1AC

Contention One Is a Rejection of Being

Well start with the idea that things within the world change. This is validated by how
nothing in the world is permanent; youve gone from infancy to adulthood over time,
replacing the individual cells and atoms in your body for new ones. In the same way,
even seemingly permanent things like mountains erode and change over time.
This means objects arent permanent and that theyre in a process of change, a
process of becoming something new. We need to shift our focus from static notions of
being to dynamic ideas of becoming.
Focus on static identities entrenches Being
Schwartz 9 Mel, L.C.S.W., psychotherapist and marriage counselor
[March 30, http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shift-mind/200903/being-becoming] ap
For all conscious entities (and there is reasonable argument that all matter is indeed sentient, a belief known as pansychism)) the process of
becoming puts us squarely in this new paradigm of personal evolution and participatory change. Much of my work is devoted to catalyzing and
enabling people to change. Some people seek change and cant wait to transform. Others often ask why they
have to change. This difference in outlook depicts their worldview: being or becoming. The fear of
movement or change is rooted in a very fixed attachment to ones identity. If Im not who I think I am, who am I?
This view sees our identity as static, and hence sees us as a being. A more evolving consideration
identifies core features and characteristics of our personality, yet sees them as a creative work, always
adapting and evolving to new and higher levels. Our predominating worldview informs our sense of self---and others. The
process of becoming is forgiving. In the flow of becoming we are no longer rooted in the hardship of fear,
insecurity or the notions of mistakes. The fuller participation in our unfolding life assists us in the art of
living well. Becoming is open and unlimited, being is structured and limiting. As the artist crafts their art, so might
we look at our life. Learning to live artfully has us see our lives as a process open to inquiry and learning, always receptive to new meaning.
Thus, we are always becoming. I recently attended a lecture by a self-proclaimed guru. He spoke of himself as being enlightened. It would have
been far more sagacious if he referred to his commitment to the process of enlightenment, for enlightened speaks of a permanent state.
This worldview, or ontology, of being has material implications.
Valuing being rejects senses and empiricism, causing nihilism
Winters 10 Joseph, PhD., Department of Religious Studies, UNC Charlotte
[May 10, http://www.academia.edu/1604395/On_Becoming_becoming_Being_and_Affirmation-
A_Revaluation_of_Nietzsches_Redemptive_Ontology_Carlon_L._Robbins_May_2010_] ap
For Nietzsche though, as previously noted, this view of life is anything but realistic. The valuation of Being over Becoming
amounts to the inversion of values, and the inversion of life. Quite simply, the positing of Being as the
true world and that of Becoming as mere appearances, provides the transpositer of this valuation and
ontology with a baseless sense of security in spite of history and empiricism. History is the
demonstration of the validity of the senses as it reveals to us the long-term shifts and consequences of
to the ever-shifting, helical movements of Becoming. On the other hand, reason provides believers in
Being with a defense mechanism against that which has come to be despised, the body and the senses.
According to Nietzsche however, the ontology of Being, the emphasis on otherworldliness, is a
symptom of decline, of decadence or nihilism. This condition is the last Nietzsche presents of four propositions as to why
the actual world of flux (appearances) was constructed as such, and the so-called real world was fabricated. Any distinction between a true
and an apparent world is only a suggestion of decadence, a symptom of the decline of life. That the artist esteems appearance higher than
reality is no objection to this proposition. For appearance in this case means reality once more, only by way of selection, reinforcement, and
correction. The tragic artist is no pessimist: he is precisely the one who says Yes to everything questionable, even to the terriblehe is
Dionysian.25 It is in Nietzsches concept of the Dionysian affirmation of life, the force of the tragic-artist, in which we find Nietzsches own
reification of the salvific or redemptive (transfiguration) characteristic of Nietzsches ontology. Tyler T. Roberts points out in his book Contesting
Spirit: Nietzsche, Affirmation, Religion, the Dionysian artist is an exemplification of the healthy body in that he esteems Becoming. He
confirms this by describing this new appearance as reality once more, only by way of selection, reinforcement, and correction. Thus, rather
than invoking two oppositions, [he] contrasts an opposition between the philosophical sense of appearance and truth, with the relative
difference between an artistic appearance and reality: artistic appearance is reality once more.26
The ontology of being causes endless warfare ontological focus is critical to more
effective action
Burke 7 Anthony, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at UNSW, Sydney, and author
of many books
[Ontologies of War: Violence, Existence and Reason, Truth & Existence, 10:2]
This essay describes firstly the ontology of the national security state (by way of the political philosophy of Thomas
Hobbes, Carl Schmitt and G. W. F. Hegel) and secondly the rationalist ontology of strategy (by way of the geopolitical thought of
Henry Kissinger), showing how they crystallise into a mutually reinforcing system of support and justification,
especially in the thought of Clausewitz. This creates both a profound ethical and pragmatic problem. The ethical
problem arises because of their militaristic force -- they embody and reinforce a norm of war -- and
because they enact what Martin Heidegger calls an 'enframing' image of technology and being in which
humans are merely utilitarian instruments for use, control and destruction, and force -- in the words of
one famous Cold War strategist -- can be thought of as a 'power to hurt'.
