< Back Jean-Paul Sartre and Pope Leo XIII “Separated by c. 75 years, these men nonetheless faced a common challenge: Rebuild civilization!” David Cowles Jean-Paul Sartre, existentialist philosopher, prolific author, and perpetual social critic is not often linked with Pope Leo XIII, leader of the Roman Catholic Church from 1878 to 1903. Yet, these two men share an important intellectual legacy: a focus on freedom. Separated by c. 75 years, these men nonetheless faced a common challenge: Rebuild civilization! Sartre faced a Europe shattered by two world wars, the collapse of the liberal republics, the meteoric rise and gradual decline of fascism, and the rampant spread of Stalinism. He was at various times a communist, an existentialist, a ‘man of letters’, and a member of the French resistance. After WW II, Sartre wrote prolifically in an effort to influence the course of Europe’s reconstruction. And what of Leo XIII? The crisis he faced was more cultural than it was political. In fact, you can think of Leo as ‘politically agnostic’…and proud of it. Leo’s pontificate occurred at a dark time for European civilization; he inherited a ‘war’ on three fronts: Intellectually, the so-called Enlightenment had undermined belief in God; the promise of science and technology replaced the Good News and gave rise to colonialism, militarism, and the humanitarian horror known as the Industrial Revolution. Politically, a flurry of new ‘isms’, liberalism, socialism, communism, and anarchism, threatened to marginalize Leo’s ‘ism’ of choice, Catholicism. Morally, these were the early days of modern permissiveness. The cult of ‘license’ was rapidly replacing the practice of ‘morality’ as the foundation of Western civilization. To young people in particular, morality was associated with rules laid down by parents, teachers, politicians, and priests – rules that were enforced selectively…and often brutally. By 1889, the liberte of 1789 had become license. Freedom is not just ‘freedom from’ constraint; true freedom is also ‘freedom to’ create. Nor is free behavior to be confused with random behavior. Consider the Brownian motion of molecules: it is totally ‘unconstrained’…but it is certainly not ‘free’. In fact, randomness is the antithesis of freedom; it undermines free will just as surely as does determinism. In fact, it has been shown that it is impossible to distinguish, phenomenologically, between a thoroughly random world and a rigidly determined one. Both are infinitely susceptible to infinitesimal perturbations. Freedom is a function of ‘will’ and will is always a will to create (or to destroy only in order to create). That’s what will is. It is will that empowers human beings (and perhaps other entities) to formulate projects and carry them out. Will requires the freedom to execute a project once conceived; but it also requires the capacity and inclination to formulate the project itself. The essential element of ‘will’ that allows us to formulate projects is a set of ideal values, freely chosen, that we use (1) to evaluate the current state of our world and (2) to conceive projects to bring that current state into closer harmony with those values. To whatever extent our ‘ideal values’ are imposed on us or our ‘choice of projects’ is dictated to us, our subsequent actions are not a function of will. Nor are they if either our values or our projects pop-up randomly. ‘Whack-a-Mole’ is not chess. Will reWill requires freedom; in fact, freedom is the substance of will. The famous phrase ‘free will’ is redundant. Freedom is only operative in the context of will and will only exists in the context of freedom. When will, motivated by our ideal values, commits to some project, we implicitly designate that project as ‘good’. (‘Good’ is synonymous with ‘our set of ideal values’.) In doing so, we identify something outside ourselves and our world as ‘good’ and when we designate something outside ourselves as ‘good’, we affirm the reality of an objective, transcendent Good that qualifies our project as ‘good’. Example: every work of art aims to be beautiful. Beauty is a core value involved in the creation and appreciation of art. However, different artists and different cultures understand beauty in radically different ways. Furthermore, what is beautiful in one context might be much less so in another. But the value itself, beauty, never varies and never waivers! Without the value known as ‘beauty’ there is no art. When utility replaces beauty as the standard of measurement, art vanishes. “The Bali have no art; they do everything well.” Likewise, if a value is transcendent , it is not derived from anything in this world…or in any possible world. A value has its status a priori . In that sense, values exist before (logically, not temporally) the world exists. Even if there were no world(s), justice would still be justice, even if not yet interpreted or applied. Stated differently, it is impossible to imagine a world where ‘justice’ is not a value. It may be ignored, perverted, or even rejected, but the value itself never goes away. A society that ignores or rejects justice is simply…’wrong’. Let’s let Leo get a word in edgewise on this subject: “Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object.” Immortale Dei (ID) For Leo, ‘truth and goodness’ (in the person of God) is the summum bonum : “… The supreme end to which human liberty must aspire is God.” Human Liberty (HL) Freedom “…is to be regarded as legitimate in so far only as it affords greater facility for doing good…” (HL) This controversial and counter-intuitive proposition should be understood as a tautology. The fact that it is not read that way is grand testimony to the crisis of intellectual life in contemporary Western society. Freedom is the opposite of slavery. When we choose a project that is ‘suboptimal’, we are giving-in to some compulsion (biological, psychological, or social). “… To exchange the unchangeable good for evil…is not liberty, but its degradation, and the abject submission of the soul to sin.” (HL) “… Whosoever commits sin is the slave of sin. (John 8:34)” (HL) So here we are, like little boys, imagining that when we are our naughtiest, we are our most free. In fact, the reverse is true. How incredibly distorted our view of reality has become! As Immanuel Kant wrote before Leo or Sartre, “… A free will and a will subject to moral laws are one and the same.” If I were truly free, I would want to do good. Earlier still, the Psalmist began: “Happy is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in company with scoffers. Rather, the law of the Lord is his joy; and on his law he meditates day and night.” Jean-Paul Sartre approaches the question of ‘freedom’ from a diametrically opposite point on the ideological spectrum. He denies the existence of God and, perhaps ‘worse’, states (like Lucretius) that even if God did exist, he wouldn’t be relevant. Like Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Ayer and Wittgenstein, Sartre rejects outright even the possibility of objective, transcendent values. Without God, “there could no longer be any a priori good, since there would be no infinite and perfect consciousness to conceive it… (If) God does not exist, we will encounter no values…that can legitimize our conduct.” Existentialism is a Humanism (EH) Even so, Sartre recognizes that life without values is impossible. In so doing, he accepts a major part of the Leonine thesis (summarized above). But according to Sartre, if there is no God to source our values, then it is incumbent on us to invent them. This view offers us an important glimpse into Sartre’s ontology. We will see later that for Sartre, human beings take on many of the functions reserved for God in other philosophies. But for now, let’s return to the subject of values: “… If I have eliminated God the Father, there has to be someone to invent values… To say that we invent values means neither more nor less than this: life has no meaning a priori . Life is nothing until it is lived, it is we who give it meaning, and value is nothing more than the meaning we give it.” (EH) Brave talk! But this is little more than what children do when they play Cowboys and Indians (sorry, ‘Cowpersons and Native Americans’) or Pirates ( aka ‘non-traditional merchants’). They invent rules, establish values and act accordingly. At the time these values are held earnestly, but all is erased when mom calls, “Dinner!” These ad hoc rules have no objective validity, and the values they represent have no transcendent worth. They are ‘made up’ and they remain operative only so long as the ‘play’ continues. One is reminded of Shakespeare’s Tempest : “Our revels now are ended. These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air; and—like the baseless fabric of this vision— the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” However, to his great credit Sartre avoids the trap of moral nihilism that doomed Nietzsche, Camus, Ayer, and others. He finds a very clever way out. Sartre locates ‘value’ in ‘freedom’ itself. Earlier we noticed that ‘freedom’ has a unique property: it is the antithesis both of determinism and of indeterminism, even though they are antitheses of each other. How is this possible? In Sartre’s ontology, freedom is closely related to le neant , negation. Freedom negates both determinism and randomness. Sartre demonstrates that the determined and the random are fundamentally identical. They both