Recent-ish Reads, January 5, 2026

Welcome to How To Get Things Less Wrong's first process-relational reading roundup of the new-ish year! As always, it explores some highlights of practical comparative metaphysics in action, showing how those foundational frameworks for what things are are ubiquitous, important, and actually pretty easy to update.

First, a really on-point piece about the psychological benefits of understanding existence process-relationally. It even name-checks Heraclitus and Whitehead. For a deeper dive on similar themes, check out a more academic article from 2020 that has been central to my own thinking, "From nouns to verbs: How process ontologies enhance our understanding of social-ecological systems understood as complex adaptive systems." It's one of the clearest explanations I've ever encountered of the difference between substance and process metaphysics, how they show up in everyday thinking as well as research, policy, and culture, and how to start operationalizing process-relational thinking and practice.

The existential balm of seeing yourself as a verb, not a noun | Psyche Ideas

In the therapy room, I’ve seen how rethinking what we are – and what it means to ‘be dead’ – can lighten our fears

Psyche

Also in the realm of psychology, a research review article highlights the problems that arise from chasing view-from-nowhere "objectivity" and the benefits gained from including diverse, embedded perspectives to ground-truth our maps.

The Cost of Excluding Lived Experience in Psychiatric Neuroscience

In a new paper published in NPP – Digital Psychiatry and Neuroscience, researchers argue that including scientists with lived experience of mental illness Excluding researchers with lived experience limits our understanding of psychiatric neuroscience.

Mad In AmericaKelly McFadden

Next, two of my favorite political epistemologists, David Roberts and Samuel Bagg, in conversation about how limited humans (even "rationalists") are as cognitive agents, how much social identity shapes our perception and predictive processing, the necessity of collective social structures calibrated to correct for individual limitations through breadth, diversity, and processes, and the vast problems that spiral when people don't trust those structures and processes. They also chat about ways to be more epistemically successful (i.e., less wrong) by trusting the right people in the right contexts and applying discerning judgment in the face of uncertainty. All in all, it's a conversation that supports aspects of this map-territory frame that bridge to identity: the presence of process-relational thinking in all minds and cultures, its compatibility with most existing religious and secular worldviews, its trending success, its anti-elite cool, its moral clarity, its necessity for art and meaning, and so on. There's a very readable transcript if you're like me and prefer reading to listening.

The cure for misinformation is not more information or smarter news consumers

Political scientist Samuel Bagg explains why social identity is at the root of the misinformation crisis -- which calls for something deeper than factchecking.

VoltsDavid Roberts

Relatedly, there's not a lot of daylight between process-relationality as a metaphysical framework and solidarity as a political commitment, and Hamilton Nolan has a great piece on the benefits of the latter to transcend and bridge across religious and non-religious beliefs in a democracy.

The God of Solidarity

Beyond religion, a better world.

How Things WorkHamilton Nolan

On the flip side, there's not a lot of daylight between map-metaphysics' deterministic and essentialist individualism, evangelical prosperity gospel bullshit, and MAGA fascism by way of Project 2025, as laid out in a detailed historical review by political strategist Matt Royer. I think it's worth a longer quote, with a couple bracketed comments:

Though Donald Trump initially attempted to distance himself from Project 2025 during the campaign, the document ultimately appealed to him because it articulated the society he has always envisioned. In this world, power is autocratic and centralized, ordered around insular family dynasties overwhelmingly led by white men. Oversight [system feedback from diverse perspectives] is minimal or nonexistent. ... Social obligation disappears. People do not owe one another anything.

These tenets are not merely political preferences—they are the direct inheritance of prosperity theology. They flow from a belief system that treats wealth as moral proof, poverty as personal failure, and hierarchy as divinely ordained. What we are witnessing now is the exertion of political power steeped in that [metaphysical] dogma, made flesh through policy and governance.

And Americans are suffering for it.

The more clearly we understand the ideological architecture we are up against—not just a party or a candidate, but a decades-long fusion of theology, media, money, and power—the more obvious it becomes that incremental responses will not suffice. ... It must be confronted at the level of values, story, and moral clarity.

The Regressive Evangelism of America Part 4: God’s Plan #Blessed

How the Christian Right created a society and politics of greed and selfishness that’s susceptible to conmen

By the BallotMatt Royer

Here's a quick and lovely meditation on learning from, and not just about, the more-than-human world.

A Living Map | Atmos

In a year of uncertainty, the living world has offered guidance—answers written in feathers, roots, and time.

AtmosAtmos

This one wasn't published particularly recently, but came to my attention through end-of-year lists. (Anyone else love end-of-year list season as much as I do?) Below is an interview with an author of a book that has been on some such lists, which touches on the goofy map-metaphysics embraced by AI billionaires and their bootlickers.

Adam Becker Takes Aim at Silicon Valley Nonsense | TechPolicy.Press

In a new book, the science journalist Adam Becker skewers the more outlandish ideas and motivations in the tech industry.

Tech Policy PressJustin Hendrix

Finally, process-relationality often shows up in the better, more wisdom-oriented self-help advice. Timely case in point, this philosophy-based take on resolutions.

How To Set Better New Year’s Resolutions: Focus On Processes, Not Outcomes | Philosophy Break

As many of us set New Year’s resolutions for 2025, MIT philosophy professor Kieran Setiya argues that we might better serve ourselves by focusing on the quality of processes, not just the result of projects.

Philosophy BreakJack Maden

Have you seen any process-relationality out in the wild lately?