Sher, with respect: your post presents a postmodern critique of the fb administrator’s statement on merit, framing it as a mask for harm and exclusion. But in doing so, you bypass a far more likely and meaningful interpretation: that the administrator acted in good faith, out of a sincere belief that tokenism diminishes rather than empowers individuals. By assuming his appeal to merit was a covert exercise in maintaining privilege, you adopt a cynicism that forecloses on the possibility of ethical nuance. What could have been a constructive engagement with competing values is instead reduced to a moral indictment.
The discomfort expressed with “tokenism” does not necessarily signal a resistance to diversity. But it can just as easily reflect a concern that representation should arise from genuine engagement, not symbolic inclusion. To treat such a view as suspect by default is to fall into the trap of reading all institutional actors through a singular lens of power and bias. But that move lacks interpretive generosity. You take a complex ethical stance and collapse it into a familiar narrative, one that leaves no space for honest disagreement or sincere principle. In doing so, you deny the humanity of the very people you aim to hold accountable.
Your analysis reflects a postmodern worldview: one rooted in suspicion, identity politics, and deconstruction. While this perspective has revealed many important truths, it also comes with limitations. It too often substitutes moral certainty for dialogical engagement and favors symbolic justice over substantive solutions. In contrast, metamodernism, as theorists like Hanzi Freinacht and Vermeulen suggest, offers a framework that holds tension rather than resolves it prematurely. It oscillates between sincerity and irony, idealism and skepticism, to find a middle path that affirms complexity. That kind of thinking is what your piece is missing.
The administrator you criticized was navigating a value conflict, not performing an act of harm. A metamodern response would have embraced the tension: how do we respect merit while honoring the need for inclusion? How do we ensure representation without reducing individuals to representatives? These are difficult questions, and they deserve more than an accusatory reading. The world needs conversations that can hold these contradictions, not ones that resolve them by villainizing people who disagree.
Rather than opening a generative dialogue, your article retrenches the postmodern habit of casting disagreement as evidence of moral failure. But not every challenge to a DEI initiative is rooted in bigotry, and not every call for merit is a tool of suppression. Sometimes, it’s a principled objection to shallow representation. Metamodern discourse recognizes this and tries to move beyond the binary of oppressor and oppressed. It seeks integration, not indictment.
Frankly, it’s disappointing that you didn’t take the opportunity to model that kind of depth and intellectual charity. Your critique, grounded in an outdated framework, flattens complexity into accusation. In an era that urgently needs bridge-building, synthesis, and moral humility, we can’t afford that. Postmodern diatribes have had their moment. It’s time to move on. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thank you for engaging—truly. This is the kind of response that makes the deeper conversation possible, even if we arrive from very different angles.
But let’s name what’s happening here, clearly and carefully.
You’ve accused my piece of postmodern cynicism, of flattening ethical nuance, of “villainizing” someone who was—by your account—simply navigating a complex values conflict. But what you call “interpretive generosity,” I call a demand for comfort disguised as dialogue.
Let’s take this slowly, and build a cognitive bridge together:
⸻
1. Interpretive Generosity vs. Power Literacy
To say that I should assume “good faith” on the part of an institutional actor is not a call for nuance—it’s a reinscription of privilege. In Cognitive Ecology, we recognize that context is cognition. Meaning, the administrator’s words don’t exist in a vacuum of intention; they participate in a systemic feedback loop where appeals to merit routinely mask exclusion.
That doesn’t mean I deny their humanity.
It means I recognize their position.
⸻
2. The Misuse of ‘Tokenism’ as a Shield
When someone claims they reject inclusion because they fear “tokenism,” what they’re often doing—intentionally or not—is protecting a worldview where only certain kinds of excellence are legible.
Who defines merit?
Who built the measuring stick?
To say that my critique “collapses” complexity is to ignore the recursive nature of institutional harm—where even principled objections can be embedded in unconscious patterns of erasure.
That’s not moral indictment. That’s ecological awareness.