characterize a world devoid of purpose, choice, etc. Morally, it makes no difference whether events are determined or random; either way, they are meaningless. They make no appeal to transcendence. According to Sartre, unique among the categories of existence, the concept of freedom entails its own value. This is eerily reminiscent of the ontological argument for the existence of God, according to which the concept of God entails the existence of God. But Sartre’s view raises questions: If freedom is a value in itself, from whence does it derive that value? After all, freedom per se (and by definition) has no content; it is merely ‘freedom’, right? Not so, says Sartre: “Freedom, under any concrete circumstance, can have no other aim but itself…(man) can will but one thing: freedom as the foundation of all values… The ultimate significance of the actions of men of good faith is the quest for freedom itself.” (EH) Let’s unpack this: Is freedom “the foundation of all values”? Well, values would have no relevance in our world if we lacked the freedom to conceive and execute (to the best of our abilities) projects that embody those values. On the other hand, freedom cannot be “the foundation of all values” per se . Those values must have a reality beyond freedom itself. Freedom wouldn’t be freedom if values were hard-wired or random. Earlier we observed that freedom empowers ‘will’ and is its essence. Now it is time to turn the tables: without will, freedom is meaningless. The concept of ‘meaning’ presupposes a ‘signified’ beyond the ‘signifier’, so ‘Will’ must be directed at something outside itself, and it is that direction that constitutes freedom’s meaning. ‘Something outside itself’ must possess intrinsic worth if it is to stimulate the will to act. (Why else would ‘will’ undertake action?) That worth must be a function of values embodied in a freely chosen end, values that are objective and transcendent. Let’s restate: Will operates only in the context of purpose (end). To will some ‘end’ is to endow that end with value. It is the values embodied in that end that give it worth; and it is those values and that end that give worth to will itself and therefore to freedom, which is its essence. The sum of all projects freely chosen by the will because of their intrinsic value constitutes the worth of ‘will’ per se, and therefore, the value of the freedom that empowers will. “Man is free. Man is freedom…… Man is nothing other than his own projects.” (EH) Wow! Humanity is not only ‘free’, but ‘freedom’ itself; it is humanity that injects freedom into the world. Yet, that freedom is simply the sum of the freely chosen projects that ‘will’ empowers us to undertake, and as we saw earlier, ‘projects’ imply choice and choice implies value. Traditionally, God is understood to be supremely free and, in some formulations at least, freedom itself. Sartre preserves this ontological structure but puts humanity in the place of Godhead. But he doesn’t stop there: “There is no difference between free being – being as project, being as existence choosing its own essence – and absolute being.” (EH) Again, God is traditionally understood to be ‘absolute being’, sometimes referred to as ‘the ground of all being’. Sartre defines God as an entity whose essence (good) precedes existence; he defines humanity as an entity whose existence (freedom) precedes its essence. God’s perfection does not compromise God’s freedom. Sartre misses this. For him, God is hardwired. He is not a free being who chooses good unfailingly; he is a being whose essence defines him as good and robs him of the freedom to choose. If that were true, perhaps the concept of God would indeed be irrelevant…but it is not! What makes God good, supremely good, is that God freely and perpetually chooses to embody the objective and transcendent values from which all worth is derived. God’s ‘good’ is active, not passive. Second, “God said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” ( Genesis : 1:26). God and human beings do not form a template as Sartre imagined. Rather, human beings and God share a common ontological nature: freedom. We are co-creators. Remember Kant: “… A free will and a will subject to moral laws are one and the same,” and Leo: “… The supreme end to which human liberty must aspire is God.” (HL) Freedom is the ever new and ever active power to choose the eternal and unchangeable ‘good’. In popular consciousness, Leo is viewed as the archenemy of freedom (as it is popularly conceived, i.e., as license); Sartre, on the other hand, is viewed as its champion. Yet, Sartre’s ideology of ‘freedom’ leads away from the moral nihilism of Nietzsche, Ayer and Camus and back to objective, transcendent values a la Leo. So, two great men whose views are irreconcilably opposed? I think not! 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 . Previous Next

< Back Football and Social Change David Cowles Sep 20, 2022 “…You feel your body sliding between other bodies, not under them; you look up and OMG, it’s Morning in America, daylight after all.” In Issue #2 of Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) , we looked at football as an enterprise, and, more broadly, as a metaphor for life itself. Hopefully, we were able to contribute some concrete ideas on how to coach a successful team , how to succeed as a player, and how to lead a successful life once it’s time to hang up those cleats for good. (When is that, Tom Brady?) Building on that theme, this edition of Thoughts While Shaving (TWS) asks, “How is working for social change like playing fullback on a football team?” R U ready!? The quarterback hands you the ball…and now you’re staring at maybe eight different colored shirts, supported by 16 cleated legs. True, some of those legs are pushing your way but still, it’s a congealed mass: No Daylight, No Joy! But you do your thing. Coach designs the plays, QB calls them (on this team), you execute them. You don’t get ‘paid’ to second guess (actually, you don’t get paid at all, unless you’ve already made it to the NFL…or are violating NCAA rules). Still, it takes all your strength and courage to smash your body at top speed and with maximum force into a 1,500 lb. scrum. Yet you do it! Why? There is no chance of gaining any yardage, and you’re risking a fumble or, even worse, an injury. Why not just take a knee? Doesn’t that make more sense? It might, but that doesn’t matter, you’re not doing it. Why not? Duty to your teammates ? Faith in your coaches? Both, but more than either, Hope . Take a knee, avoid disaster, but lose all hope of any gain, or smash into the scrum, risk mishap, but maintain a sliver of possibility . So, you crash, ball clutched, legs churning, and guess what? Loss of a yard! Fourth down! Ok then, so what did you accomplish? Absolutely nothing, right? Well, in terms of field position, ‘absolutely nothing’ would be putting it generously. More accurately, you lost a yard and wasted a down. Still you accomplished something. Your self-sacrifice actually accomplished a lot: You demonstrated your Love for your teammates. They can count on you, you did your duty . Solidarity! You demonstrated your Faith in your coaches and your quarterback. Plus, you made your team smarter! When you succumbed to the scrum, you created information , data. Your coaches could see what went wrong; they can make adjustments. And you planted that same information in the other team’s psyche : “We smoked ‘em; they won’t try that play again. We better be on the lookout for some sort of sweep or maybe a pass.” Whatever. You can’t control how another team reacts to your data, but you can put the data out there and hope they misread or misuse it. Information and disinformation. If it’s not Love that makes the world go ‘round then surely it’s info/disfo: it’s the currency of grade school squabbles, middle school gossip, political campaigns, international relations and, oh yeah, war. Fourth down: The coach is sending in a new play. He’s a ‘boomer,’ and now we see he’s a fan of The Who to boot. So, guess what?! “Meet the new play…same as the old play!” That’s right, same play (with a minor tweak to the blocking scheme). The Gods Must Be Crazy (or at least the coaches). Isn’t this exactly the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome? But, of course, you’ll do your duty . Again, you smash the scrum, but this time you feel your body sliding between other bodies, not under them; you look up and OMG, it’s Morning in America , daylight after all. What does this have to do with the struggle for social change? Well, take a look (regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum): The Conservative movement after Goldwater (1964) The Civil Rights movement after the Martin Luther King (1968) The Gay Rights movement after Stonewall (1969) The Anti-War movement after McGovern (1972) The Right to Life movement after Roe (1973) Nicaragua after the Contras (1990) I could go on. In each case, dogged perseverance paid off…big time! Causes that everyone had written off as hopeless suddenly, Phoenix like, rose victorious. That’s how social change happens. Against all odds, Faith, Hope, and Love ( Duty ) can carve out a sliver of daylight (possibility). That’s how to play fullback …and perhaps it’s also how to change the world. Have you taken the ATM Survey yet? Tell us what articles you want to read and how we're doing? Click here . 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.

