Whitehead

Whitehead is an immensely difficult writer. Hosinski's Stubborn Fact and Creative Advance (1993) is a brilliant introductory work, and I highly recommend it, especially if you have to read Whitehead for a class Sherburne's Key is also very helpful, though you get a lot of Sherburne, too. At issue is usually Whitehead's neologisms. To draw another analogy between Heidegger and Whitehead, however, both men were notorious for creating new words because what they wanted to explain was both so uncanny and yet so obvious that the old words didn't work. Don't let the language scare you away. Whitehead rewards hard work, and you will likely never forget what you learn from him. The ideas that we are beginning to take much more seriously these days about holistic thinking, interconnectedness, interdisciplinarity, non-dualism, commensurability between science and religion, and creativity were all covered by him seventy years ago. Don't let your professors tell you that Whitehead is an outmoded metaphysician. His `philosophy of organism' is as inherently open-ended, properly understood, as anything passing today as postmodernism. Read Whitehead.
Posted by E.M. Dale

New Rules!

America could really use a few new myths, indeed, a whole new Story. Paeans to the rugged individualist recklessly braving the cutthroat competitions of life must give way to tales of groups, organizations, and governing bodies selflessly cooperating for the greater good. Celebrations of national independence should evolve into global celebrations of interdependence. The prevailing notion of personal profit as a fair and effective motivator in human endeavors needs the tempering influences of empathy, compassion, service, community, and a bottom-line concern for the most disadvantaged in society.

Money can no longer serve as the prime measure of a person's value or of the worthiness or lack thereof of social policies; instead, we need to view individuals and their governments through a universal prism of transcendent, ethical, and spiritual values. Nor can the use of force — power to the strongest, richest, and most capable of violence — continue as the primary way of making decisions and resolving conflicts. America needs to manifest nothing less than a genuine working democracy, where the most dominant force resides in the voice of the common people.

From P!

Lessons from the EU

But, while GDP per capita has been rising in the US, most Americans are worse off today than they were five years ago. An economy that, year after year, leaves most of its citizens worse off is not a success.

More importantly, the EU’s success should not be measured only by particular pieces of legislation and regulation, or even in the prosperity that economic integration has brought. After all, the driving motivation of the EU’s founders was long-lasting peace. Economic integration, it was hoped, would lead to greater understanding, underpinned by the many interactions that inevitably flow from commerce. Increased interdependence would make conflict unthinkable.

The EU has realised that dream. Nowhere in the world do neighbours live together more peacefully, and people move more freely and with greater security, than in Europe,….

In today’s world, too, there is much that is not working well. While economic integration helped achieve a broader set of goals in Europe, elsewhere, economic globalisation has contributed to widening the divide between rich and poor within countries and between rich and poor countries.

Joseph Stiglitz

Peace of Mind by Joshua Loth Liebman (1948)

Our interdependence with others is the most encompassing fact of human reality--our personalities are made by our contacts with others. There is, therefore, a duty which falls upon all of us--to become free, loving, warm, cooperative, affirmative personalities.

To love one's neighbors is to achieve an inner tolerance for the uniqueness of others, to resist the temptation to private imperialism. We must renounce undue possessiveness in relation to friends, children--yes, even our loves. The world is full of private imperialists--the father who forces his artistic son into business, or the mother who rivets her daughter to her service by chains of pity, subtly refusing the daughter a life of her own.
from Shels Blog