19
The pragmatic problem arises because
force so often produces neither the linear system of effects imagined in strategic theory nor
anything we could meaningfully call security, but rather turns in upon itself in a nihilistic spiral of
pain and destruction. In the era of a 'war on terror' dominantly conceived in Schmittian and Clausewitzian terms,
20
the
arguments of Hannah Arendt (that violence collapses ends into means) and Emmanuel Levinas (that 'every war employs arms that turn
against those that wield them') take on added significance. Neither, however, explored what occurs when war and being are made to
coincide, other than Levinas' intriguing comment that in war persons 'play roles in which they no longer recognises themselves, making
them betray not only commitments but their own substance'.
21
What I am trying to describe in this essay is a complex relation
between, and interweaving of, epistemology and ontology. But it is not my view that these are
distinct modes of knowledge or levels of truth, because in the social field named by security,
statecraft and violence they are made to blur together, continually referring back on each other, like
charges darting between electrodes. Rather they are related systems of knowledge with particular systemic
roles and intensities of claim about truth, political being and political necessity. Positivistic or scientific
claims to epistemological truth supply an air of predictability and reliability to policy and political
action, which in turn support larger ontological claims to national being and purpose, drawing them
into a common horizon of certainty that is one of the central features of past-Cartesian modernity. Here it may be
useful to see ontology as a more totalising and metaphysical set of claims about truth, and
epistemology as more pragmatic and instrumental; but while a distinction between epistemology
(knowledge as technique) and ontology (knowledge as being) has analytical value, it tends to break down in
action. The epistemology of violence I describe here (strategic science and foreign policy doctrine)
claims positivistic clarity about techniques of military and geopolitical action which use force and
coercion to achieve a desired end, an end that is supplied by the ontological claim to national
existence, security, or order. However in practice, technique quickly passes into ontology. This it does in two
ways. First, instrumental violence is married to an ontology of insecure national existence which itself
admits no questioning. The nation and its identity are known and essential, prior to any conflict,
and the resort to violence becomes an equally essential predicate of its perpetuation. In this way
knowledge-as-strategy claims, in a positivistic fashion, to achieve a calculability of effects (power) for
an ultimate purpose (securing being) that it must always assume. Second, strategy as a technique not
merely becomes an instrument of state power but ontologises itself in a technological image of 'man' as
a maker and user of things, including other humans, which have no essence or integrity outside
their value as objects. In Heidegger's terms, technology becomes being; epistemology immediately
becomes technique, immediately being. This combination could be seen in the aftermath of the 2006 Lebanon war,
whose obvious strategic failure for Israelis generated fierce attacks on the army and political leadership and forced the resignation of the
IDF chief of staff. Yet in its wake neither ontology was rethought. Consider how a reserve soldier, while on brigade-sized
manoeuvres in the Golan Heights in early 2007, was quoted as saying: 'we are ready for the next war'. Uri Avnery quoted Israeli
commentators explaining the rationale for such a war as being to 'eradicate the shame and restore to the army the "deterrent power"
that was lost on the battlefields of that unfortunate war'. In 'Israeli public discourse', he remarked, 'the next war is seen as a natural
phenomenon, like tomorrow's sunrise.'