< Back Events Don’t Just Happen David Cowles Nov 19, 2024 “An event is a real life, flesh and blood application of eternal values to present circumstances.” “Events happen!” Could any English sentence be more obviously true? And so totally false? Words can be funny things sometimes, and ‘to happen’ happens to be just such a word. Technically, it’s an active voice verb like ‘to kill’. But ‘killers kill’ sounds a whole lot different than ‘events happen’. The sentence, ‘killers kill’, is jampacked with information. ‘Events happen’ tells us absolutely nothing: “Something undefined emerges as a result of something unknown.” It is a pseudo-sentence. It’s the semiotic version of the null set! This is Edward Lear at his best. “Something happens to something, resulting in something else.” We call it happenstance – something happens to happen. Brilliant! For this I took out student loans! Although grammatically active voice, happen dissolves every trace of agency. An event that just ‘happens’ is a passive result, powered by chance, possibly unintended, perhaps unwanted, of an unspecified process. Consider Universe. It’s an event, a pretty big one, but an event, nonetheless. Did the event we call ‘universe’ just happen ? Some physicists think so, but what would it mean if that were the case? How can something come from nothing solely by chance? Consider my remarks, uttered in my best faux-Etonian , after a late night boozer in a London pub, “As it happens , I’ve left my wallet at home this evening.” When something just happens (like this, presumably), no one is responsible, no one is to blame. ‘It just happened ’. What was I to do about it? It’s as if the universe had somehow played a dirty trick on all of us…and gotten away with it. Bad universe, bad! But of course, this is very far from the case! Everyone at Goat & Griffin knows that I carefully removed my wallet from my pants pocket before I left home that evening. Events don’t just happen! Ok, how do they occur then? Universe is recursive throughout and on every scale from Cosmic to Planck. Recursion is in Universe’s DNA – it is a fundamental feature of its topology. It’s perpetually aware of itself at every scale. In fact, self-awareness itself is a defining feature of Universe. An ‘event’ begins as the world’s ‘critique’ of itself, conducted from the perspective of eternal values like Beauty, Truth, and Justice. An event ends when Universe physically adjusts in response to that conceptual critique. In this way, an event satisfies Gregory Bateson’s ontological criterion: It is a difference (conceptual) that makes a difference (physical). The Gospel of John founds Being on the concept of logos . Often translated, not incorrectly, as ‘Word’, logos can be understood more broadly as anything that facilitates the communication of meaning. Every ‘word’ has a truth value as well as an aesthetic quality and a political tone . Every word is itself a pattern of meanings, but each word acquires its full meaning only in the context of its position in a ‘well-formed formula’ (sentence). We recognize eternal values like Beauty, Truth, and Justice. They are manifestations of Good. In fact, most of us experience Good primarily through these manifestations. Events then are a really big deal! They don’t just happen . Every event is ‘East meets West’, ‘North meets South’, Past meets Future. An event is a real life, flesh and blood application of eternal values to present circumstances. The World is a disorganized multiplicity of elements. Through universal recursion, an emerging event orders those elements and judges the whole through the prism of Value. Based on that assessment (critique), the emerging event is a praxis intended to enable Universe to better reflect Value. At conception, the event instantly organizes its field into a World (Past) which it then judges (Present) against the standard of the Good (Eternal). Guided by Value, the event proposes, modifies, and executes a concrete ‘fix’. That fix now becomes an element in the World of every subsequent event (Future). According to Alfred North Whitehead, the World consists of events and nothing but events. These events cannot emerge randomly, evolve chaotically, or happen accidentally. There is method in their madness…and that method resides in the Universe itself. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 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 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 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 Reading The Bible Backwards David Cowles May 23, 2024 “We struggle for freedom from the prisons others build for us, from the prisons we build for others, and from the prisons we build for ourselves.” We are accustomed to reading books from cover to cover in the order determined by the author/editor(s). Take the Old Testament: Genesis through Malachi . The order makes sense. Creation had to come before Exodus, which had to precede Monarchy, preceding Exile and the erection and destruction of the Second Temple. Of course, this order is not necessarily the order in which the texts themselves were written. Some of the material in Job and Exodus , for example, is much older than anything in Genesis . The modern Bible groups the books of the Old Testament into four categories: Law (Torah), History, Wisdom, and Prophesy. Read this way, the Old Testament tells a perfectly coherent story. Torah : Creation (Genesis), Liberation (Exodus), Theocracy (Leviticus). History : The transition from Theocracy (Leviticus) to Anarchy (Judges) to Monarchy (Samuel) to Tyranny (Kings, Chronicles, et al.) and ultimately to Captivity (Daniel, Ezekiel) in Babylon (6th century BCE) and Repatriation. Wisdom : The Wisdom Writers paint with a broad brush; they are the ‘big picture’ guys. They write at the level of cosmology, ontology, and metaphysics. They condemn all manifestations of secularism: idolatry, materialism, even consumerism. As they do so, they outline an alternative world order. Prophesy : If wisdom is big picture , prophesy is laser focused . Prophets react to the socio-economic conditions and events of their own time. They write at the level of journalism. Recurring peeves: concentration of wealth, abuse of power, lax observance of Torah and ever increasing secularism. Wait! Something’s not quite right about this picture. The Old Testament was edited and assembled in the time of the Prophets. Wisdom, History, and Torah (Creation & Law) should be viewed from that perspective. But we don’t read the Bible that way, do we? We start with Creation and, well, you know the rest. Doing so makes it seem as though history is a chain of semi-logical deductions with today as its ‘theorem du jour ’. In fact, however, we build our past based on empirical inductions beginning with today . Make no mistake: Judeo-Christianity is a revolutionary idea! It was revolutionary when Abraham left UR, when Moses confronted Pharaoh, when Joshua conquered Jericho, and when Canaan lived in relative peace during 250 years of Theocratic Anarchy under the Judges. It was revolutionary when Jesus fought a war on two fronts, confronting the twin authorities of Rome and Jerusalem, and when Paul planted the seeds that undermined the Roman Empire. It is just as revolutionary today and fortunately, since 1776, we’ve learned a bit about revolutions. We have learned, for example, that all revolutions require three things: A searing indictment of things as they are (status quo). A clear vision of things as they could be (utopia). A practical program to get from point A to point B. We find all three in the Old Testament…but not in the ‘right’ order! The Prophets condemned the immorality, corruption and tyranny that had taken over Palestine. But a critique of current injustice, by itself, doesn’t get the job done. It takes three legs to make a tripod. Critique only bites if it is powered by a vision of ‘what might have been and could still be’. That’s the job of the Wisdom Writers. The Prophets and the Wisdom Writers tell the same story but from different perspectives…and we need them both. The Prophets focus on the specific historical and political situation, the Wisdom Writers on the futility of any human endeavor that lacks God as its guiding principle. Hijacking the words of Robert Kennedy, Prophets “see things as they are and ask why?” Wisdom Writers “dream of things that never were and ask why not ?” Which brings us to the third leg of our tripod: Praxis . It’s how we get from A to B. If Prophesy answers the what , and Wisdom answers the why , Praxis offers the how . Praxis has two sides: History and Strategy. What’s been tried and how did that work out for us? What practical steps must we take now to realize our vision (Wisdom)? We need to begin with a practical political platform – like the Party manifestos in the UK…only realer and truer . But for us, this turns out to be the easy part! Long before there were prophets and wise guys, there was already a detailed political program to redeem an alienated world – it’s called Torah: 613 rules of conduct - time tested in the crucible of Sinai, at the great wall of Jericho, and during the time of the Judges - guaranteed by God to promote health, prosperity, justice, and peace. Wait! 613 rules of conduct? What am I, 8? 613 rules, yes; 8 years old, you wish! But don’t fuss, there’s a secret, shh! Lean in and I’ll whisper it to you: “Torah includes its own Cliff’s Notes . You just have to know where to look.” (If only Tolstoy, Dickens and Thackery had been as considerate.) The Torah consists of 613 laws (above), 611 of which are specific laws applicable to specific behaviors in specific situations; but the other two are general laws, applicable to all things in all situations, and as it turns out: these two laws perfectly summarize the other 611. Therefore these two general laws, collectively known as the Great Commandment (Mt. 22: 37-40), summarize the other 611 (tactics) and form the core of our revolutionary strategy: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Deut. 6: 5) “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Lev. 19: 18b) To which Jesus adds, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” (Mt. 22: 40) We struggle for freedom: freedom from the prisons others build for us (prophesy), freedom from the prisons we build for others (praxis), freedom from the prisons we build for ourselves (wisdom). 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. 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 Laura Cabrera Contributor Laura Cabrera's interests focus on the ethical and societal implications of neurotechnology and neuroscientific advances. She has been working on projects that explore the media coverage and the attitudes of the general public toward pharmacological and novel neurosurgical interventions for the treatment of psychiatric disorders. She has also worked on the public perceptions towards the use of different modalities of neuromodifiers for enhancement purposes, as well as their normative implications. Her current work also focuses on the responsible governance of neurotechnology. Neurotech Challenges Mental Privacy: New Human Rights?

