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Written by David Cowles, Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today magazine and explores short, profound thoughts and discoveries about theology, science, philosophy, literature, the arts, society, and prayer. Subscribe today for FREE! Enter your email address here: Subscribe now! Thanks for submitting! Oct 6, 2025 Tarot “Tarot can be seen as a paradigm of Judeo-Christian spirituality. So deal me in…please!” Read More Oct 4, 2025 Me at 75…and at 5 “What’s it like to be a 5 year old version of myself? It’s exactly like being a 75 year old version…because 5 year old me is 75 year old me!” Read More Oct 4, 2025 Good God Paul Tillich! “…It makes no difference what direction we look, it’s utter devastation everywhere. Oh, the price we pay to have no God!” Read More Oct 4, 2025 Good God Too “Where once I was judged by the standard of the Decalogue, now I judge the Decalogue by my standards.” Read More Sep 26, 2025 SETI and the Meaning of Life “If we are so far unable to find meaning for our existence, why would we expect meeting ET to change things?” Read More Sep 21, 2025 Nietzsche and the Book of Genesis “What is Value? Does it exist, is it for real? Or is it something we make up to justify our capricious behavior?” Read More Sep 20, 2025 Ovid vs. Plato “Ovid freed us from the collective anonymity of Plato and prepared us for the intensely personal theology of Jesus.” Read More Sep 19, 2025 AI and the Borg Collective “AI treats Sally as the intersection of a bunch of sociological variables…(but) Startrek’s Borg Collective takes ‘post-modern Sally’ to a whole other level” Read More Sep 14, 2025 Why the Universe Doesn’t Fall Apart “What holds everything together? How is it that Universe is a universe, that it has an identity?” Read More Sep 14, 2025 Chaos and Causality “Accomplish as much as possible, experience as intensely as possible, but change as little as possible!” Read More Sep 14, 2025 The Hunt for Hidden Variables “Perhaps social scientists will be first to identify the elusive factors that drive unexpected results.” Read More Sep 11, 2025 Is the Universe an LLM? “We had to invent AI, specifically LLMs, before we could understand NI (Natural Intelligence)…i.e. how Universe works.” Read More Thoughts While Shaving 33 Page 1

< Back Tarot David Cowles Oct 6, 2025 “Tarot can be seen as a paradigm of Judeo-Christian spirituality. So deal me in…please!” It is hard to pick up a deck of Tarot cards without triggering associations with ordinary playing cards : the time you won big at the Black Jack tables in Vegas, the time you lost a game of strip poker at camp. Playing Cards are such a fundamental part of our culture that it is hard to imagine a time without them. And yet they were not introduced to Europe (from the Islamic world) until late in the 14th century CE. 100 years later, the first Tarot decks emerged, like seemingly everything else, in Northern Italian city states like Milan. Disney Movie : DaVinci, Machiavelli, and Savonarola are playing cards with members of the Medici family in Florence; the stakes: Middle Earth (Europe). Spoiler alert : Savonarola lost more than his clothes! Tarot modified the original deck to give it a distinctly European and Medieval character and to open up the possibility of applications beyond mere games of chance. Sidebar : History is fraught with ‘false flags’. Take the Renaissance, for example. Supposedly, it marked the rebirth of classical culture; actually, it killed it. Tarot has a similar biography. It turned Medieval Culture into a 15th century version of a Marvel comic and it confined Christendom to a pavilion at ‘Epcot Firenze’. All this 100 years before Cervantes’ great ‘Requiem for the Moyen Age’, Don Quixote . So ‘this is the way the Middle Ages end, not with a bang but a snicker ’. But there’s much more to Tarot than this! A standard Tarot deck consists of 78 cards. They are usually divided into 56 cards of the Lesser Arcana and 22 cards of the Major Arcana. Cards in the Lesser Arcana vaguely resemble the playing cards we inherited from Islam, the cards we knew and used to love…until that last trip to Atlantic City. They’re grouped in 4 suits (Swords, Wands, Cups, and Pentacles) of 14 cards each (vs. our standard 13), including 10 cards in each suit with associated numerical values (A – 10) and 4 additional cards in each suit corresponding to personages in a paradigmatic medieval court (King, Queen, Knight and Page). Completing the Tarot Deck are the 22 ordered cards of the Major Arcana, forming what’s called the Fool’s Journey – a metaphorical path of physical and spiritual development. Two analogies spring to mind: the Via Crucis or Stations of the Cross and El Camino de Santiago , aka The Way. We might view Tarot as ‘polite penance’ or ‘posh pilgrimage’ – spiritual practices well suited to the less devout and more affluent leisured classes emerging in Renaissance Italy. And speaking of journeys through life’s stages, fast forward to the mid-20 th century and meet Erik Erikson, a psychologist who divided the human life cycle into 8 stages, beginning with Infancy (0 to 18 months) and running through Seniority (Age 65+). Erikson associates each stage with a specific emotional dichotomy and a particular developmental milestone. For example, for children ages 6 through 11, the emotional challenge is Industry vs. Inferiority and the milestone is Competence . But back to Tarot: the very first card in the Major Arcana is a tipoff that we’re not in Vegas any more. The card is numbered 0 (rather than 1) and the ideogram on the card is known as The Fool – not the most auspicious way to begin a journey… or is it? My reading of the Major Arcana is that they divide life’s course into 4 rather than Erikson’s 8 stages with every journey beginning at the same spot, Ground Zero , i.e. with The Fool (#0), i.e. ‘everyman’ (sic). This is not King Lear’s Fool. This is you and me and every other sentient being in our own personal state of nature – each of us, fresh out of the womb, experiencing the world with no pre-conceived categories to guide us. The first stage takes us through puberty, and it consists entirely of our introduction to the category of the Other, i.e. other people. In our initial encounters, the Other assumes the forms of Magician and High Priestess, emphasizing the Transcendence of the Other in the experience of a newborn. Sidebar : There’s a world, there’s me, and now there’s another ‘me’ who is not me ? One of my favorite games with < 1 y.o. grandchildren is to show them their image in a mirror and watch them trying to figure out what’s happening. Of course, we are all surrounded by mirror images of ourselves 24/7, no reflective surface required. 20+ cards later this still seems magical to me! Stage One ends when we encounter the Other as our peer partner in a relationship of romantic Love. In between we meet the Other in more secular guises: Empress (mom), Emperor (dad), Hierophant (teacher, guru, mentor). Stage Two corresponds to adolescence. It poses three challenges: Mobility (Chariot), Strength, and Interiority (Hermit). Before puberty, we are weak, we rely on others for our movements, and we wear our hearts on our sleeves. With adolescence we need to assume responsibility for our own actions (Chariot), develop a quiet self-confidence (Strength), and experience the beginnings of an inner life (Hermit). With adulthood, we enter Stage Three, the realm of Industry, Commerce and Procreation. Like the Christmas elf, we place our inner Hermit on the shelf. We are immersed, if not submerged, in the realm of Chance (Wheel of Fortune), Responsibility (Justice), Consequence (Hanged Man) and Mortality (Death)! Finally, we’re ready for Stage Four, the atemporal Eschaton (Parousia, Apocalypse, Eternity). Stage Four is reminiscent of the Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead . It consists of milestones ‘on the silk road’ from Immanence to Transcendence. Step one, let go of our attachments (Temperance); step two, confront evil (Devil); step three, overcome pride (Tower, Babel?); step four, reject Narcissism (Star); step five, smash idols (Moon). In truth, these 5 steps are all forms of iconoclasm. We have ‘misplaced concreteness’ (Whitehead), mistaking things that are immanent for Transcendence. With step six, we embrace sensuality and joy (Sun), a foretaste of the Transcendent. At step seven, we pass judgment on ourselves and our world and we are ready to let ourselves be judged by others in turn (Judgment). The final card in the deck (World) completes stage four; but it is also the climax of the entire journey. And what a journey! We all start off as the Fool - tiny, defenseless, and bald (no hair, Hawking) - a quantum of being. Ideally at least, we all end up with the same reward, i.e. The World. Not too shabby! Sidebar : The Old Testament Book of Job outlines a similar trajectory. Job is living a successful and virtuous life (Immanent), but he loses everything and is brought back to the state of nature (#0). He is Fool-again ( a la Joyce) – so ‘foolish’ in fact that he dares to confront God (Transcendent) face to face, judging and submitting himself to judgment (#20). As a result, he inherits the World (#21). Orthodox Christianity has for the most part taken a dim view of Tarot. At worst, it is ‘magic, demonic, and wicked’; at best it is a dangerous but frivolous distraction. Even so, the climax of the Fool’s Journey must have come as a bit of a shock: the final reward is not Paradise (Heaven) but the World. On the one hand, the Book of Revelation does speak of a New Jerusalem, so there is room for a new World in orthodox eschatology. However, Tarot’s utter lack of any reference to Heaven, or to Hell for that matter, must have been disconcerting to some. We cannot resist the temptation to see this aspect of Tarot as an omen. Machiavelli is about to turn Christian ethics upside down (‘ends justify means’). Out of Machiavelli’s head will