Process Relational Ecological Civilizations Topics and Discussions

I wish to expand a bit on my last posting re i) "Whitehead's Contribution to Thinking Cosmologically in an Ecological civilization" and, ii) "How the integration of the sciences, humanity, and the universal (aka, spiritual) in Whiteheadian Process Thought."

Based on Matt Segall's book, "Physics of the World Soul," he will address in brief three main themes of conversation before the John Cobb forum panel in cross examination with John Eastman. Those three topics will concern i) the integration of evolution with ii) the quantum sciences and iii) Complexity theory utilizing the Whiteheadian process philosophy of cosmological metaphysics.

R.E. Slater

September 4, 2022

Thinking Cosmologically in an Ecological Civilization:

Whitehead's Contribution

Cobb Institute

October 21, 2020

Presenter: Matt Segall

Respondent: Timothy Eastman

Recording Date: September 15, 2020

*Unfortunately the Q&A was not included :(

https://cobb.institute/

https://www.openhorizons.org/process-nation-a-question-evoked-by-jon-gill.html

https://www.openhorizons.org/education.html

Ecological Thinking

What is ecological thinking?

https://ecoscenography.com/ecological-thinking/

One of the critical lessons that ecology is teaching us is that humans are not separate from nature, but are members of the web of life (Hes and Du Plessis 2014).

Ecoscenography 1.2

The first step to integrating ecological thinking into scenographic practice, involves grasping the fundamentals of ecology and living systems. Ecology demonstrates how eco-systems are not just a collection of species, but are also relational systems that connect humans, as organic systems, with animals and plants – It stimulates an increased understanding that the world is fundamentally interconnected and interdependent (Hes and Du Plessis 2014). From an ecological perspective, humans are not separate from nature but are deeply embedded in the ‘web of life’ (Capra 1994). As Naess (1989) suggests, “A human is not a thing…but a juncture in a relational system without determined boundaries in space and time” (1989: 79). Thus, humans are an integral part of the processes of co-creation and co-evolution that shape the living world (Hes and Du Plessis 2014).

Ecoscenography 1.3

Ecological thinking requires a broadening of identity in how we see ourselves in relationship to the world around us. Hes and Du Plessis explain that “as one’s identity expands, so does one’s view of the world. With these changed perceptions also come a change in values, behaviours and possible leverage points” (2014). Sean Esbjörn-Hargens (2010) describes this ‘widening of identity’ as a transition from ‘me’ (egocentric) to ‘my group ‘(ethnocentric) to ‘my country’ (sociocentric) to ‘all of us’ (worldcentric) to ‘all beings’ (planetcentric) to finally ‘all of reality’ (Kosmoscentric). In performance practice, this could be interpreted as a widening in identity from ‘me’ as the artist to considering how I might create work that actively engages with communities as well as the ‘living world’.

This notion of ‘creative expansion’ inspired by Esbjörn-Hargen’s ‘widening identity’, asks the performance maker and scenographer to engage with the work on multiple levels – it challenges the theatre artist to look beyond usual anthropocentric values (such as egocentric, ethnocentric, sociocentric and worldcentric perspectives) often adopted in the theatre practice to also incorporate planetcentric and kosmoscentric views.

The challenge of ecological thinking requires altering our assumptions, attitudes, to understand that we are participating in, and co-evolving with nature (Eisenberg and Reed, 2003: 3). In other words, in order to engage with the world from an ecological perspective, we need to see ourselves as part of (rather than above) nature – to engage with the ‘human’ aspects of our context in relationship to the [cosmo]biophysical context (Hes and Du Plessis 2014). This implies making a conscious effort to contemplate how our work as theatre practitioners might connect to broader communities and ‘living systems’.

Ecology incorporates principles of wholeness, interdependence, diversity, partnership, energy flows, flexibility, cycles and sustainability (DeKay 2011: 65). These themes of interconnection, relationship and co-existence underpin the value system of ecological thinking or what Dominique Hes and Chrisna du Plessis (2014) also describe as the ‘ecological worldview’. The ecological worldview presents a universe that consists of dynamic relationships and processes – It is a “globally integrated view, acknowledging and integrating diversity and previous levels of development, focusing on the long-term future of the world system” (Hes and Du Plessis 2014). In summary, the ecological worldview asks theatre artists and scenographers to think beyond the transient qualities of the theatre or site, to also understand how their work affects wider communities and living systems.

Ecological thinking is profoundly about understanding that ecology is not just about non-human things, it has to do with the way we imagine ourselves as part of nature (Morton 2010). Adopting an ecological perspective entails altering the lens through which we perceive the world and ourselves (Kegan 1982). At the core of this shift is a change in focus, a moving away from egocentric and anthropocentric thought (separateness) to include concepts of integration, awareness and holistic perception (interconnectedness). Mark DeKay explains that this is no easy cognitive task, but rather part of a transition in our developing capacity as humans (2011: 60). Despite this challenge, ecological thinking is crucial to designers of any discipline engaging with sustainability and offers a holistic approach to the possibilities of producing positive benefits as well as remediating past environmental damage (Zari and Jenkin 2010).

