Spotlight - Alfred North Whitehead # 2

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Transcription:
https://app.podscribe.ai/episode/56549397

Speaker 0 (0s): Part to me, Whoo my friends. Welcome back to the beginning. We're back here with Alfred North Whitehead we are in what we're doing, what we're doing is we are looking at the future through the eyes of a philosopher in the past. Yeah. And it is so intriguing and beautiful and amazing journey all through the eyes of the past.

I got to tell you, this is really something to reading these older books that are not fiction and they're not science fiction. And there are really not literature. They are the dialogs, the paper's the written correspondences of, of people in the past. There is something so visceral about it. And I hope all of you, we're getting a chance to get out of this. What I get out of it, let's dive right back in here and you can actually, hopefully you can get a sense of what I have been getting a sense of.

And again, these are just the dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead and they were taken or written down over the course of about 20 years or 30 years. So let's, let's jump right back into it here. Again, I'm going to just kind of go through some excerpts that I've highlighted, stopping every now and then to give you a sense of what I think about it. And hopefully allowing you a few moments to do a little mental exercise with me and see what you think about it.

So that being said, I just jumped right back in here from the book. I raised the question why the creation of an artwork exhausts the experience for his creator, but is infinitely potent have repeated stimulations in the enjoyer. Perhaps you said it is because of all human effort is directed towards the achievement of an end, whether it is satisfied or not.

And the artists in, although never quite the result he hoped for is largely attained. And therefor finished for him to a point in which he ends is where the enjoyer begins. That's an interesting way to look at it. What do you think the generation now at the age of 50 or thereabouts, he said seems to, to have had its upbringing terribly bungled. When I address an assemblage of youths under the age of 30, I am aware of feeling a hearty respect for them.

I think he continued, it came from their parents having lost their own belief, but going on insisting on the dead formula of conduct in order to keep their children quote unquote good. When they no longer believed in these formula themselves to children eventually found that out, deceived their parents in turn and it resulted in deceit all around.

They knew their old religion was empty, but were not honest with themselves no more with their children about it, their children in those years, between 18 and 24, when one is experiencing for the first time, the vital necessities, emotional and physical were left in total ignorance of the social consequences of certain types of conduct. I think that's really relevant today. I know that when I was growing up, there were certain ideas and certain

Speaker 1 (4m 21s): Conceptions of how life should be done.

Speaker 0 (4m 25s): We weren't necessarily true. And those do in fact lead to social consequences, but why such an advance in the past two centuries when mathematics had been highly developed by the Greeks at least 26 centuries ago,

Speaker 1 (4m 51s): That was an interesting point. Mans earlier discoveries in mathematics were made by observation,

Speaker 0 (4m 58s): All of his physical surroundings as

Speaker 1 (5m 2s): The Contra distinguished from abstract reason, set he on the Plains of Cal DIA, he noticed the stars swinging round and round. Do you do just the conception of the circle and finally arrived at the wheel? Interesting to think about how mathematics may have been discovered

Speaker 0 (5m 27s): In the past and how the evolution of our science resulted from it. I think you can go much like the wheel for me,

Speaker 1 (5m 38s): I'll circle in understanding the relationship.

Speaker 0 (5m 42s): So between mathematics and abstract thought and how today being away from nature

Speaker 1 (5m 50s): And submersed in this world of tech,

Speaker 0 (5m 54s): The logical abundance. No, that makes sense. That makes sense that our idea and our worldview has become so narrow, the further we go away from nature, the more narrow the pathway of advancement becomes. Does that kind of makes sense if you just take that little, that little particular bite there of man, you are using an abstract thought by staring at the stars and realizing that we are rotating in that the way you can see the moon move around the earth and you can see the procession of the Equinox, how one could get from there to the wheel.

I like those are big ideas. Those are big thoughts and abstract. Where today we are narrowly focused on this tiny little part of technology. And it's just fascinating. The, the deeper you get into something, the more of the illusion of abundance. I told you, I told you this is going to be interesting. Beautiful, right? How is experience to be brought to the level of consciousness and transmitted into an art form out of the subconscious?

That is a big question you are speaking to mentally. It is first and aesthetic experience powerfully felt emotional experience with mental perceptions. Then it demands a definite artistic form. The trouble with creators have today is that they try to substitute a mental idea for the aesthetic experience. They think, look here, wouldn't it be exciting to try it this way away?

No one else has ever tried it before, but the novelty is of no significance. All that has any significance is the depth and vitality of an experience out of which the art comes in. And if it kind of

Speaker 1 (8m 11s): Comes out of mirror consciously clever radio, Sunation it is for doomed. You are dealing in secondary perceptions and relatively shallow experience. It does not

Speaker 0 (8m 27s): Behr the stamp of deepest truth. Wow. That has some pretty, that was pretty deep. Yeah. That's kind of cool.

Speaker 1 (8m 38s): Break that down a little bit. So if you, and I want to,

Speaker 0 (8m 44s): How was experienced to be brought to the level of consciousness and transmitted into an art form out of the subconscious? I think that as a question that all the artists are striving to do, right?

Speaker 1 (8m 56s): You're trying to bring something back from the unconscious mind. It's a lot like that.

Speaker 0 (9m 4s): Going balls deep into like a 10

Speaker 1 (9m 9s): Graham's psychedelic trip. What a day, two of an Iowasca Benjen trying to formulate a new linguistic pathway to share the experience

Speaker 0 (9m 20s): And with others with right.

Speaker 1 (9m 23s): If you really want to transcend, if you want your idea to live forever, if you want to put your stamp of authenticity on to the minds of those who are viewing your right now,

Speaker 0 (9m 36s): Do you think you have to have this, this is

Speaker 1 (9m 42s): New way of, of showings. And so what is that? What is that?

Speaker 0 (9m 47s): Well,

Speaker 1 (9m 48s): You don't want to be too mentally about it. If you want to know,

Speaker 0 (9m 51s): Do you want to

Speaker 1 (9m 57s): Invoke field in someone

Speaker 0 (9m 60s): Else? You want to have both the power and the soothing effects of your idea transmitted not only via

Speaker 1 (10m 13s): Words, ...