index

About everyday effects

click on images for full-size:

Process that is us (Virginia)

Process that is us (Texas)

Process that is us ('Dialogue' by Toko Shimada -- the red marks spell out furusato (old home village) in Japanese hiragana).)

One philosophical tactic in this study is to insist on the mutual constitution of process and structure -- there are no empty processes or un-embodied structures. Places exist within the process that also is our embodied existence.

-- This might be true but does it really make any difference in day to day living?

-- Yes it does, because it frees us from thinking of some universal process sweeping us into emptiness, or some huge structure crushing us.

-- But the process you appeal to is too big; it's too social, so we as individuals can still feel crushed by its results. Or are you just preaching Stoic resignation?

-- There are, it's true, some meaning-processes over which we have little or no control: linguistic drifts in pronunciation, for example, or long-term changes in styles, or the changes in meaning-making that happen with new media. At the other extreme there are micro meaning-processes we are consciously involved in through adopting new practices, norms, and rules, altering our tastes by deliberate exposure to new ranges of food or art, and so on. There is a also middle range of social processes that establish norms and practices, and over which we could have more control if we worked at it and organized cooperatively. These are often political matters, everything from municipal zoning and land use ordinances, to choices of house style, to ecological activism.

-- You call ecological activism a meaning-making process?

-- Insofar as it establishes norms and practices, yes. If "there are no empty processes or un-embodied structures" then many everyday social and political activities are indeed part of our self-creation of identity and meaning through the maintenance and change of norms and social grammars.