Despite these difficulties, most logicians continue to identify the proposition as a linguistic entity and to assume that the language can be settled in such a way that the statement is either true or false. Whitehead makes a different move. For him, the proposition is not a linguistic element. It is a relation in the real world between some entity, usually a society of some kind, and a pure potential or abstract possibility on the other.

The data of our conscious experience are all what Whitehead calls societies, and the vast majority of our thoughts are about societies.

Whitehead saw that a moment of human experience is neither physical nor mental, or we could say it is a very complex integration of both.

Whitehead shows us the importance of what in popular parlance are sometimes called “vibes.” Learning takes place in experience that is the synthesis of real relations — to the personal past, the body, and the wider world.

All too often today, at least in the United States, “spirituality” is juxtaposed to “religion” as an alternative. “Spiritual but not religious” has become a cliché. It often becomes individualist, self-serving, and separated from concerns for justice and peace in the public world.

In a time of global crisis we need leaders who care about the whole world and think in terms of what is good for the whole. We need world loyalty.

In the Cartesian view, to attribute feelings to these animals was to commit the “pathetic fallacy.” Even today, the industrial production of meat takes no account of any subjective experience on the part of cows, pigs, and chickens.

Whitehead is distinctive, if not unique, in making ecological relations primary in the interpretation of reality.

Los Angeles “has become, of all things, a leader in sustainable water management…”

There’s a message of hope embedded here.

“It seems that the art takes the threat out, becomes more humanistic, more…it’s more questioning…”

To be crazy is definitely not to be stupid. In many ways we have been collectively brilliant. But brilliant people can be crazy.