​
​What is Process Philosophy
​ and How do You Practice It?
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At the heart of process philosophy is the idea that relationships and moments of experience, not solid objects moving through space, are a key to understanding the cosmos, planet Earth, other people, plants and animals, atoms and molecules, hills and rivers, God, and yourself. 

The value of this idea is not only that it is interesting and empirically warranted, but also that its advocacy is urgently needed in our time, given the many crises we face: ecological, educational, social, and spiritual. For the past four hundred years or so in the West, one of the most popular metaphors for understanding the cosmos was that of a machine. Many people thought of universe as a giant clock, made up of cogs and gears and wheels, that follow a very precise and predictable pattern of movement.  This way of thinking supported the view that all things - animals, plants and the earth, for example - are merely 'things' to be manipulated for human ends.  And it supported the view that some humans - women and people of color, for example - are likewise reducible to 'things.'  As seen through a mechanistic lens, living beings are levers in a system but not subjects worthy of respect; tools for economic growth but not agents of their own lives.  This way of thinking lends itself to much injustice, much devastation, much tragedy.  It is tearing the world apart.

Process philosophy offers an alternative to the mechanistic view. It affirms instead that the world is more like a garden than a computer, that things are more like rivers than rocks, and that the future is open.  It also recognizes that each living being has feelings of its own and value for itself, and that all living beings are deserving of respect and care, people much included. To think this way is to feel connected with the wider world; to be flexible and creative; to feel the feelings of others; to hear the call of truth and beauty.  It is to take love and wonder, justice and joy, as more important than appearance, affluence, and marketable achievement.  It is to measure 'success' in terms of compassion not greed.

Process Philosophy is not a religion.  It is an outlook on life, a way of understanding things, a worldview.  Some process thinkers are Jewish, some Christian, some Muslim, some Buddhist, plus more.  There's no need to reject your religion, what you love and care for, in order to find meaning in the process outlook. But you need not be 'religious' in order to find process philosophy and process practice helpful.  You may be "spiritual but not religious" or indifferent to religion altogether.  Process philosophy offers a unique outlook on life that can serve as a bridge between religions and bridge between religion and secularity.  It offers ideas helpful to personal fulfillment; healthy family life; a sense of purpose; a love of people, animals, and the Earth; and the cultivation of compassionate communities. The purpose of this page is to introduce you to the process outlook and provide resources for further study as you wish.

- Jay McDaniel, August 2020


Process Snapshots
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​Want to Study Whitehead?

If you are especially interested in the details of Whitehead's philosophy as articulated in Process and Reality, here are some concepts you might want begin with: (1) actual occasions of experience as the fundamental units of reality, (2) eternal objects as pure potentialities, (3) prehensions as what holds the universe together, (4) concrescence as the subjective activity of gathering a world into unity, (5) creativity as the ultimate reality, (6) God as the eternal companion of the universe, (7) interconnectedness as the way actual entities are present in one other, (8) novelty as the newness of each moment, (9) creativity as the "many becoming one," (10) the idea that all things are present in, and pervade, an extensive continuum (space-time); (11) the idea that there are two kinds of process, and (12) the ideas of nexus and subjective forms.   

At the heart of Whitehead's vision in Process and Reality is the idea that experience -- not solid objects -- are the key to understanding the world, God, and yourself.  The two primary examples of experience Whitehead offers in Process and Reality are a moment of human experience and energy-events within the depths of atoms.  What we call energy events are primal instances of 'occasions of experience,' and what we call occasions of experience in human (and other animal) life are later evolutionary expressions of energy-events.  You can find no better interpreter of these  ideas than John B. Cobb, Jr. in his Whitehead Word Book.  Click on these links for excerpts. Cobb is cited in many of them.  If you want to undertake a sustained study of Process and Reality, try Whitehead Videos: Reading Process and Reality.
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Practicing Process Thought:

Some Guidelines


Think big, but think small, too. Always listen. Let God be in heaven as well as on earth. Avoid cliches and jargon.  Remember the cosmic but honor the particular.  Seek unity but be a champion of differences.  Be 'mystical' if that is your leaning, but avoid self-absorbed mysticism that neglects the ordinary world and the perspectives of others.  Learn from science and beauty.  Love your enemies.  Don't hide from the brokenness. Make merry when you can.  Be kind.
The Cobb Institute: A Community for Process and Practice is interested in the practice of process thinking.  Click here to visit their website.  I am a member of its board of directors.  As I told a former student about the Cobb Institute, he asked me what it really means to practice the process way.  I thought of so many activities: being kind, building compassionate communities, spending time in nature, praying and meditating, being curious, gathering in community, spending time alone, studying and learning (including studying process thought), creating and enjoying music and art, resisting evil, loving your enemies, and wholesale (sometimes raucous) merry-making. I explained to him that the practice of process thought has a lot to do with practicing the art of living and pointed him toward this statement developed by the Cobb Institute on spiritual integration.  It defines spirituality as embodied wisdom and emotional intelligence in daily life. He also wanted some more general guidelines, so I came up with the list that you will find below.  The guidelines I offer aren't rigid or final, and I don't speak for the Cobb Institute. Its many friends might arrive at a very different list of suggested guidelines. Let them be springboards for your own reflection.
Be there, be here

Be there with the whole of it as best you can.  With people in other parts of the world, with the hills and rivers, trees and stars.  Grieve with them and hope with them.  Have planetary feeling.  Know that the universe is a communion of subjects and not simply a collection of objects.  See something like subjectivity, vital energy, everywhere.  Fall in love with the all.

And also be here with your local community, with friends and family, neighbors and strangers close at hand.  Don't pretend that you are, or need to be, everywhere.  Help your local community become creative, compassionate, participatory, diverse, inclusive, humane to animals, and good for the earth, with no one left behind.  Help people in your community know, and be compassionately linked with, people in other communities.  Help them understand that we are small but included in the larger web of life.  Help them love the local and love the planetary. Call it ecological civilization.

Always listen

Especially if you are in a position of privilege, make sure you listen to other people and also to the more than human world.  Let the voices of others enter your ear, let the experiences of others be part of your life.  Feel their feelings as best you can, without pretending that they are your own.  Don't just listen to what you like; listen to what irritates you, or shocks you, or changes you.

​Also listen to your body, to your own feelings, and, as you can, listen for a still small voice inside you which is God's calling.  Know that even God begins with listening: with feeling the feelings of all things and responding with fresh possibilities.  Listen for the fresh possibilities.

Think small as well as big

We're all familiar with the axiom "think globally, act locally."  It's a good one.  But it's important to think locally, too.  Think small as well as big.  Don't pretend that global consciousness is superior to local consciousness, or the other way around.  Let the two forms of consciousness be on a par, on the same level.  See beauty in those who think locally and encourage them to think globally.  And see beauty in those who think globally and encourage them to think locally.   

Critique all notions of global thinking that somehow neglect the fact that other creatures matter, too, that the "globe" is not a human globe.  And critique all notions of global thinking that neglect just how differentiated and fragmented the world is, ecologically and humanly.  Avoid saying "we're all in this together" if there's even a hint that "we" are - or should be - one big, happy, middle class, western family.  Be honest about the fragmentation, the brokenness, the injustice. 

Seek harmony and unity, but be a champion of differences

It's good to want people and other living beings to dwell in mutually enhancing harmonies.  It's good to talk about peace and unity.  But also be a champion of differences: different religions, different cultures, different personalities, different animals, different seasons, different landscapes, different moods.  Don't fall into the trap of sameness, of presuming that there is one "right" way to be human or to be alive or to exist.  Don't let your convictions and views and values become an umbrella that suffocates others.  Be glad that there are people who disagree with you.  Be glad that not everyone is a process theologian.

Avoid self-absorbed mysticism 

It's good to have a mystical side: a sense of the numinous, a feeling of oneness, a love of beauty, a capacity for silence, a heart for the ecstatic.  But don't fall into the trap of saying it's all here.  Accept the fact that your here is different from the here of someone in another country, a distant city, another zip code, another social class, another race, another religion.  Even next door.  Give other people space to have their own here: to have feelings and wisdom and beauty that are not your own.  Don't pretend that you are disembodied; that your here is everywhere.  Let there be many here's, some of which are there for you.  Know that being there means honoring the distance and uniqueness of what is here for others.