⸻
3. Metamodernism Doesn’t Require Neutrality
You invoke Hanzi and Vermeulen as if metamodernism is a call to hover above conflict in a sacred tension of both/and.
But real metamodern practice doesn’t mean refusing to name harm so we can feel sophisticated.
Metamodernism, if it’s to mean anything, must be able to grieve and build at the same time. It holds paradox, yes—but it also holds people. If tension becomes an excuse to avoid accountability, that’s not integration. That’s spiritual bypassing with better branding.
⸻
4. Complexity ≠ Bothsidesism
You say I should’ve “modeled depth and intellectual charity.”
I say: I did. But not in a way that flatters the powerful.
Depth isn’t always symmetrical. Sometimes clarity is charity.
And sometimes moral discernment is not moralizing.
The point of Breaking the Loop was not to flatten the administrator’s intent—but to contextualize it. To show how even the most seemingly neutral or reasoned statements can operate as exclusion feedback loops when left unexamined.
⸻
5. Sincerity Requires Systemic Awareness
You said I didn’t ask the right questions.
But here are mine:
• Why is it so often marginalized people who are asked to offer interpretive generosity, while their experiences are subjected to cold rational critique?
• Why is “merit” always the refuge of those already on the inside?
• Why is my clarity mistaken for cruelty, and the administrator’s coded dismissal of inclusion treated as principle?
Sher, thank you for this generous and challenging reply. You’ve taken the time to respond with clarity and care, and I want to honor that by responding in kind. I agree; this is where real dialogue begins: not in agreement, but in mutual willingness to sit with difficult questions. What follows isn’t a counterattack, but a continued weaving. I.e. a dialogue between paradigms that don’t always speak the same language, but must learn to.
You say that what I framed as interpretive generosity is actually a “demand for comfort disguised as dialogue.” But I don’t think those two are mutually exclusive. Interpretive generosity is not about ignoring systems of power; it’s about holding space for individual moral agency within them. I never claimed the administrator's words existed in a vacuum; rather, I argued that flattening their intent into complicity with systemic harm risks foreclosing precisely the kind of nuance metamodernism invites. Yes, merit can be a mask. But it can also be a sincere, if imperfect, principle. Part of the metamodern task is holding that ambiguity without collapsing it into a single moral reading.
Your point about “tokenism” being used as a shield is well taken. But I’d invite a distinction: between dismissing inclusion out of discomfort, and rejecting a specific mechanism of inclusion out of concern for dignity. Who defines merit? Yes, that’s a crucial question. But if every objection to tokenism is coded as protection of privilege, we leave no room for those navigating genuine internal conflict about representation and fairness. The work, I think, is not to dismiss that discomfort but to metabolize it...to turn it into dialogue rather than indictment. Not all wounds are best treated with scalpel logic; some require conversational stitching.
You’re right that metamodernism shouldn’t become a refuge for neutrality. I agree entirely: both/and thinking is not a license to avoid hard truths. But neither is it a license to assume power always speaks with one voice. You say “grieve and build”: yes! That’s the work. But grief without complexity can become indictment in disguise. And building without dialogue can quickly reproduce the same hierarchies it seeks to dismantle. My worry isn’t that your critique names harm; it’s that it risks sealing off the administrator’s moral world before it’s been opened.
To your excellent question ("why are marginalized people so often asked to offer interpretive generosity?") - the honest answer is: they shouldn’t have to be. But neither should anyone be preemptively framed as a symptom rather than a subject. My argument is not that we center comfort, but that we remember discomfort is not evenly distributed, & that includes the discomfort of being misread, flattened, or essentialized by systems of critique themselves. Complexity is not a shield; it’s a compass. It doesn’t prevent moral discernment, it makes it more accurate.
Lastly, I appreciate your invocation of synpraxis and cognitive ecology. You’re absolutely right: dialogue is not a neutral act. It has costs, and power shapes perception. But if we agree that we’re both operating within a metamodern paradigm, then we also agree that meaning emerges not just from critique, but from synthesis. And synthesis requires the strange alchemy of listening without totalizing, of naming harm without precluding healing, and of holding power accountable without dissolving the individual into it.