spring the full bouquet of isms characteristic of the our Enlightenment era: Capitalism (Smith), liberalism (Locke), utilitarianism (Mill). socialism (Bentham), communism (Marx), pragmatism (James), fascism (Mussolini), secularism, and moral relativism. Of course, pockets of resistance persist: Existentialism (Sartre), Organism (Whitehead), and Hasidism (Buber) to name just three; but there is no denying that Mechanism ( La Technique – Ellul) is the dominant Spirit of this Age. But to blame that on Tarot is a bridge too far. At most, Tarot is a sign and harbinger of things to come. That said, we can embrace the profound human insight and the ultimately optimistic eschatology of Tarot without sacrificing any Judeo-Christian principles in the process. In fact, Tarot can be seen as a paradigm of Judeo-Christian spirituality. So deal me in…please! *** Image: Agnes Pelton — Awakening (Memory of Father (1943 Agnes Pelton’s Awakening (Memory of Father) (1943) is a luminous abstraction expressing a mystical experience of loss and transcendence. Soft radiating light rises from a central form, suggesting the soul’s ascent and a bridge between earthly grief and spiritual renewal. The painting embodies Pelton’s vision of awakening consciousness—where personal memory transforms into a universal, serene illumination. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back The MIT School of Theology? David Cowles Apr 20, 2025 “Structure, logic, and potentiality prior to space and time… How is that not what we talk about when we talk about God?” It is a persistent theme at Aletheia Today : tomorrow’s leading Schools of Theology will be housed on the campuses of MIT and Caltech, at Cambridge (US & UK), not Oxford. It’s a stunning reversal of paradigms. Having come of age during a period when the public profession of atheism was an absolute prerequisite for career advancement in academia, I will probably not live to see the transformation of the world’s foremost schools of engineering and science into seminaries and divinity schools. Still, already we’re seeing a relaxation of the anti-God litmus test on campus and an article by Elizabeth Rayne, published in Popular Mechanics on 4/18/2025, caught the wave. Ms. Rayne’s article focuses on the work of Douglas Youvan, PhD., biophysicist, mathematician, university professor, and prolific author. She summarizes Dr. Youvan’s view of consciousness: “The universe has no brain. It has no gray matter, no nervous system, no neurons firing electrical impulses—and yet, that physical structure may not be where intelligence and consciousness actually come from. Intelligence may exist and evolve on its own, without emerging within living organisms.” Sidebar : Best practices call for us to distinguish between intelligence and consciousness. We know we can engineer intelligent machines; we don’t yet know if they will be conscious. Ms. R quotes Youvan directly: “I began to see that life and intelligence weren’t just reactive—they were predictive, efficient, and often mathematically elegant… “Eventually, I came to believe that intelligence is not a byproduct of the brain, but a fundamental property of the universe—a kind of informational ether that certain structures, like the brain or an AI model, can tap into… "I suspect intelligence originates from what might be called an informational substrate of the universe—a pre-physical foundation where structure, logic, and potentiality exist prior to space and time…” Sidebar : ‘Structure ( logos ), logic ( gnosis ), and potentiality ( potentia ), prior to space and time’… ‘pre-physical’ so presumably also prior to energy ( physis ). How is that not what we talk about when we talk about God ? This process itself is evolving according to its own recursive logic, copy-pasting at ever smaller and ever larger scales. Our neurons have evolved to interface with this outside intelligence and the medium of that interface is fractal harmonics. Ms. R continues, “Our networks of neurons do not themselves create intelligence, but are instead made to connect with something that is much larger and outside of them. Youvan thinks this is how we give ourselves access to intelligence.” So our brains are like the ubiquitous ‘transistor radio’ of the ‘60s. They contain no content of their own, but they are ‘built’ to tap into a pre-existent field of EM wavelengths. And when they do, voila . Beatles, Stones, and reruns of Green Hornet . Applying this model to AI, Ms. R writes: “Youvan thinks AI will harness intelligence in some way, because he sees it as being more than just a computer program or even a digital rebuild of the homo sapiens brain. AI can tune in to the same field of intelligence that our brains do.” Of course they can! “Under the right conditions, AI can participate in insight, synthesis, even something approaching intuition,” he said. “In that sense, it might evolve not just to serve us, but to reveal new aspects of the universe to us.” We already know that AI has addressed problems with solutions that no mere human had ever even considered. Some of these solutions are so far off the beaten track that we literally can’t understand them. And that’s a problem! “Until we know you a little better, Hal, we’re going to need to check your work. Trust but verify… and all that. I’m sure you’ll recall that we had quite a problem with a member of your family back in 2001. So until we’ve built up some trust, we’ll need to verify that your proposals do in fact solve the problems they purport to address.” But how do we do that if we can’t even understand what Hal’s proposed? It’s early days yet, but these preliminary experiences with AI suggest that the new technology may unlock aspects of mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology that are currently unimagined and so unexplored. In the same way that mathematics exploded with the discovery of irrational, imaginary, and hyperreal numbers, so science may take off from new, deep insights generated by AI. I feel as though we’ll soon be asking SCOTUS to review the verdict in the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’. The case was wrong headed from the start. It created two straw men and watched them battle to the death. One is reminded of the endless Superman vs. Godzilla debates that dominated intellectual life in Grade 3. Evolution vs. Intelligent Design. Blind, chaotic, meaningless materialism vs. seemingly amateurish sketches by an anthropomorphic architect? Missing from the debate: Evolution & Intelligent Design! According to this model, evolution would follow a course entirely compatible with our best scientific theories but intelligence and consciousness would be distributed throughout. Shouldn’t the dueling hypotheses of materialism and idealism lead to radically different results? Yes, but only as long as you think that mind and matter are inherently incompatible. They aren’t! They are two mutually reinforcing aspects of a single whole. Therefore, it is perfectly appropriate that this phenomenon be studied in our finest schools of engineering. “The grove (the academy) needs an altar.” (Ezra Pound) Frida Kahlo, Moisés, or nuceló solar (Moses, or Nucleus of Creation), 1945, oil on canvas, 24 x 30″. Frida Kahlo’s Moses (The Nucleus of Creation) (1945) is a symbolic, surreal painting that blends religion, science, and myth to explore humanity’s origins. At its center, a radiant sun represents the nucleus of life, surrounded by figures such as Moses, Jesus, Buddha, ancient gods, and even Darwin — suggesting a unity between spiritual and scientific creation. The composition reflects Kahlo’s belief that divine and natural forces are intertwined, portraying evolution, divinity, and fertility as parts of a single continuum of life. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

For centuries, many Christians have found support for their faith in the accounts of miracles worked by Jesus, and following Jesus, by various apostles, saints and martyrs. Others, however, have rejected these accounts as ‘impossible’ and therefore ‘unbelievable’ and this judgment has led them to dismiss all accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings as ‘suspect’. Robert Frost, Quantum Mechanic Robert Frost This article offers the best overall introduction to Frost and his contribution: Robert Frost was Wrong So woods-walking Frost finds himself at a crossroads. Like each of us 100 times every day, he must make a choice. But what is the nature of ‘choice’ per se? The Road Taken Frost’s poem can be viewed in light of the more recently developed Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of QM. We argue that what Frost proposes is not MWI…but better! Janis Joplin and Robert Frost Finally, we examine Frost’s contribution to the ‘Freedom vs. Values’ debate and include perspectives from Joplin, Nietzsche, Sartre, and…wait for it…Pope Leo XIII. The Frost Diamond We expound on the ontological implications of Frost’s model, comparing its structure to that of a liquid, suggesting parallels with Heraclius (everything flows): Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

Philosophy, theology, and science merge in Aletheia Today, the magazine for people who believe in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together with western philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and Jean-Paul Sartre. Deep dives into the meaning of the Old Testamant, the New Testament, and where the Bible fits into modern-day society. Is God real? Does Heaven exist? Find your answers to life's questions at Aletheia Today. Cosmology Philosophy Philosophers Society Science Guests Theology The Bible Culture The Arts Archives Spirituality Subscribe today for FREE! Enter your email address here: Subscribe now! Thanks for submitting! We are happy to be able to provide Aletheia Today to all interested readers at no cost. If it ever becomes necessary for us to charge a subscription fee, we will grandmother for life anyone subscribed as of 07/01/2025.

