the word “religion” for purposes of this project was offered?
Self correction processes that are talked about here feel more like running into walls erected by others who thinks they know what's best for me. " I am free to go anywhere as long as I stay within the maze" that created for me. Maybe the only real choice I have which maze I want to get "lost and found" in!!
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
The religion that's not a religion is a 12 step program. I find all your issues were addressed in the big book and 12x12 . God handle's the results.
Becoming: Intentional transformation through the awareness of the convergences of philosophies, sciences and religions. Explications can be shown to those who are curious, but pointing to the convergences is probably enough bait to get the snowball rolling. The ecology of practices is implicit and will emerge during exploration. No priesthood, creed or institutional polity is required, just dialogos. I'm really only describing what has happened to me over the last 40 years.
A "religion that is not a religion" can also be called a "substitute for religion" or "pseudo-religion", and once it is called that, it is no longer necessary to think about it, we already know what it is. Analyzing it beyond that is mere philosophical entertainment, which is fine, but perfectly useless.
I think wrt to spiritual bypassing that Kastrup's phrase "the intellect is the bouncer of the heart" can offer a glint of a pathway "through". Technological content structured in a way that easily onboards current habits and expectations and is salient, yet appeals to the intellect and cuts through the bullshit cultural grammar. Stealing the culture by through the culture you are stealing from which, in a way, the AFtMC community is doing at the moment. But perhaps a more targeted approach can be developed, incorporating animated videos on certain points, VR pedagogical arenas or "dialogos" centers, or even an ARG (alternate reality game). Consciously comandeering technological trends to infuse wisdom :)
So no one in this project has God in their life nor believes or necessarily disbelieves in God as a living experience but you think you are qualified to improve world systems of belief? I'm curious why you would so exclude the overwhelming numbers who have God in their life as a living experience? Your limit is you won't include God, you won't even try. Why?
Sounds like, Looks like, Smells like but it's not :-) Most religions have an unattainable greater than the individual, greater than the community goal that is always "just beyond" our intellectual comprehension. Is your non-religion's overarching goal to therapeutically provide mental well being? Is this a "greater than" enough goal that provides the peace of mind those that actually practice religions are experienced each and every day by the B's?
Would *a* religion that’s not a religion, and building it off a conciliatory space between and affording *all* religions of the past and future that can abide it be a better name than *THE* religion that’s not a religion and statements of building *THE* religion of the future?
Perhaps. I do want to convey something moving outside the category of what we have called religion.
@@johnvervaeke I think so many of us are extremely grateful for that and that it’s necessary. My concern is more about ramping down the mistakes of enthusiastic iconoclasm, and the perception of it in religious people who would be amenable to the dialogos otherwise. And I do think that some separate space in individuals and communities will still arise around it, but it can offer a full ecology of what a religion offers to those of us who can’t exactly believe in the old traditional manner in the total truth of one tradition, but respect and draw heavily from them.
@@Ac-ip5hd Yes that is well said. My concerns are: the religion of the future sounds utopian, and Wilber already has this with his religion not tomorrow. Still I need to think about your excellent points.
@@johnvervaeke Thank you for taking the time to consider the point, the video was very thoughtful and a great analysis of the problem, especially on equivocation, con vs conveyor belt, and the issue of teacherly authority. I look forward to you guys and the community continuing to wrestle with those problems and continue cultivating this project through it’s infancy.
I have come to be completely disillusioned with this project. It is going to totally be seized by the You Will Own Nothing And Be Happy Religion That's Not a Religion, and like Game B it also has a Utopia That Isn't a Utopia. I think it will just assimilate mystics with scientific bias from their fixity and as Jung said the alchemists where gnostics who created our scientific worldview, it came out of mutating syncretic gnosticism that was an anti Christianity parasitic to it. I believe this to be fragmented academia into the many reclaiming the One through it's symbols without a trinity to stop it. I see these enthusiastic goals have become ten times worse in the project and fiercely gnostic contemporaries in the project, Peter Limberg doing the After Socrates who sexualizes religion, and RATNAR's art is ugly as hell. I hope if the Eastern Orthodox Bishop you are debating is overly ecumenical that someone serious from the Fr Seraphim Rose side takes this project to task and will be breaking it down for our bishops in letters for them. I think it slips out quite often whether it is your speech on Bruno in the cognitive science show and how with Neoplatonism Christ is unnecessary, "Paul Tillich a God Beyond The God of Theism: How Gnostic is that!", the obvious prelest on Rebel Wisdom when you became infatuated with Jonathan's radical elements as potential for synthesis, and when Peterson says you seem more Christian and tell a story of how your "partner" said you where the most Christian person ever, you were like Jesus (See Jonathan Pageau clips: More Christian than Christianity.) I have finished my rough first draft in arguments and pointing out negative tendencies in the Sangha and surrounding projects that are part of this at net, there is a complete chiliastic tendency and inability in the project to self police whenever it is libertine evil, esoteric evil, left wing, or sexual impropriety, not by Christian standards but by your own and the videos Jordan and Dave Fuller made on How To Detect a Culty Cult. Because it's baked in at the theological level and built on gnostic academia, and the pre political world view of you and your colleagues, which multiplies on the periphery and down to the project. Giving out secular seance and active imagination to the Nones because it's what they want is like handing out money to crackheads. I will be addressing this stuff publicly on my lower level as a blue collar nobody who participated in and believed in it, in blunt force plain English that won't be easily ignored, networking with platformed people, and reaching out to the serious thinkers in my hierarchy who can actually debate you, and making sure they know what Limberg is up to cuz it sure as hell ain't orthodox.
And I believe you care for reciprocal reconstruction and it is the spirit of your project coming out. There are plenty here who do not, and even if you fixed it quit, or converted (which you won't) it will continue with it's same goals. Even at a flat psychological level this is an antichrist religion, especially as it integrates it.
Since you're against capitalism and technology, I must be against your movement. Freedom is our holy word, not some snide guru talk against what permits hundreds of millions of people to enjoy astonishing well-being. :(
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