​Ephemeral

Introducing Whitehead's Principle of Process
Visually, Musically, and Verbally
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Verbal
That how an actual entity becomes constitutes what that actual entity is, so that the two descriptions of an actual entity are not independent. Its ‘being’ is constituted by its ‘becoming.’ This is the ‘principle of process.’

Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh During the Session 1927-28) (p. 23). Free Press. Kindle Edition. 

Musical *
* Nothing's going to change the principle of process.  Things will always be changing.
​For me, Evanescence's version of Across the Universe communicates the sense of ephemerality (perpetual perishing) that haunts Process and Reality, leading Whitehead to trust, to hope, that there might be a reservoir of memory tenderly remembering all that passes away. He speaks of this reservoir as the consequent nature of God. In Across the Universe I hear both the ephemerality with its ever-shifting imagery of events, broken and whole, across the universe; and also the hope that, at some level and in some way, permanence is a reality, too. "Nothing's gonna change my world." I know the word permanence is a funny word; it can mean non-temporal (outside time altogether) or everlasting (lasting forever in time). The consequent nature is everlasting; the primordial is eternal. Seems to me that within the human heart there's a yearning for perishing not to be the whole story. Part of the story, yes. But not the whole story.

-- Jay McDaniel

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Picture
Open Horizons