“Waiter, bring me one order of everything on the menu and when I’ve finished, I’ll pay for whichever dish I liked the best.” < Back Robert Frost was Wrong David Cowles Oct 15, 2024 “Waiter, bring me one order of everything on the menu and when I’ve finished, I’ll pay for whichever dish I liked the best.” Shortly after Niels Bohr produced his quantum model of the atom (1913), Robert Frost wrote (1916) his iconic poem, The Road Not Taken . Apparently a commentary on existential angst and the human condition, Frost’s poem can be read on an entirely different level. It raises questions that haunt the science of Quantum Mechanics (QM) to this day. Of course, that may not have been Frost’s intent; at that time the wide world was just beginning to learn about Relativity. But a poem is a poem is a poem. Once written, it transcends its author and even its milieu. We must meet the text head on, accept it on its own terms, regardless of the author’s subjective intent. A hundred plus years ago it was popular to think of the Universe as if it were a finely tuned Swiss timepiece, wound by God ‘in the beginning’ and left running mechanically ever since. Some 7 th Day: Gone fishin’! But by 1900, a series of observations and experiments had already made this view untenable and eventually led to the discovery of Quantum Mechanics. QM showed that there is no pre-determined course of events, that what happens is more a function of probability than causality, and that Universe at its most fundamental level is best understood as a perpetual series of ‘choices’ In the realm of philosophy, this insight popped up as the Existentialist doctrine of Freedom. Jean Paul Sartre, the high priest of Existentialism, divided Universe into en-soi , which was perfectly deterministic, and pour-soi , which was perfectly free. He skirted the problem of dualism by defining en-soi as etre (being) and pour-soi as neant (nothingness). Le neant functioned as the negation of l’etre and in this way diversity was reconciled with solidarity. Sartre understood that freedom, while absolute, could not be unbounded. For example, one is not ‘free’ to draw a square circle or fly to Mars just by flapping one’s arms. Facticity (the real world) imposes logical and physical limitations, but those limitations are external to the agent and do not in any way limit or qualify that agent’s perfect freedom . Limitations are part of en-soi , never pour-soi . In The Road Not Taken , Robert Frost confronts a simple choice between two options (0, 1). He has a destination to reach and there are two roads that will take him there. Facticity excludes any other option: he cannot fly, he cannot tunnel, he cannot crawl for miles on his hands and knees through underbrush. If he is to accomplish his ‘project’ (arrive home by end of day), he has only two choices: there are only two roads he can take. Frost’s preferred solution: travel both roads and still be one traveler. But with his imagination still bound by the limitations of classical physics, he rejects that notion as impossible. QM, however, suggests that such a strategy is possible. In fact, most current interpretations of QM assert that this is the only possibility. Given the existence of two equally attractive (i.e. equally probable) paths with identical start and stop points, Frost will travel both, whether he likes it, or is aware of it, or not. But how? One possibility, supported by the various “double slit” experiments that gave QM its start, suggests that a quantum follows two or more paths simultaneously but does not ‘decide’ which path will be its ‘real’ path until it is reaches its destination and is observed (measured) by an external agent: “Daddy’s home!” or “I shall be telling this with a sigh…” Mr. Frost can indeed “travel both and be one traveler”; there’s no other way to get where he’s going. But when he finally arrives at his destination, it will appear to all observers (including Frost himself who is now his own observer) that he has come by one path only. His arrival, once observed, collapses the Wave Function. According to this model, Frost can experience both walks and then, at the very end, he can ‘decide’ which walk was more satisfying, select that walk, and make that his actual experience, his history, his biography. We imagine that we live in a world where the past determines the future. Frost shows how wrong this is. It is at least as true to say that the future selects its own the past. This interpretation has massive real world implications. Imagine, for example, how this might play out in a restaurant. “Waiter, bring me one order of everything on the menu and when I’ve finished, I’ll pay for whichever dish I liked