EMERGENCE EMERGES.  Hard to argue with that.

It is especially hard if you are following the slow drip of chapters from the new book Emergentism that are popping up periodically on Brendan Graham Dempsey's substack.

You might know Brendan from his acclaimed Youtube series After Postmodernism -- or his recent work as one of the mavens of Metamodern Spirituality.  His unique mixture of careful critique, quick assimilation & daring imagination provides a very playful and provocative arena of thought. 

This new book (pseudonymously & crypto-humorously attributed to a certain Adyahanzi) picks up, arguably,  where Ken Wilber and Teilhard de Chardin left off.  It presents a cosmic, biological and social developmentalism that attempts to be more culturally critical, scientifically up-to-date and mythically potent.  Huzzah!

Indeed, it is perhaps insufficient to be merely familiar with contemporary scientific and trans-scientific notions about emergent layers or regimes of integrated complexity in nature and ourselves.  Perhaps a worldview also has to stir our souls?  It would certainly be nice if our sense of the cosmos could succeed in being as privately satisfying and socially motivating as the grand narratives of religious history. 

So this volume proposes a creative shift from implied emergentism to a self-aware and poeticized Emergentism.

The goal is Religion 2.0.  The goal is civilization design.  The goal requires new culture-artists.

If any of that tickles your fancy or strikes you as essential for grappling with the meaning crisis, then you'd be an utter fool (and possibly a heretic?) to ignore this intrepid trek from Logos to Mythos to Religio. 

Of course, Alexander Bard would immediately demand to know where the Pathos (!) is but I'll bet that it's in there somewhere... 


* BONUS *

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