< Back You have Nothing to Lose but Your Clouds...What if you could vote to change the weather? David Cowles May 3, 2022 Suppose every day we could vote what weather we were to have tomorrow. What fighting there would be, what killing of one neighbor by another…most things that we vote for do not really matter, you are a little more or a little less uncomfortable as the government does one thing or another but the weather oh dear…that would be a disaster.” “Suppose every day we could vote what weather we were to have tomorrow. What fighting there would be, what killing of one neighbor by another…most things that we vote for do not really matter, you are a little more or a little less uncomfortable as the government does one thing or another but the weather oh dear…that would be a disaster.” ( Everybody’s Autobiography by Gertrude Stein) The year is 2075. Scientists have finally figured out how to control the weather. For centuries everybody has talked about it, but nobody has ever done anything about it, until now! Scientists now control the weather, but we still control the scientists. Each evening, we citizens decide by majority vote what the next day’s weather will be. We logon to our computers or smart phones and pick: high temp, low temp, sunny, cloudy, rainy, snowy, windy, etc. Our present political parties would quickly disappear (irrelevant now), and they would be replaced by competing lobbies: beach goers, ice skaters, sunbathers, farmers, skiers, sailors, etc. But this state-of-affairs would likely prove unstable. As Ms. Stein suggests, it could quickly degenerate into social chaos with violent conflicts breaking out among opposing ‘parties’, i.e., gangs. On the other hand, I do like all the new political slogans that are cropping up. My favorite so far: ‘Sunbathers of the world, unite; you have nothing to lose but your clouds!’ Of course, it is also possible that the reverse would happen. It just might occur to us that compromise was the only viable course: seasonal variation in temperatures, a mix of sun and rain, and a certain number of days set aside each year to meet the needs of ‘special interests’: swimmers, skaters, skiers, sailors, etc. In other words, we could decide to keep things exactly as they are now! Well, not exactly as they are. Nature has provided something for everyone, but the body politic might be willing to ride roughshod over the interests of a few folks on the edges: storm chasers, snow ploughers, rescue workers, i.e., and of course, meteorologists. Of course, there would be unintended, and at least initially unwelcome consequences: what would we talk about during those awkward pauses in a conversation? Could local TV news programs survive without a weather segment? But this fable raises many more serious issues, for example: How balanced are the forces of order and chaos in society? When they clash, what is it that determines the outcome? Are there limits to the justice or utility of majority rule? And if so, what lies beyond? If you enjoyed this ‘Thought while Shaving’ and would like to take a deeper dive into this topic, check out the feature length article, Meteorological Democracy , in Issue #1 of AT Magazine , to be published on 6/1/22. Anytime from 6/1 on, just click on aletheiatoday.com . 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.

“You’ll end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, profitably! But it’s still gambling.”    < Back Philip Goff David Cowles Mar 1, 2024 “You’ll end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, profitably! But it’s still gambling.” Philip Goff is a breath of fresh air: he’s a philosopher on the faculty of a major university (Durham), whose work is published by Oxford University Press. He maintains that existence may have an objective purpose, and he is willing to at least consider a role for ‘God’ in the overall scheme of things. In the end, Goff rejects what he describes as the Abrahamic (Judeo-Christian-Islamic) ‘Omni-God’ (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent) but nonetheless posits the possibility of a transcendent, purposeful entity. Goff is willing to entertain the ‘God Hypothesis’ provided God’s knowledge and power are somehow limited, or God’s benevolence is impure or conditional. So, Goff’s latest book, Why - The Purpose of the Universe , was eagerly anticipated. Unfortunately, it disappoints. Goff fails to make a clear distinction between the sort of God he excludes a priori and the sort he might entertain. His characterization of ‘Abrahamic divinity’ oversimplifies. Any concept of omnipotence is limited by what’s possible, omniscience by what’s knowable, and benevolence by what’s doable. God cannot square a circle any more than you can! He cannot fashion a rock that is too heavy for him to lift. These logical and material fallacies have nothing to do with divinity. God is Good…in fact, God is Value per se . That’s really all you need to know. God does not ‘have values’ or ‘determine’ values; God is Value! Value is the efficient cause and the final cause of everything that is. I mean, what else could be? Why else would anything ever happen? It is said, “Love makes the world go round.” The same could be said of ‘the Good’. In fact, Love and Good are denotatively synonymous. Every novel event begins and ends with Value. Value is the sole motivator: it alone allows us to execute judgment on ‘the gods of Egypt’ (i.e., on what is ). Motivated by Value, we push off from shore; guided by Value we seek the horizon. Value alone guides us to create what might be . Between these two poles, Alpha-impulse and Omega-goal, each event shapes itself. It is causa sui and sui generis . It is informed by only two things: (1) the Actual World ( what is ) and (2) God’s values ( what might be ). “Some folks see things as they are and ask why; I dream of things that never were and ask why not.” (Bobby Kennedy) Between motive and immortality, each event is 100% free – free to react to what is, free to pursue what might yet be. This is what Goff calls ‘libertarian free will’; it closely resembles Sartre’s notion of absolute existential freedom. Robert Frost illustrates this concept in his most famous poem, The Road Not Taken . Out for a stroll in the NH woods, Frost comes to a fork in the road. He knows that both paths will take him to his destination. Yet he agonizes over the choice: “Both that morning equally lay.” Frost’s location and destination were hard-wired; his route was entirely undetermined. Every event (→) begins and ends with what is (Actual World → Objective Immortality → Actual World). In the context of this ontology, Abraham’s God is the same as Goth’s. The notion of an Omni-cubed (∞³) God is a straw man, set up only to be torn down. It’s easy to disprove the existence of something that is impossible, something that makes no sense on its face. Goff’s work is about God and Consciousness…and he gets them both wrong. Early on, he dismisses strong AI, claiming that there is something ‘special’ about the neuronal stuff he’s made of (i.e., his organic chemistry). Later, however, he proposes the possibility that the cosmos itself may be conscious ( Cosmo-panpsychism )…and the cosmos is not (primarily) made of neurons…or any other ‘special stuff’. Here, Goff carries a good idea too far. He not only posits universal consciousness, but he also maintains that all actual entities are rational agents . No doubt, events change the world (though we can’t reliably predict how), and events exhibit internal patterns. But those patterns cannot be reduced to rationality, nor can all changes be chalked up to agency. We