* * * * * * *

A Short Observation

This next section is a short review of a forum held at CIIS hosted by Matt Segall. It is of note that the term and practicum of cosmoecological civilization began in Communist Russia in the 1970s (although I would argue with native aboriginal tribal fellowships); was picked up and heightened by post-Maoist/Socialist China in the 1990s; and later, by the Western nations (Europe, America) in the 2000s.

Moreover, Process Thought (both in it's philosophy, theology, and touchstones in science et al.) speak across all socio-political economies and ethno-religious civilizations. It's why process thought works so well. Because it is so identifiable with the kind of reality we seem to live in and experience across all human studies and historical flow and event.

So don't let the word "Marxism" throw you off. I once took a class with the world renown French Maoist philosopher Alain Baidou who taught a class on Being and Event. One side of it approached process thought (my word, certainly not Alain's!) from Being and the other side approaches it from Event. In Whiteheadian terms we describe this process-like philosophy as "Being and Becoming."

Alain's work in this area is very like process thought but with important distinctions and if the Christian idea of the Gospel of Jesus had been inserted into Baidou's thought one couldn't have told the difference between the two. However, Alain is not a Christian, and was not teaching a Christian perspective. It is his own philosophy from a lifetime of experiencing and observing the cruelty of German Naziism and even crueler post-colonial French-Muslim class struggle in North Africa from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Though Alain sought a world of mutuality even so did Jesus in his time of Jewish-Roman unrest. Jesus called it "love." Today's ecologists might rethink these terms today when approaching new societal paradigms for integrative fellowships between-and-with all present relationships unfolding and enfolding into a future of present presences.

Enjoy,

R.E. Slater

September 4, 2020

Fifth annual conference of the World-

Ecology Research Network

“Planetary Utopias, Capitalist Dystopias: Justice, Nature,

and the Liberation of Life”

California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA

May 30-June 1, 2019

Whitehead and Marx:

A Cosmopolitical Approach to Ecological Civilization

article link

by MATTHEW DAVID SEGALL

May 31, 2019

Below is a recording of my talk (a video first, then audio only that includes the discussion afterwards). I’ve also included an extended draft of some notes I took to prepare my talk. Finally, I’ve included my notes taken while listening to Jason Moore during yesterday’s opening lecture.

A few words about the words in the title:

“Cosmopolitics” is an effort on the part of thinkers like Isabelle Stengers, Bruno Latour, and Donna Haraway to think beyond the modern human/nature and fact/value divides, or what Whitehead called the “bifurcation of nature.”

“Civilization“?!? This phrase, “ecological civilization,” comes from China’s Communist Party. Achieving ecological civilization is one of their stated goals for the 21st century. In China there are now about 35 graduate programs and research centers devoted to Whitehead’s thought and process studies.

What does it mean, to Whitehead, to be “civilized”? He does not use the term in an exclusivist sense and is even willing to consider that some animals some of the time (e.g., squirrels) may be capable of it (see Modes of Thought). But usually not. It means a conscious recognition of and participation in the creative power of ideas–like freedom or love–to shape history.

“We find ourselves in a buzzing world, amid a democracy of fellow creatures.” -Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality).

Whitehead is not an idealist, however. Ideas only have power when the material and historical conditions are ripe, when a particular habitat can support their ingression.

Many moderns, Marx included, have too anthropocentric an idea of ideas. Ideas were already active in evolutionary processes long before conscious human beings emerged on the scene. Ideas are not just conjured up in human heads or scratched onto paper pages by human hands. Whitehead invites us to expand our conception so that we can sense that the idea of the Good generates the light and warmth of the Sun no less than the nuclear reactions and electromagnetic radiation known to physicists, that the idea of Beauty is at work in the evolution of peacocks and butterflies and roses and not just in Beethoven’s 9th or the Mona Lisa. Ideas don’t just shape history, they shape geohistory and indeed cosmic history.

“The basis of democracy is the common fact of value-experience, as constituting the essential nature of each pulsation of actuality. Everything has some value for itself, for others, and for the whole.” -Alfred North Whitehead (Modes of Thought 151).

Every bacterium enriching the soil, every bumble bee making honey in the hive, every human being participating in society, every star spiraling in the galaxy has value for itself, for others, and for the whole. Nonhumans not only have value, they are agents of value creation.

Whitehead (in a conversation with his wife Evelyn and the journalist Lucien Price in 1944) was asked if the prior half-century or so had any political thinkers as daring as those who inaugurated the new relativistic and quantum physics, he answered “There is Marx, of course; though I cannot speak of him with any confidence.” But he goes on to describe Marx as “the prophet of proletarian revolt” and marks the singular relevance of the fact that the first practical effectuation of his ideas [Soviet Russia under Lenin] occurred in a society dominated by farmers. Here we see Whitehead was ahead of his time in recognizing the importance of food sovereignty. Any serious resistance to capitalism must begin with soil and seeds.