Let’s keep building that bridge. Not for comfort. Not for consensus. But for the kind of co-created understanding that metamodernism, at its best, makes possible.
Thank you. This is the kind of conversation I always hoped EFS would invite—not because we agree, but because we can hold a dialogue shaped by both responsibility and reciprocity.
I want to name first what I appreciate: your willingness to stay—to respond not with defense, but with discernment. That is rare. And it matters.
You say interpretive generosity is about making space for individual moral agency within systems. I can hold that. In fact, part of what EFS aims to do is invite exactly that kind of agency—not to erase the individual into the system, but to ask how we account for our roles within it without losing ourselves.
That said, here’s where I still see the tension—and perhaps the power of our different paradigms.
From within Cognitive Ecology and Synpraxis, intent does not precede impact—they’re co-emergent. The idea that we “flatten” someone’s moral interiority by naming the systemic patterns they participate in assumes a linear model of interpretation. But systems don’t flatten people—they pattern them. And the more power you hold within a system, the more likely your good intentions will be metabolized by the dominant logic unless you’re actively interrupting it.
So when I speak of “tokenism as a shield,” I’m not dismissing internal conflict or sincerity—I’m naming the moment where internal discomfort becomes a boundary rather than a bridge. That’s the feedback loop. That’s what EFS tracks.
You’re right: not all wounds require a scalpel. But some do. And part of the trauma of those repeatedly excluded is that when they offer that scalpel—clear pattern recognition—it’s often mistaken for cruelty, cynicism, or overreach. That is the loop.
I also hold your concern about complexity becoming a compass rather than a shield. Yes. Yes. But a compass without a willingness to act becomes a spinner. And in too many of these spaces, “we need more dialogue” becomes the pause button for transformation.
And that’s where our paradigms might stretch each other beautifully:
• You’re inviting moral depth.
• I’m naming system entanglement.
• You’re pointing to the necessity of synthesis.
• I’m ensuring we don’t collapse difference in pursuit of comfort.
Let’s keep building the bridge, exactly as you say. But let’s also name whose feet are already tired from carrying the weight of that bridge for generations—without recognition.
If we can hold that paradox together, then maybe metamodernism can become what it was always meant to be: not a performance of complexity, but a practice of re-humanization.
And that’s a future I want to keep walking toward—with you, and with whoever’s ready.
Also, one thing I want to gently name:
I’ve offered my identity, my framework, and my vulnerability to this conversation. I’m speaking not just from theory, but from lived experience, positionality, and years of relational work.
And yet—I don’t know who I’m speaking with.
You’ve written with fluency and care, but without context or name.
For all I know, I could be responding to a bot trained on metamodern discourse.
This isn’t about tone-policing or mistrust—it’s about relational integrity. Dialogue requires not just ideas, but presence. And in spaces like this, where power is often made invisible, anonymity can become another layer of protection that others aren’t afforded.
So I ask this not to call you out—but to call you in:
I guess they were needed back on their home planet of New England. Whilst I am very impressed with the patience that Sher displayed, I am not entirely sure the Metamodern Reply Guy was worth the evident energy employed by trying to alchemise their obvious word games into something catalytic. A woman's work is never done I guess.
You ask for interpretive generosity, when exclusion for speaking up is happening there often. Stop gaslighting the reality, which is there's simply, purely, cult dynamics happening there in many respects.
So sorry! I didn’t realize this essay was a follow up to “When a Paradigm Shift Becomes Aware of Itself.” I read it and realized who you were writing about - I think. I looked up the metamodern men - all white dudes. Of course they were uncomfortable with your contributions. Published White Men with Ivy League degrees cannot abide even perceived challenges. Metamodern sensibility sounds like needlessly wordy, meretricious jargon word salad gobbledygook anyway. The Synpraxis you write of makes intuitive and practical sense. Maybe you need to be neurodivergent, like me, to just get it.