22

Questioning the ontology of being reveals new choices outside enframing thought
Burke 7 Anthony, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at UNSW, Sydney
[http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.2burke.html] ap
But is there a way out? Is there no possibility of agency and choice? Is this not the key normative problem I
raised at the outset, of how the modern ontologies of war efface agency, causality and responsibility
from decision making; the responsibility that comes with having choices and making decisions, with
exercising power? (In this I am much closer to Connolly than Foucault, in Connolly's insistence that, even in the face of the anonymous
power of discourse to produce and limit subjects, selves remain capable of agency and thus incur responsibilities.88) There seems no
point in following Heidegger in seeking a more 'primal truth' of being -- that is to reinstate ontology and
obscure its worldly manifestations and consequences from critique. However we can, while refusing
Heidegger's unworldly89 nostalgia, appreciate that he was searching for a way out of the modern
system of calculation; that he was searching for a 'questioning', 'free relationship' to technology that
would not be immediately recaptured by the strategic, calculating vision of enframing. Yet his path out is
somewhat chimerical -- his faith in 'art' and the older Greek attitudes of 'responsibility and indebtedness' offer us valuable clues to the kind of
sensibility needed, but little more. When we consider the problem of policy, the force of this analysis suggests
that choice and agency can be all too often limited; they can remain confined (sometimes quite wilfully)
within the overarching strategic and security paradigms. Or, more hopefully, policy choices could aim to
bring into being a more enduringly inclusive, cosmopolitan and peaceful logic of the political. But this
cannot be done without seizing alternatives from outside the space of enframing and utilitarian strategic
thought, by being aware of its presence and weight and activating a very different concept of existence,
security and action.90 This would seem to hinge upon 'questioning' as such -- on the questions we put to
the real and our efforts to create and act into it. Do security and strategic policies seek to exploit and direct humans as
material, as energy, or do they seek to protect and enlarge human dignity and autonomy? Do they seek to impose by force an unjust status quo
(as in Palestine), or to remove one injustice only to replace it with others (the U.S. in Iraq or Afghanistan), or do so at an unacceptable human,
economic, and environmental price? Do we see our actions within an instrumental, amoral framework (of 'interests') and a linear chain of
causes and effects (the idea of force), or do we see them as folding into a complex interplay of languages, norms, events and consequences
which are less predictable and controllable?91 And most fundamentally: Are we seeking to coerce or persuade? Are less violent and more
sustainable choices available? Will our actions perpetuate or help to end the global rule of insecurity and violence? Will our thought?
Contention Two Is Embracing Becoming
Our aff is affirms process philosophy and becoming while rejecting being.
Process philosophy is about interrelated processes and becoming
Mesle 8 C. Robert, professor of Philosophy and Religion at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa
[Process-Relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead, p. 9] ap
Process philosophers, on the other hand, argue that there is urgency in coming to see the world as a
web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have
consequences for the world around us. This stance requires us to challenge and reject the prevailing
philosophies and theologies that give primacy to Being over Becoming, to independence over
relatedness, to things over processes, to the idea that the human spirit is fundamentally isolated from
the social and natural web in which we clearly all live and move and are becoming. Yes, of course, there is
something important about the ideas of permanence, of Being, and of standing as our own independent person regardless of what anyone else
says. But what is important here is better understood and more wisely addressed by rooting even the
endurance of things in the deeper recognition that nothing stays the same forever and that no person is
an island. Or, as someone suggested, people are islands, but islands arent what they appear to be. Deeper down, even islands, like waves,
are merely faces of a deeper unity. If we cannot see that unity, we imperil the web in which we live.
The ballot asks the judge to decide who has done the better debating. This is a focus
on the process of debate itself. The ballot is a process, just as our speeches are.
Priorities are on processes, not products
Rescher 2k Nicholas, German-American philosopher at the University of Pittsburgh, Co-Chairman of
the Center for Philosophy of Science
[Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues, p. 6] ap
A process philosopher, then, is someone for whom temporality, activity, and change-of alteration,
striving, passage, and novelty-emergence-are the cardinal factors for our understanding of the real.
Ultimately, it is a question of priority-of viewing the time-bound aspects of the real as constituting its
most characteristic and significant features. For the process philosopher, process has priority over
product-both ontologically and epistemically. This process-oriented approach is thus historically too pervasive and
systematically too significant to be restricted in its bearing to one particular philosopher and his school. Indeed, one cardinal task for the
partisans of process at this particular juncture of philosophical history is to prevent the idea of "process philosophy" from being marginalized by
limiting its bearing to the work and influence of any single individual or group.
