Breaking Modernity’s Spells: A Methodology for Naming the Shenanigans and Landing Differently

Introduction: The Need for Spell-Breaking

Modernity is full of spells—sleight-of-hand tricks that make us feel like we are engaging deeply when, in fact, we are circling the surface. These spells keep us moving quickly, optimizing, performing, and extracting meaning without metabolizing it. They make us mistake urgency for importance, righteousness for responsibility, and critique for actual change. And worst of all? They make us feel like we are doing something real while keeping us from doing the things that actually matter.

If modernity has perfected the art of spell-casting, then part of our work—if we are serious about relational intelligence, about co-stewardship, about metabolizing complexity rather than steam rolling it—is to become skilled in spell-breaking.

This methodology is an invitation to interrupt modernity’s trance and land with the land, with each other, and with complexity differently. It is not a moral purity test. It is not about policing. It is not about superiority or self-importance. It is about shifting perception, unsettling extractive habits, and creating the conditions for a different kind of accountability—one rooted not in coercion, but in metabolic synchrony fidelity.

The Three Movements of Spell-Breaking

1. Naming the Shenanigans

Before we can land differently, we have to name what keeps us from landing at all. This step is about humorously calling out the shenanigans—the distractions, performative gestures, and social scripts that allow us to sidestep the real work while making it look like we are doing it.

In Brazil, there is a word for this: malandragem. Not just cleverness—**strategic cleverness, which can be generative sometimes. It is important to remember that malandragem is also part of the medicine of tricksters: the ability to move smoothly through the world, manipulating perception, dodging friction. In this case, we will focus on the kind of malandragem that dodges accountability to remain untouchable.

Modernity is full of this kind of malandragem. It turns grief into a marketing strategy. It turns justice into a performance. It turns land acknowledgments into rituals of plausible deniability. It turns surface reckoning into professional branding.

Modernity says, “Say the words, get the points, move on.”
Modernity says, “Perform the reckoning loudly enough, and no one will ask what you’ve actually shifted.”
Modernity says, “Be critical, but only in ways that don’t require you to change.”
Modernity says, “Listen to the sage, nod at the right moments, maybe post it on social media with a thoughtful caption, and people will know you are one of the good ones.”

Naming the shenanigans is not about shame. It is not about scolding. It is not about proving we are above it (we’re not). It is about breaking the spell of pretending.

2. Grounding Accountability in Metabolic Fidelity

Once the shenanigans are named, the next step is to redirect accountability away from policing, coercion, and performance—and into metabolic fidelity.

What the heck is metabolic fidelity? It is a commitment to not shortcut the wrestling, the resting and the digesting. It is a refusal to rob each other of earned knowing by offering fast-tracked moral conclusions. It is the difference between doing-to and being-with.

Accountability in modernity often becomes a ledger—a system of transactional debts and credits, a way to prove goodness or punish failure. But genuine accountability is not transactional, but metabolic. It is the slow, difficult work of staying in process, of metabolizing what needs to be composted, of not rushing to a place of resolution before the (neuro)chemical breakdown has actually happened.

This means:

We do not ground accountability in policing. Policing each other is an extension of modernity’s logic of control. It keeps us focused on correctness rather than relational integrity.
We do not ground accountability in imposing our will on others. Accountability is not domination. It is not about forcing someone into compliance. It is about creating the conditions for collective neurogenesis—for a way of being that grows new relational neuropathways and capacities rather than reinforcing old ones.
We do not ground accountability in moral self-righteousness. Moral purity is an escape hatch. It allows us to position ourselves outside of the mess rather than recognizing our complicity inside it.

Instead, we ground accountability in staying with the wrestling. The wrestling between ego and land. The wrestling between our conditioned responses and our gut bullshit (self)detector. The wrestling that is sacred, and that cannot be rushed.

3. Naming the Non-Negotiables

Only after naming the shenanigans and grounding accountability in metabolic fidelity do we name the non-negotiables. Not as rigid rules, but as commitments to relational integrity.

These are not agreements based on perceived individual needs, which often reflect conditioned entitlements. They are not about securing comfort or predictability. They are scaffolding for a different way of being entirely—one where belonging is not dependent on human validation but on alignment with a deeper relational field.

These include:

Commitment to SMDR (which also stands for Slow, Messy, Difficult, Relational). No fast-tracking. No bypassing. No pretending the work is clean or simple.
Commitment to Eldership and Intergenerational Succession. Recognizing that wisdom is cultivated over time and that we are responsible for ensuring it is shared in ways that do not center individual egos or single generations.
Commitment to Composting. Instead of just tearing things down, we commit to transmuting what is harmful into something that can fertilize different possibilities.
Commitment to Staying With Complexity. Refusing to collapse into binaries, easy answers, or simplistic narratives that erase entanglement.

These are not moralistic demands. These are metabolic commitments—commitments that sustain depth rather than extract from it.

Conclusion: The Invitation

Spell-breaking is not a one-time act. It is a practice. A rhythm. A way of moving through the world that refuses to let modernity metabolize everything into a transaction—but also recognizes that not everyone will choose to step out of the trance.

And so, we invite you into this practice.

To humorously name the shenanigans at the beginning of a collective process
To refuse to ground accountability in purity or coercion.
To commit to a different way of being-with—one that honors the wrestling rather than bypassing or trying to shortcut it.

This is not an easy practice. It is an ongoing experiment, an unfolding process of noticing, unlearning, and metabolizing. Maybe this resonates with you, maybe it doesn’t. Either way, there’s no rush. What happens next isn’t about proving anything—it’s about noticing where the impulse to engage (or disengage) comes from, and whether there’s something there worth staying with.

So take a breath. Stay curious. And if the pull is there, even faintly, consider what it might mean to follow it—not toward certainty, but toward a different way of being-with. No rush. No pressure. Just an opening.