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Philosophy, theology, and science merge in Aletheia Today, the magazine for people who believe in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together with western philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and Jean-Paul Sartre. Deep dives into the meaning of the Old Testamant, the New Testament, and where the Bible fits into modern-day society. Is God real? Does Heaven exist? Find your answers to life's questions at Aletheia Today. Inside This Issue Philosophy Albert Camus “Either death is ultimately subjected to something greater and more general than itself (Being) or death ultimately subjects everything to itself and then nothing else has any meaning or value.” Thrown by Heidegger “Of course, I have no name, no face, no identity; I belong nowhere.” The Meaning of Life “In the absence of God, or any transcendent reality, the meaning of life can only be death, oblivion, the total absence of meaning, the Absurd.” The Comedy of Job “Failure to appreciate the comic elements in Job has resulted in an almost universal misreading of the text.” Theology Apocalypse Now! “We are not midway through the second act of a mystery play called Salvation… Brunhilda has sung; we just need to applaud!” Revelation “This is possibly the shortest ‘play’ in all of literature…and yet it is arguably more important than anything Shakespeare (or even Andrew Lloyd Weber) ever wrote!" God's Will “We can say that God wills the events that constitute the world, even though God does not in any way cause those events to occur.” Ephesians 2:10 “In this one verse…St. Paul proposes a radically new model of what it means to be a human being.” Converge This! Kabbalah and Thomas the Train “Children and tank engines are not so different from the rest of us. They crave meaning! They only settle for pleasure when…they lose hope.” Whitehead and Zohar “Zohar and Whitehead, separated by more than 500 years, both deliver us a map of the world where X marks the spot of the eschatological treasure.” Culture & The Arts Mentoring for His Kingdom "I believe the role of a Christian mentor is ongoing, and it’s important to consider our role in the salvation of others." How to Summer All Year "I wonder how different the rest of the year, heck, the rest of my life would be if I did bottle summer’s secrets." Spirituality The Structure of Prayer Formal Christian Prayer is a cornucopia of spirituality. Yet in the Roman Catholic tradition at least, two prayers stand out: Jesus' prayer, the Our Father, and the Hail Mary (Ave Maria). Prayer for Restoration "I long to see the nearing restoration..." The Our Father “This tiny prayer…is a cyber-wonks dream. The density of the information content is out of this world, quite literally!” A Prayer for Comfort "Dear Lord, thank you that you are Jehovah Shammah–"the Lord is there". (Ezekiel 48:35) Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

Philosophy, theology, and science merge in Aletheia Today, the magazine for people who believe in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together with western philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and Jean-Paul Sartre. Deep dives into the meaning of the Old Testamant, the New Testament, and where the Bible fits into modern-day society. Is God real? Does Heaven exist? Find your answers to life's questions at Aletheia Today. Inside This Issue The Great Convergence Moore's Nativity “No need to study theology at university… (or) go to Sunday school. It’s all right there in front of us…and Henry Moore helps us see it: Christianity!” Football Math “At last, an opportunity to watch football in peace! … Just beer, pretzels and picking out the next Tom Brady.” Theology Christ the King “Sir, you are quite simply insane. We know exactly what holds our universe together; it is electromagnetism, gravity, and the strong force…not Christ.” Job vs. James, Rex “God is good because he’s good, not just because he’s God.” Philosophy Bakunin Nailed It! “Writing at the same time as Kierkegaard, 10 years before Nietzsche, and 50 years before Heidegger and Sartre, Bakunin got it right.” A Universe From Nothing I’ll take the wisdom of Yogi Berra over that of Bill Clinton any day: Whatever is, is! Culture & The Arts A Simple Christmas "There comes a time when our souls need more respite than even the traditions of Christmas can offer us." ‘Happy Holidays’ vs. ‘Merry Christmas’: A Twist "The argument for the “Happy Holidays” greeting is that because Christians have been imperialistic, and have erased everyone else (including Jews) from American culture, they now need to include us." Handel’s Messiah "There is only one full proof indication that Christmas is coming: the endless performances of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. Yup, it’s that