Speech acts are processual performatives
Stripple 7 Johannes, Lund University
[September 15, http://turin.sgir.eu/uploads/Stripple-Stripple%20Stuff%20of%20IR.pdf] ap
The idea that language is a form of action that is constitutive of the world has been materialized with
the discovery of speech acts by Austin (1961) and Searle (1969). The brief background is that while
Hume divided all sentences into is or ought sentences, speech acts (betting, promising, naming a
ship, saying I do in a marriage ceremony) are sentences that neither describe something nor engage in
a normative debate. Speech acts are performatives; they perform an act instead of describing it. While
constatives are used to make a true or false statement, performatives do not have truth conditions,
but felicity conditions, conventions legitimizing the legitimate use of performative utterances (Waever
2000:286). By saying something is done, the utterance creates a new condition. The world is different
before and after the utterance. The use of language creates institutions, i.e. institutionalized speech acts
or speech enacted institutions. Paul Chilton exemplifies with oath swearing, an institution that depends on the presence of a lawyer
as well as a form of words and where the lawyer is legitimized through a chain of speech institutions (Chilton 2004:31). Therefore, security,
territory and authority are much more than just lenses that can easily be applied to the world and discussed in terms of their
correspondence to that world; they fundamentally make up precisely that world which we are going to study. This taps nicely into
the gist of process ontology: what a thing is consists in what it does (Rescher 1996a:46). As I see it, concepts of
IR are better seen as verbs rather than nouns, as performatives rather than constatives, as processes rather than essences. Security, territory
and authority are not labels for immutable parts of the world, but part of the world of our making.6
This debate is key understanding competing narratives is key to a functional
democracy singular explanations of society fail
Gare 4 Arran, Australian philosopher known mainly for his work in environmental philosophy,
philosophy of science, philosophy of culture and the metaphysics of process philosophy
*Defending Democracy Against Neo-Liberalism: Process Philosophy, Democracy and the Environment*1+ PDF 11-12]
Democracy requires, first and foremost, an education system that appreciates that humans only become free
agents able to take responsibility for their community and society and participate properly in its institutions through being
educated, that is, encultured. An education system should simultaneously enable people to master their cultural heritage, appreciate that
they are culturally formed and culture creating beings and should develop peoples capacity to actively participate in maintaining, questioning,
developing and transforming their culture, including their institutions. Inevitably, participation in the development and
transformation of a culture, particularly where this is associated with the development or transformation of institutions, will
involve power relations. To understand the relationship between culture and power, especially as this relationship operates over long
durations, it is necessary to consider the nature of agency and of action and the relationship between
these and narratives. As we saw, Schelling suggested a close relationship between narratives, the process of coming to self-
consciousness, and agency over generations. Such ideas have been defended and developed much further by recent philosophers. It has
been shown how people act according to how they define reality, or, what amounts to the same thing, which
characterization of reality they take to be legitimate, and how it is through stories that definitions of reality are elaborated, promulgated,
evaluated, chosen and acted upon (Gare, 2002b)[4] David Carr in particular has shown how all but minor actions require of people that they tell
a story of what they are doing in order to continue the action after interruptions, to coordinate the actions of different people and to integrate
particular actions with broader actions and projects (Carr, 1991). Actions are lived stories. The more complex the action,
the longer its duration and the more people involved, the more obviously this is the case. Actions such as building a
community or developing our understanding of the cosmos can transcend generations, and Carr showed the central importance of narratives to
such actions. Institutions are largely made up of patterns of symbolically organized actions crystallized and
sustained as part of such long-term complex actions. However, in crystallizing patterns of actions, institutions take on a life
of their own and become objects to be maintained, questioned, reformed, transformed or redefined in relation to other institutions and to
societys current and longer term projects. To continue long term actions, each new generation must be educated to
appreciate the stories (histories) characterizing the purpose and development of these institutions, their roles
within these multi-generational actions and the arguments which have taken place over their purposes and roles in order to be able to properly
take on roles within them. Just as individual actions consist of a hierarchy of smaller, component actions while being components of broader
actions, stories are made up of smaller, component stories while being parts of broader stories. People are born into social worlds
already constituted by stories, including stories of institutions, and must take a place within these; but in taking up a place, they are
put in a position where they can question and transform these stories, including the ultimate goals they project. That is, through stories
people are recognized as subjects and are thereby subjected by the logic of these stories, but at the same
time they can be empowered to entertain or imagine alternative narrative emplotments with alternative
visions of the future and alternative ways of living, to configure the stories of their own lives and to participate in refiguring, thereby become
the co-authors of, these broader stories (Wood, 1991). The stories of particular people are lived out in a world of unfolding stories of different
durations, ultimately extending to the stories of nations, civilization and of humanity over centuries. Democracy and Polyphonic Stories By
recognizing the storied nature of human action and of societies it becomes possible to consider the
kinds of stories required for democracy. To begin with, recognizing actions as stories focuses attention on the way in which other
beings enter into a story. In the Hobbesian model of action, beings other than the actor, including other people, enter into the story of an
action (or complex of actions) only as the subordinates, instruments or obstacles for realizing particular ends. They are objectified. The story of
such an action, if it is explicitly articulated, is monologic, recounted from one, unquestioned perspective. But stories can also involve
appreciating others as co-becoming processes with their own ends and stories might be questioned and reformulated to
accord justice to all beings affected by such stories. Such reformulation requires a place within these stories for actors to question their own
beliefs, to challenge each others beliefs and to reflect on and reformulate the stories they are living out.