What is value? We can discuss the differences between use v. exchange value, objective v. subjective value, but ultimately Marx says value is a social relation determined by the amount of labor time it requires to produce a commodity. Humans create value by working on raw material or dead nature.

Is all value really produced by human labor alone? Is there nothing extrahuman that supplies value? In Whitehead’s cosmos there is no mere matter or dead nature, no inert or raw material to be appropriated by something called Man.

Whitehead: “We have no right to deface the value-experience which is the very essence of the universe” (Modes of Thought 111).

We can link value to agency. Moderns, whether Locke, or Marx, or Hayak, limit agency and thus value-creation to human beings.

According to Latour, the abstract, idealistic materialism of classical Marxism misses the activity/agency of the world.

Latour: “We have never been modern in the very simple sense that while we emancipated ourselves, each day we also more tightly entangled ourselves in the fabric of nature.”

Despite his recognition of metabolic rift, Marx was fully modern in his commitment to what Latour calls the “double task of emancipation and domination” (We Have Never Been Modern 10). The emancipatory task was political: to end exploitation of humans by humans. The task of domination was technoscientific: to become masters of nature.

“The fabric of our collectives has had to be radically transformed to absorb the citizen of the 18th century and the worker of the 19th century. We need a similar transformation now to make space for non-humans created by sciences and techniques.” -Latour (We Have Never Been Modern 185-6).

Latour’s Gifford lectures on Gaia invite us to transform our imagination of the earth as modern globe by turning it inside out, such that we come to see that we are in a crucial sense surrounded by the earth, we are enclosed within it, trapped, earthbound. We cannot escape to a beyond, Musk and Bezos’ extra-terrestrial utopianism notwithstanding.

How are we to think human freedom and human-earth relations after modernity? Humans are not as free and teleological as moderns have imagined; nor is nature as dumb and deterministic as moderns have imagined. Marx says that what distinguishes the worst human architect from the best honey bee is that the former designs his building ideally before constructing it materially. Man has a plan. Bees, apparently, are simply automatons obeying blind instinct. But is this really how human creativity works? Is this really how bee creativity works? Architect Christopher Alexander discusses how medieval cathedrals were generated over generations in a purposeful but not centrally planned way. This is akin to the way insects build their nests, following a simple organizational patterning language out of which emerges enduring forms of order and beauty. Buildings that are designed and built in the way Marx imagined tend to be dead structures meant for money-making rather than living. Consciousness of the power of ideas does not mean mastery over ideas. Ideas possess us, purpose us; we participate in their power, co-workers and not free inventors.

Donna Haraway: “in so far as the Capitalocene is told in the idiom of fundamentalist Marxism, with all its trappings of Modernity, Progress, and History, that term is subject to the same or fiercer criticisms. The stories of both the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene teeter constantly on the brink of becoming much Too Big. Marx did better than that, as did Darwin. We can inherit their bravery and capacity to tell big-enough stories without determinism, teleology, and plan” (Staying With the Trouble, 50).

What does Haraway propose we do instead? In place of deterministic teleology, she proposes process-relational creativity; and in place of a Big Plan from on high she proposes playful communal kin-making with the ecological beings we breath, kill, eat, love, and otherwise communicate with on the daily down here on planet Earth. She credits James Clifford (Return) with the notion of a “big enough” story, a story that remains “ontologically unfinished” and situated in zones of contact, struggle, and dialogue” (Return 85-86).

How do we become sensitive to the values of nonhumans? We need new practices of aestheticization, new stories, new rituals (or perhaps we need to recover “old” practices, stories, and rituals) to help us become sensitive to the values of nonhumans. Indigenous peoples can help us develop these. I think something like this is going on even in major documentary films like the new Attenborough film “Our Planet” (problematic as its title is, and as Attenborough’s ecological politics are): e.g., the images of a mass suicide of walruses in northeastern Russia.

Becoming sensitive to the values of nonhumans doesn’t mean we don’t still have a hierarchy of values that in many cases puts humans at the top. As Whitehead says, “life is robbery.” But, he continues, “the robber needs justification.” What is the human, anyway? Are we one species among many? In an obvious sense, of course we are; and we ignore our dependence upon and embeddedness within wider ecological networks to our own peril. In another sense, we are not just another species. We have become, for better or worse, a planetary presence, a geological force. How are we just justify our presence on Earth? What does ecological justice look like when the idea of justice is expanded beyond just human society?

There are a number of ongoing polemics among anti-capitalist scholars, particularly metabolic rift theorists and world-ecology researchers (e.g., John Bellamy Foster and Jason Moore; incidentally, Foster seems to get Latour all wrong), regarding the proper way to understand the relation between human beings and the rest of the natural world. I would want to approach these disputes in a diplomatic manner. I am not here to choose sides, and anyway I don’t even know the whole story. But at this catastrophic moment in geohistory, those of us resisting the mitosis of capital might do well to focus less on widening abstract semantic divisions and more on imagining and materializing the shared future we hope we one day achieve on this Human-Earth.

