America stands at a crossroads, shaped by the competing forces of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism and Romantic nationalism. While the Enlightenment emphasizes reason, progress, and global interconnectedness, Romanticism champions identity, tradition, and a deep sense of place. Both offer valuable insights but also carry dangerous extremes—one veering into detached technocratic individualism, the other into exclusionary nostalgia. Below I offer notes on how process philosophy, particularly the thought of Alfred North Whitehead, provides a way forward by integrating the strengths of both traditions while avoiding their pitfalls. Process philosophy emphasizes world loyalty and loyalty to local community bonds, suggesting that we can imagine a world where both are valued. Moreover, world loyalty and local community extend beyond human affairs to include the more-than-human world—recognizing that our ethical responsibilities and sense of belonging can embrace the planet and all its living beings. Through this vision of relational interdependence, both locally and globally, process thought offers an alternative to the polarization that defines American political and cultural life today.
What is Happening in America Today?
If you study European intellectual history, the current moment in America appears to be shaped by a fusion of two historical moods: the Enlightenment and Romanticism.
The Enlightenment, emerging in the 17th and 18th centuries, championed rationality, scientific progress, universal human rights, and the pursuit of knowledge. Thinkers like Voltaire, Kant, and Locke emphasized reason as the primary tool for human advancement, advocating for democracy, individual liberty, and the separation of church and state. This intellectual movement fostered optimism in humanity’s capacity to improve the world through scientific discovery, technological progress, and moral reasoning.
Romanticism, which flourished in the late 18th and 19th centuries, arose as a reaction to the perceived cold rationalism of the Enlightenment. Romantic thinkers such as Rousseau, Wordsworth, and Goethe emphasized emotion, imagination, national identity, and a deep reverence for nature. They rejected the mechanistic view of the universe and instead celebrated intuition, the mystery of existence, and the deep cultural and historical roots of human communities. Romanticism often idealized the past, seeking inspiration in folklore, mythology, and traditional values.
Each of these worldviews contains valuable insights but also carries potential pitfalls. Enlightenment rationalism, when taken to an extreme, can lead to cold, technocratic governance that disregards emotional and cultural depth. Romanticism, when absolutized, can fuel nationalism, xenophobia, and a rejection of progress in favor of an imagined golden age.
Trumpism: A Fusion of Enlightenment and Romanticism
Donald Trump, for example, appeals simultaneously to Enlightenment optimists and Romantic nostalgics, bridging what might seem like opposing sensibilities.
On one side, Trump resonates with Silicon Valley billionaires like Elon Musk and other technological utopians who embody the Enlightenment spirit of progress and human ingenuity. This strand of Trumpism embraces deregulation, rapid technological advancement, and the belief that the future is best shaped through bold entrepreneurial ambition. It represents a continuation of the Enlightenment ideal that reason, innovation, and market-driven solutions can improve the human condition.
On the other side, Trump also speaks to those who yearn for a return to an imagined golden age of American greatness. The "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) movement is steeped in Romantic nostalgia, evoking a mythic past where national identity, cultural homogeneity, and traditional values were supposedly more intact. This strain of Trumpism thrives on an emotional appeal to heritage, national pride, and resistance to perceived cultural decline.
This dual appeal reflects a deeper tension between the Enlightenment and Romanticism—two intellectual traditions that have shaped the modern world in profoundly different ways.
The Pitfalls of Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism
The dark side of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism emerges when progress is pursued without ethical grounding:
In Silicon Valley and other technological hubs, innovation is often valued for its own sake, with little regard for its consequences on human well-being or the environment.
Market-driven solutions, while powerful, can lead to wealth inequality, job displacement, and an erosion of social cohesion.
The belief in data, algorithms, and artificial intelligence as the primary means of solving humanity’s problems risks reducing human beings to mere economic units.
When globalism is pushed without attention to local cultures and identities, it can create alienation and resentment among those who feel that their traditions and ways of life are being discarded.
The Pitfalls of Romantic Nationalism
Meanwhile, the dark side of Romantic nationalism is equally troubling:
The longing for a mythic past often leads to exclusionary and reactionary politics.
In the MAGA movement, nostalgia is frequently weaponized to stoke resentment against immigrants, minorities, and those who challenge traditional norms.
The desire for cultural preservation can easily slide into xenophobia.
The emphasis on national strength can justify authoritarian tendencies.
At its worst, Romantic nationalism fosters a siege mentality, in which communities retreat into tribalism and suspicion rather than embracing complexity and pluralism.
By recognizing these excesses, process philosophy offers a way to integrate the best aspects of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism and Romantic nationalism while avoiding their distortions.
Process Philosophy: A Framework for Integration
Process philosophy, particularly as developed by Alfred North Whitehead, provides a framework for integrating these competing impulses. It suggests that reality is not a fixed order but a continuous process of becoming. Every moment, entity, and society is in a state of creative evolution, shaped by both its past and its future possibilities.
Applying this lens to the current American divide, process thought encourages a dynamic balance between the strengths of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism and Romantic nationalism.
World Loyalty: Process thought reimagines cosmopolitanism not as an abstract allegiance to globalization but as world loyalty, which includes deep care for local communities and the planet. This means honoring cultural and historical identities while also recognizing the interdependence of all life.
Communitarianism: Process philosophy values rootedness and belonging without descending into exclusionary nationalism. It affirms local culture and traditions while encouraging openness to change and cross-cultural relationships.
Relational Patriotism: Instead of defensive nationalism or detached globalism, process thought suggests a relational patriotism—one where people can feel deeply connected to their communities while recognizing their responsibility to the wider world and the planet itself.
Process Theology: A Different Vision of God
Many romantic nationalists conjoin belief in God with non-relational patriotism or an "America First" philosophy. In this framework, God is often invoked as a divine champion of the nation-state, reinforcing a vision of patriotism that is insular, exclusive, and adversarial toward outsiders. Among Christian nationalists, faith is intertwined with a cultural and political identity that sees America as divinely favored, leading to a neglect of Jesus’ teachings—particularly those that call for humility, forgiveness, and a love that transcends borders.
Process philosophy offers an alternative, more Jesus-informed understanding of God—one rooted in relational love rather than exclusionary nationalism. In process thought, God is not a distant sovereign who arbitrarily chooses one nation over another. Instead, God is a loving presence whose horizons of care include everyone in the world—not just one people, one country, or one ideology.
A Third Way: Jesus and the Ethics of Local Community and World Loyalty
This is the third way—a faith that is neither detached nor divisive, neither naively cosmopolitan nor aggressively nationalist, but deeply relational and universally compassionate. It is the way of Jesus.
In process theology, God does not control history but lures individuals and communities toward greater love, justice, and creative transformation. God’s presence in the world is not about domination but about offering possibilities for healing, renewal, and cooperation.
If America is to move beyond the destructive extremes of technological hubris and reactionary nationalism, it must embrace a more integrated, process-oriented vision of society. This means valuing both reason and emotion, innovation and heritage, individuality and community—rejecting both utopian detachment from reality and nostalgic resistance to change—and embracing an ethics of care that acknowledges interdependence between people, nations, and the planet. The divine lure, however understood, can be a guide for individuals and communities, calling them toward a future that is just, compassionate, and ever-evolving in creative harmony. We can and do resist the lure, and we do it all the time. Witness the hatred, the violence, the demonization of enemies, the sadness. But we can do better. Process theology presents the image of a God, within us and beyond us, who can inspire, support, and animate this hope.