< Back Quantum Consciousness David Cowles Oct 14, 2025 “It seems likely that all living organisms emit a bio-photonic aura…” Remember the ‘60s? Of course, you don’t. You weren’t born yet. Or if you were, you killed off those brain cells decades ago. But if you could remember the ‘60s, you’d remember that time (was it at Woodstock?) when a bead-bedraggled, tie dye wearing shaman, asked if she could ‘read your aura’. Of course, she could! It’s the ‘60s, man; everything goes! “Oh, you’re gorgeous. I see purple and a lovely shade of pink. It shows you’re a kind, generous, loving person. I do see a spot of green you might want to work on but overall, it’s magnificent. By the way, you wouldn’t be able to spare some change by any chance?” It was fun while it lasted…but you heard Wall St. calling. Now, more than half a century later, it turns out your shaman was right after all. A recent article by Darren Orf (published 5/13/2025 in Popular Mechanics ) confirms what hippies knew ages ago: “You’re glowing!” Recent studies confirm that living organisms emit ‘biophotons’…lots of them. A live mouse, for example, can emit up to 10⁵ photons per second. “You could even say it glows,” Rudolf, so why don’t we see it? (It would make life so much easier for my cat.) The trouble is, these biophotons are incredibly weak, well below the perceptual threshold of most humans. Just how weak are they? An advanced digital camera requires a full hour of exposure before it can record enough data to form a coherent pattern. It seems likely that all living organisms emit a bio-photonic aura, even prokaryotes (e.g. bacteria), single celled organisms without a nucleus. But, of course, we can’t know that for sure, at least not yet. What we do know is that plants do have auras. If a plant suffers some sort of injury, the aura at the site of the injury is especially intense. This suggests that organisms shift into overdrive to repair damage and that they emit more photons in the process. How is this related to consciousness? In the 1990s polymath Roger Penrose proposed that consciousness consists of quantum processes that take place in microtubules in the brain. The theory was and is controversial, for a number of reasons. But unexpectedly, experimental evidence is piling up in support of Penrose conjecture. We live in a World that spans c. 60 orders of magnitude…“from the Redwood Forest (the cosmic event horizon) to the gulf stream waters (the Planck measure).” (Woody Guthrie) Our lives are confined to just one such order. For example, our touted human awareness ( aka consciousness) is limited to events with durations between one-tenth of a second and one full second, one order of magnitude: “Our little life is rounded with a sleep.” ( The Tempest ) In recent experiments, scientists have shot photons into microtubules. Amazingly, the light was re-emitted after a period of time no shorter than one tenth of a second and no longer than one full second. Light travels through the microtubules roughly 10 orders of magnitude more slowly than in a vacuum. Whatever is happening in the ‘black box’ results in the phenomenon we call consciousness . Sidebar : I rank Roger Penrose as one of the three great intellects of the 20 th century, along with Einstein and Whitehead. Even so, I guffawed when I first heard his theory of consciousness: “Ridiculous!” But these days, more and more skeptics are coming around to his point of view… and now I am one of them. But this story is not all unicorns and rainbows! These findings have a potentially more disturbing aspect. To confirm their hypotheses, scientists need a control group. What better control group for a living organism than a deceased one? You might expect that the bioluminescence would switch off at the moment of death. If so, searching for an aura could be a useful way to determine whether a particular organism is alive. But nature may not be as neat as we’d like it to be. The evidence is equivocal but seems to suggest that life and death are more of a continuum than a dichotomy. In one study, 30 minutes after ‘death’, mouse bodies continued to radiate photons, albeit at an average rate approximately 40% lower than when they were fully alive. These findings suggest that biological activity continues long after ‘clinical death’. Intriguingly, this is one more bit of evidence to reinforce the emerging ‘ bio-continuum ’ consensus. Collectively, these discoveries constitute a double edged sword. On the one hand, they might increase the window available for resuscitation…or even resurrection. On the other hand, they could challenge the way we customarily handle organic remains. The assumption that clinical death is synonymous with a total loss of conscious sentience is eroding. What if the deceased organism retains some level of awareness? At the risk of sounding ‘gross’, these findings challenge the morality of treating a ‘dead body’ as ‘refuse’. Sticking a loved one in a body bag and then into a refrigerated cabinet to await cremation and/or burial doesn’t seem so attractive any more. Most pre-industrial societies follow a more prolonged and potentially less terrifying process when saying goodbye. We’re all familiar, of course, with the Tibetan and the Egyptian Books of the Dead . Two civilizations with little if any cross contact developed remarkably similar traditions. This suggests that these rites rose in response to something fundamentally cross-cultural, e.g. the intuition that life is a continuum. The traditional Irish wake and the Jewish practice of ‘sitting shiv’ are further manifestations of this tendency. The Nordic tradition of placing a corpse in a boat and sending it into the sea is another. Clearly, these are areas that require additional exploration. In the meantime, it seems that somewhat more humane funerary practices are ethically indicated, at least until we have more data. *** Hilma af Klint’s The Ten Largest, No. 10, Adulthood (1907) bursts with swirling pastel forms that suggest blossoming consciousness and the invisible forces animating life. Executed in egg tempera on paper mounted to canvas, it merges organic curves and floating symbols into an ethereal visualization of spiritual growth and human energy. Part of a series inspired by mystical revelation rather than formal aesthetics, the work channels the aura of adulthood as a transcendent state between earthly experience and higher planes of existence. 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 Maya David Cowles Sep 27, 2021 “Nothing is everything” is an advertising slogan for a new drug that treats plaque psoriasis. Of course, in this context “nothing” refers to unblemished skin while “everything” refers to the goal of the treatment. But what could “nothing is everything” mean in other contexts? “Nothing is everything” is an advertising slogan for a new drug that treats plaque psoriasis. Of course, in this context “nothing” refers to unblemished skin while “everything” refers to the goal of the treatment. But what could “nothing is everything” mean in other contexts? One branch of contemporary physics claims that ‘everything’ emerges spontaneously out of ‘nothing’. Include in this camp Big Bang Theory, Bootstrapping, and the idea of Negative Vacuum Pressure. Another branch of physics claims that ‘everything’ inevitably becomes ‘nothing’. Include in that camp the Second Law of Thermodynamics (Carnot et al), Entropy, Big Crunch, and Heat Death. In one sense both groups are saying the same thing, nothing = everything, but in another sense, they are saying the exact opposite of one another. Of course, one could belong to both schools simultaneously: everything emerges spontaneously out of nothing, and everything ultimately decays back into nothing. This is probably the most cogent formulation of this idea. However, it has consequences. It threatens to reduce so-called reality to the status of ‘maya’ or the cosmos to the status of a virtual particle. Opposing these views is the idea that the cosmos has a transcendent origin (God?) and that whatever is can never not-be (Parmenides, Servino). 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.

“What You See Is What You Get! Right…or wrong?” < Back R U WYSIWYG? David Cowles Oct 15, 2023 “What You See Is What You Get! Right…or wrong?” We live in a crazy world. There’s no doubt about that! Mythology, theology, philosophy, and science are some of the different ways we model this world. The result? Libraries full of conflicting theories…and no indisputable answers. Perhaps we’re overthinking things. Let’s simplify matters: What you see is what you get! Right…or wrong? WYSIWYG has champions across all intellectual disciplines. All we ‘know’ is what we ‘see’ (or sense) so why not build our models based on that data alone? Realism, naïve or otherwise; Materialism, Marxist or otherwise; Positivism, Logical or otherwise, plus Pragmatism and Empiricism – all assume that what you see is what you get. On the other side of the question, we also have some serious contenders: Homeric mythology, Judeo-Christian theology, Eastern spirituality, and Existentialist philosophy, to name a few. If it is true, that what you see is what you get, then we live in a self-contained, ontologically democratic universe, a flat world in which everything (‘what you get’) can be explained in terms of everything else (‘what you see’). Easy-peasy, lemon squeezy! Proponents of this view believe that human experience, aided by the tools of reason (e.g. logic and mathematics), provides sufficient information for us to account, fully or approximately, for the world we live in. So, mission accomplished , right? Let’s call these folks our ‘WYSIWYGs’. Of course, they’ll admit, we do not have all the answers yet, but we are close enough that we are entitled to have confidence that our project can, at least in theory, be completed. Most WYSIWYGs believe that it is ultimately possible to construct models of reality that account for our world within a tolerable range of accuracy based solely on the data of human experience. But is that true? Can a model that relies solely on the data of experience ever give a complete account of that experience, or of experience per se , or of the world that supports such experience? Alternatively, do we need to resort to something outside the realm of direct experience to complete our model? Once we have understood the world to the best of our ability, may we not still ask: “Is this all there is?” “Hold on,” you say. “Nothing is nothing without experience.” And you are correct! (Thank you for reading Aletheia Today .) But based on that direct experience, we can infer that something outside the realm of direct experience is