Such reflection can involve considerations of different possible paths to particular ends, questioning the ends themselves and envisaging
alternative ends, or questioning of the interpretations of situations on which such judgements are based. Reflection on interpretations can
range from questioning what is taken to be the case, or questioning the interpretative schemes through which situations are interpreted. The
participants in the action might be accorded different degrees of recognition as potential or actual
participants in questioning and choosing between different versions of the stories in which they are participants. Where a high
degree of recognition is acknowledged, we have polyphonic stories, stories which take into account a diversity
of perspectives in dialogue and debate with each other , generating at the same time greater
reflexivity and much more active engagement in interpretation, questioning, conjecturing, storytelling
and choosing between different versions of stories by the participants in the story (Morson & Emerson, 1990:
231-268). Democracy presupposes and requires polyphonic narratives. For a social order to be democratic there must be appreciation of
diverse perspectives, dialogue, questioning, telling and retelling of stories, the generation of new conjectures about the nature of the world and
new emplotments to interpret or reformulate the stories we are living out individually and collectively, and philosophies to more systematically
question, develop and reformulate and adjudicate between conjectures about and interpretations of the world. In a democratic world
order there would be a polyphonic grand narrative giving a place to diverse people in diverse
institutions, countries and regions with diverse interests contemplating what kind of future they want. It would consist of people
constrained to participate in this narrative but would provide them with the means to question and
reformulate the narratives of the institutions within which they are participating, their communities, their societies and their civilizations, and
this grand narrative, and the means to promulgate their versions of these stories, to debate with opposing versions and to participate in
choosing between rival versions. The destruction of democracy involves the imposition of a monologic narrative
on society with very little place for questioning the stories or interpretative schemes that people are socialized
into and which they are living out, and the disappearance or trivialization of philosophical questioning and speculation.
Process thought stimulates discussions and avoids neocons and chaos
Cobb & Griffin 12 John B., Jr. & David Ray, The Center for Process Studies
[http://www.ctr4process.org/publications/Articles/pax_americana.shtml] ap
From the point of view of process thought, individual thinkers, even those influenced by process
thought, should not try to develop an ideal system and pressure others to adopt it. The value of proposals such
as these is, first, to show that a Pax Americana is not the only possible future for the planet. Second, such proposals can stimulate
discussion, involving many in thinking of the advantages and disadvantages of such systems and also
proposing their own alternatives. If there is no widespread discussion of the kind of world we want,
either the neo-conservatives will triumph, or the effort to achieve a Pax Americana will bring about
chaos. To us, both of these possibilities are disastrous. We are sure that something better is possible. But it will not
happen without vigorous debate and hard work in reforming global and local institutions. We believe
that process thought can contribute to this task.
Most affs propose a plan with reference to the resolution, similar to a Platonic form.
For them, the resolution is the absolute, real being. This is seen with topicality and
framework arguments, where someone argues a plan isnt topical enough, as
though topicality were on a sliding scale in relation to the unchanging resolution.
We, however, take a different approach. A plan is, literally, a proposed action. Our
action is the performance of this speech act.
As such, my partner and I affirm the resolution in its entirety. Instead of treating it as a
monolithic object, we understand it for what it truly is: a process.