are, I think, on the cusp of discovering that intelligence, and even consciousness, is platform-agnostic. In fact, the essence of panpsychism is the conjecture that ‘consciousness is everywhere’, that it pervades cosmos. It appears likely that many, if not all, organisms are conscious (or at least self-aware) in some way and to some degree, and there are strong reasons for wanting to extend the net to include certain inorganic phenomena…like computers. Goff posits three activities that make life worth living: “creativity, learning, and showing kindness to others," but he makes no effect to substantiate his claim that these values are somehow sewn into the fabric of the cosmos. The discovery of Value raises key questions: How is it that there is such a thing as Value? How does Value come to influence the course of events? By what faculty are we able to access Value? I agree with Goff that the answers to these questions are tied to the matter of consciousness. I would go even further and argue that Value is impossible without consciousness. Consciousness is reflection; it’s the universe ‘taking a selfie’, i.e., reflecting itself reflecting. Consciousness is what Universe sees when it sees itself. But reflection is comparative. I conceptualize A in the context of ~A. Judging A on the basis of the values it manifests requires an external perspective that also encompasses ~A and the set of universal values by which we may judge A. Goff rejects, I think too easily (below), Pascal’s argument for the existence of God (his famous “Wager”), but Goff replaces it with a ‘modern’ version called ‘Bayesian Logic’. According to this ‘science of inference’ we can validly reason upstream (induction) as well as down (deduction). In a nutshell, assume there is an event, A. If we don’t directly know anything about any events other than A, can we deduce something about everything else based on our experience of A? Were Leibniz and Blake right after all? Is every event a reflection (monad) of every other event? Can we discover “a universe is a grain of sand”? Crazy, right? Well, not entirely. If we know that A is very likely to occur, provided B has occurred before it, and if we know that A is very unlikely to occur unless B has occurred before it, then our experience of A lets us presume, provisionally at least, that B has occurred. Apply this to the matter of God: If there is a God according to the Judeo-Christian prototype, then it is likely that the created world would be well-ordered. If there is no God, then spontaneous ordering would be very, very unlikely . The world is extremely well-ordered (i.e., the degree of fine-tuning is astronomically improbable). ‘God’ accounts for that fine-tuning better than ‘no-God’ accounts for it. Therefore, it is likely that God exists…very, very likely! As with Pascal, Goff’s conclusion comes down to a so-called ‘Wager’, but the nature of that wager is very different. Goff uses Bayesian Logic to establish the existence of ‘God’ as highly probable . With Bayes, you end up living life as though you were counting cards at a Black Jack table in Las Vegas – in other words, very profitably! But it’s still gambling. Pascal is a whole different kettle of fish! His argument has nothing to do with probabilities, so his ‘wager’ is a wager in name only. Pascal’s argument is based on something much stronger…and much more ephemeral. Pascal is prepared to divide the World in two: on one side, A - the set of all things/events that make a difference, that have consequences, that change things, that mean something; on the other side, B - the set of all things/events that do not belong to A, i.e., that make no difference, have no consequences, change nothing, mean nothing. Every event X in Set A is associated with a proposition P of the form, ‘X exists’ and with proposition P’ of the form, ‘P is true’. Therefore, the proposition ‘X exists’ is always true, provided that X is a member of A. For Pascal, at least, A is the set of all things that exist, and B is the set of…nothing. Anything that might have belonged to B doesn’t exist. So, B is the null set, ø. In fact, it’s a ‘double null set’ ø² – a null set of null elements. (Ok, I made that up!) But in any event, the only set that has real members is A. Therefore, whatever belongs to A exists. What does this have to do with God? Pascal notes that God’s existence makes no difference if we don’t believe it, and that our beliefs about God make no difference if God doesn’t exist. Therefore, the existence of God is only meaningful if we believe it, and our beliefs about God are only meaningful if God exists. Therefore, there is only one meaningful solution to the problem: God exists, and now that I know that for certain, I cannot not believe. While I disagree with Philip Goff on many things, we are all indebted to him for helping to move conversations like this one back into the public domain. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Click the cover image to return to Spring 2024. Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Stations of the Cross David Cowles Mar 14, 2023 “The Stations of the Cross are not just about Jesus’ final hours; they are about all the hours of all of our lives.” When I was in grade school (parochial), there were no Fat Tuesdays to usher in the season of Lent – 40 dreary days leading up to Holy Week. Instead, we were subject to a ‘penitential practice’ perfectly commensurate with the event it presaged: crucifixion. No, not self-flagellation. Lord knows, we had parents enough for that. No, it was a Christian rite known as the Stations of the Cross. If the name sounds ominous, it was! Sometimes you can judge a book by its cover! Every Friday afternoon during Lent – Friday for heavens’ sake, ‘Freedom Day’ for the under 13 crowd – when the bell rang at 2:30, instead of rushing home and out to play, we were marched in silence to the near-by church to celebrate the stations. Some celebration! We sat in silence in a dimly lit church for what seemed like hours…but probably was less than 60 minutes. For excitement we got to watch a priest and two altar boys (sic) walk slowly up and down the aisles of the church, stopping at each one of the ‘stations’, a plaque on a far wall of the church. Some mumbling, a few prayers, then off to the next station! Rinse, repeat! 14 times! Jesus wept! Many years later, in my mid-20’s, I traveled to Europe with my brother. One afternoon, we found ourselves in a grotto with an open air display of those same dreaded stations. In my newly acquired spirit of open mindedness, I decided to walk through them ‘one last time’; suddenly, like Paul en route to Damascus, light broke over Marblehead… I got it! The Stations of the Cross are not just about Jesus’ final hours; they are about all the hours of all of our lives: First Station: Jesus is condemned to death . As are we all, condemned to death that is, from the very moment of our conception. Now is the hour of our death. To live is to die, to live our life as our death. As the Irish would say, “Jesus, we hardly knew ye.” Second Station: Jesus takes up His cross . We are born. With our first post-natal cry, each of us unwittingly accepts a role as an active participant in the pageant of life. We make our mark in the Big Book of the universe. We sign the contract. Third Station: Jesus falls for the first time . Childhood can be overwhelming. We encounter unanticipated obstacles, we stumble, we make mistakes. A road diverges in the wood, and sometimes we don’t really want to take either branch, but of course, we must choose. Jesus too! Christian doctrine holds that Jesus