best.” Or what about a lifetime? You follow all courses open to you and then, at the end, you get to choose the one path that gets you the best result. How kool would that be! But this option is not all it’s cracked up to be either. First, it isn’t really ‘Frost’ who makes the final decision. That decision is made by the whole experimental apparatus, the whole Universe for that matter, and is as much a function of mathematics (probability) as aesthetics (taste). Second, Frost will have no memory whatsoever of ‘the road not taken’. Similarly, I will have no memory of the dishes I decided not to pay for in your restaurant, or how they tasted. In a bizarre turn, you only get what you pay for after all. Cruel justice! Hugh Everett’s “Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics” modified this picture. According to Everett, every time Universe confronts a choice it bifurcates, splits. In one Universe, Choice A is made; in a second Universe, a perfect copy of the first save for this one decision, Choice B. According to this view, Mr. Frost must “travel both”…but he is no longer “one traveler”. According to Everett’s theory, there are now two Frosts, entirely unaware of one another; sadly, according to Everett, they will never meet again. Everett’s theory allows Frost only one set of experiences, but he may (or may not) find consolation in the realization an alternate Frost is having the other set of experiences in an alternate universe. In any event, both Frosts arrive in the same town at the same time, but now it is really two different copies of the same town, each existing in its own Universe. What a waste! What is it about Nature that makes you think it might be that inefficient? Once arrived, the town is the same in both universes, as is ‘the Frost’. So why can’t they pick back-up where they were before the split? Suppose we modify Everett’s model to allow Frost’s many trajectories to intersect, to become entangled, perhaps to recombine, to merge, radically constraining the proliferation of universes that so bedevils Everett’s scheme. This model allows the Universe to grow but at something approximating its currently observed rate, not exponentially as with Everett. This model begins to resemble Richard Feynman’s Sum Over Histories . According to Feynman, Mr. Frost travels both paths; but this time he remains one traveler. The two experiences merge only when he reaches his destination, but the final product is not a choice between, but a mash-up of, the two experiences. It might be more accurate to say that a part of Frost travels one path and another part travels the other path. Feynman’s model does not double the amount of experience Frost enjoys but it does combine experience from both pathways into a single outcome. According to our restaurant metaphor (above), we get to taste all the items on the menu…but only as samples, never as full meals. Recently, a new interpretation has come along that builds on Feynman. In this thought experiment, known as the Cheshire Cat , quantum data is understood to show that certain properties (qualities) of the quantum follow one path while the particle itself (quiddity) follows the other. In Alice in Wonderland , the cat’s grin, a property, can appear separately from the cat itself. In the Cheshire Cat experiment, the particle’s spin can travel a different route from the rest of the quantum. In The Road Not Taken , perhaps Frost’s gait and affect travel one path while his body follows the other. Crazy, I know, but this is Quantum Mechanics! Convinced? Neither am I, but it’s one logical possibility. Bottom line : The Road Not Taken is beautiful and ground breaking…but ultimately and unavoidably wrong! You can “travel both (roads) and be one traveler;” in fact, you must . But no one could have known it at the time. That said, there is a non-thetic intuition that suffuses this masterpiece that prepares us for what might be coming down the road. Perhaps it is a defining function of art to prepare us psychologically for impending upheaval. In any event,100 years later, no one is loosening their seat belt! A hundred plus years ago it was popular to think of the Universe as if it were a finely tuned Swiss timepiece, wound by God ‘in the beginning’ and left running mechanically ever since. Some 7th Day: Gone fishin’! Image: “Observation of a Quantum Cheshire Cat in a Matter-Wave Interferometer Experiment,” by Tobias Denkmayr et al., in Nature Communications , Vol. 5, Article No. 4492; July 29, 2014 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 dtc@gc3incorporated.com . Return to Harvest 2024 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