< Back AI for Healthcare “Boka, is it true you used to drive 10 miles to see a doctor once a year and called that healthcare?” David Cowles A recent article posted online quoted a health plan executive as saying, “Solving consumer engagement is worth $1 trillion to our organization.” Considering that the market cap of the largest health plan today (UHC) is less than half that, this is obviously a bit of an exaggeration. But only a bit! There is no doubt that consumer engagement is healthcare’s Holy Grail. Since the collapse of ‘strong form’ Managed Care in the mid-1990s, Engaging the Consumer has been Job One for healthcare providers and benefit plan managers alike. We’ve tried cost shifting (high deductibles), Consumer Directed Health Care (HRAs & HSAs), health fairs, financial incentives for lifestyle management, urgent care and walk-in clinics, telemedicine, no cost preventive care, consumer education, and finally, computer assisted customer service. None has made the slightest dent in the titanium dome of consumer apathy! Two exceptions : Doctor Google and boutique pharmaceuticals. We do love our pharmaceuticals! We can’t wait to try the latest $300/dose drug that TV promises will give us marital bliss, obedient children, career success, limitless leisure, and a ‘scratch’ golf game. Plus, we never tire of entering our symptoms into various databases and then wringing our hands gleefully upon receiving their mechanically generated diagnoses. It’s a roller coaster ride for those who don’t go to amusement parks. It is said that the definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior over and over again while expecting a different outcome each time. That’s us! We’ve poured billions of dollars into consumer engagement initiatives over the last 30 years…and we’ve come up empty. My mother-in-law (RIP) used to say, “If you have your health, you have everything!” Americans don’t necessarily agree. We will invest great wealth into exercise equipment, gym memberships, vitamin therapies, fad diets, etc., but we are reluctant to spend a single hour or a single dollar on traditional medicine. Yet it is still the case, rightly or wrongly, that traditional medicine accounts for about 90% of our nation’s healthcare spending. Folks today want to shop for healthcare like they do electronics, IRT. They want all the information there is, neatly summarized by a ‘Consumer Reports’ Bot. We want to know the differential diagnoses, treatment options, prognoses, and risks, all in one shot. At the same time, we want our healthcare to be ‘bespoke’. We want to be able to tweak our data, play ‘what if’. We want a ‘one size fits one’ health strategy. In a phrase, we want Virtual Concierge Medicine (‘VCM’ – just what we don’t need…a new acronym to learn). On the supply side, we have an acute shortage of physicians, nurses, and healthcare professionals, especially at the primary care level. What providers we do have suffer from burn out. The combination of medical advances, patient flow, regulatory mandates, and burdensome paperwork is simply unsupportable. As a result, healthcare organizations on average turn over 100% of their staff every 5 years. If only a technology existed that could deliver features consumers want while reducing providers’ workload! We might hope that such a technology would engage patients, improve overall population health, and ameliorate quality of life for healthcare professionals; we might hope it would reduce, or at least cap, the per patient cost of healthcare while allowing us to increase compensation for providers, especially those near the base of the economic pyramid (e.g., first responders, nurses, primary care physicians). If only there was such a thing as ‘Artificial Intelligence for Healthcare’… Now, here is where you expect me to say, “Introducing Health Bot 101”; sorry to disappoint! Sure, there are a number of ‘AI for Healthcare’ platforms in development right now, but early indications are that they won’t go nearly far enough to make any difference at all . (How’s that for a prognosis!) Consider ‘Hippocratic AI’ for example. This platform advertises itself as the first ‘safety-focused’ AI for Healthcare. Not surprisingly, they have adopted the ancient Greek motto (4 th century BCE), “First do no harm,” which translates into modern English as, “Above all, don’t get sued." For all its initial hype and promise, Hippocratic has apparently surrendered even before it’s been launched. The site has decided that it will not suggest possible diagnoses . May I pose a question? What good is any healthcare resource if it doesn’t diagnose? Did you just say, “Pick on someone your own size!” Admittedly, Hippocratic AI is a start-up. So how about Google? Big enough for you? Google’s AI for Healthcare initiative grades its product(s) according to 4 measures: How closely do AI’s answers reflect medical consensus? Are AI’s answers free of bias? How precise are AI’s answers? Do any of AI’s answers risk harming the patient? As we’ll see below, Google’s application is not AI, it’s Anti-AI. Ok, it is ‘artificial’ but it’s not ‘intelligent’. All it’s doing is rearranging symbols within a very tight set of parameters. That is not the promise of AI. We need AI to discover and label new maladies, to model novel treatments and cures and test them virtually, to invent new treatment protocols, to envision new surgical techniques, to propose proper genetic intervention when appropriate, etc. In short, we need AI to go where no physician has gone before. Let’s see how this vision fares under Google’s 4 tests: Sometimes consensus is a good thing; sometimes it’s not! Apparently, the Sun does not revolve around the Earth after all. We want doctors who’ve kept current, but we also want doctors who aren’t afraid to go against the tide when appropriate. Apparently, Google doesn’t agree. Bias is bad, we can all agree on that, but sometimes one person’s ‘bias’ is another person’s ‘fair and balanced’ – and vice versa, of course. The risk is that the arbiter of ‘bias’ will be…‘biased’! What doesn’t belong and why? ‘Precise’ doesn’t seem to fit here, does it? Of course, we want our answers to be as ‘precise’ as possible, but precisely what does that mean? Accurate? Detailed? Narrow? Litigation immune? What are Google’s ‘precision’ criteria? Finally, ‘Don’t harm the patient!’ Come on now, who could possibly have a problem with that ? Well, me for one! “ALL healthcare involves risk!” How many times have you heard that from your favorite characters on your favorite (pre-strike) TV medical dramas? But we don’t believe it, do we? We live in the age of warranties and product liability. We want our results guaranteed! Not happening! No healthcare regime will ever be able to deliver that level of assurance. By its very nature, healthcare is a ‘risk/reward’ proposition. If I treat diagnosis X with therapy Y, how likely is it that I will be helped (and by how much)? How likely is it that I will be hurt (and by how much)? Come to think of it, we apply this same thought process every time we make a decision. Should I steal this cookie? Should I rob this bank? Should I get married (or divorced)? Should I jump out of an airplane? Should I go ‘all in’ on this hand? I’m standing at the craps table at Bellagio. I’ve noticed that in the warp and woof of the game, it’s reached a point where I have $400 on the felt, spread among various numbers. Should I let it ride or pull it down? If I let it ride, I could walk away with $800…or more; plus I would be able to tell all my friends, “I beat Bellagio”. That’s worth something, right? On the other hand, I could easily lose all $400 on a single roll. So my decision comes down to this: just how badly do I need that $400? Why should healthcare be any different? The Fact is, it can’t be! We just pretend that it is. So, it looks as though the ‘AI Revolution’ in healthcare may be over before it began, but it doesn’t have to end this way! When self-driving vehicles were first introduced, people were horrified… me among them. No human being at the controls? Nope, no one to fall asleep at the wheel, drink and drive, text while moving, etc. What a disaster that would be! Now I can say with confidence: self-driving vehicles are coming soon to a neighborhood near you… if they’re not already pulling into your driveway… and I can’t wait! Sure, self-driving vehicles pose some risks. We’re doing the best we can to minimize those risks, but we’ll never eliminate them entirely. The question is, “How do the risks posed by self-driving vehicles compare with the risks of human-driven cars?” Now apply that to healthcare: 30% of all healthcare delivered in the United States is either ineffective or harmful; almost 20% of patients are misdiagnosed. Could a Bot do any worse? Still, who can argue with Hippocratic’s ‘safety first’ focus? We all want patients protected from incorrect diagnoses and ineffective or harmful treatments; we all want patients’ PHI (Personal Health Information) kept confidential. Nevertheless, this is a huge climb down from Hippocratic’s initial commitment to ‘always-on triage’. Beyond that, though, it is puzzling that an AI program would make safety its #1 priority. What about functionality? Shouldn’t we be looking to develop AI that works and protects, rather than AI that protects and may have some functionality as well? As a society, we need to recognize the fact that safety and functionality are often at cross purposes; we must make sober, adult, and may I say ‘non-ideological’, decisions about which strategy is best in what circumstances. Take, for example, HIPPA. It was intended to protect patients’ PHI without increasing the cost or compromising the quality of care; it has failed. Oh, don’t get me wrong: it’s done a marvelous job of securing personal data. But the cost of compliance has been massive and felt all along the supply chain, even to the level of the lone MD with her totemic ‘black bag’. More importantly, HIPPA has eroded the quality of patient care. It takes a village to treat a tumor! Optimal outcomes often require input from diverse stakeholders. But such input is only possible if relevant patient information is shared, and that sharing is precisely what HIPPA regulates . (Notice I said, “regulates”, not “prohibits”… or even “restricts”.) So, the fault does not lie with HIPPA! The law is careful to include a number of well-considered exceptions to its ‘data lockdown’. The problem