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North Whitehead, Alfred – 15 Destruction of Temporary co-operation of organisms
Identifier
025761
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Whereas in the last observation, Whitehead examined co-creation and the creation of temporary aggregates – he calls them societies . But he also recognised the need for destruction – that these societies decay and have no value and as such have to be removed.
Destruction requires destroyers and one of the fascinating aspects about destruction and the destroyers is that there is every reason to consider them an essential part of the overall strategy and the Great Work.
We may personally consider the effects one of unsurpassing evil, with deaths, pain and misery, starvation, poverty, chaos and disorder. But in the wider context, to create something radically new, the old has to be radically destroyed.
And disorder and degeneration is achieved via these destroyers ‘thwarting, contrary decisions from the settled world’, every time the creators think they have managed to bring order back into the world, a set of people effectively thwart their plans and destroy what has been ordered.
If we think of this like a pendulum, the pendulum has to swing across a still point to attain an equal and opposite level of destruction.
A description of the experience
PART II Discussions and Applications
Chapter III - The Order Of Nature
Section III
But there may evidently be a state in which there are no prevalent societies securing any congruent unity of effect. This is a state of chaotic disorder; it is disorder approaching an absolute sense of that term. In such an ideal state, what is 'given' for any actual entity is the outcome of thwarting, contrary decisions from the settled world. Chaotic disorder means lack of dominant definition of compatible contrasts in the satisfactions attained, and consequent enfeeblement of intensity.
The source of the experience
North Whitehead, AlfredConcepts, symbols and science items
Concepts
Creation and destructionObjectives of the Great Work
Personality
Strategy of the Great Work
System
Temporary co-operation of organisms