< Back Becoming David Cowles Nov 8, 2021 Absolute evil is non-being. But non-being is inconceivable since whatever we conceive is conceived as at least potentially being. Non-being is not and has no potential to be. Absolute evil is non-being. But non-being is inconceivable since whatever we conceive is conceived as at least potentially being. Non-being is not and has no potential to be. Relative evil, however, is alive and well and its headquarters seems to be Planet Earth. War, genocide, deadly pandemics, natural disasters, poverty and injustice seem to be all around us: relative evil is all around us. Were it not for relative evil, we would be living in Paradise…which apparently we are not! But relative evil is not absolute evil; it’s not absolute evil because things that are ‘relatively evil’ nevertheless actually are. What partakes of being cannot be absolute non-being. Relative evil is most definitely a ‘privation of being’ but not a total privation of being. Evil (non-being) is what constitutes conflict. Event A is not event B and vice versa. A lacks some of the being of B and B lacks some of the being of A. By themselves, A and B are mutually incompatible. It is either A or B but never both. But A and B are not by themselves; they are surrounded by other events (collectively let’s call them ‘C’) that partake both of A and of B. A and B mutually compatible in C and when A and B are compatible, the conflict between them becomes ‘contrast’. What we call ‘becoming’ is the progressive transmutation of conflict into contrast. But becoming is an entropic process. The transmutation of conflict into contrast generates heat and eventually erodes all order. In the end, becoming undermines being. Fortunately, however, contrast is merely a way-station between conflict and something infinitely better: harmony. The transmutation of ALL contrasts into harmony is the function of the unique event (D) that we call God. In God, all things are more than just compatible; they are mutually enriching. When universal conflict becomes universal harmony, Paradise is realized. Harmony is the ultimate order. It is the eternal aspect of temporal events. 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 Of Mice and Mirrors “On a deeper level than you know, your neighbor is yourself…and you are your neighbor.” David Cowles Do I know who I am? Only if I know who you are! And so a new ‘mouse test’ solves a three millennia-old conundrum: How do I even know that I am ? Bet you haven’t thought much about that since college! Fortunately, others have. René Descartes (d. 1650 CE) claimed to have discovered being in the process of thinking: cogito ergo sum . As self-absorbed adolescents, most of us found Descartes’ naval gazing attractive and convincing for a time. But Descartes had his critics—some before he was born. The grandfather of Western philosophy, Anaximander (c. 550 BCE), believed that each of us comes to be only by relating (‘granting reck’) to an ontological equal, e.g., another person. 2500 years later, a Jewish existentialist, Martin Buber, picked up the baton: “In the beginning is the relation.” In between, there was a guy named Jesus (c. 30 CE), aka the Christ, who picked out one of the 613 mitzvahs found in Torah and made it the cornerstone of his philosophy: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is not the standard Sunday School ‘do unto others’ – this is radical ontology: Regard your neighbor as yourself because, on a deeper level than you know, your neighbor is yourself…and you are your neighbor. This Jesus inspired a cadre of followers that included two of the world’s greatest philosophers, Paul of Tarsus and John of Ephesus. Together, the three created a stir that lasted a few hundred years. Then Jesus went out of fashion, and we had to ‘make do’ with the acrid ideas of Machiavelli and his heirs. So began the real Dark Ages (1500 – 1900 CE). But now we know, Jesus was right after all (along with Buber, Anaximander, et al.). “And how do I know? A mouse test tells me so!” Here’s how: At birth, a ‘mischief of mice’ is divided into two teams; call them Team Jesus and Team Descartes . Cartesian mice are raised in a mouse-free, mirror-free environment, aka isolation. Christian mice grow up in the company of other members of their species and in the vicinity of mirrors. It’s Game Day! Experimenters first select a Cartesian mouse. They put a dollop of white ink on the mouse’s black fur, and then they place that mouse in front of a mirror. Nothing happens. (What’d you expect, fireworks?) But then they repeat the experiment, this time selecting a good, church-going Christian mouse. As soon as the Christian mouse catches sight of itself in the mirror, it begins to engage in heightened grooming activity, apparently attempting to wipe off the white ink. Our Christian mouse (1) knows what she is supposed to look like (through experience with other mice), (2) realizes that the mouse-in-the-mirror is she, (3) recognizes that she does not look as she should, and (4) initiates remediation, aka self-grooming, to correct the problem. This is an intellectual tour de force . But it may come with a dark side! Jun Yokose, study author, University of Texas, writes: “Using gene expression mapping, the researchers identified a subset of neurons in the ventral hippocampus that were activated when the mice ‘recognized’ themselves in the mirror. When the researchers selectively rendered these neurons non-functional, the mice no longer displayed the mirror-and-ink-induced grooming behavior. “A subset of these self-responding neurons also became activated when the mice observed other mice of the same strain (and therefore similar physical appearance and fur color), but not when they observed a different strain of mouse that had white fur.” “The gene expression analysis also showed that socially isolated mice did not develop self-responding neuron activity in the hippocampus, and neither did the black-furred mice that were reared by white-furred mice, suggesting that mice need to have social experiences alongside other similar-looking mice in order to develop the neural circuits required for self-recognition.” Does this mean that incipient racism is hard-wired into the mammalian genome? Or, much worse, that it is inherent in the process of thinking itself? In that dire case, do we need to be concerned that racism will be an emergent property of AI? How would you recognize a racist bot? Are we about to unleash a new generation of Klansmen? Moving beyond ‘race’, if that were even possible, the research suggests that self-awareness ( aka consciousness) may require us to see ourselves from outside-in, reflected either in other, similar-looking members of our community or in an external image (e.g., reflection in a mirror) of ourselves. Would art, e.g. a cave painting, serve the same function? Writing this in December 2023, I am struck by how quickly Hamas’ recent invasion of Israel triggered an eruption of antisemitism across the globe. With little apparent thought, folks’ opposition to the specific policies of the current government of Israel turned into violence against anyone of Jewish descent, anywhere, without provocation of any sort. Many Jews oppose both the objectives and the tactics of Israel’s military offensive, but that reality seems lost on the knee-jerk antisemites. You can hardly escape the feeling that this was simmering just below the surface, waiting for the slightest crack in the crust of civilization to erupt geyser-like into the air. You will not be surprised to hear that the 21 st century may be when we finally learn that we’re not alone. You’ve been expecting little green men on your front lawn for years now. But I’m not talking about extraterrestrials; I’m talking about the myriad of species with whom we share our planet, most of whom were here long before we were. Who’s the alien now? The fact is, we live surrounded by sentient, self-aware organisms that we have shamelessly treated as if they were pet rocks . Now, as we push back the fog of anthropo-exclusivity, perhaps we will also discover our own common humanity. Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. 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< Back Butterflies and Human Development David Cowles Apr 17, 2026 “Our personalities dissolve into a soup, just like a caterpillar’s DNA, then reassemble according to an entirely different schematic, just like a butterfly.” 1750 words, 8 minute read You’ve heard about the famous Borneo Butterfly, the one who flapped its wings and closed O’Hare Airport for 4 hours. It’s called the Butterfly Effect; and this is not that! Nature is a many-splendored thing! All life on Earth is descended from a single DNA molecule, synthesized about 4 billion years ago. That single molecule is responsible for the enormous variety of life forms, from primates to parrots and poplars to plankton, in our biosphere. Some of us breathe oxygen, some carbon dioxide; a few of us prefer methane. Different strokes! 30 trillion cells, representing more than 200 distinct cell types (tissues), coordinate their activities to create a symbiotic environment for themselves and to support a single meta-organism, i.e. you! The individual cells reproduce and the meta-organism they support also reproduces. The key to life’s success is its ability to adapt and evolve as it reproduces. It all begins, of course, with the auto-reproductive double helix, but after that the world is only limited by the breadth of Nature’s imagination: meiosis and mitosis, sexual and asexual reproduction, symbiosis and endosymbiosis, etc. But nothing is more inventive than the lowly butterfly whose maturation process includes old fashioned Ovidian Metamorphosis …the transformation of a frog into a prince, a girl into a tree (Ovid), a caterpillar into a butterfly, or as we will see shortly, a cherubic child into a teen terror. Here’s how Claude (Anthropic) describes the process: “It all begins when a butterfly lays an egg on a plant. The egg contains all the genetic instructions for the entire life cycle. When the egg hatches, out comes a caterpillar — the larval stage. It munches on leaves almost constantly, shedding its skin (molting) several times as it grows. “Once the caterpillar has eaten enough and grown sufficiently, it forms a protective casing around itself called a chrysalis (not a cocoon — that's for moths). Inside, the caterpillar's body essentially dissolves itself . When the caterpillar seals itself inside the chrysalis, it releases digestive enzymes that break down most of its own body tissues — muscles, organs, and fat — into a nutrient-rich liquid, a kind of biological soup. “This process is called histolysis (histo = tissue, lysis = breaking down). At its most extreme, the interior of the chrysalis really does become something close to a cellular slurry. Remarkably, certain clusters of cells survive this process and use the nutrients from the dissolved tissue as raw material to build entirely new structures: wings, antennae, compound eyes, legs, and all the other features of an adult butterfly. “Once histolysis is complete, the reverse process — histogenesis — begins. After one to several weeks (depending on the species), the adult butterfly emerges from the chrysalis. It pumps fluid into its crumpled wings to expand them, waits for them to dry and harden, and then takes flight. The adult's main purpose is reproduction — finding a mate and laying eggs to start the cycle again. “Some studies suggest butterflies retain memories from their caterpillar stage, hinting that despite the dramatic physical overhaul, there is some biological continuity between the two forms. “True histolysis — where tissues are broken down into a nutrient slurry — appears to be exclusive to holometabolous insects: butterflies, flies, beetles, bees, wasps, ants, and fleas; this specific mechanism doesn't appear to have evolved independently in any other animal lineage that we know of.” However, there is at least one other organism that relies on a species of metamorphosis as a key component of its maturation process: Homo Sapiens . We enter the world like a house on fire. As they say in Texas, we’re ‘all process no content’…but we absorb data quickly and we sort it continuously. As we grow, we develop a functional map of the world and we come to understand our place in it – just in time for puberty to shake the etch-a-sketch, wiping out the image entirely. We start over but now with a different focus. Before puberty, we’re all about Nature, i.e. the World. We drink in data like a sponge and build ‘ice cream castles in the air’ (Joni Mitchell). There is no proposition too outlandish for us to entertain and if those propositions are logically contradictory or physically impossible, so what? It’s our Golden Age…if only we were old enough to enjoy it. Puberty turns us inside-out, literally! We are no longer interested in ‘this stupid world’; we are now hyper focused on the Self. The data we funneled during our first 12 years is now laser focused on just one subject: me! (What else?) Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? What is to become of me ? And oh yeah, Who am I ? Twelve agonizingly introspective years later, just as we’re perfecting our Narcissism – and loving every minute of it - the mirror shatters. Somehow and without realizing it, you’ve let the nose of an ‘Other’ into our hermetically sealed tent. You have a life partner, maybe children, a job, perhaps even a career, and bills to pay. Congratulations, you made it onto the treadmill; welcome to the rat race! We no longer see ourselves (↓), we still can’t see out into the world (↑), now we can only look side-to-side (↔); we can only see ‘other people’ – i.e. folks who share our predicament. Our focus now: Society! If your level of mental activity going forward is not what it once was, you are to be forgiven. There are contacts to be made, clubs to join, a golf swing to perfect; there are diapers to change and children to educate; there is a ‘check book’ to balance, a mortgage to pay, and a 401k to grow. There are career and corporate ladders you must climb all the while preparing your own teenagers to become responsible adults, just like you. The whole scenario would be horrific…if you were conscious of it. Be thankful for little mercies: you’re not! You party hardy ( Wayne’s World ). You exact revenge by living well ( The Great Gatsby ). You root for the home side and take pride in their triumphs. Meanwhile, without a shred of malice you screw up your marriage, your children, your career and oftentimes your health. And then what? And when what? You’re more than ready for Stage Four, but here things get tricky. Some folks get to Stage Four in midlife; I’m in awe. Many others, I am afraid to say, never get there at all or, if they do, when they do, they don’t realize they’re ‘not in Kansas (Stage Three) anymore’ ( Wizard of Oz ). Most of the rest of us get there but much later than we would have liked...at least in retrospect. So a belated Welcome to Stage Four ! Your mission now, should you choose to accept it, is to focus on God (substitute ‘higher power’, Gaia , or negative vacuum pressure, if you prefer). I say ‘God’ because I mean to refer to what is beyond this fickle World, this sorry Self, and even this Other but includes, integrates, transcends, and perhaps even redeems them all. You began life focused on Nature, the World; you matured past that on to an unholy obsession with your Self. Then, for better or worse, something distracted you. Was it a glint of light off a gemstone, the sparkle of gold, or the allure of an attractive member of your preferred gender? Something made you lift your head and so for the next umpteen years you looked only to the right or to the left. “No more cosmos, no more self!” You found Society! So far, we’ve marched in lock step with our cohort. 