comes at the application level. Healthcare professionals, by and large, do not understand the nuances of the law; why should they? They’re ‘doctors and nurses and such’ (Willie Nelson). Rather than risk Draconian fines or unpredictable litigation, many have adopted a ‘see no data, hear no data, share no data’ approach to patient care. That is neither what HIPAA intended, nor what it requires, but it is how it is being interpreted and administered on our mean streets . At one time, even my own doctor was refusing to respond to texts and emails “because of HIPPA”. Let’s compare the potential results of AI delivered healthcare vs. healthcare delivered by old reliable, Homo sapiens (HS). First HS : I go to my doctor and my blood pressure (BP) is a bit high; my doctor recommends some lifestyle changes and a particular medication. I return in 3 months to have my BP rechecked; still high. Did I follow the doc’s lifestyle instructions? Did I take my medication religiously? Ok, let’s try a new med and check again 90 days out. 6 months have gone by now and there’s still no guarantee that my BP is under control. Now AI : Again, upon initial examination, my BP is elevated. My PCP hands me a blood pressure monitoring device to use at home, but then he turns all my future healthcare over to an AI Bot named Charley. Chas, as I call him, tells me to cut way back on my sodium in-take for 2 weeks to see if that has any impact; it doesn’t. Ok, am I willing to cut down on alcohol and switch to decaf? Hmm. Two weeks later, we’re moving the needle; it’s working, but not enough to satisfy Charley. Let’s tweak the dosage on your BP medication and check again in two weeks. Thank you, Charley, for the wonderful experience and the excellent result! Remember the days when you typed and mailed all your correspondence? Then you waited two weeks for a reply. Doesn’t seem possible, does it? So buck up; it’s early days yet. If it’s alright with you, I’ll continue to envision the day my great grandkids say to me, “Boka, is it true you used to drive 10 miles to see a doctor once a year and called that ‘healthcare’?” 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 AI Issue Table of Contents Share Previous Next

As a chaplain, I am allowed to talk about faith or pray with a client if that is what he or she wants. Like many people in our secular and even religious society, I am to be there for ‘those of all faiths or none.’ < Back Being a Faith Chaplain in a Secular World By Rev. Dr. Anne-Louise Critchlow May 29, 2022 As a chaplain, I am allowed to talk about faith or pray with a client if that is what he or she wants. Like many people in our secular and even religious society, I am to be there for ‘those of all faiths or none.’ Like many of us, I work for a company that, while endorsing ‘good moral values,’ does not want to propagate Christian beliefs. So, why would this company want a chaplain to work with its staff and clientele? As far as my employers are concerned, they want me to be concerned with the well-being of their residents (over 55s, some of whom live in independent living units, while some in residential care houses). According to my terms of employment: I can show pastoral care by engaging with residents’ problems and worries; I can give bereavement counseling and advice; I can promote community events; and I can even contribute to their understanding of their own spirituality! However, ‘spirituality’ is a cover-all term for enjoyment of music, poetry, art, and nature. “Everyone has spirituality,” says those interested in this term, “But it may or may not involve specific beliefs or religion, and we should not try to impose our beliefs on anyone.” As a chaplain, I am allowed to talk about faith or pray with a client if that is what he or she wants. Like many people in our secular and even religious society, I am to be there for ‘those of all faiths or none.’ Those of all faiths or none… Have you heard this phrase before? It is very likely that you have because it is used by those who work in education, local councils, hospitals, and anyone in the caring professions. This phrase allows us to include everyone without discrimination (which is helpful), but it also appears to stop those who have a particular religious conviction from sharing it with others. It is a very common remit in the twenty-first century – a sort of catch-all label that means I should offend no one and treat all beliefs as if they are the same, thus supporting the idea that what is true for me may not be true for you. It appears to be the ultimate in tolerance, and tolerance is one of the gods of our secular age. So, how can I work as a chaplain while being true to my faith convictions? You might object, “Surely the apostles were very direct in the way they evangelized? Why can’t we be the same?” You can try being very outspoken if you like, but you will soon find you are dismissed from your job. It is also dishonest to agree to your terms of employment and then override them. As for the apostles, they weren’t being paid by a secular employer, and looking closer at some stories in the Acts of the Apostles, we see that Paul engaged with different audiences and different worldviews in a variety of ways, and we would be well advised to do the same. He discussed the Good News with those in authority in the synagogue, appealing to their knowledge of their own religion, but when he spoke to the citizens of Athens in the Areopagus, he was careful to quote their own poets, as a starting point in the discussion. (Acts 17:28) The early apostles started where their audiences were in terms of culture and understanding, and we can do the same. Listening to where people are in their understanding of life is always worthwhile. Once people feel valued by us, they may trust us to open up about what they really feel, especially about their spiritual concerns. It is a privilege to be invited into their world and their worries; however, we should proceed respectfully. “I’d like to chat to the chaplain, as long as she doesn’t mention God,” one of our residents told the housekeeper. I spent an hour listening to the tragic events of her life and the anxieties she had endured. I asked her the odd question, seeking clarification, but, as she had requested, there was no mention of God. The next time I met her, I listened again. Suddenly, she blurted out, “So, what do you think about believing in God when I have shared with you all of my sufferings?” “Are you sure you want me to talk about that?” I inquired carefully. “Yes, I do,” she replied. After a long discussion, she asked me to pray for her. All this from a resident who had asked me not to mention God! Her life story also points out the truth of the fact that we should not lightly dismiss suffering or sound as though we have easy answers for someone’s personal difficulties. Sometimes, just being alongside them is enough for them to know that they are loved and understood. Nor should we stereotype the sort of person who might be open to God. I had a request from a long-term alcoholic to pray for him, when all the more outwardly respectable people in the housing unit showed no interest in faith at all. The next time I saw him, he had turned his back on addiction – quite an answer to prayer! An ex-soldier suffering from PTSD and heaving drinking was behaving terribly to staff and residents alike. The business director was surprised by his request: “I want to see the chaplain.” We prayed together over a number of months, and when he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, he put his faith in Jesus. I was limited by my work agreement, but he was not limited at all in what he told his fellow residents about his hope of eternal life. In his will, he asked that I take his funeral – what a privilege! Events for residents – body, mind, and spirit I advertise such events with complete transparency so that residents can stay away if they are so inclined. By having a laugh together and sharing on a human level, they relax, and when I tell them a story about how God has forgiven me or if I share a parable or written prayer, they don’t turn away. My secular employer acknowledges that everyone has a spiritual part of their nature, and how true that is. I find that as people get older, they want to know more about their spirituality and experience God. The extraordinary power of prayer No government or company or department can legislate against prayer. I pray for all the places and people I visit, and God answers those prayers! One resident, Betty, was given two weeks to live, suddenly realized she didn’t know how she was going to meet God. She had only met me once when I had prayed for her, but now she felt the force of that prayer, and she asked to see me again. I told her the story of the lost sheep, and she asked to be found by the Good Shepherd. Another Christian resident was made to sign an agreement with her housing provider, affirming that she would not share her faith with the other residents. She was very upset, but she prayed for her fellow residents. On my next visit to her house, I presented an Easter experience event – again with a mixture of games, a quiz, and crafts, but also the power of the Easter story. Who does not need to know about forgiveness and the hope of eternal life? All the people she had silently prayed for came to that event. She said to me later, “Anne-Louise, I thought that God’s work through me had been stopped, but he sent you to do the work instead.” We agreed that we had an unseen partnership! The challenge of dementia Can you communicate the love of God to someone who has lost their mind and memory? God is not hindered, nor should we feel so hindered. While in a discussion with a group of residents about Easter memories, suddenly a resident with dementia, who could hardly speak, sang “There is a green hill far away.” We sang the hymn together, and she recounted what she had heard in Sunday school as a child. (This should be an encouragement to Sunday school teachers!) “Deep calls to deep.” (Psalm 42 v. 7) God speaks to people through recalled memory. We, too, can speak the truth to the memories in the caverns of one’s mind and heart. Restrictions are no barrier to the real work of God I have seen this truth in all areas of work. When I worked with Street Pastors, a Christian organization, we could not share our faith openly when in partnership with the Council and the Police on the streets and in the pubs, but we were allowed to answer questions and respond to requests for prayer. Again and again, we saw people relaxing when they were under no pressure, and we were guests ‘on their turf.’ Because of their feeling of authority, they shared their problems with us openly, asked for prayer, and thanked us for what we were doing. I told more people about Jesus on the streets under those restrictions than I did in the church building. I now wonder whether the politically correct restrictions on faith imposed in the workplace are as detrimental as I once thought. One thing is sure: God has his own way of speaking to people, whether we are ready or not. Let us not be afraid of secular employers and restrictions. No one can stand in the way of God’s work, of drawing His people to Himself. Rev. Dr. Anne-Louise Critchlow has been a teacher of English Literature, a church pastoral worker, and a chaplain in France, North Africa, Manchester, and Bristol (UK). She is married with four children and thirteen grandchildren. She now works southwest of England as a chaplain. Previous Next Share 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. 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, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to the Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Be a Prophet! David Cowles Sep 26, 2023 “…As always in human history, it will be prophets like you who will herald change – like roosters summoning the dawn.” You’ve read the Old Testament prophets. Did you ever think, “I wish God would call me?” Well, what’s to say he hasn’t? The role of the prophet is to speak Truth, especially when it’s unpopular…like now! Today, we are all called; literally everyone can be a prophet, but how? Aletheia Today has identified 5 themes from our online publications and turned them into icebreakers - memes that reflect ideas, secular and religious, theological, philosophical, and cultural, that are by now familiar to regular readers of ATM and TWS . Subscribe here . To help you jump start conversations, we’ve selected 3 useful everyday items and emblazoned each item with one of our 5 memes (below), all guaranteed to break through any ice, no matter how thick. Just pick one of our memes, match it to an item from our store , and you’ve already taken the first step on your journey of 1,000 miles. Good luck! Stay safe! Check out our memes: Not God or Man, God and Man - The world used to be full of gods disguised as humans; today, it’s humans impersonating God. Yahweh (‘God’ in Judeo-Christian scripture) is wholly God (Creator) and wholly Human (Savior, Redeemer, Messiah)! In Genesis, “God created the heavens and the earth,” the Cosmos, the material world, ‘the whole shootin’ match’. Then through Mary, Mater Dei , God became an element within that whole. Incarnation turns the Cosmos inside out. The whole becomes the part. That’s solidarity! Shop AT! Think Dangerously - The art of thinking is threatened, but don’t blame today’s AI. Most thinking is done using language, the original AI, the fossil record of other people’s thoughts. Ironically, we refer to today’s AI as Large Language Models (LLMs) – a tip of the cap to the sub-structural role of language in all AI. Was the library at Alexandria the world’s first fully functional LLM? But there’s a problem. Only 3% of what we think is original ; the rest just echoes past ideas. Somebody thought them up once, but it wasn’t you…or me. So why the compulsion to repeat these stale memes, endlessly, ad nauseum ? Be a revolutionary, have original ideas, think dangerously! Shop AT! Smash Idols – “ You shall put no gods before me . ” Idolatry is the root of all sin, putting something ahead of God. It could be a Golden Calf, a Tesla Model X, or a bottle of booze. There’s nothing wrong with gold, cars, or spirits – until they become idols…and then we have to smash them (figuratively speaking of course)! Sorry about your windshield. Shop AT! Exodus 3: 14 - “I am who am.” Moses challenged God: ‘Ok, I’ll lead your revolution against Pharaoh…but first, tell me who you are!’ So, Yahweh utters these four words: “I am who am.” The gods of Babylon, Egypt, Greece, and Hollywood are beings among beings; Yahweh is Being itself ! Shop AT! Judges 21: 25 - “In those days, there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” After the Exodus, God ruled Israel directly for 250 years; it wasn’t hard. First, there’s Torah, 613 dos and don'ts for daily living. Then there’s conscience – everyone’s direct pipeline to the mind of God. Finally, there are judges , charismatic leaders who step up as needed in every culture to do the work of God. Samuel, Israel’s last faithful judge, warned the people against throwing over theocracy for monarchy: “He (the king) will take your sons and assign them to his chariots (conscription)…he will make them do his plowing and harvesting (civil service) and produce his weapons of war (military industrial complex)…He will use your daughters as perfumers, cooks, and bakers (exploitation). He will take your best fields, vineyards, and olive groves (eminent domain) and give them to his servants (bureaucrats). He will take…your best oxen and donkeys and use them to do his work (nationalization). He will also tithe your flocks (taxation…). As for you, you will become his slaves (…without representation).” (I Samuel 8: 11b – 18) In a single stroke, the people of Israel ceased to do "what was right in their own eyes" and began doing what was expedient in the eyes of another…with predictably disastrous results. Indeed, the entire millennium from Samuel to Jesus can be seen as one long effort to mitigate or reverse the disastrous decision made at Ramah. So tell me now, “Who needs a king?” Shop AT! Judeo-Christianity is revolutionary in every sense of the word: philosophical, cultural, political. It challenges virtually every tenet of our materialist, conformist, authoritarian culture. The Judeo-Christian perspective offers welcome, if challenging, relief from the mind-numbing hum of modern civilization. Perhaps Tracy Chapman said it best in Drive (The Cars): “You can’t go on, thinking nothing’s wrong…” Plenty’s wrong! Regional wars, terrorism, the threat of nuclear holocaust, racism, sexism, poverty, climate change, mass extinction, bioengineered pandemics…shall I go on…or do you get the point? These problems have been millennia in the making, and they won’t be solved overnight. But as always in human history, it will be prophets like you who will herald change – like roosters summoning the dawn: Moses, Lao-Tse, Isaiah, Buddha, John the Baptist, Galileo…you’re in good company! Shop AT! 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 an 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 What’s the Matter with Santa Claus? David Cowles “Do you remember when and why you stopped believing in Santa?” I have always been bothered by Santa Claus . He was a big part of my growing-up and I remember clearly ‘the hour I first disbelieved’ (c. age 6). The idea of adults teaching their children something they know to be untrue is troubling to say the least. I mean, we teach them enough falsehoods without meaning to; there’s no reason to exacerbate our crime with deliberate deceit. Adults justify their behavior with the age-old soporific, “It’s for the children.” If only! In fact, whenever someone says, “It’s for the children,” or “It’s for their own good,” you know it isn’t. We teach kids about Santa Claus in an attempt to recapture some trace of the forgotten wonder of our own childhoods. But kids have no need for our foolish nostalgia. They already live in an enchanted world. Made-up talismans only serve to confuse them as they try to piece together a map of that world. Lying is probably not best practices , but I justify telling lies every single day – to my fellow jaded adults; and I’m not apologizing for it. Lying to children, on the other hand, can be a serious offense. We have no less than Jesus for an authority, “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.” (Mark 9:42) Not the end I was hoping for! Do you remember when and why you stopped believing in Santa? For me at least, as I continued to work out my mappa mundi , Santa gradually emerged as an ‘odd man out’. The more I learned about ‘the real world’, the less space I found for an inhabited North Pole, flying reindeer, chimney transport, and a global same day package delivery service. (This was long before FedEx.) Eventually, the cognitive dissonance became unbearable. It was suddenly easier to reconcile the idea that adults were lying to me than that Sidney Greenstreet (‘a certain fat man’ – Casablanca ) was responsible for my Christmas morning. I remember that day, where I was and who I was with, because it was a really big moment. It was a ‘Station of the Cross’ for me. It was also the day when everything began to fall into place: “Maybe I can make sense of this world after all. Maybe, if I rule out every sort of magic, any trace of enchantment…” And so, I took a bite of the apple, gained knowledge, and ‘grew up’. Sorry, Peter (Pan, not Cephas). So of course, when I became an adult and had children and grandchildren of my own, there was no Santa Claus in our house, was there? You bet there was! I’m every bit as much a wimp as you. Maybe we didn’t push Santa quite as hard as my parents had: no letters to the North Pole, no cookies and milk. But still…we had Santa. Now that I am on the ‘other slope’ of that giant Gaussian Mountain (aka Bell Curve) we call a ‘human life’, I’m realizing that the world is enchanted after all. I mean, come on! Big bangs, quantum tangles, half-live cats, DNA – it’s a wonderland. But it’s not easy to overcome my primal disenchantment. I’m jaded now. So just as I tried to retain Santa as a part of my six-year-old’s world view, now I try to reduce experience to fit into the categories of so-called Science . Just as I once struggled to keep a place for Santa on my ‘world map’, now I struggle to keep out every trace of enchantment. As a stepchild of the 20th century ( nee c. 1200 CE), I feel compelled to explain the universe entirely in terms of itself…despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I need to give that up. I need to rediscover wonder, but on my way, I’ll need the support of some authorities. Once again, I turn first to OG Jesus of Nazareth (aka, the Christ), “…Unless you turn and become like children, you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 18: 3) For my second source, I turn, appropriately, to a child. One morning, my youngest daughter heard two of my grandsons arguing: A: “You don’t believe in Santa Claus.” B: “Yes I do!” A: “Santa Claus doesn’t exist.” B: “Everything exists !” One grandchild (B) had a broader, more inclusive ontology than his brother (A). A few years later, he might have retorted, “There are more things in heaven and earth, A, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 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. Previous Next