did not sin, but he was most certainly subject to all the same temptations we are, and he too had to make decisions. Should he obey his parents or stay teaching in the temple? Fourth Station: Jesus is met by His Blessed Mother . Who is there to pick us up when we fall? Our mothers, of course. “Kiss it and make it better.” Mothers are healing, mothers are forgiving. Most of us have our first taste of ‘the spiritual’ through our mothers: love and the ontological vistas love opens for us. Fifth Station: Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry the cross . Next to our moms, no one is as important to us, growing up, as our peers. (Sorry, Dad!) Throughout our lives, but perhaps most especially during the later stages of childhood, we ‘depend on the kindness of others’. Friends make us feel we belong. Others share our same predicament. They carry our crosses as we do theirs. We’re all in this together! Sixth Station: The face of Jesus is wiped by Veronica . From tween (above) on to teen, young love is our next encounter with ‘the other’. We discover sexuality, and we experience both compassion (mother) and companionship (friends) in a single person. Seventh Station: Jesus falls a second time . The trials of adolescence. The indiscretions of our youth. Who makes the passage from 12 to 20 without copious mishaps? Eighth Station: Jesus consoles the women of Jerusalem . With adulthood comes a more mature relationship with others. We assume our places in society. We enter careers, we form families. We are now capable of mature, reciprocal relationships. “Oh, Master, grant that I may never seek so much to be consoled as to console.” (St. Francis) Ninth Station: Jesus falls a third time . The burdens of adulthood can be crushing. Now we are tempted by the sins of middle age . Tenth Station: Jesus is stripped of His garments . Ultimately, our identities unravel; we find ourselves naked again. If we are to discover our true selves, we must shed our myriad false selves, symbolized by our choice of clothing (uniforms): from sun suit to business suit to sweat suit. Eleventh Station: Jesus is nailed to the cross . We have shed our personae, but now we must put on the cloak of the cosmos, symbolized by the cross, the intersection of all that is. Now we must accept responsibility for our lives, for the part we’ve played in the evolution of the world as it has come to be. This part is no picnic. Twelfth Station: Jesus dies on the cross . Once we have wrapped ourselves tight in the cloak of the cosmos, we are absorbed into it. We die! Thirteenth Station: Jesus is laid in the arms of His Blessed Mother . Death recapitulates life. We are back in the arms of our mothers. Nothing has changed yet everything is different; everything has changed yet nothing is different. Fourteenth Station: Jesus is laid in the tomb . “It is finished!” Beyond the arms of our mothers, we are now comingled with our ancestors, with the cosmos, with Big Bang itself. At the First Station, we were condemned to death. Sentence executed! Hurry Easter! 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 World Series David Cowles Oct 27, 2025 “The World Series is stochastic. A team cannot carry over excess runs from one game to offset a future scoring deficit.” In professional baseball, the champion is the team that wins 4 games (out of 7) in the World Series. Typically, the first two games are played on the home field of one team, the next three games on the home field of the other, and then back to the initial venue for the final two games (if needed). It’s not rocket science; a precious 6 year old can grasp it. It is not uncommon for the ‘home team’ to win the first two games. That does not by any means guarantee that that team will win the series. The other team now has ‘home field advantage’ (i.e. 3 out of the 5 remaining games will be played on its home field). After the first two games, we still have no idea which team will win the Series but we do know that one team will win it and that it will take no more than 5 additional games to determine that winner. This much is certain. Still, after the first two games, our ‘home field winner’ is half way to the goal of 4 wins while their opponent is just getting started…maybe. Does this remind you of anything? How about a certain road race alleged to have taken place in Greece more than 3000 years ago? According to legend, as reported by the philosopher Zeno, a certain tortoise challenged the great Achilles (the Usain Bolt of his day) to a road race. As expected, Achilles declined; it would be demeaning for him to leave a lowly reptile in the dust. So the tortoise upped the ante, “Ok then, how about you give me a head start, say half the distance to the Finish Line?” Now Achilles was a clever boy; he knew that he could run at least 10 times as fast as the tortoise so catching up should not be a problem. By giving the tortoise a substantial head start, he can blow him away and still preserve his precious classical honor. Plus, his Saudi friends had put up a sizeable pot of prize money. And then there’s always the chance of making some lucrative side bets with naïve punters in the crowd. So, honor intact, Achilles accepts the challenge! Gotcha! Not so clever after all, are you, Troy Boy ? Achilles has fallen into the tortoise’s trap; he has agreed to a wager he cannot possibly win. But the future hero of Troy positions himself at the Starting Line, brimming with bravado. The challenger takes his place half way to the Finish Line; the crowd is surprised, and somewhat disconcerted, by the reptile’s quiet air of sly self-confidence. “Is there something going on here that we’ve missed?” You ‘bet’ there is (pun intended)! Achilles knows that he can run 100 meters in 10 seconds or less without breaking a sweat. So just 5 seconds after the starting gun is fired, Achilles has caught up to the tortoise; except, of course, he hasn’t. While Achilles was busy getting himself to the 50 meter line, the tortoise was also moving forward, albeit at a slower pace. After the same 5 seconds, the tortoise has just 45 meters left to go (vs. Achilles’ 50). So once again, Achilles needs to catch up and this time he only needs a half second to do so (5 meters); except of course, once again, the tortoise has moved on. Our contestants repeat this process over and over, but Achilles never quite catches his nemesis. Gradually it dawns on Achilles, the punters, and the fans that Achilles will not catch the tortoise…ever! The tortoise made a lot of money on side bets that day and he used it to build a Jurassic theme park dedicated to the preservation of endangered reptilian species. The world is a better, richer, more diverse place because of Achilles’ blind arrogance. But why is this result different from the outcome of the World Series (above)? Achilles’ difficulties stem from the fact that we all assume that spacetime is continuous, i.e. that it is infinitely divisible into ever smaller units. The World Series is not continuous; it is stochastic. It consists of no more than 7 games, and each game is a discrete event with a definite outcome. One game does not bleed into another. A team cannot carry over ‘excess runs’ from one game to jump start the next or use those runs to offset a future scoring deficit . Are you posh enough to play golf? Or are you, like me, content to watch Rory on the tube? Either way, you know that a game of golf can be organized in either of two ways: Match Play works like the World Series. Every hole stands on its own: you win, you lose, or you tie. With Medal Play shots accumulate over 18 holes and the winner is not