12 years of the World, 12 years of the Self, and now Society – but for how many years this time? Let’s break it down. A very few of you will make the transition to Stage Four as young adults, many more will opt-in as part of a midlife crisis. Society tells us that we ‘owe it 40 years’ so Age 65 is a popular stepping off point. But lately 65 has become 72 and 72 has become 80. How come? Economics plays a part, of course; but also, many people resist the transition from Stage Three to Stage Four. Even after Society has lost interest in them and moved on, they embarrass themselves by clinging to the last vestiges of their social identities. It is truly pathetic but eventually even they succumb. Then there’s Team Alamo! These dinosaurs both dread and despise Stage Four. They do not believe that the contradictions of the early stages can be resolved in a higher synthesis. They are content to leave things as they are. Live and die, one and done, end of. We have mistakenly treated the Stages of Human Development (e.g. Erikson) as a product of steady organic maturation. We need to jettison that model. What’s going on here is genuine metamorphosis, a repeating cycle of histolysis-histogenesis. We are holometabolous – not on the DNA level of course; but at each of life’s phase changes, our rigid personalities, like a caterpillar’s genes, dissolve into a soup, where the traits are reassembled according to an entirely different schematic. We are just like a butterfly…or a Transformer: one minute we are Optimus Prime, next we are his supersonic spacecraft. After birth and before dying, most of us will undergo three nearly total reassemblies (c. ages 12, 25, and 65). We are likely to experience each as a catastrophe…and so it is; but each is also an opportunity. This is especially so of the final reshuffle. Now for the first time, we are empowered to take charge of our own evolution. We’ve waited (albeit unknowingly) for 65+ years for this. We should welcome, not avoid it, cherish, not resist, and make the most of it we can. After all, now that you know the World, the Self, and Society, why not get to know God (or a vegan substitute)? “The chance won’t come again!” (Bob Dylan) *** Odilon Redon Butterflies (1910) is an oil‑on‑canvas painting in which Redon presents butterflies as delicate, dreamlike forms floating in a luminous, atmospheric space, reflecting his shift toward vivid color and contemplative natural subjects. The work embodies Symbolism, using butterflies as metaphors for transformation and poetic reverie, and is housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 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 That Time You Weren't Exceptionally Divine Annie D. Stutley They say that a watched pot never boils. That’s a lie. It does boil, but do you know what doesn’t? A Tale of Three Christmases and Unexceptional Personal Limits.... I have two settings for Christmas. The first begins in November when I think of every holiday task I will complete early so the season is stress-free. The second is in the third week of December when I realize that I haven’t accomplished anything I planned. And nowhere is my holiday frenzy more frantic than on the eve of my children’s last day of school before winter break when I realize that I have procrastinated buying their teachers’ gifts. Of course it begins innocently enough. It always does. Years ago, when my kids were little, teacher gifts were something I could put off. They each had one teacher. I could run to the nearest gift store and buy three exceptional baskets of goodies. But now my kids are older with a whopping 20 teachers, coaches, and instructors. Sometime around Thanksgiving I remind myself to plan ahead for affordable yet heartwarming care packages that properly say, “Thank you for fostering my kid, who I know is sometimes a complete jackass.” Yet, I end up doing what I’ve done for years now. I make a mad dash to the grocery store the day before and determine that the best way to compensate for my ineptitude is to overcompensate. Thus, I choose a most complicated dessert that will wow my neglected teachers. And I will, of course , prepare it all myself. It sounds completely logical in the moment. One year, though, I actually conceded that one cannot make a dozen yule logs in one night. That year, my kids had only 12 teachers combined. So, I bought a case of wine and funny labels like “It’s 3:30 somewhere” and placed each clever label over the vineyard’s label. Simple! Except that you can’t drop your kid off at school with a backpack full of wine—not even in New Orleans. So, guess who unloaded a case of wine at the elementary school? This gal. Only our school doesn’t have a parking lot. Our school is in a highly trafficked neighborhood where there is rarely off-street parking. I found a spot three blocks away, only to get as far as two steps when I realized my scrawny arms cannot carry a case of wine down three blocks, through a security gate, and up a set of stairs. So I retreated. I took two thirds of the wine out of the box and carried four bottles at a time, deciding on three trips—one for each kid's teachers. To date, I don’t know why I thought it wise to bring the wine directly to the teachers and why I didn’t just leave them in the office. And I wish I had because guess whose Mom busted into fifth grade math class with wine? Yep, you guessed it. By the time I was on my third trip, I was sweating and my middle child (Middle Man) completely ignored me when I tiptoed in the dark into his reading classroom where they were watching Charlotte’s Web. As I sheepishly handed his teacher a heartfelt bottle of booze, a droplet of my sweat splattered and smudged the clever label. As God was my witness, I swore I’d never do the wine thing again. So, what did I do the next year? Homemade marshmallows. Lord to Heaven! That was a Christmas catastrophe. Marshmallows have five ingredients, and the biggest time consumption is waiting for them to set—two factors that led me to think my choice wise. However, waiting to begin at 8 o’clock at night to make marshmallows for 15 teachers means you’ll be staring at trays, waiting for them to set, well past midnight. It was close to one in the morning when I finally sliced the last pan of marshmallows and laid them in green tissue paper in red Chinese cartons. I was exhausted, maybe a little buzzed from the rosé I chugged that last hour but satisfied with my superpowers. Seriously, which other kid was gonna stroll into homeroom with homemade marshmallows? Not even Sheryl's kids. (See "That Time You Ousted Sheryl" for clarification.) But the following morning I realized just how not-Sheryl I am. Taking a final look at my supreme exceptionality, I peeked inside one of the cartons and resting contentedly were my perfectly, poufy marshmallows. But perfectly green ! In my complete Annie-ness, I didn’t remember that I live in New Orleans where our humidity is a legitimate reason to avoid moisturizer altogether and also where one should never put a food item made entirely of sugar onto anything soluble, namely green tissue paper. Frantically, I pulled all the marshmallows out—all 90 of them—for inspection. Most of the green was on the edges. For a split second, I considered leaving them alone. Maybe it would look intentional. Only it didn’t because the green bled down like green veins, and also, knowing my luck, some teacher had a freak dye allergy. I simply can’t be the parent to poison the science teacher. So I trimmed them. “It’ll appear intentional,” I said, as Middle Man looked despondently into the now heap of white powdered globs. “Sure. We’ll go with that,” he said dryly. That was the year my kids took irregular polygon-shaped marshmallows to school for their teachers’ holiday gifts and the year that, as God was my witness, I swore to never make marshmallows again. So, 2019 was to be my comeback. No sweaty wine. Nothing poisonous. That was the plan until I hadn’t bought a single ingredient for making gifts and was exhausted from a week of nursing Middle Man’s flu. I stumbled into the supermarket in the same yoga pants I’d worn for three days and spotted a display of packaged divinity. Right then is precisely when I should have realized the limitations put on me that week. It is also precisely why I’m pretty sure I don’t have a conscience at all because when I studied the mushy rounds of confection I said, “I can make that. Easy!” Silly Annie. Divinity is for grown-ups. Like marshmallow, divinity only has five ingredients, but with a nougat consistency. Divinity is also as far from a divine experience to make as the devil is from divinity. In fact, divinity is the devil. Here’s why: It was while I was laying out the ingredients when Mama trotted over to the kitchen to see what I was doing. Mama lives with us now, and there are moments when it is very convenient to have someone wise in your presence. That is, if you are the type of person to listen to wisdom. “You know, divinity is really finicky about humidity,” she said as I looked over the recipe. I ignored her. I lit a fire and poured the sugar, water, salt, and Karo syrup into the saucepan and waited. And waited. And