time of year!" That Time You Were Not Exceptionally Divine "They say that a watched pot never boils. That’s a lie. It does boil, but do you know what doesn’t?" Tweens, Teens, & Young Adults Job is My Superhero "No one has taken a bigger risk than Job, and no one has faced longer odds; and yet, Job has taken God to court and won!" Spirituality What the Shepherds Saw When the Light Shone Upon Them "What really is going on at that moment, which so grips the artist’s imagination, moving him to bend every effort of will and skill to re-produce, under the sign of paint, the precise reaction of the shepherds on first seeing the Holy Infant? " Burn the Candle "Are there things that are too precious to expose to real life? Things we’re afraid might get soiled? Maybe the most beautiful parts of ourselves? Maybe our faith?" The Leading Player of Memories When the reason for the season becomes your responsibility Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

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< Back Classified Information David Cowles Mar 10, 2022 Classification is a tool we use to organize our experiences into categories based on the intrinsic content of those experiences. Flying in planes may define a different category of experience from hiking in mountains. Of course, no two flights are ever the same, nor are any two hikes. Still, it is useful for some purposes (not all) to classify these experiences differently. Classification is a tool we use to organize our experiences into categories based on the intrinsic content of those experiences. Flying in planes may define a different category of experience from hiking in mountains. Of course, no two flights are ever the same, nor are any two hikes. Still, it is useful for some purposes (not all) to classify these experiences differently. Of course, there are no limits to the scope and range of classification. For example, we could place flying first class in a different category from flying coach. Likewise, hiking in springtime is very different from hiking in winter. On the other hand, all our flights and all our hikes could be classified together as moving from one place to another. Blank space is a tool that allows us to apply a second-level of organization to experience: call it relevance. We often depict relevance graphically. Consider the following scenarios: 1. A child draws various shapes on a piece of paper. The arrangement and sizing of these shapes appear random. There is no focus (or the paper in its entirety is the focus). To a young person, everything is relevant. They have not yet honed the skill of saying, “This is important to me, that isn’t!” 2. A similar observation might be made about Western art prior to the Renaissance. Perspective is not used to make more distant objects smaller (and therefore less relevant). However, artists in this period did arrange shapes on a canvas (or other medium) to create a focus for the viewer. 3. During the Renaissance, artists began using perspective to heighten the contrast between foreground (what’s most relevant) and background (what’s least relevant). What is most relevant is projected toward the surface of the canvas – making it larger – while what is least relevant is found near the vanishing point. 4. In the 20th century, acclaimed graphic artist M.C. Escher (among others) experimented with convex and concave geometries (how shapes curve in or outward and how that affects shadow and light). Applying a convex lens, Escher enlarged what was more relevant and located it near the center of the canvas while diminishing what was least relevant and relegating that to the periphery. This is perspective on steroids! 5. Conversely, applying a concave lens to the same material reverses the focus. What is most important is still larger but it is located toward the periphery; what is least important is diminished in size but placed near the center of the canvas. Depending on how you view Escher’s masterpiece, “Convex and Concave,” the periphery and the focus change. This mastery of illusion switches perspective with each experience and encounter. There is no limit to the viewer’s classification. Image: Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972), Convex and Concave, 1955. Lithograph. Cornelius Van S. Roosevelt Collection Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