No worries at all. I write about patterns and systems, not individuals. My goal isn’t to call people out, but to reflect on the broader dynamics at play. We’re all learning, and I trust that in time, the mirror will be held with more care. Metamodernism holds real potential—it can be generative when it strives to decenter itself. But so far, it seems to be struggling with how to actually do that.
This following share may not be Sher's style (I don't know), but it is mine. It's strong stuff, and yet I have a literal duty of care to speak up, so I hope it's not deleted. I see it as critically important for the care and safety of others, and the conversation is too important for what I experience going on to go unspoken.
It saddens me to say, but based on my experience, there appear to be some deeply concerning dynamics in Brendan Graham Dempsey’s 'Metamodern Spirituality' space, particularly around exclusion of dissent and the silencing of powerful voices, especially those of women and marginalized voices. I encourage anyone engaging with Brendan's spaces to do their own inquiry and pay close attention to the patterns at play.
Speaking personally, I have come to feel that there are cult-like dynamics operating there, and I believe it’s important for others in the broader metamodern community to be aware of this possibility and assess it for themselves.
When such dynamics unfold inside spaces that claim to be about spiritual depth, systems thinking, and human evolution, they do real harm. They erode trust, silence important perspectives, and leave many quietly exiled while the space maintains a public face of openness and complexity.
With the care and safety of all in mind, I’ve written a public statement of witness and concern, grounded in my own lived experience. Please read and share with care and discernment, for the sake of integrity and truth in the evolving cultural field of the global metamodern conversation space. ⤵️
Thank you for this. I feel your care, your courage, and your clarity. It means more than you know. Grateful to be walking this complex path alongside voices like yours.
When I first got interested in metamodernism, I stuck my head in a couple of spaces. I was dismayed, but not surprised, that all or nearly all the posters and commenters were white male. I don't know how I came by it — it's a real mystery given that I grew up in the rural north, which is almost exclusively white, and decades ago at that — but I've always much preferred to be in mixed groups. I think part of what you experienced stems from the fact that, while non-white males frequently have to consider others', especially white males', POVs, the reverse is much rarer. They lack the practice and so either struggle with it, refuse to do it, or are unaware they should at least make the attempt.
I put this somewhere else as a response sorry for the repeat!:
+++
I identify with your experience but have found that Unconditional Love (sometimes referred to as "grace") negates the need for merit in a relationship. This breaks the cycle you articulately describe. If someone so strongly feels the need to be "right" that is their problem. Their moral "strength" or merit is ironically their weakness. We must wait patiently and love until love lifts them out of the cycle too. Sometimes it can be the case that you are considered in the wrong when you know you are right. Difficult though this is, it is good just to be "in the wrong" since being wrong or right is of no consequence to you - only love matters. This is what, I reckon, the cross is all about.
Thank you, Bruce. Yes—this is the deeper loop beneath the loop.
Unconditional love, when it’s real, removes the need to be right or understood. It lets us stand in truth without needing validation, because the truth isn’t about dominance—it’s about liberation. Of the self, and hopefully, one day, of the system.
And grace doesn’t mean silence.
It means telling the truth without bitterness,
being misunderstood without retaliation,
and staying whole without needing to win.
That’s what the cross is about.
And that’s what breaking the loop feels like, too.
I hear the impulse to name, and I get where it’s coming from. But integrity isn’t only shown through calling out. I believe in creating environments where systems of harm can’t root themselves—not just shining a spotlight on one node in the system. I’m not protecting power; I’m practicing power differently. Trust that if I had felt naming was the most generative path right now, I would have. This is not avoidance—this is discernment. And it’s rooted in care for everyone involved, including those harmed.
Sher, with respect: your post presents a postmodern critique of the fb administrator’s statement on merit, framing it as a mask for harm and exclusion. But in doing so, you bypass a far more likely and meaningful interpretation: that the administrator acted in good faith, out of a sincere belief that tokenism diminishes rather than empowers individuals. By assuming his appeal to merit was a covert exercise in maintaining privilege, you adopt a cynicism that forecloses on the possibility of ethical nuance. What could have been a constructive engagement with competing values is instead reduced to a moral indictment.