The aff exchanges an ontology of being for one of becoming, providing an escape from
the confidence in being that makes antagonisms possible
Burke 7 Anthony, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at UNSW, Sydney
[http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.2burke.html] ap
I was motivated to begin the larger project from which this essay derives by a number of concerns. I felt that the available critical,
interpretive or performative languages of war -- realist and liberal international relations theories, just
war theories, and various Clausewitzian derivations of strategy -- failed us, because they either perform
or refuse to place under suspicion the underlying political ontologies that I have sought to unmask and
question here. Many realists have quite nuanced and critical attitudes to the use of force, but ultimately affirm strategic thought and
remain embedded within the existential framework of the nation-state. Both liberal internationalist and just war doctrines seek mainly to
improve the accountability of decision-making in security affairs and to limit some of the worst moral enormities of war, but (apart from the
more radical versions of cosmopolitanism) they fail to question the ontological claims of political community or strategic theory.82 In the case
of a theorist like Jean Bethke Elshtain, just war doctrine is in fact allied to a softer, liberalised form of the Hegelian-Schmittian ontology. She
dismisses Kant's Perpetual Peace as 'a fantasy of at-oneness...a world in which differences have all been rubbed off' and in which 'politics,
which is the way human beings have devised for dealing with their differences, gets eliminated.'83 She remains a committed liberal democrat
and espouses a moral community that stretches beyond the nation-state, which strongly contrasts with Schmitt's hostility to liberalism and his
claustrophobic distinction between friend and enemy. However her image of politics -- which at its limits, she implies, requires the resort to war
as the only existentially satisfying way of resolving deep-seated conflicts -- reflects much of Schmitt's idea of the political and Hegel's ontology
of a fundamentally alienated world of nation-states, in which war is a performance of being. She categorically states that any effort to
dismantle security dilemmas 'also requires the dismantling of human beings as we know them'.84 Whilst this would not be true of all just war
advocates, I suspect that even as they are so concerned with the ought, moral theories of violence grant too much unquestioned power to the
is. The problem here lies with the confidence in being -- of 'human beings as we know them' -- which
ultimately fails to escape a Schmittian architecture and thus eternally exacerbates (indeed reifies)
antagonisms. Yet we know from the work of Deleuze and especially William Connolly that exchanging an
ontology of being for one of becoming, where the boundaries and nature of the self contain new
possibilities through agonistic relation to others, provides a less destructive and violent way of
acknowledging and dealing with conflict and difference.85
Mechanistic materialism is the root cause of the worlds destructiveness and nihilism
the grand narrative of the aff creates space for process philosophy
McLaren 8 Glenn, Swinburne University of Technology
[http://researchbank.swinburne.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/swin:11453] ap
In 'Nihilism Inc: environmental destruction and the metaphysics of sustainability', Arran Gare argues that
to properly comprehend, debate and then effectively confront the global problems confronting
humanity, it is necessary to develop comprehensive, unified systems of thought. To demonstrate this, he has
identified patterns of metaphysical thought pervading civilizations which have endured through long periods of history. Rather than cultures
being fragmented and chaotic, as postmodernists have suggested, Gare shows how these deep patterns unify cultures and the individuals and
institutions defined through them. In particular, Gare has identified two main patterns of thought, one being
mechanistic materialism, the other process philosophy. Mechanistic materialism, according to Gare, is
based on belief in the primary reality of material components over composite entities. This is the core of
a pattern of thought which, he argues, has come to dominate the modem world. It has underpinned
some of its successes, most importantly by facilitating control of the world; but it also underpins much
of its destructiveness and nihilism. Without the perspective provided by an alternative metaphysical
tradition it is impossible to appreciate the root cause of this destructiveness or how it could be
avoided. One destructive aspect of the culture dominated by mechanistic materialism is that by denying
that it is one metaphysical tradition among others while censuring any practice not defined through this
tradition of thought, it has blocked efforts to question it or to consider and develop alternative
metaphysical traditions. For process thought to be considered as an alternative to it, it is first necessary
to recognize mechanistic materialism as a tradition of metaphysical thought, and to do this it is
necessary to create the conditions that will allow alternative systems of thought to be researched and
articulated. Systematic philosophy, he argues, should be developed as a new grand narrative. Through a
grand narrative it is possible to not only articulate a metaphysical system but put in perspective and gain
a greater understanding of the successes or failures of other systems; although as Gare points out, one
advantage of dealing in characterizations of the nature of physical existence is that there are few rivals
to contend with. Mechanistic materialism itself has been extremely successful in providing the basis of a grand narrative, a grand
narrative that has not only articulated this metaphysics but integrated people and institutions into a story of social, political and scientific
progress. This has culminated in the almost complete domination of the world by Neoliberalism. The purpose of this chapter is to
outline Gare's alternative metaphysical system, one that could underpin a grand narrative with the
potential to re-integrate people and institutions differently and allow us to envisage a different future.