Remember the cosmic but honor the particular

Remember the cosmic.  Don't think that human beings on planet earth are the center of creation.  We are small but included in an evolving galactic whole.  But also remember that the whole of the universe is contained in each particular, in each grain of sand, and that the individual grains are where the action is.

Know that "everything is interconnected" but also that connections are always unique and specific.  Your connections with your parents are different from your connections with best friends, which are different from your connections with small children, which are different from your connections with trees and soil and sunshine.  Have affection for the particular, for the small, for the unique, for the specific.  Avoid the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. 

Avoid cliches and jargon

In explaining process thought to others, or to yourself, avoid cliches to the best of your ability, such as "everything is interconnected" and "the future is open." They grow tiresome and empty.  Seek out poets and find fresh ways to say things.  Use specific and poetic language when possible, and don't be afraid to appeal to intuition.  Remember that, for Whitehead, ideas can be expressed in many different ways and are not reducible to words.  They can be expressed through illustrations as well as abstractions.  Have a little Zen in you; in explaining how everything is interconnected, offer someone a cup of tea.

Avoid process jargon to the best of your ability.  Use only when necessary.  It's alright to say "actual entities" every once in a while, but also just say moments of experience.  It's alright to say "eternal objects" every once in a while, but also just say the pure potentials.  It's alright to say "the consequent nature of God," but also just say God's tenderness or the deep Listening. It's alright to speak of "creative transformation," but also say, with Gerard Manley Hopkins, the freshness deep down.  Don't fall into what Whitehead calls the fallacy of the perfect dictionary.  Create your own dictionary.

Learn from science and beauty

Remember that for Whitehead the objects in our world are facts, as are our subjective responses to those objects.  Science does an excellent job of helping us understand the objects of our world, especially if science is liberated from mechanistic paradigms that forget the qualitative and organic sides of the world.  Be willing to critique the mechanism but also learn from the insights.  Appreciate the fact that science is evidence-based and try to be evidence based yourself, albeit with an expanded understanding of evidence that includes beauty.

Beauty is the richness of experience found in human life and the more than human world: the harmonies and intensities, sometimes pleasurable and sometimes painful, that are life as lived from the inside.  The arts (music, literature, poetry, dance, sculpture, drama) are masters of presenting beauty.  And so, in a different but complementary way, are the hills and rivers, trees and lakes, planets and stars. The awe we feel in the presence of a mountain or ocean tell us something about the world no less than a scientific accounts of those immensities.  The truths we discern from a really good movie about life on a battlefield are no less valuable than the facts and figures about that battle.  A song or dance well performed, that tells us about the cruelties of injustice is as informative, if not more informative, than a more prosaic account of those cruelties.  Know that facts include the subjective as well as the objective: in Whitehead's words, the private matters of fact and the public matters of face.  Stick to the facts and learn from them all.

Let God be in heaven and on earth.

If you believe in a personal God who has properties such as love and wisdom, and who prefers peace over violence, justice over hatred, let God be there, too.  There in your nearby neighbors, there in people in other parts of the world, there in plants and animals.  Acknowledge that their ways of knowing God may be very different from your own, and beautiful, too.  Be responsible to the face of the other (Levinas).  Love their there-ness.

Also, don't talk about divine immanence all the time.  Let God have a here of God's own, which is other to your own here.  Just as other people transcend you in their uniqueness, and other animals and plants do the same, so let God transcend you.  Speak of God as the Deep There.  Address God as You who transcends and loves you and you and you.

Celebrate local connections and enjoy life.

Know that life is more than ethics, more than "being good."  It's also about gladness and playfulness, wonder and a sense of mystery.  About friends and family, music and storytelling.  About food and water, bicycles and trees.  About laughter and struggle, silence and beauty.  Let your here​ include zest for life.  Let it include all the "letters" in the spiritual alphabet:  Use your time, energy, and money to help others do the same.  
Open Horizons