The discomfort expressed with “tokenism” does not necessarily signal a resistance to diversity. But it can just as easily reflect a concern that representation should arise from genuine engagement, not symbolic inclusion. To treat such a view as suspect by default is to fall into the trap of reading all institutional actors through a singular lens of power and bias. But that move lacks interpretive generosity. You take a complex ethical stance and collapse it into a familiar narrative, one that leaves no space for honest disagreement or sincere principle. In doing so, you deny the humanity of the very people you aim to hold accountable.
Your analysis reflects a postmodern worldview: one rooted in suspicion, identity politics, and deconstruction. While this perspective has revealed many important truths, it also comes with limitations. It too often substitutes moral certainty for dialogical engagement and favors symbolic justice over substantive solutions. In contrast, metamodernism, as theorists like Hanzi Freinacht and Vermeulen suggest, offers a framework that holds tension rather than resolves it prematurely. It oscillates between sincerity and irony, idealism and skepticism, to find a middle path that affirms complexity. That kind of thinking is what your piece is missing.
The administrator you criticized was navigating a value conflict, not performing an act of harm. A metamodern response would have embraced the tension: how do we respect merit while honoring the need for inclusion? How do we ensure representation without reducing individuals to representatives? These are difficult questions, and they deserve more than an accusatory reading. The world needs conversations that can hold these contradictions, not ones that resolve them by villainizing people who disagree.
Rather than opening a generative dialogue, your article retrenches the postmodern habit of casting disagreement as evidence of moral failure. But not every challenge to a DEI initiative is rooted in bigotry, and not every call for merit is a tool of suppression. Sometimes, it’s a principled objection to shallow representation. Metamodern discourse recognizes this and tries to move beyond the binary of oppressor and oppressed. It seeks integration, not indictment.
Frankly, it’s disappointing that you didn’t take the opportunity to model that kind of depth and intellectual charity. Your critique, grounded in an outdated framework, flattens complexity into accusation. In an era that urgently needs bridge-building, synthesis, and moral humility, we can’t afford that. Postmodern diatribes have had their moment. It’s time to move on. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Breaking the Loop Was the Bridge
Thank you for engaging—truly. This is the kind of response that makes the deeper conversation possible, even if we arrive from very different angles.
But let’s name what’s happening here, clearly and carefully.
You’ve accused my piece of postmodern cynicism, of flattening ethical nuance, of “villainizing” someone who was—by your account—simply navigating a complex values conflict. But what you call “interpretive generosity,” I call a demand for comfort disguised as dialogue.
Let’s take this slowly, and build a cognitive bridge together:
⸻
1. Interpretive Generosity vs. Power Literacy
To say that I should assume “good faith” on the part of an institutional actor is not a call for nuance—it’s a reinscription of privilege. In Cognitive Ecology, we recognize that context is cognition. Meaning, the administrator’s words don’t exist in a vacuum of intention; they participate in a systemic feedback loop where appeals to merit routinely mask exclusion.
That doesn’t mean I deny their humanity.
It means I recognize their position.
⸻
2. The Misuse of ‘Tokenism’ as a Shield
When someone claims they reject inclusion because they fear “tokenism,” what they’re often doing—intentionally or not—is protecting a worldview where only certain kinds of excellence are legible.
Who defines merit?
Who built the measuring stick?
To say that my critique “collapses” complexity is to ignore the recursive nature of institutional harm—where even principled objections can be embedded in unconscious patterns of erasure.
That’s not moral indictment. That’s ecological awareness.
⸻
3. Metamodernism Doesn’t Require Neutrality
You invoke Hanzi and Vermeulen as if metamodernism is a call to hover above conflict in a sacred tension of both/and.
But real metamodern practice doesn’t mean refusing to name harm so we can feel sophisticated.
Metamodernism, if it’s to mean anything, must be able to grieve and build at the same time. It holds paradox, yes—but it also holds people. If tension becomes an excuse to avoid accountability, that’s not integration. That’s spiritual bypassing with better branding.