This is a version of process philosophy. Its distinctive characteristics will be revealed by outlining and discussing its basic
categories, contrasting these with those of other traditions of thought being developed to challenge the mechanistic materialist world-view.' It
will be argued that several problems exist within these alternative traditions, particularly theistic versions of process metaphysics, which are
overcome by Gare's metaphysics.
Contention Three Is Oceans
We approach the resolution of oceanic development as a way to understand
becoming and processes. Oceans are water with waves of energy. Those waves are
not objects but processes the energy changes between them, not the particles of
water.
Waves of water provide the perfect example of how the world is composed of
processes a focus on things reduces the significance of process reality
Rescher 2k Nicholas, German-American philosopher at the University of Pittsburgh, Co-Chairman of
the Center for Philosophy of Science
[Process Philosophy: A Survey of Basic Issues, p. 6 7] ap
One way of downgrading processes is to question not their reality but rather their significance. On this
perspective, it is conceded that nature is indeed replete with many and varied activities and processes
but insisted that they are simply the doings of substantial agents and thereby secondary and derivative.
Every verb must have a subject and every event or occurrence is a matter of the agency of things. Denying the ontological autonomy of
processes, this process-reducibility doctrine insists that all there is in the world are things and their properties and actions. This position
reasserts the orthodoxy that maintains the ontological substance bias of Western philosophy. The fly in the ointment is that the
world is full of processes that do not represent the actions of things (save on a rather naive and
obsolescent atomist/materialistic model of nature). Although processes can be the doings of things, the idea that they must
be so is nothing but an unhelpful prejudice. When water freezes or evaporates, it is not a "thing" (or collection
thereof) that is active in producing this result. The "freshening" of the wind, the forming of waves in the
water, the pounding of the surf, the erosion of the shoreline are all processes that are not really the
machinations of identifiable "things." Consider such processes as "a fluctuation in the earth's magnetic
field" and "a weakening of the sun's gravitational field." Clearly such processes will make an impact on
things (magnetic needles, for example). But by no stretch of the imagination are these processes
themselves the doings/activities of things/substances. There is not a thing "a magnetic field" or "a gravitational field" that
does something or performs certain actions-nor does the worth or sum project such a field. Where is the thing that is being active when we
have a fall in barometric pressure? For the process philosopher, the classical principle operari sequitur esse is reversed: his motto is esse
sequitur operari, since being follows from operation because what there is in the final analysis is the product of processes. As process
philosophers see it, processes are basic and things derivative, because it takes a mental process (of
separation) to extract "things" from the blooming buzzing confusion of the world's physical processes.
Traditional metaphysics sees processes (such as the rod's snapping under the strain when bent sufficiently) as the manifestation of dispositions
(fragility), which must themselves be rooted in the stable properties of things. Process metaphysics involves an inversion of this perspective. It
takes the line that the categorical properties of things are simply stable clusters of process-engendering dispositions.
The timeless ocean of Being holds no value to life
Mesle 8 C. Robert, professor of Philosophy and Religion at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa
[Process-Relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead, p. x-xi] ap
I am a process-relational philosopher because everything I care about is in process and in relationships
even my ideas. Being part of an allegedly timeless reality holds no allure for me. Whatever people may
dream or speculate regarding timeless, changeless, becomingless eternity, it is clear to me that nothing
in our actual lives fits that category. I respect philosophies of Being because I understand why they
speak to us in our confrontation with change, old age, and death. But I am still going to die. I believe the
testimony of those who report mystical and meditative experiences they can only describe as timeless, but I know those experiences happen
and then fade. I understand that in timeless eternity I would suffer no injuries, fear no diseases, feel no pain,
commit no sins, experience no aging, and face no death. But what sense does it make to speak of I
then? Hindus and Buddhists recognize that I would simply disappear, merging with the eternal ocean
of Being. I certainly agree that, whatever I am, I am never truly separate from the larger relational whole extending infinitely in time and
that my self will eventually be lost as I fully melt back into earth, air, fire, and water. But in a timeless eternity, if there be
such, I could not hug my children, tickle Elliot, make love to my wife, or walk the beach with waves
washing my feet. Even the ocean changes constantly. But just as importantly, I am committed to Becoming
because everything I care about lives in time. That is why I am a process philosopher. The joy of life is in
the journey.
