Reimagining Peace through Process Philosophy

Within process philosophy is a compass that can help us address the most urgent social and environmental issues of our time. However, too few people are aware of process thinking and its potential. Reimagining Peace through Process Philosophy makes the practices, metaphysics and applications of process thought more accessible and easier to apply. It illustrates these through the example of the climate crisis, an urgent peace issue and symptom of a “global systemic crisis”. The book argues that systems, cultures and practices guided by narrow-visioned “static thinking” and “static metaphysics” hinder our ability to address many global challenges. For example, ideas about the world as made of separate individuals underpins mainstream economic theories and influences decisions across many scales, fostering a prioritisation of money and profit, over people and their wellbeing. In contrast, process metaphysics expounds a view of the world-in-process, co-created by relational processes in each new moment. This fosters a contextual approach to economics, shifting core assumptions such as self-interested individuals to people-in-communities. Process thinking emphasises a practice of iteratively bringing abstractions into experienced, relational and ever-changing contexts. This book shows how process thinking depolarises left and right political ideologies, subjugates the goal of GDP growth to improving personal and planetary wellbeing, and unites science and religion through a narrative of cosmological, political and community participation. Process thinking offers a way to recalibrate education, economics and politics to peace, connecting systemic interventions with practical steps that can change humanity’s trajectory. By bringing people together, strengthening relationships and reviving our sense of personal and collective purpose, this path not only leads to a healthier future, but to a happier present-in-process. Juliet Bennett is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies, School of Social and Political Sciences, and Charles Perkins Centre, at The University of Sydney.