continued to wait as the sugar liquid took half of my lifetime to reach 260 degrees. When it finally did, I slowly poured it into the mixing bowl of stiff egg whites and again waited and waited and waited for what seemed the remainder of my life for the magic to happen. But it did—to Mama’s and my complete astonishment. “Haha!” I proudly chuckled as I spooned poufy clumps of winter white onto a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet. “Humidity be damned!” They held their shape. It was on to batch two of four. It was during batch two that I realized I forgot to put my kids to bed. It was also during batch two that the dog made a river of pee in the dining room. And it was in the middle of batch two that as I stared at bubbling sugar determined to never hit 260 degrees that I called off the fourth batch. Middle Man was too sick for school. His presents could wait. But again, the divinity kept its shape. “I am so good at this!” I said to no one in particular, a tiny prideful note sent out into a world determined on making me feel inept. By the time I started batch three, Middle Man was in a Tamiflu and broth coma on the couch and the other two kids were asleep upstairs. The river of pee had been cleaned. I even remembered to move the damn Elf on the Shelf. It was 10:30. Again, I prepared the sugar to boil. And in the quiet of my holiday home, I stared at the pot. They say that a watched pot never boils. That’s a lie. It does boil, but do you know what doesn’t happen? A sugar boil doesn’t hit 260 degrees without taking a piece of your soul with it. Studying that damn pot, feeling time and my alertness fade away, I contemplated all the choices that led me to making divinity at 11 p.m. on a Wednesday. Why must I push myself to rally behind some ideal that I should be exceptional? Who cares? I could have bought the divinity. I could have made boxed brownies. I could have filled tins with the teachers’ favorite store-bought candies and be in bed right now. Instead, as the sugar boil defied me, I questioned my very existence. Why do I even bother trying for any life exceptional? No one really cares if I do or don’t do anything well. Boiled sugar not reaching 260 degrees makes a person think such damaging thoughts, especially when they are tired and a little buzzed from chugging rosé the last hour. So, too, will a divinity mixture that still hasn’t formed into the right consistency after seven minutes of mixing on high speed! The grinding motor of the mixer shook me from my self-loathing. Why wasn’t this batch doing what the others did? I stopped the machine and tested a clump. It fell back on itself. “Crap!” I yelled at no one in particular. Again I mixed and mixed until it looked right and then spooned it out, only to see each clump puddle after just seconds. I could have made a fourth batch. I could have muscled up and finished strong. But I didn’t. And you know why? Because New Orleans is insanely humid, and I should have listened to my mother. But mostly because though I may strive to be exceptional, there is nothing exceptional about my limits. It was time I learned that. I was short by five teachers. Two didn’t need a present before the next afternoon. Another we’d see again before Christmas. So, I scanned the house for replacements and found twelve of two dozen gourmet cookies that had been delivered the day before. They were worth giving away for the sake of my sanity. I filled the remaining tins with the re-gifted cookies, planned to buy the other gifts in the morning, and as God was my witness, swore to never make divinity again. I know enough to know that I can’t pull off procrastination without mishap. I can’t pull off a lot of things without a little drama. But I’m so much more than my ineptitude. I’m kind. I’m a good listener. I’m relatable. I’m a doting mother, a great wife, sister, daughter, and friend. Screw divinity. I’m badass without it. I shut the lights off downstairs at midnight—an hour earlier than the marshmallow affair of 2018. But as I was cleaning up beforehand, I stuck the puddled divinity from batch three in a hot oven. Maybe I could make divinity cookies a thing? After the last bowl was clean and the good divinity packed, I shut off the oven, left the door ajar, and went to bed. Yet, I forgot about those “cookies” in my oven until the following night when I preheated the oven to 450 degrees to cook a roast. I was seasoning said roast, grateful that divinity and a need to be exceptional was a thing of the past, when from his couch confinement, Middle Man said, “What’s that smell?” I sniffed the air. It smelled like burnt sugar. That’s odd, I thought. Then I remembered my experiment. I threw open the oven and went temporarily blind as billowing smoke rushed into my kitchen and overwhelmed my first floor. Alarms went off, dogs barked, and my flu child gagged. Divinity struck again! Those damn leftover globs melted straight through my silicone cookie sheet onto the oven floor. Some of us aren’t meant to meddle with the Divine. Starting with me. 2020 Update: Today was the last day of in-person school for Middle Man. He went with four pre-packaged coffee cakes to give to his four teachers. The cakes were baked in a kitchen far away from mine and by the hands of a professional. Last night I watched a cheesy Hallmark Christmas movie and sipped rose', all without turning on my mixer once. 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. Previous Next

< Back Re-Imagining the Magnificat Tawnie Olson "In our zeal to project our conceptions of The Ideal Woman onto this enigmatic first-century figure, we’ve strayed a bit from the little we do know." Considering how important she is to Christianity, it is surprising how little information the New Testament provides about the Blessed Virgin Mary. This is despite the fact that, even during Jesus’s lifetime, people held strong opinions about her. According to St. Luke, Christ’s preaching was once interrupted by a follower who shouted: “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!” To which Jesus gave the quelling reply, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!” (Luke 11:27,28 NRSV). Over the centuries, Jesus’s suggestion that Christians focus on our relationship with God, rather than speculate about Christ’s earthly family, has been widely ignored. Theologically, artistically, poetically, and musically, we have not been able to resist filling in the enormous gaps in the Gospels’ accounts of Mary with our own ideas about what a woman worthy of bearing the Son of God must have been like. Sometimes, in our zeal to project our conceptions of The Ideal Woman onto this enigmatic first-century figure, we’ve strayed a bit from the little we do know. Sandro Botticelli’s Madonna of the Magnificat, for example, portrays Mary as a stylish blonde Florentine aristocrat, surrounded by refined angel/courtiers as she coolly pens the Magnificat with one hand and dandles the infant Jesus in the other. It is a beautiful painting, far beyond my ability to praise adequately, but somehow, I just can’t imagine the woman it depicts giving birth in a barn. To finish the Re-Imagining the Magnificat, click here . Image: Madonna of the Magnificat, Sandro Botticelli. (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons ) **This is a republication without modifications from blog.oup. Canadian composer Tawnie Olson is inspired by politics, spirituality, the natural world, and the musicians for whom she composes. She is the winner of the 2018 Barlow Prize, a consortium commission for The Crossing, Seraphic Fire, and the BYU Singers, and the 2021-2023 National Opera Association Dominick Argento Chamber Opera Composition Competition (for Sanctuary and Storm, libretto by Roberta Barker). She is currently working on a new piece for Grammy-nominated Sandbox Percussion, funded by a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. Return to Yuletide 2023 Previous Next

< Back Tantum Ergo St. Thomas Aquinas Sing, my tongue, the Savior’s glory, Of His cross, the mystery, sing; Lift on high the wondrous trophy, Tell the triumph of the King: He, the world's Redeemer, conquers Death, through death now vanquishing. Born for us, and for us given; Son of man, like us below, He, as Man with men, abiding Dwells, the seed of life to sow: He, our heavy griefs partaking, Thus fulfils His life of woe. Word made flesh! His word life-giving, Gives His flesh our meat to be, Bids us drink His blood, believing, Through His death, we life shall see: Blessed they who thus receiving Are from death and sin set free. Low in adoration bending, Now our hearts our God revere; Faith, her aid to sight is lending, Though unseen the Lord is near; Ancient types and shadows ending, Christ our paschal Lamb is here. Praise for ever, thanks and blessing, Thine, O gracious Father, be: Praise be Thine, O Christ, who bringeth Life and immortality. Praise be Thine, Thou quickening Spirit, Praise through all eternity. (Thomas Aquinas by Sandro Botticelli .) Between antiquity and modernity stands Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–1274). The greatest figure of thirteenth-century Europe in the two preeminent sciences of the era, philosophy and theology, he epitomizes the scholastic method of the newly founded universities. Like Dante or Michelangelo, Aquinas takes inspiration from antiquity, especially Aristotle , and builds something entirely new. Viewed through a theological lens, Aquinas has often been seen as the summit of the Christian tradition that runs back to Augustine and the early Church. Viewed as a philosopher, he is a foundational figure of modern thought. His efforts at a systematic reworking of Aristotelianism reshaped Western philosophy and provoked countless elaborations and disputations among later medieval and modern philosophers. Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Previous Next

< Back Being David Copperfield David Cowles Oct 17, 2023 “Most of us would rather be a well-drawn character in a Stephen King novel than a real person.” When I began writing David Copperfield , I knew I had my work cut out for me. To capture the panorama of life in 19 th century England, I needed to invent dozens of unique and interesting characters: Aunt Betsey, Mr. Murdstone, Tommy Traddles, Uriah Heep, Mr. Micawber, and of course, Agnes Wickfield, to name just a few. Each of these characters, even Davey himself, needed a backstory and a constellation of motivations to account for their actions. Each character needed to be memorable but also believable, a tall order for any author. Nevertheless, my novel was well received. Now I am starting work on an autobiographical sequel. I’d planned to follow the same plot line, but I’ve already realized that this won’t work. Two problems: first, my hero…that’s me! (Ok, anti-hero, if you insist.) I’m no David Copperfield. To the extent that my character has a backstory and a personality that explains his behavior…that character is not me! Sigmund Freud notwithstanding, nothing accounts for my actions. Authors rely on characters’ backgrounds to explain their behavior. I do what I do. I was made in the image and likeness of God: “I will be what I will be.” (Exodus 3: 14) Most of the time, my actions do follow well-worn tracks. I find it’s easier to do what folks expect. Until I don’t! My life story starts out as a real page turner, suddenly morphs into a head scratcher, and ends up dusty and half-read on the shelf of someone’s rarely visited library. My second problem is you! Who R U? I need to know if I’m to include you in my novel. Are you really an alter-ego (a mini-me) or are you just a cardboard cutout rescued from the set of The Truman Show ? Have you passed the Turing Test? If not, I can test you right now. Luckily, I just bought a Manhattan skyscraper for this very purpose. So, please walk to the edge of my roof and tell me, what do you see on the sidewalk directly below? No? What are you afraid of, a gust of wind? You’re a 250-pound fire plug and today’s totally calm! Even my flag is limp. No, you’re not afraid of some imaginary gust; you’re afraid of yourself. You know that you could just as easily jump off the edge of my roof as not. Probably, you won’t; but maybe, just maybe, you will. It’s a chance you’re not willing to take. The stakes are unaffordably high. That uncertainty is what makes a life interesting…and a novel unreadable. Ok, you will? Great. And so you walk right up to the edge and give me a detailed report. Thank you; now I know that you are cardboard after all. Only a fictional character would throw caution to the wind. Or… perhaps you’re just very brave, or macho, or have a keen sense of balance; perhaps for some reason, you are anxious to please me and so you comply with my utterly unreasonable request. Or perhaps you are a real person and just pretending to be a piece of cardboard. As I stare at my still blank monitor, I realize that I am already embroiled in two of philosophy’s most intractable problems: (1) Other minds, and (2) Free will. We’re in love with determinism ! We love destiny, God’s will, and the laws of physics…anything so long as it’s not me . It’s the ultimate free lunch: order without responsibility! The Devil made me do it, so I’m not to blame, but boy-o-boy, did I ever enjoy myself in the process. Sin without its wages: ‘volunteer work’. Thank you, Lucifer, for the free ride! So, there will be no Autobiography, at least not in the mode of David Copperfield . Perhaps I could cobble together a curriculum vitae with a dramatis personae , but don’t expect any explanation of my actions or the actions of any of my characters. We are most definitely not in search of an author! Most of us would rather be a well-drawn character in a Stephen King novel than a real person. Being real is messy, unpredictable, and always disappointing. We’d love to have a persona we could rely on: “That’s just the sort of hairpin I am!” What better way to justify everything I do while taking responsibility for none of it? We all want to ‘be someone’. Tracy Chapman, Fast Car , “I had a feeling I could be someone.” Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront , “I coulda been someone.” Ricky, Boyz in the Hood , “I want to do something with my life; I want to be somebody.” So, we measure ourselves against various fictional characters. Speaking for myself, I’m not as good a dad as Father Knows Best , as good a kid as Leave it to Beaver , as good a spouse as The Good Wife, as good a criminal as The Blacklist , as good a friend as Cheers , as good a dog as Lassie . Yet I judge myself in comparison to these imaginary beings; and of course, I come up short! My celluloid heroes are smooth; they know who they are, their behavior is consistent, their lives have meaning. By comparison, I’m more of a hedgehog, a ball of sharp bristles, concealing endless contradictions, masking noxious self-doubt. My life is a meander, not a journey. Imagine Odysseus without his Ithaca – that’s me… and you too, unless you’re one of Jim Carey’s props. I can no more measure up to my fictional idols than wooden Pinocchio could measure up to Geppetto’s idea of ‘a real boy’. I am not just ‘less than’; I am entirely ‘other than’. Less than? Ok, I can improve. Other than? There’s nothing I can do. I’ll never be a rhinoceros. But I can surely die trying! 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 How Moses Saved Egyptian Civilization “…Walk through the streets of Jerusalem, through the marketplace at Mahane Yehudah, and find distinctly Judaized foods, dress, music, and customs from every part of the world.” Tzvi Freeman Chabad.org invites the readers of Aletheia Today to read this article in full by following this link. Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Previous Next

< Back Jubilee 2025 David Cowles Jun 27, 2024 “Every 50 years we get a collective do-over! Golfers will recognize this as ‘Taking a Mulligan.’” I don’t care what you say, we’re in a pickle! We have been entrusted with a body of knowledge that is profoundly revolutionary, politically intolerable, and contrary to 500 years of so-called ‘accumulated wisdom’ (1500 – 2000 CE). We dare not proclaim this knowledge openly, so we speak in vague, euphemistic terms so as not to offend anyone’s secular sensibilities . For example, we’ve reduced Eucharist from ‘Transubstantiation’ to an ‘Expression of God’s Love ’. So when I read this recent Vatican press release announcing that 2025 would be a Jubilee Year, I was not in the least surprised: “VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In the Hebrew Scriptures, God commanded his people to observe a Jubilee as a time to restore their relationships with God, with other people and with the land. Especially since St. John Paul II proclaimed the Holy Year 2000, part of the Catholic Church's Jubilee efforts to repair those relationships has included working for the forgiveness or just restructuring of the foreign debt of the world's poorest countries.” There is no more radical idea in all of social philosophy than the concept of Jubilee , yet somehow the Church has managed to boil it down to an NPR-like segment on ‘debt restructuring’. According to Torah , every 7th day is a Sabbath, every 7th year is a Sabbatical Year, and immediately after the 7th Sabbatical Year…Jubilee! That’s some build-up for ‘ a time to restore relationships’. If you have a sense that the real story somehow got buried, you’re right! Let’s compare what Torah actually has to say about this so-called ‘time to restore relationships’: “You shall count seven weeks of years – seven times seven years – such that the seven weeks of years amounts to forty-nine years…You shall treat this fiftieth year as sacred. You shall proclaim liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you…In this year of Jubilee, then, each of you shall return to your own property…The land shall not be sold irrevocably; for the land is mine, and you are but resident aliens and under my authority.” Leviticus (25) In other words, every 50 years we get a collective do-over ! Golfers will recognize this as Taking a Mulligan . Assuming Normal Life Expectancy (even by 1st century standards), each person will get at least one such do-over during their lifetime. To be clear, at Jubilee all of society’s productive assets (Marx’s ‘means of production’) are redistributed, equally, among all eligible residents. Personal property, including hearth and home, is exempt. Still, this is a long way from merely restoring relationships . The Church is frankly afraid to proclaim Jubilee in its full, Biblical sense…and understandably so! The first Card Carrying Christian, Member #1 , was nearly thrown off a cliff by a crowd of his neighbors on the very first day of his public ministry. Why? He proclaimed a Jubilee…beginning ‘this day’, i.e. immediately. Imagine you went to church some Sunday. As you’re sitting in your pew, perched smugly secure atop your ‘retirement nest egg’, you suddenly learn that your 401k has just been emptied out. The $1,000,000 that you saved, with the help of your employer and the tax code, has been confiscated. But not to worry. In return, you’ll receive an equal share of all of society’s aggregate productive property…how does $50,000 sound? Fortunately, you’re not the sort of person who would throw a prophet off a parapet…or are you? Jesus was bold; we’d expect nothing less from a Messiah. But even Jesus learned the lessons of realpolitik . After the disastrous launch of Christ 1.0 at Capernaum, it was all parables, pithy maxims, and portents of the Apocalypse. Then as now, the end of the World is a much safer subject than the redistribution of wealth! Millennia later, when JP II proclaimed the Year 2000 a Jubilee, I doubt he was worried about being thrown off a cliff. The very idea of such a thing is straight out of Monty Python : “The chief finance ministers of the G7 nations have broken into the Papal residence and kidnapped John Paul.” Not happening! This is the 3rd millennium; we take our politics and our religion seriously…but not that seriously! Even so, Pope Francis is taking no chances. He created an ecclesiastical version of Where’s Waldo . The challenge: Find the concept of Jubilee hidden in the Church’s current teachings. I understand that Leviticus can be challenging. I’m not opposed to reinterpreting the ‘letter of the law’ in order to preserve its ‘spirit’. It’s absolutely necessary and Aletheia Today attempted just such a ‘contemporary adaptation’ of the Jubilee concept in an earlier post . But our proposal went a lot further than mere ‘debt restructuring’. The cross-cultural application of ethical norms is tricky. A rubric from BCE may mean something entirely different if applied literally in a 3rd millennium setting. On the other hand, ‘interpretation’ can be code for ‘indoctrination’. The need to reinterpret an anachronistic norm can be a perfect opportunity for the introduction of heterodox ideology unsupported by Scripture. Discern. Even some non-believers sense the presence of Spirit in Biblical texts. That Spirit is in just as much demand when it comes to interpreting those texts. The goal of course is to preserve as much as possible of the original instruction, avoiding: (1) the temptation to let 21st century ideology hijack 1st century text, and (2) the temptation to water down the revolutionary implications of the original, hoping to make it more palatable to contemporary intellectual and ethical tastes. The way forward for the beleaguered Church is not some watered down compromise with secular modernity. After all, without the printing press, the internet or social media, a 1st century theological movement overthrew the late great Roman Empire. Ideas do have power! That is the revolutionary spirit that the Church needs to rediscover today…and no better place to start than by rethinking plans for Jubilee 2025. 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.

< Back Speaking Piraha David Cowles The hidden grammar censor in our Euro-brains whispers inaudibly, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Why did the speaker place ‘tall’ and ‘basketball’ in the same sentence, unless they are somehow connected?” A major fallacy that comes with a huge price tag. (This article is dedicated to three high school classmates whose abiding interest in, and respect for, other cultures helped me form my own view of the world. Thank you: Tom, Geoff, and Joe M!) We met the Piraha, an Amazonian tribe, in the August 18 Issue of Thoughts While Shaving (TWS ). Once again, just when we were sure we knew everything, we discovered we know nothing. Science and its pesky Scientific Method! It’s an outrageous inconvenience to have to study things as they are rather than as we think they should be! Piraha culture is one such example. We thought Noam Chomsky (20th century, MIT) had taught us everything we’d ever need to know about language; then along comes Daniel Everett, anthropologist, linguist, Christian missionary. Everett makes the case that Chomsky’s entire theory of language has been falsified by the confirmed discovery of just one ‘aberrant’ language, Piraha – a language that today has only a few hundred native speakers. Sorry, but that’s the nature of the Scientific Method. It admits no gray. One single ‘counter-example’ is all we need to show that we must broaden our hypothesis. In Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes (2008) Everett tells the story of his years living with the Piraha tribe in Brazil’s Amazon Rain Forest. The Piraha have a most unusual language. So far as we can tell, it is not directly related to any other language, living or extinct. Piraha has features that are rarely, if ever, found in other human languages. For example, Piraha has no words for numerals (1, 2, 3) or colors (red, green, blue). They do have quantitative concepts like ‘greater than’ and ‘less than’ and they do have words that describe an object’s visual appearance - just no words for numerals or colors per se . Example: I have a ‘whole fish.’ I start cutting the fish into pieces so that I can share it with my friends. When I’m done, I still have a ‘whole fish’ but now each of my friends has a ‘whole fish’ too. There are a number of indigenous cultures that have what we would consider ‘truncated’ number systems. For example, we find many cultures that distinguish only three quantitative states: 1, 2, > 2 (or ‘many’) – a far cry from Sister Mary Martha’s 3rd grade multiplication tables. If only! Yet, the mathematically inclined among us will correctly point out that we can reconstruct the entire set of rational numbers from just these three elements (1, 2, > 2). After all, computers do it with just 0’s and 1’s. But not so among the Piraha. The Piraha have no numerals, period. They just have fish, whole fish ! Even more esoterically, Piraha lacks the syntactic structure known by linguists as ‘recursion.’ Example: “The man, who was tall, played basketball.” Pretty simple concept, right? Not for the Piraha! This every day English sentence has no equivalent in their language. Of course, the Piraha could say, and do say, “The man was tall. The man played basketball,” but notice the difference. In our language, the juxtaposition of ‘being tall’ and ‘playing basketball’ emits a faint whiff of causality, or at least coincidence, even if the speaker has no such connection in mind. Our sentences regularly combine apparently unrelated predicates, suggesting connections that may not have been intended. Does that ever cause any problems? What do you think? The hidden grammar censor in our Indo-European brains whispers inaudibly, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Why did the speaker place ‘tall’ and ‘basketball’ in the same sentence, unless they are somehow connected?” A major fallacy that comes with a huge price tag. Connecting ‘tall’ and ‘basketball’ is not the worst thing we could ever do. Although plenty of shorties have played the game brilliantly, there is certainly some statistical correlation between height and success on the court. And if, as my JHS coach said to me, “Sonny, you stink”, well, it’s probably not the end of my world. An advocate for Piraha might pile on, pointing out the obvious, “If there’s no necessary connection between being tall and playing basketball , why put the two ideas together in the same sentence?” Why indeed! In Piraha , being tall and playing basketball would simply be presented as the serial attributes of a single human being, not necessarily connected in any way. We could copy the Piraha. We could craft sentences like “John is tall, he likes Bach, he reads comics, and he snores when he sleeps.” The sentence enumerates certain facts about John without in any way suggesting that they are linked. This way of speaking might impoverish literature, but it would certainly simplify interpersonal relations. Perhaps we should require our politicians to ‘walk like an Egyptian and speak like a Piraha,’ at least while they are campaigning. Our language is a petri dish for the growth of stereotypes. Its recursive syntax encourages us to confuse statistical correlation with physical causation: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc – a logical fallacy, enshrined more or less forever in the structure of the language we call English . In a recursive language like ours, attributes have a tendency to ‘bleed’ into substances . Wassein (what we are) is often mistaken for Dasein (that we are). Our view of the world is cockeyed, oops, I meant to say, Popeyed : “I am what I am and that’s all that I am, I’m Popeye the Sailor Man.” 80 years ago, Jean-Paul Sartre provided a crucial correction. He showed Popeye that all our attributes belong to Wassein , none to Dasein . He called our Dasein , Le Neant , and he distinguished L’etre pour soi (I, you, s/he) from L’etre en soi (it). When I was growing up (the ‘60s), we were all on a quest to find ourselves . Beatniks, hippies, reformers, and revolutionaries, we were all asking, though few of us realized it at the time, to identify those aspects of our Wassein that were also part of our Dasein . What are the things about me that are hardwired, i.e., from which I cannot escape? It all seemed so self-evident ( it isn’t ). Of course, we should be whoever or whatever we are ( we shouldn’t )! It makes sense ( it doesn’t ) to think that problems may arise if we are not who we are ( we aren’t ). Fortunately, in this matter as in all others, Sartre had an answer: you can’t escape from the world you’re in. That’s your ‘facticity’…but it’s not you ! In fact, you are ( Dasein ) precisely because you are not ( Wassein ). ~W = D: You are not what you are, Popeye; you are what you are not! So, by extension, you can’t ‘find yourself’ either. You can’t find yourself because, turns out, there’s nothing for you to find. You are Le Neant (nothingness). Furthermore, you are ‘freedom,’ not just free but freedom . You are never what you are ( en soi ); you are always what you are striving to be ( pour soi ). To ‘search for yourself’ is equivalent to playing hide-and-seek in the woods… all by yourself ! Remember when you were a kid, and you thought you were playing hide and seek only to find out later that your friends had moved on to another game…or gone home for supper. Not a good feeling! But it was only a game, a warm-up for life. Now, there is never anyone coming to find you, and no one is hiding for you to find. There are not two people, one hiding, the other seeking. There is just one person, neither hiding nor seeking, but just being! My generation’s foundational myth was the belief that ‘finding ourselves’ would somehow make us happy, give our lives meaning, help us judge right from wrong, and point us in productive and satisfying directions. How’d that work out? (Don’t worry, the question is rhetorical.) The belief that people are ‘something’ rather than ‘nothing’ lies at the root of all social conflict, especially war. We must kill the Hun (WW I), not because he (sic) is ( Dasein ) but because he is a certain way ( Wassein ). Now replace ‘the Hun’ by any group of people you don’t like and see what happens. Do I really need to spell it out? The illusion of identity is the root of social strife, and the Piraha have no identity. They aren’t someone or something , they are not even themselves ; they just are! And they have their language to thank for that. 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 The Effects of EGO on Your Success Magesh "The funny thing about ego is that it can make people believe they are more important than they are." As a session musician, I have played with many famous artists—artists who have sold millions of records. With that comes massive success: big houses, fancy cars, and more money than people could count. I was fascinated by how people dealt with their fame and success. I’ve seen firsthand people become incredibly successful only to lose everything. In my opinion, a lot of this has to do with the artist's ego—where they perceive their talent comes from and who they thank for it. I always said that my talent, first and foremost, was a gift from God, and that any success I received was due to the Lord's blessings. In my experience in the music business, I have seen many artists claim their talent as their own. It is no coincidence that these were often the artists with short-lived careers. One artist I worked with was gaining incredible momentum in his career. He went from working as a dishwasher to being propelled into superstardom on TV. Millions of people tuned in each week to watch him on a pop star reality show. No one could argue that this guy had talent. When I met him, I was surprised by some of the things he said. “I’m one of the greatest singers of all time,” he boasted to a record company executive. I immediately thought of the Corinthians verse when I heard him say those words: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (Corinthians 10:31) This artist was a living example of the complete opposite of this verse! He constantly claimed his talent was the result of hard work by him and him alone. In a way, his giant ego was burning bridges faster than they were being built. A few months after the TV show ended, this artist was given a great opportunity: he was offered a world tour supporting an incredibly famous American singer. A meeting was held with the band, the artist, and the record company. The artist’s brash personality and big head had already rubbed several record company executives the wrong way. During the meeting, everyone in the room was throwing around ideas on how to create a successful show for the tour. Driven by ego, the singer suggested that the band perform offstage in the wings while he was the only one on stage singing. “Why would you want to do that?” asked the head of marketing from the record company. The artist replied, “I don’t want the spotlight to be on anyone but me!” The record company stood with the band, insisting that the credit for the performance should be shared by all the musicians. The artist's idea to be the sole person on stage was quickly overruled. On tour, I noticed that so many people were involved in making it happen—managers, road crew, musicians, lighting people, sound engineers, and caterers. I always followed the old adage: “Treat people the way you would like to be treated.” I guess that’s why I got along with people from all walks