< Back Time Crystals David Cowles Feb 1, 2024 ”Would you trade that rock you’re sporting on your finger for a crystal of time? What if I threw in Knicks tickets?” We are used to straight lines. We love them in fact. They make us feel comfortable…and powerful. “I can do it!” The Little Engine that Could moves straight ahead. Time lets us turn our backs on the settled past and our faces toward the undiscovered future. We are plough-horses, churning our fields, leaving our furrows. We draw a line on a map to indicate our route. It’s ‘the shortest distance’; it’s the very definition of what we value most these days: ‘efficiency’. Who doesn’t hate connecting flights? We think of logic as a sequence of deductions which we refer to as a ‘chain of reasoning’. So, we may be forgiven for thinking that all process must be Linear Process (LP): A → B → C We are even tempted to say, “What else could it be?” We have such poor imaginations! In fact, IRL nothing is ever perfectly linear. Better said: non-linearity approximates linearity. Better? “Looks straight to me” means “it’s not straight - but it’s straight enough for government work”. There are no straight lines in nature! We’ve known at least since Newton that a reciprocal version of LP applies outside the realm of intentional behavior. Every action entails an equal and opposite reaction: A ↔ B Lex Telonis , ‘an eye for an eye’, may have been our species’ first attempt to codify social justice. Although harsh to our ears, in its day it was an attempt to reign-in ‘street justice’. We can use the form of the LP schematic (above) to illustrate it: A → B → A Curiously, the much renowned Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) relies on the same modified LP, but this time inverted: B → A → B Makes sense: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is the reverse of ‘Do unto others as they have done unto you’. Pay it forward…not payback ! It required the correction known as the Great Commandment (‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ - Leviticus and Matthew ), to get us off-the-line : But that’s just us. Our Eastern cousins have understood this longer…and perhaps more deeply; they call it ‘Karma’ – we call it, ‘what goes around comes around!’ This is a quantum of Pure Process (PP): A → B, B → C, C → A. I believe it is an irreducible ontological minimum. It’s also the schematic for a game you might know: Rock-Paper-Scissors . It’s the Great Mandala; “take your place” anywhere: there are no preferred spots, no asymmetries, no singularities; it has no beginning and no end. It’s a spiral – with a ‘degenerate’ 3rd dimension. Here, process is not a means to an end (because there are no ends). We mistakenly think of acts as open ended bits of string. That is not what an act is. An act is a closed loop. An act leaves nothing to chance. It is ‘objectively immortal’ (but not yet ‘eternal’); it is a settled matter of fact after the fact ! It is the process of its own confection. In school, we learned to diagram sentences by separating the subject from the predicate; IRL that’s the one thing you can never do! Naked subjects and naked predicates don’t just bump into one another on the senior prom dance floor; they must at least be ‘going steady’ first. Pure Process (PP) can be diagrammed differently by other thinkers in other contexts. Christians, for example, could use a similar schematic to illustrate Trinitarian Process (TP): Karl Marx might have used the graphic to illustrate the Dialectical Process (DP): Then there’s The Beatles’ variation: “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together…” ( I am the Walrus ) Note that this has the same structure as ‘Trinitarian Process’ (above), just rotated: There are even ways to model Pure Process for non-orientable spaces. In common with fermions (massive subatomic particles), non-orientable spaces are characterized by 720° symmetry vs. (the 360° we’re used to): Jim Croce promised us ‘time in a bottle’. Well, what if I could give it to you in a crystal instead? Plain, ordinary crystals, like the Hope Diamond for example, consist of molecules arranged in a fixed pattern that repeats in space. What if we could do the same with time? Would you trade that rock you’re sporting on your finger for a crystal of time? What if I threw in Knicks tickets? In ordinary crystals, like salt or quartz, atoms are arranged in a repeating spatial pattern. But in time crystal patterns repeat over time, in a regular, repeating cycle returning to the same positions over and over. This movement happens without using energy – it's stable, perpetual motion at the atomic level. A time crystal is a state of matter that has periodic motion ‘built-in’ to its structure. We are used to states of matter where energy dissipates, motion slows. Stasis, aka my couch, is the Great Attractor; it is thought to be the most energy efficient state of affairs. My rounded body can attest; it is powerful! But oscillation (motion) in a time capsule turns out to be more energy efficient even than stasis. Crazy? Maybe not. “Everything moves.” People often rock back and forth from one foot to another, they bounce when they hunker, and my dad could not relax unless his hands were fidgeting and his toes tapping. We are just beginning to unlock the mysteries of this new state of matter. It demonstrates what Process Philosophers (e.g. Alfred North Whitehead) have been saying all along: Process is primary; time is just one possible aspect of process. Just ‘yesterday’ (October 14, 2025, Nature Physics ) a team of scientists headed by Leo Joon Il Moon announced the discovery of a new family of time crystals they’re calling Rondeau Time Crystals ( rondeau for the musical form called a ‘round’). ‘Ordinary’ time crystals (as if ‘time in a bottle’ could ever be ordinary) evolve through their cycle smoothly and deterministically. Not so, Rondeau ! These crystals are characterized by the presence of a chaotic phase between two perfectly determined bookends . Rather than enjoying a continuous identity (as with ordinary time crystals), Rondeau Time Crystals exhibit ‘stroboscopic’ identity ( aka Eigenstate order): “ the coexistence of temporal disorder on short timescales and temporal order on long timescales.” (Moon) “This enables us to freely engineer the form of non-deterministic micromotion dynamics (chaotic phase), without compromising the stability of the coexisting long-range temporal…order (deterministic phase).” English : What happens in Vegas (disorder) stays in Vegas; it does not compromise the order that surrounds it. As if the 21 st century discovery of time crystals was not mind-boggling enough, Moon has taken things to an entirely new level. In our view, this discovery has major philosophical and even theological implications, as well as physical. We look forward to exploring those implications in detail in future posts on this site. Bookmark us…and as always, “Stay tuned.” (The best is yet to come.) 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. 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.

“It is the uniqueness of events that 'creates' spacetime; it is not spacetime that makes events unique.” < Back Who R U? - The Caterpillar David Cowles Mar 1, 2023 “It is the uniqueness of events that 'creates' spacetime; it is not spacetime that makes events unique.” I’m reading an innocuous book about DNA when I suddenly come upon a sentence that snaps my head back: “Many SNP (genetic) variants have no known consequence…but some can be crucial to who you are.” - DNA Demystified by Alan McHughen. If your head did not snap back, don’t worry; few heads would (snap or worry). But for me, this sentence is an epiphany…an epiphany of error! In fact, it would be a challenge to craft a sentence in ordinary English that was more broadly wrong than this one: “SNP variants…can be crucial to who you are.” Try, “The Patriots won every Superbowl ever played.” Wrong – it just seems that way sometimes; but this erroneous sentence is just narrowly wrong , so it doesn’t compete with McHughen’s much broader error. May I belabor the point? Telling someone they are something when they’re not is just plain cruel, even for us neo-Machiavellians. Example: In 2004, misread exit polls indicated a landslide victory for John Kerry (vs. G. W. Bush). I didn’t vote for John Kerry that year, but I have always sympathized with him. Cruel! Back to McHughen: My DNA is no part of who I am. It’s part of my world, the world I live in, but it’s not part of me : a crucial distinction. Let’s fall back on a ridiculously trite metaphor: a game of cards (doesn’t matter what game). The cards are dealt. My crowd is fond of saying, “It’s not a hand, it’s a foot.” Hand or foot, it’s what I was dealt, and it’s what I’m going to have to play. I was hoping for a “grand slam” (bridge or whist). IRL, I was hoping to play for the Boston Celtics. My hand is a jumble of 7’s and 8’s. My height is 5’ 9’’ on tip toes. I probably won’t get my grand slam, and I probably won’t play pro ball. (That doesn't mean I can’t try, but trying is not doing. I am guaranteed the unfettered right to try; I am not guaranteed positive results.) I am not those cards, and I am not this body. These are things I’ve been given to work with. So far so good, but here’s where the metaphor breaks down. In cards, I am the person behind the cards, actively playing them. IRL there is no ‘man behind the curtain’, no ‘ghost in the machine’. Let me explain. Most of the 30 trillion cells that make up my body contain a full ‘copy’ of my DNA (exception: red blood cells), but none of those cells is me. Obviously. But what about all those cells taken together? Are they me? What about the ever-evolving network of cellular interactions? Still not me. So, back to the Caterpillar’s question: “Who R U?” How about we begin with actual experience? After all, at the