Seeing Red

“You cannot know what is red by merely thinking of redness.  You can only find red things by adventuring amid physical experiences in this actual world” (Whitehead, 256).

This quotation speaks to Whitehead’s assertion that “eternal objects tell no tales as to their ingressions” (256).  While this idea is perhaps a simple one, his example of redness shares an analogical truth: whatever passed down knowledge we may absorb from books, documentaries, or other sources of “information,” we don’t truly understand the world through learning.  Just as actual occassions are dipolar, humans need both physical and theoretical access to the world in order to most meaningfully experience it.  One can substitute a number of words for “red” (justice, love, compassion, fairness) and find great meaning.

This speaks to the reality of seminary, for me.  Much of what we do constricts our physical interaction with the world by virtue of asking us to spend a great amount of time focusing on the theoretical– reading and lectures.  While we are often given “practical” assignments, internships, and opportunities to put our theoretical knowledge into the world in a variety of ways, the majority of what we do is interacting with “passed down” knowledge.  This knowledge is foundational and will allow us to bring our internal library of theoretical knowledge to our interaction with the physical world, but no amount of reading about compassion conveys or teaches the reality of what compassion is– one must experience it in “this actual world.”  One can read about love forever, but without experiencing love, the words lack their full meaning.

If, in a cosmology of process, diversity of experience leads to more possibility, more intensity, and is a goal of life, the most fulfilling life is one in which we maximize both our study and our in-the-world-ness.  Experiencing a diversity of things will allow us to know the world more fully and intensely and to make connections between our poles of experience.  The more we think and act on justice, the more we understand what it is to be just.  The more we both think and act on love, the more we understand what it is to be loving and loved.  The more justice and love we pour into the world, the more future generations will have to build on in their own re-working of the universe toward a more just, compassionate, loving world.  

Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: Corrected Edition, ed. by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne.  New York: The Free Press, 1978.