Human history is a geophysical event. Whether we date the history of this event to the emergence of symbolic consciousness 200,000 years ago, the Neolithic revolution 12,500 years ago, the capitalist revolution 500 years ago, the industrial revolution 250 years ago, the nuclear age 75 years ago, or the information age 20 years ago, it is clear that the Earth has by now at least entered a new phase of geohistorical development.

AP headline on May 6th, 2019 reads “UN report: Humanity accelerating extinction of other species.” The first line reads: “People are putting nature in more trouble now than at any other time in human history, with extinction looming over 1 million species of plants and animals, scientists said Monday.”

NY Magazine headline also on May 6th, 2019 by Eric Levitz: “Humanity is About to Kill 1 Million Species in a Globe-Spanning Murder-Suicide.”

He concludes: “Earth’s ecosystems did not evolve to thrive amid the conditions that a global, advanced capitalist civilization of 7 billion humans has created. And that civilization did not evolve to thrive on a planet without coral reefs, wetlands, or wild bees — and with global temperatures exceeding preindustrial levels by 1.5 degrees. Bringing our civilization’s ambitions and modes of operation into better alignment with the environment’s demands no act of altruism. It merely requires recognizing our own collective long-term self-interest, and changing the way we grow food, produce energy, deal with climate change and dispose of waste, on a global level, through international cooperation.”

Whether we call it the Anthropocene, the Capitalocene, the Plantationocene, the Chthulucene, the Entropocene, or the Ecozoic, diagnosing the metaphysical roots of the present ecological catastrophe is a necessary (though not sufficient) part of imagining and materializing a post-capitalist world.

Marx is not unaware of our dependence upon the natural world, writing that: “Nature is man’s inorganic body, that is to say, nature in so far as it is not the human body. Man lives from nature . . . and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. To say that man’s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.”

Marx also writes in Capital of labor as a process “by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates, and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. He confronts the materials of nature as a force of nature” (https://isreview.org/issue/109/marx-and-nature).

Marx is dialectical in his understanding of the human-earth relation, but he still treats nature as dead and awaiting the value-creating power of human consciousness.

With Whitehead, I have argued that value is not just a human social construct or free creation of human labor or desire (modern thinkers as diverse as Locke, Marx, and Hayek agree on this, as I noted above) but a cosmological or ecological power from which our human values, and our human power, derive.

Citations for the above:

• Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead by Lucien Price, p. 220.

• https://www.apnews.com/aaf1091c5aae40b0a110daaf04950672

• http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/un-report-humans-are-driving-1-million-species-extinct.html

 * * * * * * *

Thursday, May 30th

Notes on Jason Moore’s opening talk

• The planetary era began in 1492 (“the globe”) not in 1968 with earthrise photo

• the end of the world has already happened, many times.

• Man and Nature as “real abstractions” (non-European people and European women were considered part of nature); we must break down CP Snow’s two cultures, beyond “coupled systems” analysis, to a “flow fo flows” that integrates humans as earthlings

• “civilization” as a dangerous, colonial word? What is this term meant to denote? The opposite of savagery and barbarism?

• climate change as a “capitalogenic process” (what about Soviet and Chinese communist contributions?)

• “Nature is a class struggle” – “Nature” is part of the capitalist project

• we need more Marxist histories of climate change to avoid ceding the ground to neo-Malthusians

• the Earth has always been a historical actor; the present ecological crisis is not novel in this respect (see William Connolly’s “Facing the Planetary” and “The Fragility of Things”)

• climate is not exogenous to civilization and modes of production.

• Marx on labor as metabolic mediation between man and nature (man transforms nature, nature transforms man).

• from geology and history to geohistory

• Capitalism emerged out of late 15th century geographic expansion; credit, conquest, and coerced labor were essential (“capitalism’s triple helix in formation”)

• new world genocide led to regrowth of managed forests and CO2 dip, which led to little ice age; why didn’t this produce a terminal crisis in capitalism? Because of slavery frontier

• why is cotton gin not considered as important as steam engine as impetus for industrial revolution?

• “blue marble” photo of earth as “environmentalism of the rich”

• Marx acknowledged that human labor is itself a force of nature (?)

• alternative to collapse narrative (Jared Diamond)?

• jwmoore@binghamton.edu

#WorldecologySF 2019 04

Jason Moore Climate of Crisis, 379 2019 a

May 31, 2019

#WorldecologySF 2019 04

Jason Moore Climate of Crisis, 379 2019 b

May 31, 2019

Bill Gates - 2021 Glasgow COP26 Review

Three major shifts in the climate conversation

Nov 8, 2021

In Glasgow, I saw three big shifts

in the climate conversation

by Bill Gates | November 8, 2021

A lot has changed in the past six years.

Last week I spent three fantastic days at the global climate summit (known as COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland. My main impression is how much things have changed since the last summit, back in 2015—and I don’t mean because of COVID. The climate conversation has shifted dramatically, and for the better.