end of the day, there is nothing else. According to 20th century British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, to be is to experience and be experienced; so ‘experience’, let’s start there. So, how do you experience you ? Certainly not as the collection of cells we call a body (or a brain). But it’s not just that I am not a cell, a collection of cells, or even a network of cells. It’s that I am not even like any of these things! It’s not that I am ‘different’ from my cells; whatever I am is entirely unlike those cells. There are no parameters for comparison. A red ball is not a blue box. But we can compare them according to color, shape, utility, etc. No such comparison is possible between me and anything other than me (e.g., my cells). ( Sidebar : Imagine how long it must have taken civilization to convince our ‘best minds’ that the experience we call “I” is just a culture of unicellular organisms in a multidimensional petri dish! How do you do that? How do you make people believe something that silly? Why are we too anxious to think of ourselves as a ‘thing’; is this what Erich Fromm meant by “Escape from Freedom”?) Experience yourself. Take it in. Now nose around. Are you ‘like’ anything you hear, see, taste, smell, or touch? Of course not. You are an entirely unique phenomenon. So am I. In fact, you are not even like me …nor am I like you. Truth to tell, I have no idea what it’s like to be you, or a network of cells; I have no idea what it’s like to be anything at all or even what it’s like to be like something. I am, period. There’s nothing else. I am not even ‘experience’ itself; I experience experiencing. I am not the man behind the curtain: there is no man, there is no curtain, just Oz…and not-Oz. I am not the ghost in a machine: there is no ghost and no machine. It goes even deeper: I am that I am not something other than myself. My parents would be pleased: I am not like those boys who jumped off the bridge. Ok then, so what am I? Nothing? Precisely! Nothing, i.e., no thing. I am not a ‘thing’ and neither are you. Consider the alternative : Suppose I am like something else or, what amounts to the same thing, suppose I am something else. Either way, I am superfluous. The universe doesn’t need two of anything: “Lord, we don’t need another mountain…” The universe does not need carbon copies. To whatever extent I am something else or like something else, I am redundant, and the universe hates redundancy. “Idle hands”, you know… Being is a cosmic censor, relentlessly rooting out waste (e.g., duplication) before it can form. As a result, nothing is duplicative, nothing is superfluous. Again, according to Whitehead, to be is to be both novel and consequential. Mythology recapitulates cosmology. Being is Paradise, the Garden of Eden. (In Hebrew, Eden means ‘place of pleasure’; in Aramaic, it means ‘fruitful’.) But, as we know from Genesis , in Eden ‘one small step’ can turn into ‘one giant leap’ – out of Paradise. How so? A single instance of duplication would create a loop, and a single loop would freeze the universe in an endless and barren cycle of soul-numbing repetition. If anything repeats, then nothing is, was, or will ever be. My new political party will have as its slogan: “No novelty, no being!” Consider Dante’s Divine Comedy . Unwittingly, Dante ambles into the gated community we know as ‘Hell’: Dante’s Inferno , a spiral consisting of 9 descending levels (‘circles’) with the grand prize, Satan, waiting at the inflection point, the nadir of the funnel. Dante walks through Hell, past Satan, into Purgatory and eventually up to Paradise. Now suppose that just one of those infernal ‘circles’, makes no difference which one, doubles back on itself. Dante would be trapped in Hell forever, endlessly repeating the same journey. That’s the price of a single ‘error’. That’s what’s meant by the doctrine of Original Sin . Imagine living in a never-green world, bereft of all novelty, endlessly repeating itself until the ‘crack of doom’. Compared to this, Dante’s Inferno is a trip to Six Flags. One single loop, one single repetition, and all creativity is forever banished from the realm. Fortunately, there are no such loops; the universe makes no such error. We’re some 15 billion years into it and so far, not one error. Imagine you’re married to the same person for 15 billion years and never once have a fight. That’s what we’re dealing with here. The evidence is ‘merely’ inductive, but I am willing to go out on a limb and make a leap of faith (Kierkegaard beware): there will be no such error, ever! How can that be? We appear to be protected from error by some sort of omnipotent and infallible cosmic censor . Everything that is, in so far as it is, is unique. “How do I know? Occam’s Razor tells me so.” The fact that the cosmos has a censor should give us profound hope. It would take so little to make this world a living Hell. Just one error out of googles of transcriptions et voilà , ‘everlasting fire’. The very fact that there has been no such error, and apparently won’t be, can’t be, should encourage us to hope that Hell is empty (except perhaps for the Prince of Darkness) or even non-existent (good news for Lucifer, ‘light bearer’). We are offering a free tour of Hell in this issue of ATM . Sidebar : Non-believers (e.g., Bertrand Russell, Michael Ruse) make a lot of the so-called Problem of Evil. The real problem is a Problem of Good . How do you account for the fact that at the deepest possible level, the Universe is perfect? How’d that happen? Note : This is not a ‘best of all possible worlds’ argument. (Lie quiet Leibniz, I mean that is Gottfried Leibniz, c. 1600 CE) We do not live in the best of all possible worlds – far, far, far from it; but we do live in a perfect (error free) world. Memo to YHWH : There’s no more need for flood or fire. Just allow a single transcription error to slip through and walk away. Ah, but you can’t do that, can you? You tried to with Job , but that did not end well…for you. Thank you for being you! What we call ‘spacetime’ is the physical manifestation of cosmic censorship. The uniqueness of an event’s spacetime location certifies that it is not a duplicate; my coordinates are both my ‘X’ and God’s stamp of authenticity: “Inspected by #1 ”. Many things overlap with me in spacetime, but nothing else occupies the precise region that I occupy. What is co-incident with me, is me! Shift that locus a single nanodegree et voilà , something new. But note, and this is key, it is the uniqueness of events that creates spacetime; it is not spacetime that makes events unique. Topology recapitulates ontology. So, what about this body, those cells, that DNA? None of that is me; but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. These things are part of the world I’ve inherited. My experience of the world is mediated through my genetic makeup, but I am not those genes or that world. It is not enough to say that I (ego) cannot be equated with me (id), that I am-not me. Instead, we need to say I am not-me . It is not just that there is some sort of displacement between myself as I and myself as me. Being I is not-being me . Being I is being not-me! I come to be only by negating (‘being not’) what is. This “I” is very misleading. It implies something ‘other’ than something else. In one respect, “I” is as different from everything else as anything can be; in another respect, it’s no different at all. There is no “I” apart from the world, there is no Wizard directing affairs on Oz. I-ness is embedded in the world, as it’s active negation. Ontologically speaking, ‘not’ is not an adverb or a conjunction, ‘not’ is an active voice, indicative mood verb! ~A ɛ A. ~A is the proverbial snake curled up at the core of being, A. So, “Who R U?” The caterpillar was so 19th century! He asked the quintessential question of his time, the era mislabeled as “The Enlightenment”, i.e., part of the nightmare (history) from which James Joyce says we’re struggling to awake. ‘Who R U’ is a meaningless string of vocables. I am no-who. Who-ness and I-ness are incompatible categories. Backed against a wall by his Christian and Communist critics, Jean-Paul Sartre reluctantly answered the caterpillar’s question: U R ‘Freedom’. ( Existentialism as a Humanism ) U R that you can be whoever or whatever you want to be. Whitehead coined the phrase, “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”. To understand our genes and our experiences as ‘us’, or even as part of ‘us’, is to succumb to this fallacy. Sidebar : Your DNA and my DNA are 99.9% the same. Yet, my experience of the world is radically different from yours, even adjusting for the fact that we experience objectively different events. Not convinced? Ok, my DNA is 50% the same as a banana’s. (Many people have told me that I am ‘bananas’ but I don’t think they meant that I experience the world the same way a banana does…or maybe that’s exactly what they meant.) We were born after 1750, so we are enlightened (whether we want to be or not); some would even say we’re woke . But woke to what? To the fact that we are star-stuff, that we are cogs in a mechanical universe, that our lives are determined by the forces of physics, sociology, psychology, et al? I am the sum of my gender, my race, my culture, my nationality, my socio-economic class, my upbringing, and the remnants of a host of more or less ‘accidental’ events that constitute my life story – NOT! I am anything but these things! No, I’m serious: anything but! I am the but ! “I am the Walrus.” If I were what the world thinks I am (above), there would be no need for me to be at all. I would be superfluous, and the universe could dispense with me. Occam’s Razor would require it. At most, I could be the nodal point of forces outside my control…or ken. But an intersection of beings is not itself a being. I am, I am nobody’s copy, I am not superfluous. To paraphrase Job, “If the cosmos cancels me, it will be the loser for it.” I am the Walrus (along with all ‘others’, of course); I am the universe’s source of novelty and its wellspring of intensity. “Here I am Lord, I come to do your will.” Image: Alice in Wonderland. Walt Disney Productions. 1951 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 Spring 2023 Table of Contents 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. 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, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue