Ep 75 | UTOKing with Bonnitta Roy | Exploring Process Relations

[@billg302]

This is such amazing work the two of you are doing. There is so much to unpack and makes so much sense for a humble carpenter such as myself. It resonates so deeply within me that I can barely contain my excitement. I need to listen for a 3rd time before I can comment fully.

[@Footnotes2Plato]

Looking forward to listening to this in full!

[@billg302]

This dialogue is causing me to burst out of my metaphorical pod, that I feel as though I am being caste into. I feel like I am being colonized to have a single king or queen, but this video shakes that sensation off my back. If we continue to sacrifice our freedoms, will we continue to be compositional individuals? For over 20 years I have been wrestling with the pardox of individual consciousness. That of wanting to be a unique individual and the desire to become a member of a supportive collective. Your hard work, I feel, has begun to resolve this cognitive dissonance I have been suffering from but also potentially renew a collapsing culture. The collaborative work that both you (Bonnie and Gregg) have generated is absolutely amazing. I can't stress enough that all the work generated thus far by Bonnie, Greg, John V., Matt S., Brett A., and everyone in the "Transcendent Naturalism" series, needs to be disseminated outside of an academic environment. How often do you get a carpenter, such as myself, listening to your lecture series/podcasts? While you continue to engage each other in discourse, there needs to be a proactive entity that is sharing it with the masses. I believe this is what Brett Andersen was trying to convey in his own unique way. Perhaps Christopher Mastropietro can can achieve this with the Vervaeke Foundation.

[@billg302]

I am a poster child of an individual suffering from the alienation of "the meaning crisis." I have always been an amateur philosopher. My philosophy and spirituality to this day are rooted in the philosophy of both Spinoza and Hegel since I was 16. This is possibly why this particular episode resonates so deeply within me. I see the beauty. I see the wisdom. I see the love that can be endlessly divided and will never diminish. I see the particle and the wave. We can call it a coincidence or a sychrocity, but I came across an animation I think perfectly explains what Bonnie is trying to convey about god. In this video it depicts a rotating conical shell derived from the Fibonacci sequence. As it rotates, it goes in both the clockwise and counterclockwise directions depending on the frame of reference of your choosing. Depending on the frame of reference, you are retreating into the infinitely small or delving into the ever expanding greatness of the expanse. kzbin.infoINeSC0sGAhA?si=DZJLGzgjpHV9e3Tq (Please disregard the title despite the hilarious connection the animation denotes) It hinges on the conversation you have about fractal stacking around 18 minutes into your video. If you have 2 shells (individuals), you will witness fractal layering. The expansion and collapse of the spiral shell reminds me of God described as the alpha and omega. Both the beginning and the end. I guess what I am trying to say is that your work is helping me find my way in this fucked up world. Without the help of LSD or mushrooms. Thank you

[@ronalddegoede]

❤

[@billg302]

This is an amazing conversation, and I had to stop 20 minutes in to make this comment. The synchronicities I experienced in those first 20 minutes are mind-boggling because what both of you are articulating is the same concept I have been mulling over for the last 20 years of my life. I have never been able to so eloquently elaborate with such eloquent precision the nature of existence. I have recently stumbled upon Hermeticism, which it's teachings are similar in nature to what you have been describing " As above, so below" and the law of polarity. Subject and object are central when conceptualizing the whole. I might be way off base, but i believe temperature is an excellent example of this dichotomy. Hot and cold are polar opposites that describe temperature as the whole. The paradox I have been trying to reconcile is that cold is the absence of heat therefore temperature is only dependent on the existence of heat or no heat and that cold does not exist at all or at the very least doesn't have to exist. So long as we have the subject, we don't necessarily need the object. I would like to elaborate more, but I would also like to digest the rest of the video so that I don't embarrass myself any further. I became extremely exhilarated with what i heard so far and felt the need to share the profound experience you evoked out of me in only 20 minutes. Thank you both for having this dialogue ❤️

[@billg302]

If Bonnie, Gregg, or Matt (or anyone, for that matter), could reply to this for a little feedback, that would be greatly appreciated. I just want to see if I have been tracking the concepts properly. In the last couple days I have been referencing Matt's work on Whitehead and I feel like it is making sense. I just want to be sure that what I initially said is on course and that the response I am coalescing is in line with what has been said in this video.

[@Footnotes2Plato]

I was on board, nodding, eating it up, until the end when Bonnie began to discuss Part V of "Process and Reality." Whitehead's God, like Hartshorne's, is also *not* all-powerful. What gave Bonnie the impression that Whitehead's God is omnipotent?

[@Footnotes2Plato]

I realize Hartshorne and Whitehead had some important disagreements (eg, about whether eternal objects are definite or not prior to ingression), but on the mistake of omnipotence, I think they are aligned?

[@bonnittaroy]

I was just writing that in response to your prior comment. Yes for sure. Thanks for pointing it out. Yes, it's Whitehead's notions of eternal objects and God's prehension of them that turned me off. In other ways I am even less of a Whiteheadian than Hartshorne. I believe we are at a moment in history, when the new sciences can help us reshape what they were doing, in the same way that the sciences of their time were inspiring them to reshape what prvious philosophers were doing. Anyhoo, thanks for watching. And spotting.

[@Footnotes2Plato]

@@bonnittaroy The new sciences are definitely reshaping our understanding of nature, and I continue to try to learn as much as I can about their findings and their inventiveness. I guess I see these new sciences as in profound mutual resonance with the sort of process-relational ontology that spills out of Whitehead's philosophy of organism. Whitehead's process theology is at once fountational (that is not a typo; I mean to eschew foundationalism while still accepting the speculative method as involving open-ended construction of metaphysical categories) and from a secular and especially an anti-Christian point of view perhaps a bit indulgent in its overtly religious presentation if not in its underlying conceptual machinery. God in the primordial pole plays a strictly metaphysical role as a principle of limitation or concretion or as a source of relevant novelty/ingression of latent potentiality. God in the consequent pole is obviously a good deal more religious, an answer to aesthetic and moral longings. One can take this or leave it, but if you do leave it I think it indeed leaves some rather inescapable existential questions dangling.

[@bonnittaroy]

@@Footnotes2Plato " it I think it indeed leaves some rather inescapable existential questions dangling" .. Yes! I agree. Right now, I like them there, dangling. It's a source of creative tension for me. What I call "protension." Perhaps the questions are not there to be re-minded (literally) but here to be re-membered (literally).