One big shift is that clean-energy innovation is higher on the agenda than ever. The world needs to get to zero carbon emissions by 2050. As I argue in the book I published this year, accomplishing that will require a green Industrial Revolution in which we decarbonize virtually the entire physical economy: how we make things, generate electricity, move around, grow food, and cool and heat buildings. The world already has some of the tools we’ll need to do that, but we need a huge number of new inventions too.

So at an event like this, one way I measure progress is by the way people are thinking about what it’ll take to reach zero emissions. Do they think we already have all the tools we need to get there? Or is there a nuanced view of the complexity of this problem, and the need for new, affordable clean technology that helps people in low- and middle-income countries raise their standard of living without making climate change worse?

Six years ago, there were more people on the we-have-what-we-need side than on the innovation side. This year, though, innovation was literally on center stage. One session of the World Leaders Summit, where I got to speak, was exclusively about developing and deploying clean technologies faster.

I also helped launch the Net Zero World Initiative, a commitment from the U.S. government to help other countries get to zero by providing funding and—even more important—access to experts throughout the government, including the top minds at America’s world-class national laboratories. These countries will get support with planning the transition to a green economy, piloting new technologies, working with investors, and more.

The second major shift is that the private sector is now playing a central role alongside governments and nonprofits. In Glasgow, I met with leaders in various industries that need to be part of the transition—including shipping, mining, and financial services—who had practical plans to decarbonize and to support innovation. I saw CEOs of international banks really engaging with these issues, whereas many of them wouldn’t even have shown up a few years ago. (It made me wish we could get the same kind of turnout and excitement for conferences on global health!)

I announced that three new partners—Citi, the IKEA Foundation, and State Farm—will be working with Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, a program designed to get the most promising climate technologies to scale much faster than would happen naturally. They’re joining the first round of seven partners we announced in September. It’s amazing to see how much momentum Catalyst has generated in just a few months.

I was also honored to join President Biden and his climate envoy, John Kerry, to announce that Breakthrough Energy will be the primary implementation partner for the First Movers Coalition. It’s a new initiative from the U.S. State Department and the World Economic Forum that will boost demand for emerging climate solutions in some of the sectors where it’ll be especially hard to eliminate emissions: aviation, concrete and steel production, shipping, and more.

The third shift I’m seeing is that there’s even more visibility for climate adaptation. The worst tragedy of rising temperatures is that they will do the most harm to the people who have done the least to cause them. And if we don’t help people in low- and middle-income countries thrive despite the warming that is already under way, the world will lose the fight against extreme poverty.

So it was great to hear President Biden and other leaders repeatedly raising the importance of adaptation. I got to join the president, along with officials from the United Arab Emirates, to launch a program called Agricultural Innovation Mission for Climate. It’s designed to focus some of the world’s innovative IQ on ways to help the poorest people adapt, such as new varieties of crops that can withstand more droughts and floods. More than 30 other countries, as well as dozens of companies and nonprofits (including the Gates Foundation), are already supporting it.

As part of that effort, I joined a coalition of donors that pledged more than half a billion dollars to support the CGIAR’s work to advance climate-smart innovations for smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Some people look at the problems that still need to be solved and see the glass as half-empty. I don’t share that view, but this is what I would tell anyone who does: The glass is being filled up faster than ever. If we keep this up—if the world puts even more effort into innovations that reduce the cost of getting to zero and help the poorest people adapt to climate change—then we’ll be able to look back on this summit as an important milestone in avoiding a climate disaster.

The Cobb Institute: Ecology, Education, Planning, Collaboration

https://cobb.institute/

THE COBB INSTITUTE

FOR ECOLOGICAL AWARENESS, EDUCATION,

STRATEGIC PLANNING, & COMMUNITY COLLABORATION

We believe planet Earth is best viewed as a living organism and human beings are a part of it. We lament the degraded condition of our common home and the role that human beings have played in causing it. We cherish promoting its healing through education, dialogue, and initiatives that cultivate not only sustainability but also communities of compassion and equity.

https://cobb.institute/

DREAM BIGGER WITH US!

“If we want a society in which the sense of belonging is strong, people are concerned for one another, and there is strong commitment to the common good, we need a metaphysics that shows that we are in fact part of larger societies and have no existence apart from our relations to others.” - John Cobb

Community Collaboration

The Cobb Institute is a Think Tank with Legs. We often spark new ideas and encourage others to carry them forward as we support the effort. We are luring, assisting, and nurturing a variety of initiatives in the Claremont area in hopes that they will be a model and that their successes can be replicated elsewhere. But we’re also concerned with our common home, so we ignite efforts to develop the process movement and advance the common good in the United States and around the world by creating new communities and partnering with organizations who have connections countries like China and India. Our successes include:

Global Relationships

• Claremont Process Nexus

• Institute for Postmodern Development of China

• EcoCovenant Academy in India

• US-China Cooperation Campaign

Local Impacts

• Sustainability Major at the University of La Verne

• Economic Forum for Affordable Housing in Pomona

• CHERP Solar Works

• Urban Agriculture in Pomona

Educational Development

The Cobb Institute creates classes, hosts discussions, and sponsors workshops to educate people about process thought and ecological civilization. As we inch closer to a planetary crisis point and the need for an urgent change in our understanding of our relationship with the earth, our Learning Lab seeks to transform education to foster personal growth and wisdom. Our successes include:

John Cobb & Friends Gatherings

• David Orr, Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics Emeritus, Oberlin College

• Rebecca Parker. Former Professor of Theology and President of Starr King School for the Ministry

• Jeremy Lent, Founder and President of the Liology Institute

• Sophia Said, Founding Chairperson of the Madina Institute

Courses

• Whitehead & Jung - Integrating Resources for a Fragmented World

• The Rebirthing of God - Exploring the Ways in Which “God is Being Reborn”

• Suffering & Meaning - Understanding from a Process-Relational Perspective

• Walking With Whitehead - A Careful Reading of Key Passages in Process & Reality

Learning Circles

• An Awakening Planet - Contemplating the Vision of Teilhard de Chardin
• 
  
• Women in Process - A Space for Women Who Want to Explore Their Becomings & Possibilities

Workshops

• The Process of Gardening - An Introduction to Gardening from a Process-Relational Perspective

• The Process of Dying - Forgotten Wisdom

Spiritual Integration & The Arts

The Cobb Institute promotes a process-relational approach to personal spirituality and faith communities. Creativity is celebrated and included through poetry, music and visual arts as we feature artists at our weekly gatherings, on our website, and in a new series to feature the art of process. Our successes include:

Process & Faith

A Multi-faith Network for Relational Spirituality and the Common Good

Process & Coffee

A Discussion Group About Books That Foster an Integral Spirituality

International Poetry Forum

An International Conference to Consider the Purpose of Poets in an Age of Ecological Civilization

Featured Artists & Novel Becomings Series

Spotlighting the Beauty and Multiplicity of Art in All its Forms by Process artists

 

Our dream in 2022 is to make a greater impact personally by providing an integrated and wholistic approach to making meaning in our world, locally by creating compassionate communities, and globally by inspiring each community to build an ecological civilization. Dream big with us! The world needs a truly creative transformation toward the common good.

About the Institute

The Cobb Institute, named in honor of our founder John Cobb, promotes a process-relational way of understanding and living in the world. As a philosophical outlook it shares wisdom, emphasizes harmony, and focuses on the common good. We live out this philosophy by working to build an ecological civilization.

With the knowledge that all life is interconnected and in process of becoming, we use education, creativity, and an open view of spirituality to help each other and our communities thrive. This is a bold collaborative view that recognizes our interdependence, and thus emphasizes that we have a responsibility to care not just for our own lives but also for the world we share with everyone and everything else.

Our Mission

The Cobb Institute promotes a process-relational worldview to advance wisdom, harmony, and the common good. It engages in local initiatives and cultivates compassionate communities to bring about an ecological civilization. These aims will be accomplished by fostering creative transformation through educational development, community collaboration, sustainable practices, and spiritual integration.

Our History

Originally named the Claremont Institute for Process Studies, the Cobb Institute was established in the spring of 2019 as a non-profit corporation in the State of California, for the purpose of continuing the mission and legacy of the Center for Process Studies (CPS)—a Faculty Center of Claremont School of Theology (CST), established by John Cobb and David Griffin in 1973)—anticipating the relocation of CST and CPS in the summer of 2019. The Cobb Institute is part of a family of process-relational organizations affiliated with the Center for Process Studies and the International Process Network.

As the Institute engaged in self-assessments and underwent various developments during the latter part of 2019, its leadership determined that the name "Claremont Institute for Process Studies" didn't adequately express its character as an emerging community with a shared interest in a process-relational way of understanding the world, along with a commitment to implementing its values in concrete ways. Because of John Cobb's role as the founder, his bold vision for an alternative future, and the importance of his life's work, in January 2020 the Board decided to change the name of the organization to the Cobb Institute: A Community for Process & Practice. The name change was officially announced at his John Cobb's 95th birthday celebration on February 11, 2020.

12 Environmentalists You Should Know

A Personal Introduction

As of today there is one week left from completing four quarter-term college classes before starting the next term of classes. For those in my area who were interested I had encouraged them to join me in reading the poetry of Wendell Berry, an environmentalist, anti-industrialist, activist, and author. I had read his biography of short stories last fall in his book, "That Distant Land," and I suspect he will be as profound this time around in his poetry as he was in his prose last year.

Today, as I attended an Aldo Leopold seminar we ended class with a short walk around an adjoining preserve enjoying the warm spring weather while embracing the many new growing things beginning to emerge. Our host was an ecological biologist who invited the preserve's land manager last week, and resource educationalist today, to co-host with him of Leopold's life ethic as he developed from an industrial mindset of usury and utilitarianism to perceiving the then unseen flora and fauna biotic web of interconnected life in all its complexities. In simpler terms we know this as "the circle of life" aka the Disney film, "Lion King."