of life. The artist, on the other hand, was only nice to people who could help elevate his career. I remember the second night of the tour when we were having dinner backstage. It was beautifully prepared by a local catering company. Everything was calm and peaceful until the artist had an outburst. Apparently, his Chicken Kyiv was undercooked. Instead of politely asking for a new dish, he spent the next five minutes berating the server. I felt awful because she was a 22-year-old girl just doing her job. She hadn’t prepared the food; she was just bringing it out for the musicians. I tried to calm the artist down, mentioning that it wasn’t the girl's fault. Then he said something that really upset me. He said, “She’s a nobody! I’m a star, and in 20 minutes I’ll be entertaining 20,000 people.” I was beyond disgusted with his comments. Immediately, I thought of the Corinthians verse 13:4-7: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” The funny thing about ego is that it can make people believe they are more important than they are. The manager of the famous American artist happened to be having dinner when this outburst occurred. He was so disgusted by the singer's behavior that he immediately dropped him from the tour. This meant the artist lost thousands of dollars, as well as sales of his music. This had a spiral effect. Two months later, the record company dropped him because he wasn’t selling as well as they had hoped. He had also said some hurtful things to employees of the record company. Clearly, there is a lesson to be learned here: don’t be a slave to your ego when you have success. And don’t forget to give credit to the Lord when you are truly blessed with a talent. Magesh has written for “Lessonface,” “Aeyons,” “The Modern Rogue,” “Euronews,” “The Roland corporation,” “Penlight,” and “Elite Music.” He writes several monthly publications on music education. In the past, Magesh has written for parenting, humor, mental health, and travel websites as well. Return to Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back Introducing the Yellow Sub Studies Department David Cowles Jun 13, 2024 “Congratulations from Aletheia Today to all schools that are incorporating the Yellow Submarine into their curricula.” Finally, and may I say, “50 years too late,” Yellow Sub (YS) Fever is breaking out on college campuses all over the UK and US. At some schools, it’s still just a single course. Others have designated YS as an acceptable multi-disciplinary major. Harvard University has teamed up with the University of Liverpool to offer a bi-coastal educational experience. These two institutions of higher learning have created an entirely new academic department ( Yellow Sub Studies ). Makes sense: After all, John Henry owns both the Boston Red Sox and the Liverpool Football Club; plus rumor has it that the new academic department received significant funding from Sir Paul himself. Harvard just released its Course Catalog for the coming academic year. It lists the courses being offered in the first year by the fledgling YS Studies Department: Yellow Sub & Mythology : This course considers the nature of myth itself. How is mythology different from biography, history, and narrative generally? How does it reflect, and shape, its cultural milieu? Is mythology still necessary, or even possible, in the 20th/21st centuries? What is its role? Are there other modern myths and, if so, how do they compare with YS ? Yellow Sub & Dante : What are the parallels between the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine ( YS ) and Dante’s Divine Comedy ( DC )? How does Liverpool in the 1960s compare with Florence in the 14th century? How are these cultural parallels – and differences – reflected in the two works? ‘Young Fred’, newly minted admiral of the Pepperland ‘fleet’, acts as guide for our musical crew. How does he reprise the roles of Virgil and Beatrice in the Divine Comedy ? What is the role of the guide, more broadly, in the spiritual journey? (Joseph Campbell) What role does ‘twisted topology’ (non-orientability) play in DC and YS ? Do they share a common topology? How does it differ from our standard topological model? Why does it matter? Yellow Sub & The Holy Grail: One of the most bizarre chapters in Western Intellectual History concerns the quest for the Holy Grail. When you set out to find something, it is generally a good Idea to know what you’re looking for. No so the Grail. It seems clear that the Grail has something to do with the Blood of Christ; but what? Is it the blood itself, shed on the cross, and somehow preserved in vitro for more than 1,000 years? Or is it the ‘chalice’ used to collect that blood? Or is it the blood in vivo , i.e. a blood line somehow related to Jesus’ – the Merovingian kings of France, for example? Throughout the Middle Ages, knights regularly set out on quests for the Grail. Arguably the greatest English language poet of the 20th century T.S. Eliot was still searching ( The Wasteland ). How do these quests compare with the Beatles’ in YS ? Finally, the Grail legend reprises Pagan fertility rites. Lacking the Grail, the King is enfeebled and the land laid waste. Does Pepperland incorporate this tradition? Yellow Sub & Physics : The film Is a meditation on 20th century physics, including Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and Non-Locality. Liverpool and Pepperland are separated by a series of ‘branes’, each corresponding to a particular aspect of Cosmos (e.g. time, space, mind). These branes mediate the World in two distinct modalities: Liverpool & Pepperland. The penultimate brane is nothing ! Nothingness, negation, antithesis, neant – the fundamental unrest at the heart of being , the change agent per se . The final brane, the Sea of Green, is dimensionless; it is the ‘twist’ that makes topology non-orientable, i.e., that allows Pepperland and Liverpool to exist on an ontological continuum. They are no longer opposite one another; they are continuations of each other. And what of cosmic censorship? Initially, Pepperland is protected by an inverted fish bowl that prevents two versions of one phenomenon (Sergeant Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Beatles) from existing side-by-side. Ringo breaks the seal by applying ‘a hole in his pocket’ to the outside of the glass dome. What happens next? Yellow Sub & Biology : At one time, primary school Biology was little more than Human Physiology. But gradually, we have absorbed the implications of the Darwinian revolution. For 150 years now, we have been breaking down pre-supposed biological barriers. We understand now (more or less) how complex organisms (like us) evolved from ‘simple’ unicellular animals (and bacteria before that). We understand that we share more than 50% of our DNA with all mammals, many animals, and some plants. Now we are actively exploring the brain/bot interface. Can AI, embedded in a human body, enhance our quality of life? Conversely, can integrating human tissue with a Bot improve AI’s performance? Finally, as we search for life beyond Earth, what sorts of formats might we expect to encounter? What limitations are there, if any? YS presents a number of possible models for synthetic organisms, not all of which are benign. Texts for this course will include Gould’s Wonderful Life and Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines . Yellow Sub & Philosophy : The Grandfather Paradox – Even if time travel were possible, you still could not go back to a time before your date of conception…so granddad is safe. (Sea of Time) Time – Does time exist independently of the way we measure it? What is the relationship between the temporal and the eternal? Between past, future, and present? Gestalt – Are Something and Nothing reciprocal parts of a single Gestalt? Figure/Ground = Something/Nothing = Nothing/Something? Is a ‘hole’ something…or nothing? (Sea of Holes) Do they exist absolutely, or only relatively? Ontology – How does the Beatles’ Liverpool/Pepperland dichotomy compare with Parmenides’ dichotomy: Doxa / Aletheia ? AI – What is the difference, if any, between organism and mechanism? (Sea of Monsters) Congratulations from Aletheia Today to all schools that are incorporating the Yellow Submarine into their curricula. This is a great day for higher ed! 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.