< Back Boethius “The ultimate pattern of events is determined, while the specific events that form that pattern are entirely undetermined.” David Cowles You know Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas, Kant and Hegel, but do you know Boethius? My mappa mundi of Western Civilization is maddeningly simplistic. I divide it into three great and, so far at least, symmetrical epochs: Classical, Medieval and Modern. I date the Classical era from the 5th century BCE: the rise of pre-Socratic philosophy, the golden age of Greek theater, and the dawn of Athenian democracy (Pericles); it ended in the 5th century CE, one millennium later. The Fall of Rome (476 CE) kick-starts the Middle Ages. Another millennium passes and now Machiavelli and the rest of his ‘Renaissance gang’ are busy bringing down the curtain on the greatest social ‘experiment’ of all time, call it ‘Christendom’ or ‘Feudalism’ as you will. So, the Modern era begins (c. 1500 CE); are we still in its grip today? Precedent says that we are only halfway through this third epoch. Hope and prayer say otherwise! Perhaps history is unfolding according to an inverse Fibonacci series (1, 1, 2, 3, 5…). This would preserve intact the first two 1,000 year eras; but it would mercifully shorten the so-called Modern epoch to just 500 years, followed by a succession of much shorter post-Modern epochs: 333 years (now), 200 years, 120 years, etc. Who knows? Could happen! The rate of change does seem to be accelerating. We should be so lucky! Have we seen the backside of the ‘Enlightenment’? Are we on the cusp of something new? Is this “the dawning of the Age of Aquarius” we heard so much about in the ‘60s? Ok, I’ll curb my enthusiasm! The 20th century borrowed liberally from the New Testament’s Apocalypse : two world wars, the holocaust, the atomic bomb, climate change… The grip of La Technique ( per Jacques Ellul) on our economy has never been tighter, while its first cousin once removed, propaganda, thoroughly dominates our intellectual, social, and political lives. Are there any promising counter indications (i.e., grounds for hope)? Well, in the art world, we celebrate the demise of representationalism and the return to the Gothic ideal in the work of Picasso, Kandinsky , et al. Now we are once again looking beneath the surface: we’re exploring what things are , not just how they look or how they work . In science, too, we have overthrown the tyranny of Newtonian spacetime. 20th century physics pulled off a spectacular trifecta: relativity (Einstein), quantum mechanics (Heisenberg et al.), and non-locality (John Bell). Finally, literature: Ulysses (Joyce) represents the rediscovery of syntagm (vs. system). Pound, Eliot, Stein, Becket, Robbe-Grillet, et al., joined Joyce in rotating the ‘world’ 90 degrees, from a horizontal orientation (sequence) to a vertical orientation (coincidence). The classical, medieval and modern epochs each produced a gaggle of philosophers, but out of that scrum, a man called Boethius unexpectedly emerges. He bestride the millennia like a Colossus - sorry Homer. Boethius was a Christian, but scholars are uncertain about the depth of his conviction. By the end of the 5th century, Christianity had become chic . It was the way forward for any aspiring philosopher. Jupiter and Juno were yesterday’s news ! Yet, his most famous work, The Consolation of Philosophy , though thoroughly monotheistic, makes no mention of Christianity or any of its differentiating doctrines. Instead, the work displays Boethius’ profound familiarity with Greco-Roman mythology and classical history. He was a prominent personal advisor to the Ostrogoth emperor Theodoric, an Arian (i.e., a heretic, at least by today’s standards). Yet, Boethius is venerated, with official sanction, as a Christian martyr in at least one region of Italy. Be that as it may, Boethius proposed solutions to mainstream philosophical problems, the like of which are not seen again until the late medieval/early modern period (1200 – 1950). Let’s explore: All events, to the extent that they are free, seek Good and shun evil. What else could events possibly do? By pursuing something, events automatically confer on it the moniker, ‘Good’. Emerging events assess the world as it is, evaluate that world according to criteria (i.e., values) we call ‘the Good’, and act to modify that world so that it more closely conforms to that ‘Good’. Not your cup of chai? No problem, Goodbye! Of course, in our spatio-temporal world, things don’t always turn out exactly as we intend. The best laid plans… and all that. “Everything that is good is so through participation in goodness.” “If there is something to which all things are inclined, it will be the sum of all