⸻
4. Complexity ≠ Bothsidesism
You say I should’ve “modeled depth and intellectual charity.”
I say: I did. But not in a way that flatters the powerful.
Depth isn’t always symmetrical. Sometimes clarity is charity.
And sometimes moral discernment is not moralizing.
The point of Breaking the Loop was not to flatten the administrator’s intent—but to contextualize it. To show how even the most seemingly neutral or reasoned statements can operate as exclusion feedback loops when left unexamined.
⸻
5. Sincerity Requires Systemic Awareness
You said I didn’t ask the right questions.
But here are mine:
• Why is it so often marginalized people who are asked to offer interpretive generosity, while their experiences are subjected to cold rational critique?
• Why is “merit” always the refuge of those already on the inside?
• Why is my clarity mistaken for cruelty, and the administrator’s coded dismissal of inclusion treated as principle?
⸻
6. The Real Bridge
Cognitive Ecology—and Synpraxis—doesn’t dismiss dialogue.
It reframes it.
It asks: what’s the cost of your framing, and who pays it?
This isn’t a postmodern diatribe. It’s a metamodern reckoning.
Not to indict—but to evolve.
Not to polarize—but to clarify where bridges must be built with consent, not expectation.
⸻
You say it’s time to move on from postmodernism.
I say: I already have.
But I’m not interested in moving forward if we’re dragging unexamined privilege across the bridge and calling it complexity.
So let’s keep talking—but only if we both agree: complexity doesn’t mean pretending power doesn’t shape perception
Sher, thank you for this generous and challenging reply. You’ve taken the time to respond with clarity and care, and I want to honor that by responding in kind. I agree; this is where real dialogue begins: not in agreement, but in mutual willingness to sit with difficult questions. What follows isn’t a counterattack, but a continued weaving. I.e. a dialogue between paradigms that don’t always speak the same language, but must learn to.
You say that what I framed as interpretive generosity is actually a “demand for comfort disguised as dialogue.” But I don’t think those two are mutually exclusive. Interpretive generosity is not about ignoring systems of power; it’s about holding space for individual moral agency within them. I never claimed the administrator's words existed in a vacuum; rather, I argued that flattening their intent into complicity with systemic harm risks foreclosing precisely the kind of nuance metamodernism invites. Yes, merit can be a mask. But it can also be a sincere, if imperfect, principle. Part of the metamodern task is holding that ambiguity without collapsing it into a single moral reading.
Your point about “tokenism” being used as a shield is well taken. But I’d invite a distinction: between dismissing inclusion out of discomfort, and rejecting a specific mechanism of inclusion out of concern for dignity. Who defines merit? Yes, that’s a crucial question. But if every objection to tokenism is coded as protection of privilege, we leave no room for those navigating genuine internal conflict about representation and fairness. The work, I think, is not to dismiss that discomfort but to metabolize it...to turn it into dialogue rather than indictment. Not all wounds are best treated with scalpel logic; some require conversational stitching.
You’re right that metamodernism shouldn’t become a refuge for neutrality. I agree entirely: both/and thinking is not a license to avoid hard truths. But neither is it a license to assume power always speaks with one voice. You say “grieve and build”: yes! That’s the work. But grief without complexity can become indictment in disguise. And building without dialogue can quickly reproduce the same hierarchies it seeks to dismantle. My worry isn’t that your critique names harm; it’s that it risks sealing off the administrator’s moral world before it’s been opened.
To your excellent question ("why are marginalized people so often asked to offer interpretive generosity?") - the honest answer is: they shouldn’t have to be. But neither should anyone be preemptively framed as a symptom rather than a subject. My argument is not that we center comfort, but that we remember discomfort is not evenly distributed, & that includes the discomfort of being misread, flattened, or essentialized by systems of critique themselves. Complexity is not a shield; it’s a compass. It doesn’t prevent moral discernment, it makes it more accurate.