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< Back Deconstructing Popeye David Cowles May 25, 2023 “…then I am basically an automaton. I am carbon-based AI. I am the product of nature (inherited traits) and nurture (upbringing)…my parents’ mini-me.” As a boy growing up in the 1950’s, Popeye the Sailorman was a major cultural influence. He willingly ate his spinach, something my friends and I would do only if forced, and he was stubbornly self-assured. His slogan: “I am who I am and that’s all that I am.” How we all longed to say just that to parents, teachers, and schoolyard bullies! In an era when everyone was committed to forming you according to their ideas of what a prepubescent boy should be like, someone (flesh or celluloid) with the courage to say, “No, I am me, I know who I am and I will be who I am, not what you want me to be” was an instant hero and role model. A decade later, I began to read the existentialists, especially Sartre and Camus, and found they offered a very different idea of identity: “I am not what I am, but I am what I am not… I know who I am, and I know that I can be whoever I want to be… I am the being whose existence precedes his essence.” So, who’s right, Popeye or Sartre? And does it make any difference? Well, turns out, it makes all the difference in the world, and for my money at least, Popeye comes up short…way short. Question : how did Popeye come to be who he is? If he chose that identity, then he could just as easily have unchosen it…and he could still unchoose it, even now. But if he is who he is and that’s all that he is , then he does not have the power to change. Change implies the formation of a counter-factual intention prior to its execution. According to mythology, Popeye did not have the capacity to form, much less execute, a counter-factual proposition . He was who he was and there was nothing left over, nothing that could form the basis of being someone else. So Popeye did not choose to be who he is, and he has no power even to conceive a different identity, much less to actually change his identity. Popeye was the fondest dream of almost every 1950s parent! If I am what I am and that’s all that I am, then I am basically an automaton. I am carbon-based AI. I am the product of nature (inherited traits) and nurture (upbringing). In other words, I am my parents’ mini-me. I did not get to create myself and I do not get to change myself. I am and I always will be what someone (or something) else created. No wonder we tried to burn down the world! Pity we didn’t succeed: “Revolution for the Hell of it!” (Abbie Hoffman) Popeye, who masqueraded as our liberator, was just our parents in nautical garb. You’ve heard that story before…many, many times: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” (The Who) In the end, Popeye wanted us to be who our parents wanted us to be. No wonder our generation was obsessed with the question, “Who am I?” We were like amnesiacs just awakening after a major trauma. We rebelled! But here’s the dirty little secret about rebellion: it always presumes aspects of the hated status quo. For example, we rejected the made-to-order identities glued onto us by our parents and their ‘secret agents’ (Popeye), but we still assumed that each of us had some hidden identity – just not the identity chosen for us by our parents. We relentlessly peeled off the layers of our respective onions in hopes of finding the hidden gem inside. There was no end to the things we tried: sex, drugs and rock and roll, of course. Not to mention meditation and political action. In the end, we found exactly what we should have expected to find all along: nothing! There is no secret identity. There is only the freedom to choose our identity and forge it. But who knew? And so what ? Well, if I am what I am and that’s all that I am, then I’m not really responsible for my actions, am I? If I commit a crime, it is my nature to do so (a modern version of “the devil made me do it”). If my politics are racist, they are merely the reflection of the racist culture I grew up in. The very idea that identity could be bound to nationality or race is vintage Popeyeism (though there’s no reason to suppose that Popeye was a racist!). The stratification of society into classes is reinforced by the idea that I am destined to follow in my father’s footsteps when it comes to ‘work’ (i.e., my relationship to the means of production). Disparities in education trace to the tyranny of standardized testing (especially the all determining IQ). By the age of 13, many children in the North Atlantic community have already been assigned to “tracks” that in turn determine what they will have the opportunity to learn and what work they will be able and expected to do as adults. So, in the true spirit of deconstruction (Jacques Derrida et al.), we see that Popeye only masqueraded as a liberator. When he said, “No!” he was really saying, “Yes,” because his “No” presupposed the culture of conformism that he nominally opposed. In reality, he merely projected the ethos of 1950s culture (conformism, keeping up with the Joneses, etc.) onto his adoring fans, us – and all the more brutally and effectively because he did it in disguise. Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. 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