October 16th 2022: Grounded in Life Through a Process of Becoming
Grounded in Life Through a Process of Becoming
Change can be hard. There is no doubt about it. Still, we live in times of perpetual change what with the digital age and the constant flux thrust upon us by two and half years of this ongoing pandemic.
When we ponder if the change is good it must be said that it depends on the nature of the change. Sometimes change is for the better sometimes not. But good or bad, change is going to come. In fact, philosopher Alfred North Whitehead held that change IS reality. In his work Process and Reality Whitehead presented reality not as the objects around us, but instead as the moments we experience. What matters is experience. Instead of a reality being comprised of things Whitehead posits a reality comprised of moments and no moment is the same.
We are at least slightly different in each moment. The world is at least slightly different in each and every moment. The world is changing all the time. It can be no other way. Without change evolution and growth would be impossible and there would be no life. In a very real way, change is Grounded in Life.
1st Reading: Process and Reality by Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead was an English mathematician and philosopher who write in the first half of the 20th century. In his signature tome, Process and Reality he asserts that reality is not made up of substantive unchanging things. Rather, the reality is flow, it is a process of becoming
2nd Reading: Change Upon Change by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The Victorian Poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning explores the nature of change in her beautiful poem Change upon Change where she contrasts the changes of the seasons with the change in her lover. If the world changes from one season to the next, she argues, why should people be any different? Browning is pointing us to the unending nature of change.
James Joyce on the inevitable nature of change:
“Every person, place, and thing in the cosmos of Alle anyway connected in the gobbley dumped turkey was moving and changing every part of the time.”
James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake.