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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 BeingSchwartz 9Mel, 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 andenabling 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 mightwe 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 nihilismWinters 10Joseph, 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 ofto 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, ofdecadence or nihilism.This condition is the last Nietzsche presents of four propositions as to whythe 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

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shift-mind/200903/being-becominghttp://www.academia.edu/1604395/On_Becoming_becoming_Being_and_Affirmation-A_Revaluation_of_Nietzsches_Redemptive_Ontology_Carlon_L._Robbins_May_2010_http://www.academia.edu/1604395/On_Becoming_becoming_Being_and_Affirmation-A_Revaluation_of_Nietzsches_Redemptive_Ontology_Carlon_L._Robbins_May_2010_http://www.academia.edu/1604395/On_Becoming_becoming_Being_and_Affirmation-A_Revaluation_of_Nietzsches_Redemptive_Ontology_Carlon_L._Robbins_May_2010_http://www.academia.edu/1604395/On_Becoming_becoming_Being_and_Affirmation-A_Revaluation_of_Nietzsches_Redemptive_Ontology_Carlon_L._Robbins_May_2010_http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shift-mind/200903/being-becoming

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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-sizedmanoeuvres 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 thoughtBurke 7Anthony, 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 modernsystem 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 issomewhat 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 asmaterial, 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?

http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.2burke.html#_edn22http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.2burke.html#_edn22http://muse.jhu.edu.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.2burke.html#_edn22

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Contention Two Is Embracing Becoming

Our aff is affirms process philosophy and becoming while rejecting being.

Process philosophy is about interrelated processes and becomingMesle 8C. 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 issomething 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 productsRescher 2kNicholas, 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 andsystematically 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 performativesStripple 7Johannes, 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 actsby Austin (1961) and Searle (1969). The brief background is that whileHume 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 legitimizingthe 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

http://turin.sgir.eu/uploads/Stripple-Stripple%20Stuff%20of%20IR.pdfhttp://turin.sgir.eu/uploads/Stripple-Stripple%20Stuff%20of%20IR.pdf

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or speech enacted institutions.Paul Chilton exemplifies with oath swearing, an institution that depends on the presence of a lawyeras 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

correspondenceto 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 ofIR 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 keyunderstanding competing narratives is key to a functional

democracysingular explanations of society failGare 4Arran, 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 communityand society and participate properly in its institutions through beingeducated, 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, willinvolve 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, whichcharacterization 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 acommunity 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 lifeof 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 roleswithin 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 emplotmentswith alternativevisions 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 differentdurations, 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 otherbeings 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 toaccord justice to all beings affected by such stories. Such reformulation requires a place within these stories for actors to question their own

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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

participantsin 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 diversityof 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 questionandreformulate 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 schemesthat people are socializedinto and which they are living out, and the disappearance or trivialization of philosophical questioning and speculation.

Process thought stimulates discussions and avoids neocons and chaosCobb & Griffin 12John 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.

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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. Ouraction 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 possibleBurke 7Anthony, 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 andremain 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 waradvocates, 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 philosophyMcLaren 8Glenn, 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 hasidentified 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

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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 denyingthat 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 grandnarrative 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 tooutline 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 basiccategories, 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.

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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 processesthe energy changes between them, not the particles ofwater.

Waves of water provide the perfect example of how the world is composed of

processesa focus on things reduces the significance of process realityRescher 2kNicholas, 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. 67] 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 ofprocesses, 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 wehave 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 lifeMesle 8C. 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 relationshipseven 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 thetestimony 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 wouldsimply disappear, merging with the eternal ocean

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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 waterMesle 8C. 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 wasall 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 butstands 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 determinedby 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 God static, 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 createtime? 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 hasdominated 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

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universe must be bursting into existence in each moment.What kind of a world can do this? It cannot be a worldcomposed 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 willkeep coming back to this paradigm to see it from different angles and to see its complexity.