Lastly, I appreciate your invocation of synpraxis and cognitive ecology. You’re absolutely right: dialogue is not a neutral act. It has costs, and power shapes perception. But if we agree that we’re both operating within a metamodern paradigm, then we also agree that meaning emerges not just from critique, but from synthesis. And synthesis requires the strange alchemy of listening without totalizing, of naming harm without precluding healing, and of holding power accountable without dissolving the individual into it.
Let’s keep building that bridge. Not for comfort. Not for consensus. But for the kind of co-created understanding that metamodernism, at its best, makes possible.
Thank you. This is the kind of conversation I always hoped EFS would invite—not because we agree, but because we can hold a dialogue shaped by both responsibility and reciprocity.
I want to name first what I appreciate: your willingness to stay—to respond not with defense, but with discernment. That is rare. And it matters.
You say interpretive generosity is about making space for individual moral agency within systems. I can hold that. In fact, part of what EFS aims to do is invite exactly that kind of agency—not to erase the individual into the system, but to ask how we account for our roles within it without losing ourselves.
That said, here’s where I still see the tension—and perhaps the power of our different paradigms.
From within Cognitive Ecology and Synpraxis, intent does not precede impact—they’re co-emergent. The idea that we “flatten” someone’s moral interiority by naming the systemic patterns they participate in assumes a linear model of interpretation. But systems don’t flatten people—they pattern them. And the more power you hold within a system, the more likely your good intentions will be metabolized by the dominant logic unless you’re actively interrupting it.
So when I speak of “tokenism as a shield,” I’m not dismissing internal conflict or sincerity—I’m naming the moment where internal discomfort becomes a boundary rather than a bridge. That’s the feedback loop. That’s what EFS tracks.
You’re right: not all wounds require a scalpel. But some do. And part of the trauma of those repeatedly excluded is that when they offer that scalpel—clear pattern recognition—it’s often mistaken for cruelty, cynicism, or overreach. That is the loop.
I also hold your concern about complexity becoming a compass rather than a shield. Yes. Yes. But a compass without a willingness to act becomes a spinner. And in too many of these spaces, “we need more dialogue” becomes the pause button for transformation.
And that’s where our paradigms might stretch each other beautifully:
• You’re inviting moral depth.
• I’m naming system entanglement.
• You’re pointing to the necessity of synthesis.
• I’m ensuring we don’t collapse difference in pursuit of comfort.
Let’s keep building the bridge, exactly as you say. But let’s also name whose feet are already tired from carrying the weight of that bridge for generations—without recognition.
If we can hold that paradox together, then maybe metamodernism can become what it was always meant to be: not a performance of complexity, but a practice of re-humanization.
And that’s a future I want to keep walking toward—with you, and with whoever’s ready.
Also, one thing I want to gently name:
I’ve offered my identity, my framework, and my vulnerability to this conversation. I’m speaking not just from theory, but from lived experience, positionality, and years of relational work.
And yet—I don’t know who I’m speaking with.
You’ve written with fluency and care, but without context or name.
For all I know, I could be responding to a bot trained on metamodern discourse.
This isn’t about tone-policing or mistrust—it’s about relational integrity. Dialogue requires not just ideas, but presence. And in spaces like this, where power is often made invisible, anonymity can become another layer of protection that others aren’t afforded.
So I ask this not to call you out—but to call you in:
Who are you in this conversation?
And what are you willing to be accountable for?
I guess they were needed back on their home planet of New England. Whilst I am very impressed with the patience that Sher displayed, I am not entirely sure the Metamodern Reply Guy was worth the evident energy employed by trying to alchemise their obvious word games into something catalytic. A woman's work is never done I guess.
You ask for interpretive generosity, when exclusion for speaking up is happening there often. Stop gaslighting the reality, which is there's simply, purely, cult dynamics happening there in many respects.
Thank you for this. I need to remind myself that I can challenge these structures and must push back or leave if needed.
So sorry! I didn’t realize this essay was a follow up to “When a Paradigm Shift Becomes Aware of Itself.” I read it and realized who you were writing about - I think. I looked up the metamodern men - all white dudes. Of course they were uncomfortable with your contributions. Published White Men with Ivy League degrees cannot abide even perceived challenges. Metamodern sensibility sounds like needlessly wordy, meretricious jargon word salad gobbledygook anyway. The Synpraxis you write of makes intuitive and practical sense. Maybe you need to be neurodivergent, like me, to just get it.