influencing the data we glean from that experience. We can’t directly describe what we can’t experience (it’s ‘ineffable’) but we can describe its contours, the way it templates experience. Crazy? Well, when was the last time you saw the singularity at the heart of a Black Hole? Have you ever heard a ‘Big Bang’? And don’t get me started about strings, dark matter, and the multiverse! We reason from what we know to what we don’t know, every day. Reality is like a jigsaw puzzle…with one piece missing. After several days of painstaking work, the puzzle is complete, and beautiful, but with a hole in it. From the hole, we can deduce virtually everything that can be known about our missing piece, but we still don’t have the piece itself. It is generally accepted today that all models, languages, symbolic systems have limitations, boundaries if you will. The question is whether there is anything beyond those boundaries that really matters. Blaise Pascal wrote, “Faith indeed tells us what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them…not contrary to them.” For Pascal, faith was necessary to complete the picture that the senses paint; for Pascal, faith was the missing piece. How do the differences between these competing views manifest in real life situations? Consider three practical examples: Neurobiologists have made great strides toward understanding the human brain and how it works. But many people feel that we are no closer than we ever were to explaining the phenomenon of consciousness. Certainly, we have theories about the physiological conditions necessary for conscious experience to occur, but have we accounted for the experience per se ? And if not, will we ever be able to do so? Similarly, astrophysicists have made great strides toward understanding the evolution of the universe. Indeed, we seem to have pushed the fog of ignorance all the way back to the first few seconds of time…and perhaps even beyond that, all the way to Big Bang itself. But is this enough? Have we accounted for the phenomenon of being itself? Have we truly answered the age-old question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Finally, quantum field theory has been called the most successful scientific theory of all time. It predicts phenomena with approximately perfect accuracy; it has never been convincingly falsified by any experiment. That said, do we really understand what is happening at the quantum level of reality? All quantum physicists are capable of making the same astoundingly accurate predictions; yet they use a myriad of different models to account for their results. The positivist’s answer to this dilemma is simply to deny the meaningfulness of the questions themselves: (1) Consciousness is physiology; (2) Cosmos is Being; (3) QFT is its predictions. This last point is what’s called the ‘Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics’. According to Copenhagen , the accuracy of the predictions is all that matters. Models are meaningless. And yet, 90 years after Copenhagen, we’re still obsessed with our models! In Copenhagen, the scientific community shouted in unison, “Grow up!” And we did, for a while, but pretty soon we went back to building our models. The positivists’ solution is simple: meta-questions have no meaning. We have gone as far as we can go because there is nowhere else to go (Nietzsche). If you are still asking questions about consciousness or Being or the reality underlying quantum measurements, it is simply because you don’t understand those phenomena; if you did, you would understand that such questions are meaningless (Wittgenstein). But does saying make it so? Is our proclivity for formulating meta-questions evidence of our mental laziness…or testimony to our human spirit? According to French philosopher Albert Camus , the patron saint of the Absurd, it is human nature to seek unifying principles, even if such principles do not exist or are unavailable to us. Then we are Sisyphus, forever condemned to ask questions that have no answers or whose answers are beyond the grasp of gnosis . But are ‘not-knowing’ and ‘not-being’ one and the same thing? Is ‘absence of evidence’ ‘evidence of absence’? There are indeterminacies inherent in all conceptual systems (Gödel’s Incompleteness) and in all physical systems (Heisenberg’s Uncertainty). These limitations guarantee at least some separation between what can be and what we can know . At their best, anti-WYSIWYGs ground their position on what they ‘see’. For them, experience is a vector pointing toward a reality beyond perception and logic. For example, we ‘see’ things that we recognize as ‘beautiful’. We know they’re beautiful, but Aristotle notwithstanding, we can’t define Beauty, and we certainly can’t account for the presence of Beauty in our world. The same argument can be applied to Justice, Truth, and even Good itself. In a flat, self-contained, and ontologically democratic universe, there is no objective basis for valuing any one entity over any other. Existentialists might say that we are free to assign our own values to things…and they’d be right. But if those values are not rooted in something outside us, what difference do they make? Aren’t they just arbitrary projections of ‘taste’? I refrain from killing you, not because it is objectively wrong (Torah) but because the idea of killing any human being is distasteful to me. Any argument against arbitrariness must refer to something beyond the plane of ontological democracy. (Nietzsche) A world with values cannot be flat; it must be hierarchical, and hierarchy cannot function in a plane (unless you’re talking first class seating on an air plane ). In a flat world, how could the phenomenon of value claim aesthetic or ethical priority over anything else? Ludwig Wittgenstein: “No statement of facts can ever be, or imply, a judgment of absolute value…all the facts described would, as it were, stand on the same level.” How often do we find Wittgenstein agreeing with Thomas Aquinas? Aquinas advanced 5 ‘proofs’ for the existence of God, but only one, the 4th, still interests philosophers: “The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. Among beings, there are some more and some less good, true, noble and the like. But more and less are predicated of different things according as they resemble in their different ways something which is the maximum…so that there is something which is truest, something best, something noblest…and this we call God.” Thomas may not have proven the existence of God, but he may have proven that what you get cannot be reduced to what you see. The existence of Value, if you believe in Value, challenges the underlying premise of WYSIWYG, namely that we live in a universe bereft of ontological gradations. The Latin hymn, Veni Sancte Spiritus sums it up: “ Sine tuo numine, nihil est in homine, nihil est innoxium ”, which roughly translates “without you (God) human beings are empty and everything is noxious”. So, are you WYSIWYG…or anti-WYSIWYG? Admit it, you’d love to be WYSIWYG…and so would I. We could be tenured professors together at an Ivy League university! If only we could convince ourselves… Going solely on what we see, we must accept a world that came to be accidentally, that evolves purposelessly, and that self-destructs inevitably. Suffering overwhelms joy (The Buddha). Islands of order, virtue, truth, and beauty are eroded by entropy, and everything is ultimately erased by time. The world comes from nothing and returns to nothing. All of cosmic history amounts to nothing more than the life span of a self-annihilating virtual particle pair. All the things we do in life amount to nothing more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic . Ugh! But on the other hand, abandoning WYSIWYG comes at a price. We must accept that we cannot adequately model the world based solely on experience. We must add elements to our model that we cannot ‘prove’, logically, mathematically, or scientifically. We are necessarily now with Pascal (above) in the realm of ‘faith’. So what might an anti-WYSIWYG model look like? Amazingly, the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides, often called both the ‘father of western philosophy’ and the ‘father of western science’, provided us with just such a model. Qua scientist, Parmenides was a keen observer and used those observations to construct remarkably accurate models of myriad physical and astronomical phenomena. But, qua philosopher, he understood that the world itself could not be fully explained solely on the basis of such observations. For Parmenides, a world must have two faces or aspects, one seen, one unseeable. He called the former the Way of Appearance ( Doxa ) and the later the Way of Truth ( Aletheia ). Now the Way of Appearance is just what you’d expect: “To come to be and to perish, to be and not to be, to shift place and to exchange bright color.” This is a world we recognize: discrete objects and events, coming to be, then passing away, moving through space, interacting with others, and exchanging qualities in the process. But the Way of Truth is something else again: “What is ungenerated and imperishable, whole, single-limbed, steadfast and complete…Nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is, now, all together, one, continuous…Nor is it divisible, since it all alike is…it is full of what is…” 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 . Return to our Harvest Issue 2023 Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? 