Of course, had he known of the early 20th century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead and his work on process philosophy in the early 1900s this would have helped him immensely. However, let us not fault Aldo as the entire corpus of cosmology had by then been disregarded and forgotten nearly two hundred years ago after Immanuel Kant (c1724-1804) and Soren Kirkegaard's (c.1813-1855) summary cosmological work engaging what the ancients knew to how it was understood in their late enlightenment centuries. From their observations philosophy took several directions across the European and Western continents.

Be that as it may, process philosophy has evolved to include many new forms of cosmology including process ecology. Yet this tool Aldo did not have when studying forestry at Yale University under America's first forester and conservationist, Gifford Pinchot. This he would have to learn on his own as he moved from post to post examining and re-examining what he had been taught from differing eyes and viewpoints. Actually, had we as a nation listened to the native Americans whom we disregarded as ignorant savages we would have learned about nature's centrality much more quickly, and I believe, with a much more thorough appreciation, empathy and love for the land we have not loved, destroyed and plowed under as a simple thing unworthy of care and appreciation

Alas, our history abounds with societal / cultural shortsightedness even as our recent years of abusive politics and Christian form of religion has displayed contempt for non-majorities and non-nationals we use and throw away. Human history has not been so very kind to those different from us in color, complexion, thought or speech. Nor have our passionate presumptions been true guides for conduct and civilization which usually have proven wrong, misguided, and ultimately harmful.

Be that as it may, as we grow older, those of us who are willing to unlearn what we think we know to relearn what may become a fuller comprehension of life are the better for it. Aldo Leopold was one of those late disciples even as I suspect John Muir, Henry David Theoreau, and a host of other early ecologists who similarly learned to unlearn perceptions and relearn wisdom. As we know, this happens more commonly than we care to admit with people from all walks and experiences of life. To some, this whole being and life process becomes more profound than for others. It is more complete, more expressive, even more expansive. It can upset an entire life when relizing the errors one is making in judgment, contact, or perception. As a simple example, I would point to the many testimonies from young to old who come to Jesus when finally perceiving what his atoning death and resurrection really means to this life we live. Like the renewing rains of winter's end spring comes to a life in need of growing, birthing, blooming, and regenerating future lives ahead of itself.

Lastly, I have put together a very, very brief introduction from another contributing source portraying the lives and passions of those early conservationists of the past mid-American century. I think of them as America's first generation of environmental apostles speaking the gospel of nature to a modern society which had lost its hearing and its ears to the songbird on the wing, the whisper of the pine in the winds, and how one thing affects another thing so delicately as to affect all things. Follow the link below to discover what these men and women had to unlearn to be able to see aright again.

R.E. Slater

March 10, 2010

Marco Bottigelli / Getty Images

12 Environmentalists You Should Know

https://www.thoughtco.com/environmentalists-you-should-know-1709040

by Marc Lallanilla

Updated November 15, 2019

Environmentalists have had a big impact on our lives, but most people can't name one famous environmentalist. Here's a list of 12 influential scientists, conservationists, ecologists, and other rabble-rousing leaders who have been central founders and builders of the green movement.

John Muir, Naturalist and Writer

Conservationist John Muir

John Muir (1838–1914) was born in Scotland and emigrated to Wisconsin as a young boy. His lifelong passion for hiking began as a young man when he hiked to the Gulf of Mexico. Muir spent much of his adult life wandering in—and fighting to preserve—the wilderness of the western United States, especially California. His tireless efforts led to the creation of Yosemite National Park, Sequoia National Park, and millions of other conservation areas. Muir was a strong influence on many leaders of his day, including Theodore Roosevelt. In 1892, Muir and others founded the ​​Sierra Club "to make the mountains glad."

Rachel Carson, Scientist and Author

Ecologist Rachel Carson | Photo: JHU Sheridan Libraries/Gado/ Getty Images

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) is regarded by many as the founder of the modern environmental movement. Born in rural Pennsylvania, she went on to study biology at Johns Hopkins University and Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory. After working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Carson published "The Sea Around Us" and other books. Her most famous work, however, was 1962's controversial "Silent Spring," in which she described the devastating effect that pesticides were having on the environment. Though pilloried by chemical companies and others, Carson's observations were proven correct, and pesticides like DDT were eventually banned.

Edward Abbey, Author and Monkey-Wrencher

https://www.theinertia.com/environment/edward-abbey-desert-solitaire-environment-relevant-50-years-old/

Conservationist Edward Abbey

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) was one of America's most dedicated—and most outrageous—environmentalists. Born in Pennsylvania, he is best known for his passionate defense of the deserts of America's Southwest. After working for the National Park Service in what is now Arches National Park in Utah, Abbey wrote "Desert Solitaire," one of the seminal works of the environmental movement. His later book, "The Monkey Wrench Gang," gained notoriety as an inspiration for the radical environmental group Earth First!—a group that has been accused of eco-sabotage by some, including many mainstream environmentalists.