In a processual universe, the present bursts into existence in each moment, just like
waves in water
Mesle 8 C. Robert, professor of Philosophy and Religion at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa
[Process-Relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead, p. 4-5] ap
Whiteheads Process and Reality is a very tough book, so as a graduate student thirty years ago, I took a
break and walked over to Lake Michigan, trying to understand what process was all about. The weather
was gray and the lake, choppy. What is the alternative? I asked myself. What if the world were not in process?
Would Lake Michigan somehow be sitting there waveless in the future, waiting for waves to break on it?
Suddenly, the world jolted, as if it had been ajar and unexpectedly dropped into place with a snap. The future does not exist. There
is no future Lake Michigan waiting for water to fill it or waves to lap at its shores. The future does not exist.3 I
looked at the world around me with wide, amazed eyes. My eyes did not exist in the future. The sidewalk did not exist in the future. The foot
that I was going to set down on the sidewalk in a moment did not exist yet: Only the foot in the present
existed. I practically skipped home, watching the sidewalk and my feet (and my watching itself) become. At Morrys Deli, I looked in the
window (becoming) and watched the pastrami becoming, and the people becoming. Consider the idea that the future already
exists from the perspective of the Christian theology that has so profoundly shaped Western thought.
Christians have traditionally believed in an omnipotent, omniscient God who creates time but stands outside of time as we stand outside of a
cd. Or, to pick a more traditional image, time has been seen as like a great tapestry woven by God. The tapestry tells a story, but the whole
story from beginning to end exists at once on the tapestry. God, it has been assumed, is able to stand back and see the whole tapestry at once.
Thus, the future may be unknown to us, but it existsis already fully actualfor God. This concept explains how prophets are usually thought
to see the future: God simply lifts them up above the tapestry so that they can see as far ahead as God chooses, because the future already
exists. Consider the image of time as a great novel. The novel has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Within the novel, people live and die, great battles are fought, and you and I agonize over decisions. Yet,
none of the characters in the novel has anything to say about what they decide. That is all determined
by the author. On page 73, you may be struggling with whether to marry or live in celibacy. Turning to page 76, we see what you decide.
Turning back to page 40, we can read where you first met the person you love. The novelist has created it all, and having been
created, the past, present, and future are all fully settled, fully actually, fully achieved simultaneously.
Since God, as the novelist, is outside of time, outside of the novel, there is not even a process of creation for God. God is timelessly eternal,
with no past or future. So the novel exists timelessly in the mind of Godstatic, unchanging, eternalwith every decision, every action
determined totally by the divine Author. This static view of time in which the future already exists explains why Christians often assume that
everything is predetermined by God. Obviously, if God created the tapestry of time, with the whole world story on it, we had and have nothing
to say about what God decided we would do. Whatever is going to happen has already happened. When did God create
time? Since God is outside of time, the answer can only be something like timelessly or eternally. So, whatever is going to happen in the
future actually happens eternally. Western thinkers have generally avoided the Eastern view that time and change are illusions, though
Parmenides proposed a similar view about twenty-five centuries ago. Still, you can see that in important ways Western Christians have said that
time is a kind of illusion. From Gods perspective, which surely defines ultimate reality, nothing new happens, nothing changes. God is eternal,
and so is the world. Being is real, but Becoming is a kind of illusion experienced only by us finite creatures
trapped within time. In this and other ways, the philosophy of Being rather than Becoming has
dominated Western thought. The view of time in which the past, present, and future exist
simultaneously, so that the future already and always existsis already fully settled and actualis
exactly the view of time that I threw aside when I discovered that the future does not exist and became
a process philosopher. The future does not exist. There isnt even a future out there waiting to happen. Decisions must be made; the
future must be created. The creatures of the present must decide between many possibilities for what may
happen, and their collective decisions bring the new moment into being. If the future does not exist,
then you and I, the grass, the birds, the earth, the moon, sun and stars, even space itselfthe entire
universe must be bursting into existence in each moment. What kind of a world can do this? It cannot be a world
composed of hard, unchanging substances that endure unchanged under all the surface appearances of change. This must be a world in which
energy erupts anew in each moment. Is this true? Just look at your own experience. Isnt that exactly what your own experience is like? New
drops of experience pop into being one after another like buds or drops of perception (PR 68, quoting William James). Each new drop of
awareness is incredibly complex, composed of thoughts, feelings, sensory experiences, and deeper feelings of being surrounded by a world of
causal forces. You can never make thoughts stand still. Your own flow of experience is a paradigm for the process-
relational vision of reality laid out in Whiteheads work and in the book you are currently reading. We will
keep coming back to this paradigm to see it from different angles and to see its complexity.