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< Back What's It All About, Alfie? David Cowles Sep 12, 2023 “It’s simple: anything is nothing without something, but something is nothing without anything…or life is a ripe banana. Take your pick!” Certain themes permeate Intellectual History like swirls of chocolate in a pint of fudge ripple; they pop up in different guises in different eras in different Weltanschauungs; for example: Aletheia vs. Doxa – Parmenides Substance vs. Accident – Aquinas Noumena vs. Phenomena – Kant Existence vs. Essence – Sartre, et al. Être vs. Neant – Sartre Pour Soi vs. En Soi – Sartre One vs. Many – Whitehead Actual Entity vs. Eternal Object – Whitehead While each of these memes has its own special merit, one formulation sums them up best: Dasein (that it is) vs. Wassein (what it is) – Heidegger Wassein includes everything you’d ever want to know (or could ever know) about an entity: its size, shape, color, etc. It concerns what philosophers call ‘Qualia’ (aka ‘qualities’). Anything that defines, describes, or qualifies an entity or event is part of its Wassein . Rule of Thumb #1 : if it can be expressed as an adjective or an adverb, it’s Wassein . Dasein , on the other hand, has no qualities. Rule of Thumb #2 : If you can describe it at all, it’s not Dasein . In fact, Dasein tells you one and only one thing about an entity: that it is! Anything other than that belongs on the other side of the ledger. Some ledger! On one side, you have everything there is to know about Universe; on the other side, you have just one thing: that it is! And yet, the two sides balance. As the song says, “You can’t have one without the other.” It’s simple: anything is nothing without something, but something is nothing without anything…or life is a ripe banana. Take your pick! Every Wassein is unique. Two things can’t be identical; if they were, they’d be one thing. To be X is not-to-be ~X. Even God is three distinct persons. Duplication is strictly prohibited by the nature of Being itself, and it’s a good thing, too, because otherwise we’d drown in an infinity of identities . Unlike Wassein , Dasein never varies, never changes. It's a ‘Qualia-free Zone’. If you’ve ever said anything at all about Dasein , you’ve misspoken. It truly is ineffable . My ‘I am’ is your ‘I am’; they are one ‘I am’. They are not similar, or congruent, or even identical; they are one thing. My ‘I am’ is your ‘I am’, God’s ‘I am’ and the ‘I am’ of a bacterium soon to be discovered on Mars. Now, don’t get me wrong. We couldn’t be more different, and I’m certainly not a bacterium or, last I checked, God. You’re a Mensa member, a tenured Ivy League professor, and a celebrated cellist… I am not. But your ‘being what you are’ and my ‘being what I am’ are one thing! Not similar, not alike, one . But there is no Dasein without Wassein . The universal ‘that’ of Dasein is incurably linked to the particular ‘what’ of Wassein . Undifferentiated Dasein ‘borrows uniqueness’ from Wassein ; like a virus, it infects Qualia with Being . Wassein is finite; Dasein is infinite (eternal). It is. It is is. It is is once only. Dasein is incurably one, just as Wassein is incurably many. The coincidence of Dasein and Wassein is what Whitehead called an ‘Actual Entity’: the many expressed as one and the one expressed as many. The Universe consists exclusively of Actual Entities. When an Actual Entity (AE) has run its course (i.e., ‘achieved satisfaction’), it transitions to ‘Objective Immortality’ (OI). Ab initio , every AE is sui generis ; it can literally become anything it wants, provided what it wants is compatible with the Actual World (AW) it inherits. I’m 5’ 9” and 75 years of age – “I know who I am, and I know that I can be whatever I want to be”, but that does not include playing basketball for the Boston Celtics. That is incompatible with my inherited Actual World. Once an AE enters OI, it is , it can no longer not be , nor can it be other than what it is; it is no longer an Actual Entity. An Actual Entity is process; once an AE becomes ‘settled matter of fact’, it ceases to be ‘in process’ and so ceases to be an AE. And Dasein ? When an Actual Entity passes into Objective Immortality, what happens to its Dasein ? Absolutely nothing! Nothing can ever happen to Dasein ; if it could, it would be Wassein . Dasein is eternal and universal; it occurs only in the context of Wassein , but it is entirely uncolored by such associations. When an Actual Entity becomes settled matter of fact, Dasein no longer ‘associates’ with that specific Wassein , but it remains associated with the Wassein of all remaining Actual Entities. The fate of Actual Entities per se is governed by cosmology: Big Bang, Big Freeze, etc., the details of which are well ‘above my pay grade’…but they don’t matter anyway! (Sorry, Professor Hawking.) What does matter is this: Every unique Actual Entity comes to be as a reaction to a unique Actual World. That Actual World is a nexus that includes the OI of every logically prior AE. There is an Actual World that is a nexus of all Objective Immortalities. The Actual Entity that corresponds to this uber-nexus is what we used to call “God”. Does that mean that we are all ultimately God? Not exactly. For God, Dasein and Wassein (existence and essence) are a single phenomenon (note that this is a restatement of the old ontological argument for God’s existence). For us, however, Dasein is always distinct from Wassein . Therefore, God is ‘essentially good’, while we, at best, are ‘accidentally good’. The ‘non-identity’ of Wassein and Dasein is Free Will . So the Bible had it right all along. We are the image and likeness of God ( Dasein ) but not God himself ( Wassein ). 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. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . 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 Janis Joplin and Robert Frost David Cowles Jun 12, 2025 “The relationship between Freedom and Value is complex…and remains unresolved.” Robert Frost is a B-list poet. He’s an American icon who spoke at JFK’s inauguration, but he is not normally included in the Pantheon . There’s no shame in that. As a D-lister myself, I am in awe of Frost; but the A-List is hard to crack. Among Anglophone poets alone, you’re competing with Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Yeats, Hopkins, Eliot, Dylan and Dylan. That said, Frost’s The Road Not Taken is one of the most important poems ever written in any language. It touches on themes ranging from Quantum Mechanics to Human Psychology…and unifies them. It addresses issues like teleology vs. causality and free will vs. determinism. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” is one of Janice Joplin’s most quoted lyrics. In context ( Me and Bobby McGee ), Janice may be referring to the fact that one is ‘free’ when one is no longer tethered to a significant other. But her meme suggests a much larger philosophical question: What is the relationship between Freedom and Value? Perhaps Janice is channeling Nietzsche : “…One belongs to the whole, one is in the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole… But nothing exists apart from the whole!” ( Twilight of the Idols ) Nietzsche recognized that the concept of Value requires a hierarchical model of Being – an idea he abhorred. So, intellectually honest to a fault, he rejected the concept of Value outright. Choice presupposes ‘evaluation’ and e valu ation implies Value . Merely random selection is not choice ! So per Nietzsche, Freedom and Value are mutually exclusive. According to Ole Nietzsch’, we are ‘free to choose’ precisely to the extent that we understand that Choice is a meaningless concept. (He prefers Fate .) Choices, to the extent they are motivated, are not ‘choices’ at all. Or rather, they are not our choices; they are choices the Universe makes for us . That’s what ‘motivation’ is – cosmic concerns impinging on one’s personal, amoral agenda. My parents tried to ‘motivate’ me to do better in school. I had other things in mind for my precious 10 th year of life. Doing well in school was their concern, not mine, but I was the one who experienced the motivation . All motivation is extrinsic; it’s one way I feel the presence of ‘(the) other(s)’ in my life. It is the underside of my Subjective Aim , i.e. what I wish to be - for me. The distinction is subtle, but real, and crucial. Motivation is passive (‘I am motivated’) vs. ‘I aim’. I become is passive. What I ‘become’ is logically prior to the ‘me’ who becomes it. I inherit what I become. One becomes an astronaut; one does not become an artist, an inventor, an entrepreneur. ‘I come to be’ is active; I am logically prior. I create what it is that I come to be. Janice offers a kinder, gentler version of Nietzsche. She does not deny the existence of real Value, far from it, but she sees pursuit of value as a voluntary sacrifice of freedom. It’s a trade-off. For Nietzsche, ‘Doing Good’ is simply an illusion; for Joplin on the other hand, Doing Good is good , but ultimately, it’s also suicidal. I become less so that others may become more; like Jesus, we sacrifice ourselves for others: “Greater love hath no man (sic) than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15: 13) “Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains a kernel. But if it dies it bears much fruit.” (John 12: 24) At the other end of the spectrum, Nietzsche’s contemporary, Pope Leo XIII, came to the precisely opposite conclusion: Freedom and Value are inseparable. According to Leo, one is free only when, and to the extent that, one maximizes value. Leo argues, convincingly, that no ‘sane’ person would ever choose less value over more unless she were constrained to do so. I am in a bar with a tall pour of scotch in front of me. I know that my ‘best’ choice is to leave the scotch unsipped and walk home; but I drink it anyway. I am constrained or motivated by my alcoholism to choose the lesser value, immediate gratification, over the greater value, good health. Leo is normally thought of as the anti-Marx …and not without reason; but perhaps he should also be known as the anti-Nietzsch’ . Between Nietzsche and Leo, but perpendicular to the almost Christian Joplin, we find Existentialism (e.g. Sartre): by the act of choosing we assign value. We can map these disparate views as follows: Sartre ∕ ∖ Nietz Leo ∖ ∕ Joplin We do not choose in consideration of inherent value; we create value when we choose: “Ye are gods !” (Psalm 82: 6) Well, actually, ‘Ye are Frosts’! We make choices, often willingly, sometimes enthusiastically, even though there are no objective criteria guiding those choices, but once made, those choices become moral imperatives. They thereby acquire value. We make life changing decisions in the same way spectacle-rich New Yorkers decide which MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL teams to root for, subjectively, arbitrarily. We live in New England. Some of us have never been West of the Mississippi (heck, some of us haven’t been West of the Hudson – our insularity can be a source of pride). Yet we love the Cowboys and hate the Raiders… We can introduce conflict when none exists…and we can become passionate about it. Let’s drop in on Frost during his famous ‘walk in the woods’: “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…long I stood and looked down one as far as I could…then took the other just as fair…Both that morning equally lay…I kept the first for another day…I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” The poem is deceptive. So much so that it is almost universally misunderstood. Like an all-pro NFL running back, it feints right before it cuts hard, to the left. Frost is confronted with a binary choice. Either choice will lead him equally well to his destination, so his choice has no extrinsic consequences. The only consequence is intrinsic: his experience of the journey itself. And about this he can only conjecture; he had no actual information. He is flying blind. I have to fly…to Seattle. I am weighing two alternatives. I can fly coach, change planes in Philly and reach my destination in 10 hours for $500. Or I can fly direct to Seattle, business class, in just 6 hours for $1,000; both get me to my destination in plenty of time for my meetings the next day. My decision has no extrinsic consequence; but the intrinsic consequences are significant. Objectively speaking, Frost’s ‘choice’ is not a choice at all. Either way, he will reach his destination, and his choice is not informed by any useful information about either of the two alternative paths: “both that morning equally lay.” Frost’s choice, no matter how he dresses it up, is effectively a coin toss; but there’s no ego reward in that. So, he creates his own rationale to justify his choice and reinforce his precious self-image. Frost imagines himself an explorer, an adventurer, a taker-of-risk and so he paints his groundless decision in just those colors. Doing so, he guarantees himself a smug and self-satisfied old age. According to the Dogma of 20 th century Existentialism, the greatest sin, the sin against the Holy Spirit, the sin that cannot be forgiven, is the sin of ‘bad faith’. We are guilty of bad faith whenever… (1) we act, but do not accept responsibility for our actions, or (2) we act, and pretend, to ourselves and others, that our actions are motivated by objective considerations rather than subjective preferences. But the case of Frost v Frost presents us with an unusual twist. Does Frost ‘pretend’ to himself and others that his actions are extrinsically motivated? The answer is: Yes! “I shall be telling this with a sigh…I took the one less traveled by.” But Frost is fully aware of what he’s doing; he calls himself out! So is he guilty of bad faith…or not? Frost’s complex psychological motivations seem incongruous with his homespun literary style. The dichotomy is what gives the poem its tension and makes its straightforward interpretation so challenging. It screams one thing while it actually says the opposite. Faced with a similar dilemma (paths, woods, a CNN film crew broadcasting it all live from the tree tops), some folks would be content just to flip a coin: they would willingly subcontract their existential freedom to the vicissitudes of pure chance. Not Frost! Being human, Frost is intent on giving his ‘choice’ meaning, whether or not such meaning exists in any objective sense. He cannot not choose, but neither can he tolerate the idea that his choice is random. He feels compelled to invent ‘significance’…even if there isn’t any. Like Einstein, Frost cannot accept the idea that God spends his evenings at the Craps table whenever he visits the Bellagio . (But unlike Einstein, Frost knows he does, because he often plays right alongside him at the high rollers’ table – apparently science and the arts pay better than we’ve been led to believe.) So Frost invents a value scale that reinforces his somewhat adolescent self-image – we are not far from armored knights hunting dragons in Celtic forests – and he uses that scale to give his random decisions a veneer of intentionality, and therefore meaning. It is his act of choosing that designates the road chosen as ‘the one less traveled’, even though there is no objective evidence that that is the case. He then defines himself as someone who follows less traveled pathways, and he concludes: “…that has made all the difference.” He has manufactured a value system out of whole cloth, and he uses the resulting gradations to label his randomly chosen path ‘less traveled’, which translates into ‘better’ in Frost’s private language. So Frost begins (or continues) his lifelong project: the construction of a narrative that will come to be known as his life : “I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less traveled by...” The meaning of Frost’s choice comes entirely from the ‘subjective form’ (Whitehead) he gives to his actions. My Life is nothing but a series of stories I tell myself about myself to myself (and others) based on an essentially random sequence of events. The subjective aim that I attribute to my actions becomes the thread of the My Life narrative (Rob Lowe has contracted to play me in the movie version.) Barely 40, Frost had already outlined his autobiography, written his epitaph, and delivered his eulogy – not bad for someone who lived well into his ‘80s. So the relationship between Freedom and Value is complex…and remains unresolved: According to Nietzsche, Value and Freedom are incompatible, even anathematic. We are free; because there is no Value! Joplin agrees that Value and Freedom are incompatible, but she permits them to coexist on a continuum; we sacrifice Freedom when we pursue Value. According to Frost, neither Freedom nor Value are objectively real. We imagine we are free when we are in fact making random choices and arbitrarily conferring value on those choices. Finally, Pope Leo: Far from being incompatible, Value and Freedom are inextricable. We are free to the extent and only to the extent that we pursue Value. And you, dear reader, what say you now? *** Image: Hopper, Edward. Automat, 1927. Oil on canvas, 28 inches by 36 inches. Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa. Edward Hopper’s Automat captures the still, inward tension of individual isolation and the quiet gravity of decision-making. The lone woman seated in the café evokes a moment of introspection, possibly in the wake of a choice, or just before one is made. Like Robert Frost’s walker in the woods, she is poised between paths, caught in the suspension of meaning that emerges only after the fact. The painting offers no narrative resolution, only the weight of interiority, similar to our essay’s argument that the consequence of a choice lies not in its external impact, but in the subjective meaning we assign to it after the moment has passed. 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 Lubavitcher Rebbe David Cowles Jul 1, 2025 “Right here, right now, it’s about doing a good deed. That connection, even if seemingly transient, is transcendent and eternal.” This week marks the 31st year since the passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. A recent article (6/25/2025) by Mordechai Lightstone in Chabad.org Magazine celebrates the Rebbe’s indelible contribution to Western spirituality. I will quote liberally from Mr. Lightstone but recognizing that Aletheia Today addresses a ‘theologically diverse’ audience, I will not hesitate to draw parallels with other traditions (e.g. Christian) where appropriate, without in any way wishing to compromise the distinctly Jewish character of the Rebbe’s teaching. “Born in 1902 in Nikolaev, Ukraine…the Lubavitcher Rebbe…believed that every person— regardless of background or knowledge—could be empowered as a conduit to spread goodness and kindness wherever they were. Together, those combined acts could illuminate the world, elevating it and bringing true transcendence.” He spoke to the youth: “Rather than view children as merely unfinished adults, the Rebbe recognized the vigor, openness and pursuit of truth among youth as unique advantages they could teach and inspire their world-weary elders.” “And a little child shall lead them.” (Isaiah 11:6) “Unless you become like little children you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) “Rebellion is Revelation: the Rebbe was an orthodox rebel, a traditional radical. In the Sixties, the rest of the Jewish establishment looked on in disdain at what was happening to their youth…(but he) declared: ‘Finally, the iceberg of America is beginning to melt! Finally, its young people are demonstrating that conformity is not the sum of life’s goals! They have smashed the idols of false progress; they need now only be led back to the living waters of their heritage…’” “I came to ignite a fire on earth and how I wish it was already blazing.” (Luke 12:49) “I did not come to abolish the law…but to fulfill it.” (Matthew 5:17) He was a feminist. “When the world struggled with including women in the rubric of Jewish tradition, the Rebbe had long empowered them to be leaders and thinkers, masters of the Jewish future and bringers of light into the world.” “The Rebbe viewed every person as comprised of inherent goodness at the core and possessing a unique role in the world…The Rebbe sought to imbue joy…(He) created a 10point mitzvah campaign focusing on simple, practical and actionable deeds that could be performed anywhere…What you did until now—and what you’ll do tomorrow—is not the focus. Right here, right now, it’s about doing a good deed. That connection, even if seemingly transient, is transcendent and eternal.” There is only now but now is eternal. “In 1974, the Rebbe introduced the world to the Mitzvah Tank: trucks or RVs converted into mobile Jewish centers where Jewish pride could be writ large—bold, brash and ready to engage the public.” Ken Keasey and the Merry Pranksters! Or the Partridge Family. The Rebbe was ecumenical: “Gentiles need not become Jews to gain transcendence.” The nascent Christian church reached the same conclusion at the first Jerusalem council when Peter decreed that Gentiles did not need to become Jews before becoming Christians. “Each of us, following our unique callings, can live an upright and ethical life…(He) encouraged all mankind to follow the universal moral principles entrusted to us by G-d (and) known as the Seven Noahide Laws:” Do not worship idols, do not curse God, do not murder, do not engage in sexual immorality, do not steal, do not eat the flesh of a live animal, establish courts of justice. “Each individual has a path within a path. Yet there is one universal basis for us all. Through such cooperation, the Rebbe believed the world could reach its ultimate raison d’être.” One is reminded of Robert Frost "In The Road Not Taken," Frost is forced to choose between two paths but in the certain knowledge that either will lead him home (the Kingdom of God perhaps). It is not about the destination, it’s about the journey; it’s not about the end, it’s about the means. Sorry Machiavelli! “As the Rebbe told former New York City Mayor David Dinkins: ‘We are one side. We are one people, living in one city, under one administration and under one G-d.’” The world is a onesided Mobius Strip, not a two-sided coin. (There is a lesson for 21st century America in this teaching!) He was a modernist. “…The Rebbe propelled a view of Jewish life not in contradiction to technological advances, considering the burgeoning