determined until the last ice cube drops into a glass on the 19th green. Now, here’s what’s kept us focused on Zeno’s Paradox for more than two millennia: IRL, we all know that Achilles wins easily…even though we’ve proven that he can’t. There must be something wrong with our assumptions… and indeed there is! Our assumption (above) that spacetime is continuous must be false. In fact, we now know thanks to Einstein & the Quantum Mechanics that spacetime is made up of tiny, Planck size units; it’s not a flowing river, Heraclitus, it’s a post-industrial foam. The Planck bubbles are so small that for most purposes we can treat spacetime as though it were a continuum…but it isn’t. And because it isn’t, no slimy reptile stands a chance against our GOAT…and no World Series lasts more than 7 games. *** Marjorie Phillips — Night Baseball (1951) depicts a vivid evening at Griffith Stadium under the glow of newly installed floodlights. The artist captures the tension of the game as players, umpires, and fans are illuminated by artificial light, emphasizing the novelty and spectacle of night sports. Her use of bold color and simplified forms reflects both the excitement of baseball and the mid-century fascination with progress and modern leisure. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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< Back Being and Nothingness David Cowles May 12, 2022 But there are holes in this Swiss cheese. First, while it is true that ‘events’ constitute the universe, what we’re calling ‘events’ (above) are rarely primordial events. William H. Gass, in his Introduction to Gertrude Stein’s The Geographical History of America , wrote, “Life is rearrangement.” Gass attributes this idea, if not this exact sentence, to Ms. Stein. According to this view, our lives consist of elements (events) and many of these elements seem to be shared by other people: one other, many others, most others, perhaps even all others. For example, growing up, we may be fed by a mother, punished by a father, taught by a teacher, babysat by a neighbor, etc. These ‘events’ are elements of my human life and, I assume, of many, but not all, other human lives; therefore, they are elements of ‘human life’ per se . The solidarity we experience as ‘society’ may be attributed at least in part to this vast network of shared elemental experiences. How many such elements are there? The number is uncountably large, but it is many, many orders of magnitude smaller than the number of distinct human lives that these elements can generate. “Life is rearrangement.” Think of the events that make up my life as words in a dictionary even larger than the OED. Only a few of these words are involved in the constitution of a single human being, but some of those same words turn up in others. The ‘rules’ by which these events can be combined to form a human life is the syntax of being human, while the number of unique human persons is analogous to an anthology of the complete works of an entire culture. But there are holes in this Swiss cheese. First, while it is true that ‘events’ constitute the universe, what we’re calling ‘events’ (above) are rarely primordial events. Usually a ‘society’ of events come together to share a common ‘superject’, i.e., meaning. So an event in your life, ‘X’, can fulfill the same function in my life, ‘Y’; both event-clusters have a similar meaning, ‘M’, but the route to ‘M’ in ‘X’ is very different from the route to ‘M’ in ‘Y’. While two individual paths may result in a common superject, the differences in those paths will significantly impact the further evolution of ‘X’ and ‘Y’. So,’X’ and ‘Y’ each emerge from their own unique Actual Worlds, they converge along the way to share a common superject, only to diverge again so that in the end, ‘X’ is entirely other than ‘Y’. Second, while both ‘X’ and ‘Y’ project ‘M’ as it is viewed by ‘Z’, ‘M’ has a different function in ‘X’ than it has in ‘Y’. ‘X’, and ‘Y’ share ‘M’ in ‘Z’, but ‘M’ in ‘X’ is radically different from ‘M’ in ‘Y’. Like families on your cul-de-sac , our lives can look very much alike from the outside, but they are always radically different when doors are closed and the shades are pulled down (i.e., on the inside). In fact, ‘M’ in ‘X’ is always different for ‘X’ than ‘M’ in ‘Y’ is for ‘Y’. Therefore, while our lives, considered socially, may overlap, those same lives, considered ontologically, can share no elements in common. Not only is every person unique, every primordial event that constitutes that person is unique; it has a unique function in ‘X’, though it may have a shared function for ‘Z’ (understood as all others, collectively). As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in Being and Nothingness , being-for-others has nothing to do with being-for-itself. As being-for-others, we are helping to build an all-encompassing web; as being-for-itself, each of us stands, alone, on the edge of Kierkegaard’s abyss and and on that edge, none of us has anything in common with anyone else, except the abyss . 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.

Aletheia Today presents its Holy Days issue, where faith and science converge to celebrate and explore religious traditions. This special edition delves into the significance of holy days from the Old and New Testaments, offering a blend of process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays. Discover the deeper meanings of religious observances and their relevance in modern society, fostering a harmonious dialogue between faith and science. Inside Our Holy Days 2024 Issue Philosophy The Meaning of Life “In the absence of God, or any transcendent reality, the meaning of life can only be death, oblivion, and the total absence of meaning – aka the Absurd.” Dante and the Yellow Submarine “Yellow Submarine did for the Divine Comedy what West Side Story did for Romeo & Juliet…but I very much doubt the Beatles had any idea what they’d done!” The Frost Diamond “God is ‘special’ only to that extent that in God, A and Ω are one…God is what it means to initiate and what it means to culminate.” Super-Determinism “Things are the way they are simply because they are the way they are.” Theology Marx vs. Mark “The Gospel of Mark is no biography…It’s a call to action, a manifesto, a How to manual for non-violent guerilla warriors everywhere, 1st century…or 21st.” Sacramental Priesthood “I’m willing to bet there are some people out there (actually, a lot of people) who would literally love to spend their careers revealing the presence of God to others.” Culture & The Arts The Wonder School “Learning begins with curiosity and children are nothing but question-boxes.” The Concept of Death “Change cannot entail the annihilation of what changes… Something of what was must be conserved or it’s not ‘change’ at all, is it?” Spirituality Beyond the Rainbow Bridge: The Loss of a Pet and the Afterlife "In the silence of loss, I cling to the whispers of hope, believing that beyond the veil of goodbye, our beloved pets wait, their love an eternal beacon guiding us through the darkness." Comfort for Clumsy Believers: What the Disbelief of the Disciples Means for Us "There is evidence that, in the backs of the disciples' minds, there was always the glimmer of the same question that shimmers on my frontal lobe today: 'But what if we’ve gotten it all wrong about him?'" Navigating Easter to Pentecost "Jesus was always teaching. Teaching, all the time." Finding Gold in the Scars "We will adorn our scars with gold and reminisce on our journey—guided by hope." 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.

< Back The Time Trap David Cowles Dec 8, 2022 “The future is hurtling toward us at the speed of a runaway train…Now is the hour of our death…Memento Mori does not go nearly far enough. Try Vivo Mori instead.” When do you begin to think about your life in terms of a lifespan? At age 5? Before that, you are aware of older people (e.g., grandparents) and you’ve been told that they will ‘die’ (whatever that means) long before you do. To you, however, that has no significance because, for you, there is no continuity between a person who is 5 years old (you) and a person who is 80 years old (grandparents). Adults are a different life form, a different species. Like dogs in a park, kids immediately recognize other kids, even if there is a significant age difference, and they instinctively gravitate away from any adults and toward those kids. Sometime during your 5th or 6th year, however, you’re likely to begin to grasp that ‘old folks’ are actually just like you, only projected forward in time. Sobering! Or is it? I’m 5. I have lived 5 years – that’s a long time. I don’t even remember when I was a baby, but I’ve seen pictures. I guess that looks like me. I have lived one lifetime (5 years) so far…and it hasn’t been easy. My octogenarian grandparents are 16 lifetimes old by my count, 15 lifetimes more than me (one lifetime = 5 years from the perspective of a 5-year-old). My first 5 years were a bit of a schlog, and now I’m destined to repeat that 15 times? Functionally, that’s ‘forever’; death is not a material factor in my life at age 5. But now I’m 10, twice as old. No matter how old I get, I will always have lived just one lifetime. Now an 80-year-old has lived only 8 lifetimes (vs. 16), 7 more than me. Still death is remote…but a little less remote than before. Now I’m 20 with just three ‘lifetimes’ left to burn. Then 40 with just one lifetime (40 years) ahead. This sh*t is gettin’ real! I’m crossing into ‘negative territory’ now: 1 (first 40 years) + 1 (last 40 years) = 0 (aka death). 15, 7, 3, 1. It gets real, real quick! But even this is not what I mean by the ‘time trap’. When I get to age 40, and half my life is behind me, it still doesn’t feel that way to me. At 40, I’m not even close to thinking I’m ‘half-baked’. I ‘know’ it, but I certainly don’t feel it. How come? It turns out that we are born looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. The road ahead is 15, 7, 3 or 1 lifetimes long, but that feels like 30, 14, 6 or 2 lifetimes. Then, more or less suddenly, everything changes! Somewhere along the way, at the age of 60 or 65 or 70+, we realize that we’ve all along been looking at time through a concave lens. Belatedly, we turn the telescope around. What felt like 30, 14, 5 and 2 should have felt like 7.5, 3.5, 1.5 and 0.5. Time is not a kid hanging on a corner, reluctant to go home. Time is not lingering somewhere out there on the horizon, as we had supposed; rather time (aka the future) is hurtling toward us at the speed of a runaway train. Objectively, at age 40, I had a whole lifetime ahead of me. Subjectively, I had 2 lifetimes. Experientially, I had just ½ a lifetime left. I’m 40 years old and, experientially, my life is already 2/3rds over. Objectively, my life expectancy is 80 years; subjectively, it’s 120 years; experientially, it’s just 60! Like H₂0 in a freezer, time is subject to phase change. In one phase, we experience time as through the medium of a concave lens; in the other phase, the focus reverses and the concave becomes convex. The Ave Maria makes sense: “now and at the hour of our death.” Now is the hour of our death! We are all always living in the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23), at the hour of our death (Ave Maria). Memento Mori does not go nearly far enough. Try Vivo Mori instead. 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 Being and Becoming David Cowles Aug 11, 2021 In the context of a conversation about Being and Becoming, a friend of mine asked, “Is eternal becoming possible?” My first reaction was that the concept of becoming was inherently dependent on time and that time is the antithesis of eternity. But then I got to thinking… In the context of a conversation about Being and Becoming, a friend of mine asked, “Is eternal becoming possible?” My first reaction was that the concept of becoming was inherently dependent on time and that time is the antithesis of eternity. But then I got to thinking… 20th century British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, generally regarded as the founder of ‘Process Philosophy’ (although many of his ideas show up in the works of Nicholas of Cusa 500 years earlier), believed that the world consists of atomic acts of becoming (he calls them “actual entities”) and that time is suspended during each such atomic act. For Whitehead, time is characteristic of the relationship among actual entities but absent from the process of ‘concrescence’ that takes place within each actual entity. So, according to Whitehead, eternal becoming is not only possible, it is the way the world works. So, I was wrong and my friend was right; thank you, John! 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 Refresh the Crèche Deidre Braley "Maybe it was that I, myself, had just given birth—but as I held the perfectly composed Mary in my hand, she no longer felt believable." A bejeweled nativity scene sits atop our mantle every year at Christmastime. Despite baby Jesus’ missing arm (somewhere in the handing down, he came down one hand ), the whole crèche is quite elegant. The camel looks regal in his saddle, the livestock are radiant, and the three wise men wear gems upon their fashionable turbans. Mary is glowing in golden frocks—naturally—and Joseph remains stoic, despite having just witnessed the horrific, beautiful shock called childbirth. All of the figures are white, clean, and blushing. I studied each figure this year as I unwrapped them from fragments of bubble wrap and paper towels, blowing a dead fly from Jesus’ cradle. In past seasons, I have felt a swelling in my throat as I unveiled and arranged the scene with nostalgic care. But this year felt different. Maybe it was that I, myself, had just given birth—but as I held the perfectly composed Mary in my hand, she no longer felt believable. She was no warm-blooded woman who had just had a baby without medical care or epidural; she was just cold and ceramic. The same went for the wooly sheep, gleaming white despite living in a barn, and baby Jesus, looking resplendent with his crown of golden hair and impressive pectoral muscles. I’m sure these figurines were fashioned by well-intentioned people—devout Christians, even—who meant for such finery to display the glory of the Lord and the divinity of his birth. Won’t these look beautiful on the mantle, I bet they sighed, imagining families across the world gazing upon the flaxen scene and feeling the comforts of Christmas. But in that moment, I was struck by the irony that this crèche meant to point us toward Jesus’ wondrous demonstration of humility had the odd effect of removing it, instead. These figurines were decked out and dignified; they weren’t at all the type one might feel akin to. How odd, I thought. I want to be drawn to these, but they feel so…lofty. I couldn’t help but notice that this nativity’s portrayal of Jesus made me feel distant from him, looking so magisterial there in his manger. Jesus’ birth should remind us that holiness cohabitates with the common. So why do we feel inclined to dress up the humble bits in emeralds and gold? Sure: a bedazzled manger looks lovely amongst our twinkling lights and hand-me-down heirlooms, but do we inadvertently set Jesus aside when we make him look like the least believable human of all time? Do we begin to see him as ethereal—with his flowing locks and bulging biceps—and fail to grasp that he was born in the same bloody fashion that we all were, that his entrance to the world was plebeian as the rest of ours? When we admire his ceramic countenance upon our mantles, do we miss that God actually stooped down and became fully man—coming down to us so we could walk alongside him? Have we still not grasped that the Lord doesn’t give a hoot about finery or putting on airs? It is Christ’s example of humility, and not haughtiness, that draws us toward him. And yet, we perpetuate the narrative that he is untouchable and unlike us by adorning him with jewels. We reject the revelation that Paul writes about in Phillipians: “...Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man” (2:5-7). Jesus demonstrated his total power in the way he neither clutched it nor strutted it about; he could become a baby who relied on his mother for milk and diaper changes without losing an ounce of his majesty. Gaudy portrayals of Jesus’ birth reveal we don’t understand his true majesty—or his heart—at all. They remind me of the final scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade , when Indy and the antagonist Walter Donovan both guess which cup is the Holy Grail. Amidst a dazzling selection of chalices, Donovan chooses a golden goblet that’s set with emeralds, while Indy reaches for a dusty and well-worn cup in the back. Donovan drinks from his goblet and instantly turns to a mummified shell of himself. (In the words of the ancient knight protecting the grail: “He chose…poorly.”) Indy, on the other hand, chooses wisely, and in doing so, avoids mummification and uses it to save his mortally wounded father. The lesson from this scene is clear: Donovan failed to choose the correct cup because he did not actually know Jesus; if he had, he would have known that he is “gentle and lowly in heart,” and that the humblest cup actually represented his power best. Why does it matter? you may be asking. Why can’t this girl just sip her eggnog and leave our pretty nativities alone? It’s because I desperately need Jesus to be real . I need him to be a man who ate fish and warmed himself beside fires and wept aloud and bled red blood. I, like Thomas, need to be able to hold his hands in my own and put my fingers in the places where he was pierced so that I can believe that resurrection is really true and not just some happy fable we can tell the children. I can’t make do with pretty, substanceless things . I am not comforted by white ceramic skin and a muscular baby in his shimmering trough. I am not kindred to a Mary who smiles as though she didn’t just give birth in a cave. And I have no business with rubies or emeralds, royalty or riches. I need Jesus, the baby who cluster feeds and pulls his mother’s hair. I need Mary and Joseph, the young kids who had a baby together and weren’t even married. I need to see sheep and cows with manure stuck to their coats, and a camel that looks travel-worn and moody. I need to see wise men with weathered skin and relieved faces, because they trusted God about this baby and they half-can’t-believe he’s really here. And the rest of the world needs that too. I can say that with confidence, because isn’t that the very reason Jesus bothered to humble himself in the first place, to empty himself of pretense, to take on a form we could relate to? So that we—dusty and broken and limping as we are—could somehow look at the Master of the Universe and believe we could draw close? We have a high priest that can sympathize with our weakness. This truth is ground-breaking, counterintuitive, ingenious, earth-shattering. His ability to sympathize with our weakness is one of his greatest gifts to humanity—so why are we so hesitant to portray it? So I guess this is just me, on behalf of the drunks and the postpartum mothers, making the case for a crèche that reveals Jesus’ humanity. It is me, along with the tow-truck drivers and nail technicians and juvenile delinquents, who need to see the earthiness of his birth. We do not need more imagery that makes Jesus inaccessible or unbelievable. Keep the jewels and wooly white animals. Give us instead reminders of how he entered this world amidst dirty surroundings, so that he could grow to walk with dirty people, washing our filthy feet and filthier hearts. Yes, this is the Jesus this world needs. This is the Jesus that God actually sent. And this is the Jesus I want to gaze upon—at Christmas, and all the other times of the year, too. Deidre Braley is a freelance writer and editor. She lives in Maine with her husband and two children, and most days can be found savoring an overly cheesy bagel or drinking a second cup of coffee while working on her weekly newsletter, The Second Cup . She is a strong believer in the power of poetry, picking roadside flowers, and blowing past small talk at all costs. Follow her on Instagram @deidresecondcup or on Facebook — she loves meeting new friends. Return to Yuletide 2023 Previous Next

< Back Beyond Pascal's Wager “Once we get past skyscrapers and suspension bridges, we really have no idea what’s going on, do we?” David Cowles A Hasidic folk tale, possibly dating back to the Baal Shem Tov himself, tells of a certain Rabbi on his way home from Schule who comes across an elderly widow crawling on her hands and knees under a streetlamp. Not wanting to play the part of passer-by in some future production of The Good Samaritan and eager to perform one last mitzvah before going to bed for the night, the Rabbi offers to assist. "I've lost my shiny penny, the only thing I have left in the world," the widow wails. "And is this where you lost it?" the Rabbi inquires innocently. "No," she replies. "I lost it over there." The quizzical Rabbi, still hoping to be helpful, asks, "Then why are you looking for it here?" "Because the light is better...," the exasperated widow sighs as she continues her search. But under her breath, she mutters with all the derision she can muster, "... Obviously!" This story is often presented as a commentary on the widow's folly, but in fact, the widow is the hero of the story. She defies conventional wisdom. Why look for a lost penny in pitch darkness where there's no hope of finding anything? Pennies can be funny; they have a tendency to bounce and roll. They often end up in the places you'd least expect to find them. Possibly, the widow's penny rolled under the lamp, probably it did not. In any event, it would make no sense to look for it anywhere else because, even if it were there, we would have zero chance of finding it. Let’s recap. It is unlikely that the woman and the Rabbi, now both on hands and knees, will find the penny under the streetlamp; but it’s possible. On the other hand, were they to look in the probability-rich darkness, they would have no chance whatsoever of finding the coin. Real searching is not just idle gazing; searching presupposes a target and a method of getting to that target. I’m making myself a bowl of cereal and I need milk. I open the refrigerator door and look in…for several seconds; then I call out, as we all knew I would, “Are we out of milk?” At which point, my wife gets off the couch, walks to the fridge and pulls out a brand new, unopened half gallon. I