Aldo Leopold, Ecologist and Author

Conservationist Aldo Leopold of The Land Ethic

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) is considered by some to be the godfather of wilderness conservation and of modern ecologists. After studying forestry at Yale University, he worked for the U.S. Forest Service. Though he was originally asked to kill bears, cougars, and other predators on federal land because of demands of protesting local ranchers, he later adopted a more holistic approach to wilderness management. His best-known book, "A Sand County Almanac," remains one of the most eloquent pleas for the preservation of wilderness ever composed.

Julia Hill, Environmental Activist

Conservationist Julia Hill | Photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Getty Images

Julia "Butterfly" Hill (born 1974) is one of the most committed environmentalists alive today. After nearly dying in an auto accident in 1996, she dedicated her life to environmental causes. For almost two years, Hill lived in the branches of an ancient redwood tree (which she named Luna) in northern California to save it from being cut down. Her tree-sit became an international cause célèbre, and Hill remains involved in environmental and social causes.

Henry David Thoreau, Author and Activist

Henry David Thoreau | Photo: FPG/Getty Images

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) was one of America's first philosopher-writer-activists, and he is still one of the most influential. In 1845, Thoreau—disillusioned with much of contemporary life—set out to live alone in a small house he built near the shore of Walden Pond in Massachusetts. The two years he spent living a life of utter simplicity was the inspiration for "Walden, or A Life in the Woods," a meditation on life and nature that is considered a must-read for all environmentalists. Thoreau also wrote an influential political piece called "Resistance to Civil Government (Civil Disobedience)" that outlined the moral bankruptcy of overbearing governments.

Theodore Roosevelt, Politician and Conservationist

President Theodore Roosevelt with Conservationist John Muir

It might surprise some that a famed big-game hunter would make it onto a list of environmentalists, but Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) was one of the most active champions of wilderness preservation in history. As governor of New York, he outlawed the use of feathers as clothing adornment in order to prevent the slaughter of some birds. While president of the United States (1901–1909), Roosevelt set aside hundreds of millions of wilderness acres, actively pursued soil and water conservation, and created over 200 national forests, national monuments, national parks, and wildlife refuges.

Gifford Pinchot, Forester and Conservationist

Gifford Pinchot, Forester and Conservationist

Gifford Pinchot (1865–1946) was the son of a timber baron who later regretted the damage he had done to America's forests. At his insistence, Pinchot studied forestry for many years and was appointed by President Grover Cleveland to develop a plan for managing America's western forests. That career continued when Theodore Roosevelt asked him to lead the U.S. Forest Service. His time in office was not without opposition, however. He publicly battled ​​John Muir over the destruction of wilderness tracts like Hetch Hetchy in California, while also being condemned by timber companies for closing off land to their exploitation.

Chico Mendes, Conservationist and Activist

Conservationist Chico Mendes | Photo: Alex Robinson/Getty Images

Chico Mendes (1944–1988) is best known for his efforts at saving the rainforests of Brazil from logging and ranching activities. Mendes came from a family of rubber harvesters who supplemented their income by sustainably gathering nuts and other rainforest products. Alarmed at the devastation of the Amazon rainforest, he helped to ignite international support for its preservation. His activities, however, drew the ire of powerful ranching and timber interests —Mendes was murdered by cattle ranchers at age 44.

Wangari Maathai, Political Activist and Environmentalist

Conservationist Wangari Maathai | Photo: Wendy Stone / Getty Images

Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) was an environmental and political activist in Kenya. After studying biology in the United States, she returned to Kenya to begin a career that combined environmental and social concerns. Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement in Africa and helped to plant over 30 million trees, providing jobs to the unemployed while also preventing soil erosion and securing firewood. She was appointed Assistant Minister in the Ministry for Environment and Natural Resources, and in 2004 Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while continuing to fight for the rights of women, the politically oppressed, and the natural environment.

Gaylord Nelson, Politician and Environmentalist

Gaylord Nelson, Politician and Environmentalist

No other name is more associated with Earth Day than that of Gaylord Nelson (1916–2005). After returning from World War II, Nelson began a career as a politician and environmental activist that was to last the rest of his life. As governor of Wisconsin, he created an Outdoor Recreation Acquisition Program that saved about one million acres of parkland. He was instrumental in the development of a national trails system (including the Appalachian Trail) and helped pass the Wilderness Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and other landmark environmental legislation. He is perhaps best known as the founder of Earth Day, which has become an international celebration of all things environmental.

David Brower, Environmental Activist

Envrionmental Activist David Brower

David Brower (1912–2000) has been associated with wilderness preservation since he began mountain climbing as a young man. Brower was appointed the Sierra Club's first executive director in 1952. Over the next 17 years, membership grew from 2,000 to 77,000, and the group won many environmental victories. His confrontational style, however, got Brower fired from the Sierra Club—he nonetheless went on to found the groups Friends of the Earth, the Earth Island Institute, and the League of Conservation Voters.