field a valuable component to achieving greater good. Using the latest means of communication, the Rebbe encouraged that radio in the 1950s, satellite in the 1980s and Internet in the early 1990s all be used to advance knowledge and education…” “Spreading Jewish knowledge isn’t something that should be left only to the Jewish professionals or clergy. The Rebbe would exhort that if all you know is alef, then teach alef! Each of us has the power to instruct and inspire others. What is more, we’re tasked to not just teach others, but to fully empower them so that they, in turn, can teach others. Like a lamplighter kindling a flame, once the wick is fully lit, it can be used to kindle other lights to come.” Knowledge and virtue can be contagious…so be your own patient zero! In a non-Archimedean universe each of us is the center. Think Globally/Act Locally. “. . .Jews should travel to communities around the world… (but) form a holistic part of the communities they serve…” Would that all missionaries of all faiths followed the Rebbe’s guidance. “Each community—and each individual in it—is empowered to perform the final word, thought or action that can tip the scales, and bring redemption to the entire world.” At least intuitively, the Rebbe understood the finer points of chaos theory. All events are ontologically equal and any event can be historically decisive. We are all butterflies ceaselessly flapping our wings. We are all called to be priests, prophets, and kings, to spread beauty, truth and justice throughout the cosmos. It is a terrible artifact of the Archimedean world view that most of us are overwhelmed by the enormity of this challenge. We give up. “What can I do?” What can any one person do in a world so large, in a cosmos so vast? Quelle Domage! But the real, substructural world is not so large, nor is the cosmos so vast. We do not live in an Archimedean universe. The whole is not simply the sum of its parts. Counter intuitively, a single ‘part’ can be even greater than the whole. In this regard, Christians have an edge. According to the Doctrine of Incarnation, Jesus Christ, “true God and true man”, the 2nd person of the Blessed Trinity, born into the world as a ‘part’, is infinitely greater than the ‘whole’ created world into which he was born. “Through him all things were made.” (John 1: 1-5) So this week, and every week, it is appropriate that we celebrate the life and teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, as we strive to live his lessons in our fractured world. Abraham Rattner, Star of David , pencil, ink and watercolor, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1977.36.42 Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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“How new wealth is to be distributed is just as important as how old wealth has been distributed.” < Back Utilitarianism David Cowles Dec 1, 2023 “How new wealth is to be distributed is just as important as how old wealth has been distributed.” The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number – who could possibly argue that this is not the proper metric for measuring the ethical value of any act? I mean, what else could it be? Could an act that produces less good for fewer people possibly be preferable to one that produces more good for more people? In practice, when we’re not being totally selfish, most of us are guided by some version of Utilitarianism in our daily lives. It’s not a terrible way to live; it certainly speaks of good intentions (whatever they’re worth). But beyond that, what does it mean ? Like most self-evident memes, when we try to untangle this one, it falls apart in our hands. Take ‘Good’ for instance. I won’t even get into the general problem of defining ‘Good’; that’s not necessary for this purpose. Instead, whatever ‘Good’ is, I’ll just ask: How do we know what’s good for another person or group? Do we assume that what’s good for one is good for all? Is what’s good , good in every circumstance? Or is good ‘context dependent’? Is what’s good today, automatically good tomorrow? Or does that evolve over time? But even if we could know what’s good for every person at every time in every circumstance, how do we quantify various goods so we can compare them? Otherwise, how could we determine ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’? Plus, when we talk about what’s good, are we talking about immediate, short term, or long term good? Do we discount ‘future goods ’ by calculating their ‘present value’ or do we just add them all up? How many ‘ goods in the bush’ does it take to equal one ‘ good in the hand’? Finally and most importantly, are we prepared to reduce ethics to arithmetic? Suppose we have 100 ‘units’ of good ; how do we best spread those 100 units across 20 potential beneficiaries? Of course, it doesn’t matter. Whatever we do, we’ll end up with 20 people sharing 100 units of good ; everyone benefits. We are assuming, of course, that the quantity of good does not change, no matter how we ‘share the wealth’. (Below we’ll consider scenarios in which this may not be the case.) So, what are my options? I could give 1 unit of good to each of 19 beneficiaries and 81 units of good to one beneficiary; or I could give 5 units of good to every beneficiary; or I could do anything in between. The doctrine of Utilitarianism per se does not offer any obvious solution to this dilemma. Are we to conclude then that every distribution model is morally equivalent? Or do we need to start adding conditions to modify our original meme? And if we do, will we end up with something like Ptolemaic cosmology, Rube Goldberg economics, and Justinian law? So the famous meme, for all its high sound, is hollow. It’s denotatively vacuous (that’s ‘meaningless’ for those of you sent down ). But unfortunately, it’s not connotatively vacuous. Since it can be perverted to justify almost any distribution scheme, it effectively blesses our worst instincts. It allows both robber-baron capitalists and Stalinist economic planners to sleep soundly while you and I toss and turn. The Peter and Paul of Utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, did not fully understand the impact that distribution has on productivity. The store of goods is not only not fixed, it’s highly volatile. It is subject to amazing growth spurts, and contractions, that turn out to be surprisingly sensitive to the way goods are distributed. The distribution of goods fuels demand, which in turn stimulates supply. To the extent that total supply increases the additional goods need to be distributed – but not necessarily according to the same formula as before. In this, economics is a bit like Quantum Mechanics: the future (measurement) influences the past (data). How new wealth is to be distributed is just as important as how old wealth has been distributed. Can we redeem the Utilitarian impulse? Sure, just create a computer model, plug in the various distribution options, press enter and see which strategy produces the most goodies, weighted as you will, over the next 20 years. That’s surely the distribution option that generates the most good for the most people. But are we willing to bless such an outcome? Is it morally acceptable? Worse, is it an ethical imperative? We have unmasked Utilitarianism as the naked Pragmatism it is. Kids, get ready to head back to the sweat shops, J. S. Mill is coming for you! Who’d have thought that a kid who read ancient Greek at the age of 3 would turn into such a bully? The British Utilitarians put lip stick on Machiavelli’s pig…and they did a first rate job of it. How many school kids have been taught that Machiavelli’s ‘ends justify means’ is wrong while Mill’s ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ is right? Even though they mean exactly the same thing! But what’s the alternative? Ethical nihilism ? On the contrary, Utilitarianism is ethical nihilism, all dressed up with nowhere to go. So what’s the solution? We need to reject all ‘results based’ ethics and turn instead to an ‘acts based’ morality. Causality is a useful concept…in engineering, but not in ethics. It’s useful when you’re building a skyscraper or landing an astronaut on Mars because the universe of discourse is rigidly defined. It is useless when you need to measure what’s good over an indefinitely large population, over an indefinitely long period of time, in an indefinite variety of circumstances. In that case, there is no well-defined universe of discourse. So, we need to divorce ethics from pragmatics. In fact, true ethics is often anti-pragmatic: sometimes we have to make hard choices, even die to defend our beliefs or to rescue a child or to save a friend! When we make such a choice, we don’t first calculate the pragmatics. It’s easy to calculate ‘the greatest good’ and then devise and execute a strategy to achieve it. Before ‘ political alienation ’, politicians used to campaign on slogans like “Progress & Prosperity” or “A Chicken in every Pot”. To advocate against such a strategy on ethical grounds is difficult, so it’s no wonder that the corrupt kings of Israel hated the prophets. A successful anti-utilitarian ethics must be based on the act itself, not on its distant consequences. In fact, according to Chaos Theory , the very idea of ‘long term consequences’ is an oxymoron. ‘A then B’. In so far as A and B are poles of a single act, they are properly co-dependent. But once Act A reaches its conclusion (‘satisfaction’), any subsequent B is indeterminable. B may be partially predictable based on the laws of probability, but no B is ever determined by any A. That doesn’t mean ‘everything is permitted’ (Dostoyevsky). Acts-based ethics can be very, very strict. Consider the 10 Commandments, the 611 specific mitzvahs of Torah, or the ‘House Rules’ our moms used to post on the refrigerator door. The history of Western ethics consists of oscillation between nihilism ( aka pragmatism) and legalism: everything is permitted…or nothing is permitted. Neither is correct! Every act begins by executing judgment on the world as it is, guided by divine values such as Beauty, Truth, and Justice. In today’s secular terminology, every act aims to make the world a better place. Emoji! Emoji! Emoji! Every act unfolds as a process of accepting or rejecting, amplifying or dampening, influences from the world it inherits. Guided by its evaluation of its actual world and by its interpretation of the divine values, every act forms a novel ‘subjective aim’. Of course, it never gets where it’s going! Nobody gets to be God expect God. Still, every process reaches an endpoint, having achieved its measure of ‘satisfaction’ which becomes the act’s ‘objective immortality’, projected forward (‘superject’) into the actual world of every subsequent act. Every act is completely responsible for itself. From its initial valuation of its actual world through its satisfaction – it lives in the ‘no excuse zone’. But once that act is complete, ‘satisfied’ and objectively immortal, that responsibility ends; novel acts are responsible for what happens going forward. My act compels nothing; it just gives the future material to work on and, hopefully, redeem. The only ‘effect’ an act should be concerned with is its effect upon itself (and its subject I suppose). I am my own cause and my own effect. But make no mistake: I am totally responsible for both. I’m just not responsible for what the world does with ‘me’ after that. It is no surprise that Utilitarianism became the dominant ethical ideology just as Leibniz and Newton were inventing Calculus. Utilitarianism represents the subcontracting of ethics to mathematics: irreducible qualities are treated as mere quantities. According to Utilitarianism, Pragmatics is now the measure of all things. Unless we intervene! 