gazed; she searched. We look for rainbows; we search for intelligent life…extra-terrestrial and otherwise. This story reminds me of ‘Pascal's Wager’ (1650 CE). Faced with the God Question , the French mathematician, Blaise Pascal, employed a forerunner of what is today called ‘Game Theory’. Conceptually, Pascal divided a sheet of paper into four quadrants. Across the top of the page, he wrote, “I believe that God exists;” down the left-hand margin, he wrote, “God does exist.” Then he filled it in: (N/N), (N/Y), (Y/N) and (Y/Y). Got it? Of course not. Would it be easier to understand if we expressed it in the language of computers, i.e., binary numbers? (0/0), (0/1), (1/0) and (1/1). No? Ok then, (0*0), (0*1), (1*0), (1*1). Now? Ok! Pascal looked at the ‘God Question’ hyper-objectively . He reasoned that one of four things must be true: (1) I do not believe that God exists, and he doesn’t; (2) I do not believe that God exists, but he does; (3) I believe that God exists, but he doesn’t; (4) I believe that God exists, and he does. Flash back : I’m standing at the craps table ( Bellagio , Las Vegas) and I’m holding one $25 chip in my hand. It’s all I have left after a week of heavy drinking and gourmet dining. This is my very last chance to recoup. The ‘felt’ offers me more than a dozen possible wagers, but I need to know my best bet, objectively speaking. Where do I put my last $25 to give myself the best chance of winning? (It’s not as easy as it looks. Different bets come with different odds but also with different payouts.) Back home : (Don’t ask me what happened in Vegas, that stays in Vegas .) I’m still looking to optimize my chances, but this time I’m playing a different game; it’s called the Game of Eternal Life . My options: God does not exist, and I never thought he did: Winner! I believed in God but, as it turns out, I was wrong: Loooser! I did not believe in God, but I was wrong; God does exist: Loooser! God exists and I knew it all along: Winner! Defining Terms - Belief in this context does not refer merely to our intellectual assent to a certain proposition; we are not talking about some sort of creedal affirmation here. Far from it! Believing X means living life as if X were true. So, if you choose one of the “I believe that God exists” options, you are committing yourself, not just to the recitation of a creed but to the adoption of a lifestyle, even if it turns out that you’ve guessed wrong. How about God ? An old man in a white robe living on a cloud? Maybe…but probably not. Then, what does it mean to say, “I believe in God?” What I call the God Hypothesis runs something like this: (A) an objective universe, more or less consistent with experience, exists, and embodies or reflects values that transcend* it; and (B) those values are normative for the way I live my life and the way I live my life, ‘makes a difference’: somewhere, somehow, on some level. *A value is transcendent if and only if it is valid throughout the universe, in all places, at all times, regardless of circumstances, and would be valid in any possible universe (don’t leave home without it) and would still be valid even if there was no universe to reflect or embody it. And finally, universe . Here we must make a distinction. By ‘universe’, I mean what science means: the sum of all events that occur relative to me in spacetime. But we also need to talk about universe, an entity in its own right, not just the totalization of other entities. Everything that happens in the universe happens in spacetime; but universe itself does not. Universe per se transcends spacetime. Nothing limits it. Nothing is beyond it. Therefore, in its own way, it is infinite and eternal. Payoff : So, two winners, two losers. I should break even over time, right? I guess it all comes down to a coin toss after all, which is what I thought in the first place. But not so fast: Remember, different bets come with different payouts. Option (1), “God does not exist, and I never thought he did”, is a winner… Cue confetti! What’s my payout? Zero… Did you just say, “Zero?” What a rip-off! I suppose I have the satisfaction of knowing that 75 years of depression and anxiety have been warranted…but that still leaves me $2.95 short of a Grande at Starbucks. Cold comfort on a winter’s morning. Options (2) and (3) are obvious losers, so “no payout for me – you loooser!” That leaves option (4). Like option (1), (4) is a winner…but this time, hold the confetti until we check the payoff. I’m expecting the dealer to put a few chips down in front of me (I’m hoping for black ones). Instead, he hands me a sheaf of papers. What the heck? – OMG, it’s the deed to the casino. The Bellagio . I’ll confess I’ve always wanted to own the Bellagio , but that’s not this. This isn’t the deed to the Bellagio …it’s the deed to the entire Universe: “Winner, winner, chicken dinner!” Who needs confetti? You’re not convinced. You think you’ve found an error in my reasoning: “Your calculations assume that all 4 outcomes are equally probable: P = 25% across the board. But that may not be the case.” “What if the probability that God does not exist is a 99.99999% and the probability that God does exist is only 0.00001%? What then? Nothing then, that’s what! Odds don’t matter! (1), (2) and (3) payout nothing – it doesn’t matter the odds. Only (4) offers a positive payout, so who cares what the odds are? Is P(4) > 0? (Few would assert otherwise.) 0.00001 is a pretty lousy average payout, but hey, it’s better than 0.00000. So, there is nothing to do but to go ‘all in’ on (4)…and pray. Since (4) pays out ‘the entirety’ and the other three options pay out ‘nothing’, I really have no choice, do I? And that , my friends, is Pascal’s Wager…or is it? Face the facts : our world is incomprehensible and frankly absurd. Sure, we can hit a rock, hurtling through deep space at breakneck speed, with a rocket launched years earlier from Earth. But that’s the equivalent of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic . On the surface, reality is somewhat intelligible and highly manipulable, but only on the surface. Once we get past skyscrapers and suspension bridges, we really have no idea what’s going on, do we? Could the world have been created by a super-intelligence? I suppose so. Could it have just arbitrarily sprung into being? So they tell me. Will anyone ever know for sure? Probably not. Will anyone ever know for sure that they’ll never know for sure? Again, probably not! “Daddy, you know everything : why is the sky blue? Why is water wet? How many seconds are there is a year? Daddy, who am I, really?” I was doing so well; I was on a role…and then I hit the wall. We can answer a million questions but the ones we can’t answer are the only ones worth answering. So what to do? Lapse back into agnosticism, skepticism, or nihilism? We are confronted with an epistemological barrier: we can’t use deductive reasoning to prove existential propositions; neither can we rely on induction. But we can use Game Theory to our advantage…and we just did. What if the implications of Game Theory could take us ‘beyond Pascal’s Wager’? Let’s revisit our base equations. Options (1), (2) and (3) pay out nothing; that’s certain. There’s no phenomenological difference between options that pay zero and options that don’t exist at all. Option 123 is equivalent to null-universe. Now let’s take a look at option (4). We’ve called the payout ‘1’ and so it is… in our two value number system. Therefore, the expected payout is just 0.000001. But what is the meaning of ‘1’? It’s not ‘half of 2’ because there is no 2; and half of 1 is still 1. There is only one and none, and one is any x where x > 0. But we’ve seen above that one is everything (Universe) and Universe (everything) is infinite (eternal). In a bizarre mathematical twist, if P(4) > 0, no matter how small P(4) is, then P(4)*∞ = ∞. This is the ultimate ‘participation trophy’. Just playing the game guarantees you an infinite payout…as long as you put your paltry pile of chips on #4. Winner, winner, cosmic dinner! Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ about, Willis! David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . 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< Back Can Subject/Verb Agreement Make the World Go Round? David Cowles We imagine that our world is made up of ‘things’ (nouns), their accidental qualities (adjectives), and the relationships between them (verbs). We imagine this because just such a classification system is embedded in our native tongue: modern English, for example, or most any other contemporary Indo-European language. We imagine that our world is made up of ‘things’ (nouns), their accidental qualities (adjectives), and the relationships between them (verbs). We imagine this because just such a classification system is embedded in our native tongue: modern English, for example, or most any other contemporary Indo-European language. What can we say about such a classification system? First, it works; it works well, marvelously well! The enormous technological progress achieved over the past 500 years is a direct reflection of the power of grammar – who knew? (Pity the 5th grader overheard asking, “Why do I have to learn all this grammar? What good is it? I’ll never use it.”) In a world made up of subjects, objects, verbs, and attributes, each of us (subjects) becomes the center of our own world, and everything that is not us (objects) becomes raw material (yes, even other people) for us to shape in service of our own ends. Our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to transform that raw material, to rearrange its attributes so that nature can be more productive. This is one way to slice and dice the world, and it works beautifully, provided that material productivity is the only standard of measurement. This is one way to slice and dice the world…but it is not the only way! William James advanced a theory of buds or units (quanta?) of experience. He developed what became known as the James-Lange theory, which argues that emotions arise as a physiological response to external events. James’ model is broad enough to include all of the usual parts of speech, only now, the measured experience (the bud) itself is the subject, the object, the network of relationships, and the shifting attributes mentioned above. The focus has moved from the individual to the individual’s experience with external events. Each bud, therefore, is like the universe experiencing itself and acting on itself; we are just grateful parts of that process. Were language built to reflect the dynamics of James’ buds, it might be a less efficient tool of industrial production, but it would certainly be a much more efficient medium for interpersonal communication. Previous Next

< Back The Search for Self David Cowles Oct 6, 2022 We are Le Neant, nothing – and nothing could be better than that! The great dramatist of the absurd, Eugene Ionesco, shared a memory from his childhood in Present Past/Past Present (1968): “My little sister and I are playing on the floor. I grab my sister’s toys…I don’t want to let her play with my blocks. (My father) puts down his newspaper and scolds me. I refuse to obey; I don’t want to give my blocks to my sister. He gets down off the bed and spanks me…I am choking with anger, with helplessness. I am indignant. This is against the proper order of things… I am very angry with him; I will never be able to forget this humiliation… He gets back into bed, very calmly, as if nothing had happened…I am still enraged, full of anger I cannot appease.” Notice that little Eugene didn’t say, “Oh well, I’m only five now, so it’s ok.” Nor, looking back at 60, does he say, “Oh well, I was only five then, so it was ok.” It wasn’t ok; not at five, not at 60, not ever never. Notice something else: Ionesco’s account of the incident and his reaction to it is the same at age 60 as it was at age five. How so? There is a persistent myth in Western culture that children wallow in childhood, that they accept its frustrations, humiliations, limitations, and restrictions in grateful exchange for the security and warmth it provides. I’ve never met such a child. Children hate childhood, no matter how loving and progressive their parents. It is only in retrospect, looking through the rosy mists of time, that it may look idyllic. Fast-forward: now I’m in my teens. I have most of the responsibilities of adulthood, but I get none of its rewards. I study; I work; I ‘play’ organized sports; I do chores; and I even babysit. And, all I get for this is a meager allowance. Know what? I could live with that. The real indignity is that I still get treated like a child! Example : I’m 13, and I’m already babysitting a couple of small boys down the street for a few hours at a time; then my parents announce that they are going away for a ‘romantic weekend’ and they’ve hired a babysitter... for me ! I can’t believe the shame didn’t kill me then and there. On to adulthood: job, family, rug rats, never-ending bills, etc. And then suddenly that’s over! Now retirement. Notice one thing, though. Throughout all of this, I am still the same me! How is that possible? Gertrude Stein asked, “What’s the use of being a little boy if you’re going to be a grown man?” The answer is that I never was a little boy, and I’m not an old man now. Those are just costumes I put on in order to ‘get by.' Stein also wrote: “We are always to ourselves young men and young women.” Well put and partially true. Given that children always want to be older than they are and that adults always want to be younger than they are, ‘young adulthood’ is a good compromise. But that’s all it is. I’m not 25 any more than I was five. At best, we might define young adulthood as our period of minimal dissatisfaction . All of this might seem a bit depressing…but it’s not. It’s glorious! Time is a one-way street, literally a bridge to nowhere . “It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” ( Macbeth ) The Bhagavad-gītā says it best, “Now I am become time, the destroyer of worlds.” Had I ever been five or 25 or 70, I’d be submerged in time now, circling entropy’s drain. Time is the great easer. To exist in time is never to exist at all. “The great globe itself…shall dissolve and…leave not a rack behind.” ( The Tempest ) But this not who we are! We exist outside of time. We are ‘participatory observers’ in the game of life. We roll our dice, move our markers, buy and sell properties; we go to jail, we take a ride on the Reading. But we are not part of the game itself. If the game board and all its pieces were to suddenly vanish, it would have no effect on us (except we’d be out the $19.99 we paid for it). We are a-temporal, and so eternal. We are at home in ‘eternity;' we are aliens in spacetime. We were never five, and we’ll never be 75. Vis-à-vis spacetime, we are not! We are Le Neant , nothing – and nothing could be better than that! Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! 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.