No worries at all. I write about patterns and systems, not individuals. My goal isn’t to call people out, but to reflect on the broader dynamics at play. We’re all learning, and I trust that in time, the mirror will be held with more care. Metamodernism holds real potential—it can be generative when it strives to decenter itself. But so far, it seems to be struggling with how to actually do that.
This following share may not be Sher's style (I don't know), but it is mine. It's strong stuff, and yet I have a literal duty of care to speak up, so I hope it's not deleted. I see it as critically important for the care and safety of others, and the conversation is too important for what I experience going on to go unspoken.
It saddens me to say, but based on my experience, there appear to be some deeply concerning dynamics in Brendan Graham Dempsey’s 'Metamodern Spirituality' space, particularly around exclusion of dissent and the silencing of powerful voices, especially those of women and marginalized voices. I encourage anyone engaging with Brendan's spaces to do their own inquiry and pay close attention to the patterns at play.
Speaking personally, I have come to feel that there are cult-like dynamics operating there, and I believe it’s important for others in the broader metamodern community to be aware of this possibility and assess it for themselves.
When such dynamics unfold inside spaces that claim to be about spiritual depth, systems thinking, and human evolution, they do real harm. They erode trust, silence important perspectives, and leave many quietly exiled while the space maintains a public face of openness and complexity.
With the care and safety of all in mind, I’ve written a public statement of witness and concern, grounded in my own lived experience. Please read and share with care and discernment, for the sake of integrity and truth in the evolving cultural field of the global metamodern conversation space. ⤵️
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GiOlz9TbvcA43rjY4metqZGFic-lCvM_/view?usp=sharing
Thank you for this. I feel your care, your courage, and your clarity. It means more than you know. Grateful to be walking this complex path alongside voices like yours.
When I first got interested in metamodernism, I stuck my head in a couple of spaces. I was dismayed, but not surprised, that all or nearly all the posters and commenters were white male. I don't know how I came by it — it's a real mystery given that I grew up in the rural north, which is almost exclusively white, and decades ago at that — but I've always much preferred to be in mixed groups. I think part of what you experienced stems from the fact that, while non-white males frequently have to consider others', especially white males', POVs, the reverse is much rarer. They lack the practice and so either struggle with it, refuse to do it, or are unaware they should at least make the attempt.
I put this somewhere else as a response sorry for the repeat!:
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I identify with your experience but have found that Unconditional Love (sometimes referred to as "grace") negates the need for merit in a relationship. This breaks the cycle you articulately describe. If someone so strongly feels the need to be "right" that is their problem. Their moral "strength" or merit is ironically their weakness. We must wait patiently and love until love lifts them out of the cycle too. Sometimes it can be the case that you are considered in the wrong when you know you are right. Difficult though this is, it is good just to be "in the wrong" since being wrong or right is of no consequence to you - only love matters. This is what, I reckon, the cross is all about.
Thank you, Bruce. Yes—this is the deeper loop beneath the loop.
Unconditional love, when it’s real, removes the need to be right or understood. It lets us stand in truth without needing validation, because the truth isn’t about dominance—it’s about liberation. Of the self, and hopefully, one day, of the system.
And grace doesn’t mean silence.
It means telling the truth without bitterness,
being misunderstood without retaliation,
and staying whole without needing to win.
That’s what the cross is about.
And that’s what breaking the loop feels like, too.
So who was “the white man with significant influence?” You write that you’re done protecting power. Why not name him?
I hear the impulse to name, and I get where it’s coming from. But integrity isn’t only shown through calling out. I believe in creating environments where systems of harm can’t root themselves—not just shining a spotlight on one node in the system. I’m not protecting power; I’m practicing power differently. Trust that if I had felt naming was the most generative path right now, I would have. This is not avoidance—this is discernment. And it’s rooted in care for everyone involved, including those harmed.