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 . Return to Yuletide 2023 Share Previous Next 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! Click here. 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< Back SETI and the Meaning of Life David Cowles Sep 26, 2025 “If we are so far unable to find meaning for our existence, why would we expect meeting ET to change things?” A recent post by Harvard professor, Avi Loeb, Finding a Meaning to Our Existence from Extraterrestrial Siblings , unfurled a flurry of (non-Marxist) red flags chez moi . The title alone is enough to put one off. If we are so far unable to find meaning for our existence, why would we expect meeting ET to change things? Here’s Avi… “ Dr. Rolf Dobelli… asked me what future event might endow humans with a deeper meaning for their existence? I suggested that an encounter with alien intelligence could deliver…” First Reaction : Why should I await & expect some contingent ‘future event’ ( Godot ) to ‘endow’ my life with meaning? Either my life is meaningful, or it isn’t. Either way, meaning cannot be contingent on an event that has not happened yet and may never happen at all. Finally, even if there is such an event, how and why would meeting ET be that event? Second Reaction : In the Judeo-Christian tradition there is a class of events that do ‘endow’ human life with meaning. Events in this class have a common actor, i.e. God, a unique, universal and eternal entity that utterly transcends the phenomenal world. Likewise, in many pagan cosmologies, where celestial phenomena are regularly regarded as ‘transcendent’, the two realms touch at certain extreme points, e.g. May Day, Halloween, the equinoxes and/or the solstices, dawn and/or dusk (Yeats), the edge of the World (Synge). Often, the Milky Way is understood as a permanent ‘path’ connecting ontological realms. Depending on your preferred flavor of Judeo-Christianity, there may be null, one, several, or innumerable events in this special class: YHWH: “I am who I am.” St. Dallan “Naught is all else to me, save that Thou art!” Creation ( ex nihilo ), the 7 days of Genesis . Incarnation, Transfiguration, Transubstantiation, Resurrection, Ascension, Ekklesia (Church), Parousia (Apocalypse): One event, many manifestations? Or many events? Salvation, Redemption, and a ‘personal relationship with Jesus Christ’. Third Reaction : Avi Loeb is confusing the exotic with the transcendent. ET is exotic but certainly not transcendent. Dr. Loeb is not alone in this error. The accumulation of quantity in the vain pursuit of quality is an ongoing theme across much of human civilization: Pharos buried with hordes of gold to fund their afterlives (the ultimate 401k). “Living well is the best revenge.” ( The Great Gatsby ) “Climb every mountain.” – the accumulation of experiences. ( Sound of Music ) Seeking God in extremis – across the sea, on mountain tops, in forests or in space. Seeking God in extremis – sacrifice, self-denial, fasting, mystical experiences, etc. “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings, look on my works ye mighty and despair!” (Shelley), “Nothing beside remains.” Expecting ET to confer meaning on our sad little lives falls under this umbrella. Whitehead might say this acquisitiveness is a special example of the more general fallacy of misplaced concreteness that occurs whenever we misjudge the ontological status of some existent. The paradigmatic example of misplaced concreteness is idolatry. We fashion an idol out of inanimate materials (marble, wealth, comfort, security, gratification, intoxication) and we call it ‘God’, i.e. we invest it with the power to create, and we grant it ultimate importance in our lives. 150 years ago, Nietzsche confronted and demolished this artifact of intellectual sloth with a single sentence: “One belongs to the whole, one is in the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole…but nothing exists apart from the whole!” ( Twilight of the Idols ) Nietzsche was among the first to point out that a relationship of ‘meaning’ cannot exist between ontologically parallel entities. ‘To mean (or be meant)’ is to enter into an asymmetrical relationship according to which events of one ontological order confer ‘meaning’ on events of another order. Dr. Loeb: “Finding extraterrestrial siblings would inspire us to reach out beyond the limited experiences we had so far on our home planet. There are richer opportunities in our cosmic street than available at home.” This last line is probably true. Reciprocal cultural exchanges with a near-by exo-civilization would undoubtedly add additional variety to the inventory of experiences available to us. But does variety per se create meaning or is it just our old friend ‘quantity’ in a new guise? What would it mean for our lives to have meaning, with or without ET ? The events that make up our lives already have significant order among themselves. But significance is not meaning . According to the theory of Causality, for example, events relate to one another as causes and effects . They have ‘significance’ inter se …but that is not meaning! All events (or almost all) function both as causes and as effects . They form a potentially endless daisy chain. But no such event gives any other such event its meaning. These events cannot confer meaning on one another because they exist on an ontological plain. There is no hint of hierarchy. When we ‘judge, measure, compare, (or) condemn’, we consider not the value neutral event itself but the value rich meaning of that event. We implicitly acknowledge that the object of our valuation has meaning. We execute judgement from an external, i.e. transcendent , vantage point. However, there is no reason to suppose that such experiences would be of a different ontological order; in fact, it’s hard to imagine what an experience of a different ontological order would be like. And if the promise of SETI is nothing more than greater quantity and variety of ontologically parallel experiences, how does that help us find meaning? My friend and I got ‘day labor’ jobs catching ball bearings as they came off the assembly line. Within the limits of engineering, any two balls are identical. The foreman allows my friend and me to keep one ball each as a souvenir of our day in the salt mines; but my ball does not give meaning to my friend’s, nor his, mine. If ‘ball bearings’ have meaning, that meaning must come from something that transcends them per se , e.g. the machines into which they will be inserted and for which they perform an essential task. You bristle at the hierarchical implications of this model, but it is not hierarchy per se that is required here. What’s required is transcendence. For example, it is not impossible that ‘parts’ might organize themselves into a ‘whole’ whose coordinated behavior ‘transcends’ the contributions made by each, e.g. they could form a body…like yours! In that case, it’s not a matter of hierarchy because there is only the ‘cells’ themselves, but they appear in two or more aspects: separately as individuals and collectively as an organism. The whole transcends its parts; the body transcends its cells; the machine transcends its ball bearings. They do what they are designed to do with presumably no understanding of the role they play in the final, machined product. Their essential function in the operation of the machine and in the manufacture of its product is their meaning . It is what they are, not in themselves ( en soi ) or for themselves ( pour soi ) or even for each other, but what they are for the machine and its products that transcend them. Under one aspect, each cell is its ‘own man’ (sic), doing its ‘own thing’; but under another aspect, all cells are ‘working as one’ in service of functions none of them understands or even intuits. That too is transcendence…but without politically incorrect hierarchies. Avi Loeb concludes: “For example, those worried about the cold death of the Universe would find solace in the opportunity to join a camping site of intelligent beings around an artificial source of heat. This would allow humanity to survive the future cosmic winter for potentially more than ten trillion years, the longest lifespan of stars.” We could all sing Kumbaya . Again, the fallacy of quality as accumulated quantity. In fact, the reassurance of a 10 trillion year camp fire would have zero impact on someone truly worried about the evaporation of Being. At best, and even this is a stretch, it’s a band aid and the patient is bleeding out! There is only one camp fire that could possibly console someone confronting the ontological abyss and that’s the perpetually burning bush of Exodus 3. *** La vie est touchée (oil on canvas, 144.8 × 204.5 cm) by Roberto Matta places a network of alien-totemic figures and sinuous, almost skeletal forms across a cosmic “inscape,” suggesting contact between enigmatic beings and a larger existential field. Technological devices and abstract shapes, depicted as if in motion across space, —forces moving through a psychic as well as cosmic dimension. The work fuses the organic and the mechanical, evoking a liminal zone where life is “touched” by unseen energies and unexpected encounters. 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.

Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL continues his regular blog, “Monastic Scribe”, where he reflects on "what I may have learned from all these years and what I am still trying to learn." Fr. Timothy notes, “I do not speak on behalf of Glastonbury Abbey, the Archdiocese of Boston or the Catholic Church, though I hope my faith is in harmony with all these. Any error in judgment should be credited to me and not anyone else.” < Back Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL Contributor Fr. Timothy Joyce, OSB, STL continues his regular blog, “ Monastic Scribe ”, where he reflects on "what I may have learned from all these years and what I am still trying to learn." Fr. Timothy notes, “I do not speak on behalf of Glastonbury Abbey, the Archdiocese of Boston or the Catholic Church, though I hope my faith is in harmony with all these. Any error in judgment should be credited to me and not anyone else.” Jesus Meets Mr. Spock

< Back Burying Biscuit (to Cole Porter) -- a Childhood in a Single Tale Annie D. Stutley "...of course it would be the home of a hamster with a preference for a song about a bunch of sinners on a cruise ship begging for a revival." The life and death of Biscuit the Hamster is one of curiosity, tragedy, and ultimately the perfect capture of my childhood. It begins with the hamster of my friend Kelly. I just adored her hamster. I’d ride my bike to her house, which in the 1980s basically meant that she lived within state lines. We’d study the dances in the videos on MTV, have tea parties at the bottom of her above ground pool, and play with her hamster. I was smitten and just had to get one of my own. The story goes that I named mine Biscuit because that was the name of the maltipoo I met during our notorious road trip to California , the vacation when Pop pulled up to the Beverly Hills mansion of his college friend in our rented, banged up RV, knocking down his friend’s fancy mailbox in the process. I just loved that maltipoo and figured if I couldn’t get a maltipoo of my own, I could at least save its name for a rainy day—for the name of a dog in a short story or for a hamster, which I did. Biscuit was a pretty good roommate as far as hamsters go. His bed (or pile of mulched cedar) was in an old terrarium across my room on my desk where he mostly kept to himself. Pop built a screen that latched onto the rim of his glass home, which was a good thing because Biscuit was surprisingly agile for something so small and stubby. I don’t know how that adorable rodent did it, but he ignored his exercise wheel entirely, opting to climb up the outside of the wheel and suspend himself upside down from the screen instead. I figured he was one of the brilliant hamsters; he knew that wheel would never get him anywhere if he used it traditionally, so he’d get to his spot on the screen and crawl across the top of the cage, upside down, eventually turning back to the wheel and back down to the cedar. Unless he fell first, which sometimes happened. Hamsters don’t turn around while plummeting like cats do. They just plop, but he’d always scramble back onto his feet and reward his acrobatics with a cedar nap in the corner. His trapeze act was a bit unnerving. Screens scratch and creak when a hamster uses them as monkey bars. It sounded similar to what I was sure the monster in my closet would sound like if ever got around to really messing with me. But one thing quieted my strange pet and made him, quite remarkably, fixate on me: the soundtrack to “Anything Goes.” To be specific, the revival starring Patti LuPone. To be even more specific, that fuzzy, domesticated circus rat had a favorite song: “Blow, Gabriel, Blow.” At eleven, I already had an eclectic music collection. As the caboose of five, I had an impressive memory of all Michael Jackson, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Duran Duran, and even some Rush lyrics. Being the daughter of an opera lover (Pop), I not only knew what “The Magic Flute” was, I could sing “The Queen of the Night” – albeit sharply. Finally, being Mom’s baby after nine years of praying for “just one more,” I was the recipient of everything she never got to do with the first four, which mostly amounted to watching every MGM musical Louis B. Mayer produced. Somehow this led to a love of Cole Porter and “Anything Goes.” My childhood home was a madcap household of dancing and singing and recreating the World’s Fair with Fisher Price toys across the foyer and spilling into the living room. Mom and Pop never stifled creativity; they accomodated it with supplies, suggestions, and a willingness to witness whatever production we had gotten ourselves into that day. It was never quiet and rarely without drama, so of course it would also be the home of a hamster with a preference for a song about a bunch of sinners on a cruise ship begging for a revival. But one day, Biscuit got what was coming to him. I came home from school to see him dragging his stubby little legs across the cedar. Mom had him at the vet within thirty minutes. His diagnosis: a broken back. We would have had to put him down right then and there if Doctor Gibbs hadn’t knelt down at eye level to me and asked, “Do you think you can do something very grown-up?” “Mhmm,” I blubbered. “Anything.” “You’re going to have to help Biscuit pee several times a day,” he said soberly. I’m gonna what??? I honestly thought I had done a lot of interesting things by the time I was eleven. I dove off the high dive at the YMCA and didn’t die trying. I taught myself how to ride a ten-speed. I said goodbye to each one of my siblings as they left for college and raised Mom and Pop on my own, but never did I think I’d learn how to gently massage the belly of a hamster until a bright, yellow droplet of pee popped out of its teeny-tiny urethra. However, not only did I do it, I was Biscuit’s personal catheter for a good few weeks – straight into summer and our annual vacation at Prien Lake in July. Between setting out crab lines and diving to the bottom of the lake for shells and rocks, I’d run up to the old lake house, give Biscuit a good squirt, and run back down the wharf. It was on that vacation that Biscuit died, though. Mom found him in the cedar very still; she knew. I wasn’t surprised, but it still hurt all the same. Biscuit was buried in the shade of a big, sprawling Oak at the base of the bluff overlooking the lake. Pop dug a hole. Mom said a prayer, and my sisters stood in attendance, dutifully, in spite of the fading peak tanning hours. Just before “Amen,” I cried out, “Wait!” I ran back up to the house, tears flying from my cheeks. I grabbed my boom box and a recording of “Anything Goes,” the revival starring Patti LuPone. Biscuit was ushered into Heaven to the sounds of “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” right there on the bluff where West Louisiana sees God’s most magnificent sunsets. As Patti’s vibrato shook, we all bowed our heads. I didn’t think this at the time, but I don’t know how my sisters, Mom, or Pop held it together. How did they not split into hysterical laughter? Not even a chuckle. Not even a raised eyebrow. But that was just the way of things in our glorious chaos. Something was always happening for better or worse, but it was never dull and thrived on wonder, love, and a whole lot of faith. The importance of that one year when I was the owner of a stunt hamster goes beyond learning that I can do hard things (like squeeze the pee out something) and has more to do with just how good I had it. I didn’t grow up with much money, but I lived large. My parents shared their interests with me and fed mine with everything they had, even if it was just their time. My siblings too. We knew there was treasure there within our four walls of suburbia, and we put our whole hearts into its safe keeping. (Matthew 6:21) We played together, dreamed together, prayed together, and made a production out of everything, including the burial of a hamster— especially one with a soft spot for Cole Porter. Annie D. Stutley lives and writes in New Orleans, La. She edits several small publications and contributes to various print and online magazines. Her blog, " That Time You, " was ranked in the Top 100 Blogs by FeedSpot. To read more of her work, go to her website , or follow her at @anniedstutley or Annie D. Stutley-writer on Facebook. Return to our Beach Read 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back AI and the Borg Collective David Cowles Sep 19, 2025 “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” A number of jurisdictions are using AI to identify people who may potentially be involved in criminal activity. Unlike the sleuths we follow faithfully on TV, Detective AI does not zero in on a potential suspect’s actions in order to detect hints of socially deviant behavior. Instead, it focuses almost exclusively on an individual’s sociological markers. An unemployed individual, Frank, who suddenly pays cash for a Beverly Hills estate, is behaving in a way that may, or may not , indicate criminal behavior, even if the crime, Mr. Capone, is nothing more than tax evasion. Of course, there’s no proof that any crime has been committed. Frank may have received a large inheritance from a long lost uncle. But on the surface, Frank’s behavior is suspicious, and so we are generally comfortable with Detective O’Malley (or AI) ‘looking into it’. Sally, on the other hand, is homeless. She has never in her life so much as shoplifted a pack of gum, but her demographics fit a profile that has been highly correlated in various studies with criminality. Did I mention she was ‘unhoused’ and without any ‘visible means of support’? She falls into a particular age group, has a particular level of education (or lack thereof), a certain work history, credit score, etc. And, of course, she happens to belong to a certain ethnic group (insert your favorite target here). While Det. O’Malley would have no reason even to interview Sally, AI has flagged her for ‘aggressive’ law enforcement follow-up. Justified? Or not? It is true that Sally’s demographic characteristics, when combined, have a higher than average correlation with criminal behavior. While that certainly doesn’t mean that Sally is a criminal, does it justify ‘keeping an eye on her’? Long before true AI, the IRS used such a model to pick out taxpayers (or non-payers) for audit. Supposedly, a certain number of taxpayers are randomly selected for audit each year and an additional number are targeted based on income level, lifestyle, occupation, audit history, etc. Is such a selection process justified? A truly randomized selection process would be fairer, but it would hardly ever catch serious tax cheats, and it would raise very little revenue for the taxing authorities. On the other hand, auditing only ‘high-fliers’ would encourage ‘low visibility’ individuals to consider themselves immune. So, the traditional audit selection criteria have a lot going for them: They catch a lot of cheats and raise a lot of revenue in the process. They discourage those who might be tempted to play in ‘the grey zone’. They even encourage folks to over-report income and under-deduct expenses so as not to attract the auditors’ attention. Finally, they make sure everyone knows that no one is exempt from oversight. It’s hard to imagine a more efficient algorithm…but does that make it fair? Back to Sally. AI treats Sally as the intersection of a bunch of sociological variables. The apparent assumption, stated primitively, is that if you add up all of the influences in Sally’s life, you should be able to predict her behavior with a tolerable degree of accuracy. Of course, much hinges on your definition of ‘tolerable’; what can you tolerate ? Do you require a level of conviction that puts the matter beyond any reasonable doubt (criminal standard)? Or will you settle for anything above a 50% probability (civil standard)? Or will any correlation over ‘merely random coincidence’ satisfy you? But regardless of your level of tolerance, there is a bigger problem: Sally’s sociological markers don’t include Sally . There is no allowance for Sally’s agency. We have ‘post-modernized’ Sally, reducing her to the sum of her influences. It is not Sally who acts, it is her poverty, ethnicity, etc. that act through her. And yet, it is Sally who will ‘do the time’ if convicted. Fair? At the other end of the spectrum, the model of community displayed by Startrek’s Borg Collective takes ‘post-modern Sally’ to a whole other level. While AI threatens to turn Sally into the sum of her sociological influences, the Borg model reduces Sally to a simple quantum in a complex meta-mind. Effectively, the Borg hijack Sally’s brain, her ‘compute power’, and deploy it in service of an agenda that has nothing to do with Sally and has no concern for her welfare other than, perhaps, keeping her alive long enough to maximize her return on the Borg’s investment. Sally’s fate is that of post 20 th century humans generally. She is caught between two lines of fire. On the one hand, her unique personality has been outsourced to a series of external influences: Freudian parenting, Jungian archetypes, Marxist class. On other hand, her personhood has been co-opted by a disinterested meta-mind for its own, possibly nefarious, purposes. Sally’s agency has effectively disappeared. She is doubly relieved of responsibility. First, her behavior has been accounted for solely as the intersection of influences: nothing uniquely ‘Sally’ required. She is de trop , redundant, white noise. She is a ghost in her own machine. (Ryle) On the other hand, her behavior is dictated by her compulsory service to the collective Borg identity. Sally is the prototypical Nazi commandant; she is ‘just following orders’. To what can I compare 21 st century Sally? Shall I compare her to a summer’s day? I don’t think so. How about a cell in an animal body? On the one hand, she is a product of her nuclear DNA, her mitochondria, and the proteins they produce; on the other hand, she is a cog in an organelle whose sole responsibility is the well-being of its meta-organism. Close, but still not quite. A cell in an animal body probably retains a smidge more agency than our hapless Sally. We may be witnessing Stage IV in the evolution of life on Earth: (1) RNA/DNA and the prokaryotic cell, (2) the eukaryotic (nucleated) cell, (3) the multicellular organism, (4) the collective. There is a contrarian view. There is a model in which there is only Sally. It is Sally who synthesizes her environmental influences into a single organism, and it is that organism, in voluntary association with others, that shapes the behavior of her society. Interestingly, this view achieved its most coherent expression c. 100 years ago as the apex of British Empiricism (Alfred North Whitehead) and the heart of Continental Existentialism (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre). Both schools celebrate the absolute sovereignty of the individual over her identity and destiny. According to Whitehead’s Process Philosophy , the individual designates her Actual World, sorts that World, judges it according to Transcendental Values, and adjusts it according to Subjective Aim, i.e. the individual’s vision of ‘herself in the World for others’. In its purest form (Sartre), the existential self is solely responsible for his own choices, his own actions. There are no influences, unless we lay claim to them, and there are no intended consequences, unless we identify with them. The Devil makes no one do anything and no one is ever ‘just following orders’. "We are the World", we make be what comes to be, we alone are responsible. Ironically, the sovereignty of the individual is probably best recognized today in Judeo-Christian spirituality. From Hasidic Judaism (and Kabbalah) to Evangelical (‘born again’) Christianity, the focus is first on our personal relationship with God and then, in the context of that relationship, on our liberating, peacemaking role in the World. In both traditions, we are commanded to love God unreservedly and to love others as ourselves. This is a powerful antidote to the fragmentation and collectivization of the self. Who’d a thunk it? ( Hairspray ) Judeo-Christianity has become the counter culture of the 21st century, our last line of defense against the Borg Collective. So buckle up! “There’s rough seas ahead.” ( Yellow Submarine ) *** Edward Hopper’s Night Windows (1928) captures a fleeting, voyeuristic view through an illuminated apartment window, where a woman bends over in a private domestic moment. The stark contrast of warm interior light against the dark night sky heightens the sense of quiet intrusion, evoking themes of solitude, secrecy, and the subtle tension of being watched. 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 Pontius Pilate David Cowles “Pilate could be the avatar of an entire class of folks in the post-industrial West, society’s so-called middle managers.” On the one hand it is surprising that we know as much about Pontius Pilate as we do. After all, he was Roman Governor of a frontier province (Palestine) for a relatively short period of time (26 – 36CE). Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time…or the right place at the right time! Pilate’s modern fame is almost entirely dependent on a single prisoner, only intermittently in his custody and over a period of less than 24 hours, but a prisoner so famous, so consequential that Pilate’s brief and entirely unsatisfactory encounter was enough to make him the best known Roman Provincial Governor of all time. This was no ordinary prisoner; in time, he would become more famous than OJ (Simpson), more popular than Michael (Jackson), and more dangerous than Bobby (Seale or Sands). It’s fair to say that Pilate rode into history on Jesus’ coattails. But there’s more to Pilate than bright lights; this is no Judge Ito. Pilate could be the avatar of an entire class of folks in the post-industrial West, society’s so-called middle managers . Several studies have shown that Middle Managers (MMs) experience more toxic stress than either the people they manage or the people who manage them. They are responsible for everything but empowered to do nothing . Still, the managerial class is subject to all the same ‘domestic pressure’ as the rest of us. Expenses always seem to outstrip income and then there is always the unsolicited advice, or demands, of family members. Yet, the middle manager class is strangely immobile. Rarely are C-suite executives pulled from MM ranks. On the other hand, eschewing the stress and returning to the factory floor is usually not an option either. Aging bodies are not well suited to manual labor and financial commitments, once undertaken, cannot easily be scaled back. By all accounts, Pilate is an able administrator with an impossible task. He is constantly under pressure from three constituencies: Rome, ultimately the Emperor himself, demanding he maintain public order. The Jewish residents of Palestine, the population he meant to ‘serve and protect’, seeking immediate cultural autonomy…and eventual political liberty. His wife, Procla, who has her own mystically derived ideas, agitating for ‘a seat at the table’, a say in the affairs of state. Into this field of dry kindling steps Jesus, the spark . His claim to a ‘Kingdom not of this world’ threatens both Rome and the Jewish establishment in Jerusalem. On the other hand, it emboldens Procla to broadcast her darkly prophetic dreams. Though apparently wanting to favor his wife is this matter, Pilate’s real political assessment of the situation would not allow it. In the end, he called for a bowl of water and attempted to abdicate his role in Jesus’ crucifixion by a ceremonial washing of hands. Congrats, Pontius, you’ve managed to make exactly no one happy; welcome to the world of the middle manager. In the course of these proceedings, Pilate engages Jesus in a dialog that is among the best known, albeit most enigmatic, but also most consequential, ever recorded. Lucky there was a court reporter on hand…at that hour of the night…and on Preparation Day (before Passover) to boot! One could say that the books of the Old Testament share a common concern for Law ( Torah ), i.e. God’s order. In that case, the New Testament’s focus would be Truth ( Aletheia ) in the context of that order. Arguably, every book in the New Testament is addressed to Pilate (and through Pilate, us), answering his ‘overwhelming question’, What is Truth? In Greek drama, there is a separate dramatic personage, Chorus , that represents us, the audience, and interacts with the other characters, asking questions or making comments on our behalf. In the Gospel narratives, there is no Chorus per se . Different characters assume the role at different points in the drama, for example: The self-interested Congregation at Capernaum Jesus’ helicopter relatives in Nazareth The clueless Apostles wherever they go The Soldiers at the Foot of the Cross Pilate too is Deux Ex Machina . He asks the questions we might have asked had we been in the room, if we’d had a seat at that table: “Are you the King of the Jews? Where are you from? Why do you not speak to me ?” And finally, “What is Truth?” Are these not these questions we still ask today? Image: Mattia Preti. Pilate Washing His Hands. 1663. Oil on canvas, 81 1/8 x 72 3/4 in. (206.1 x 184.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan and Bequest of Helena W. Charlton, by exchange, Gwynne Andrews, Marquand, Rogers, Victor Wilbour Memorial, and The Alfred N. Punnett Endowment Funds, and funds given or bequeathed by friends of the Museum, 1978. Previous Next