54. Traditional Faith and Metamodernism (w/ Jared Morningstar)

Process thinker Jared Morningstar joins me to discuss the relationship of metamodernism to traditional forms of religion. How can engaging the traditional frame be done without losing hard-won gains in complexity and perspective-taking? Here Jared advocates for an open, flexible, and epistemically humble form of experimentation and participation in different religious modalities. We consider the role of 'causal opacity' in religious functionality and whether reflection is inherently harmful to generating emergent potential in religious contexts. We also explore the ways traditional faiths may be genuinely engaging with hyper-complex phenomena and how tradition-specific language can be helpful in extending faith into metamodernity. Finally, we discuss the role of plurality and singularity, the general and the particular, in what it means to engage religion from a metamodern perspective.

0:00 Introduction

1:34 Reaction vs. Reconstruction: Which Direction Is Calling?

10:50 Unseen Causes: Participatory Experimentation and Epistemic Humility

17:43 Breaking the Frame: Causation, Disenchantment, and Etic vs. Emic Perspectives

24:25 Moving In and Out of Tradition: Looking Back or Going Back?

35:24 Superstition or Super-Complexity? Parsing Tradition's Relationship with Hyperobjects

50:03 Beyond Perennialism: Religious Pluralism and Traditional Particularity

1:03:09 Living the Openness

1:10:59 Orienting Value in the Uncertainty

1:18:46 Integrating the General and the Particular: Heading Out and Coming Home

1:23:33 Conclusion