2378 – Exploring Process Relations (UTOKing with Bonnitta Roy 2024)

Probably one of the most disconcerting things about Whitheadian process philosophy (or the philosophy of organism – as Whitehead called it) was its “theological” reception and transmission via American process theology (particularly Charles Hartshorne mentioned in this talk several times). It is a historically incontestable fact, that Whitheadian process philosophy survived in that milieu in mid XX century, although overall the chapter dedicated to God in ANWs magnum opus Process & Reality: An Essay in Cosmology is rather small. It almost feels like an afterthought.

I publish this here for anyone wanting to hear a contemporary discussion about inner and outer relations. This talk is a crash course of sorts through the difficulties (if completely unfamiliar with Whiteadhead’s metaphysics) but also a proof of the vivacity and constant evolution of process philosophy in today’s world. One could of course pick and choose favorite morsels about cells, agency, causality, and organizational levels – from this talk. To conclude with the conclusion of Bonnitta – the best of contemporary science and especially new contemporary scientific advances have to inform our metaphysics and philosophy – the same way the scientific advances of Whitehead’s time (quantum formalism and general relativity) were inspiring and reshaping those insights.

Whiteheadian Marxists like Steven Shaviro have taken another route entirely than the usual process theologians (check the pdf God, or the Body Without Organs from which I will quote heavily) and bringing forth Whitehead’s own criticism of both Leibniz’s and Spinosa’s notion of God, even if their positions are closer to him than anyone else. But like all thinkers of the last 2000 years (to quote Shaviro) they allow “ethical and religious interests. . . to influence metaphysical conclusions” (173). This Kantian Whitehead or critique of religion is indeed a different beast that we have become acquainted with (through let’s say essential immanentist readings like Isabelle Stengers’s Thinking with Whitehead). His criticism of religious belief is from a transcendental position rather than an immanent, Spinozian one. Rather than eliminating God (Shaviro underlines) like Nietzsche he seeks to accomplish a “the secularization of God’s functions in the world” (1929/1978, 207). This startling attempt is part of the Enlightenment project, but with a twist, because it does not seek to eliminate religion, only diminish its importance. Whitehead seeks to establish a God without religion as he wants to respect the findings of physical science without supporting “science’s reductionist positivism or tendentious separation of facts from values.” This secularized God is God as the Principle of Concretion. Coherence is here the most important thing and Shaviro continues to explain why in a passage from 2008 that is both memorable and crystal clear (coherence- a notion that is not so much logical as ecological):

The principle of coherence stipulates that “no entity can be conceived in complete abstraction from the system of the universe” (3). In order to exist, a given entity presupposes, and requires, the existence of certain other entities, even though (or rather, precisely because) it cannot be logically derived from those other entities, or otherwise explained in their terms. Coherence means, finally, that “all actual entities are in the solidarity of one world” (67).

God, or the Body without Organs, ~Steven Shaviro

1916 – Curing the Human Condition: On ‘Wild Wild Country’ (podcast 2021)

First much appreciation for both Phil Ford and J F Martel. I do not manage to listen to them as often as I could, but when I do, it is always a blast. That is why one needs friends (not friends-bosses or friend-unfriend dynamics as talked about in this piece. Friends to recommend and catch one looses trough a web cast to widely.

What I appreciate about their heady mix is first the way they never belittle and be dissmissive with their subjects, their topics (and their public) their humility and modesty in front of such vast subjects.

No matter how diverse or dispersed things are and rabbit holes go – they always manage to follow a certain waveform, play on certain motifs. They can combine high theory (Deleuze), avant-garde (Burroughs) with the most harrowing examples of heroin addict descriptions. They can both make a sociology of taste, follow on the strictures of Bourdieu, while at the same time catching a strong whiff of spirituality in Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, while at the same time finding religious (initial sin) groundings of Marxist critique of commodification, ideology and cultural superstructure. They can talk about the merits of secular society, while at the same time pointing towards the commodification behind new religions, prosperity gospel, as well as the sort of spiritualized practices, anthropotechnical hacks that are everywhere – from Silicon Valley to self-actualization corporate seminars. They decry the anxiety of cultural appropriation, its totalizing and too large terrain – while at the same time they weigh in on all the decontextualized, fetishized spiritualism, that leaves all the burden, the suffering out. They take the critique of Buddhism by Zizek, the Buddhist apparent integration of human universal suffering, while at the same time warning about the free style of new ironic class, the distinction proffered by hipster irony-non-irony thin line and the constant hard to learn code switching. One of my favorites is the part about friends – about Buddhas (and especially Osho’s speech on friendship!) sermon about the future master transforming into friend, never so true as in today’s corporate culture. Societies of control complete changed the rule of the game that went hand in hand with a changed definition of friendship, removed from the one inherited from Aristotle.

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

In this never-before-released episode recorded in 2019, Phil and JF travel to rural Oregon through the Netflix docu-series, Wild Wild Country. The series, which details the establishment of a spiritual community founded by Bhagwan Rajneesh (later called Osho) and its religious and political conflicts with its Christian neighbors, provides a starting point for a wide-ranging conversation on the nature of spirituality and religion. What emerges are surprising ties between the “spiritual, not religious” attitude and class, cultural commodification, and the culture of control that pervades modern society. But they also uncover the true “wild” card at the heart of existence that spiritual movements like that of Rajneesh can never fully control, no matter how hard they try.

REFERENCES

Chapman and Maclain Way (dirs), Wild Wild Country
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
Carl Wilson, Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste
Peter Sloterdijk, German cultural theorist
Weird Studies, Episode 47, Machines of Loving Grace
Slavoj Žižek, On Western appropriation of Eastern religions
William Burroughs, American writer
Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control”
Bhagwan Rajneesh/Osho, Speech on friendship
Daniel Ingram, Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha
Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith
James Carse, The Finite and Infinite Games