good…” “Even things which are believed to be inanimate also desire, in a similar way, that which is their own… Furthermore, that which is suitable to each thing, they preserve, just as they destroy what is harmful.” It’s hard, even for Boethius, to describe Being from the perspective of a stone. Suffice to say, there is something about a stone that works to preserve its stoniness . Was Boethius, therefore, a proponent of panpsychism ? We don’t have enough evidence to make that call, but his ontology certainly does not rule it out. “… The end of all things is the good…namely God.” The final cause. “Mortal men travel by different paths, though all are striving to reach one and the same goal… It is the perfection of all good things and contains in itself all that is good.” “The chief point and reason, therefore, for seeking all things is goodness…all things are desired for the sake of the good in them… God is to be found in goodness itself and nowhere else.” Boethius demonstrates that Good, Being, Unity, Love and God are different names for a single concept. “When…objects differ (conflict) they are not good, but…it is through the acquisition of unity (harmony) that these things are good…” “Everything that is remains and subsists just so long as it is one, but perishes and dissolves immediately it ceases to be one.” To be is to be one; to cease being is to become ‘legion’. Think of your own body; it is made up of 35 trillion cells, but you experience those cells as one body. We use ‘the body is breaking down’ as a euphemism for death. “Men who give up the common goal (unity, harmony)…thereby cease to exist themselves.” We are only so long and to the extent that we keep our focus on the Good. 1500 years on from Boethius, we have memes of our own: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” (The Who) But this is not at all what Boethius had in mind: The more things change, the more they become one! Becoming one is just about the opposite of staying the same . “The world in constant change maintains a harmony… If Love relaxed the reins, all things that now keep peace would wage continual war.” “If you do away with perfection ( aka God), it is impossible to imagine how that which is held to be imperfect could exist…” Without some universal unifying force (e.g., God or the Good), the world would disintegrate into an ever-finer grained multiplicity, culminating in heat death. Imagine all the matter/energy in the universe, inert and spread out smoothly throughout the universe. Hmm, sounds a bit like Genesis before God’s creative act: “The world was without form or shape with darkness over the abyss and a wind sweeping across the waters, (1: 1-2)” aka the CMB (Cosmic Microwave Background). “That which is the origin of all things is in its own substance supremely good.” An ‘origin’ qua origin can only be one . Once that unity is lost, so is the power of origination. “Evil is nothing, (so) it is clear that since they can only do evil, the wicked can do nothing.” Our choice is not merely between good and evil, it is between something and nothing. To be is to be good; not to be good is not to be. “We must see everything that exists as good…anything that turns away from the good ceases to exist.” Like all children, we initially understand freedom as ‘ freedom from’ – freedom from the ministrations of parents, teachers, and civil authorities. Later, we tack on ‘freedom to’ – freedom to speak, assemble, pursue happiness, etc. But there are even bigger fish to fry. External constraints can be annoying (ask any teenager), but internal constraints can be, and usually are, fatal. We are born free, not omnipotent, but free, free to be all that we can be. Anything that interferes with my ability to realize my full human potential is, in that instance at least, evil. Born free, most of us allow ourselves to be imprisoned, not by evil men (sic) but by our own attachments: “But if to care and want you’re prey, no king are you, but slave.” We are in prison, a prison of our own making; but incredibly, we know the way out of this prison. Exit signs abound and there are no locks on any doors, no gates are barred, and yet we huddle together in the prison yard, bemoaning the lot, calling out for a savior. We noted earlier that no one knowingly and freely chooses lesser good in preference to greater good; and yet we all do so, nearly all the time. Born free, we are no longer free. Each of us is in a prison of her own design. The wisdom of all cultures, east and west, is full of blueprints, maps and escape manuals. Arguably, these constitute the sum of all human reflection. Liberation is what the Buddha was all about; but perhaps the opening verse of the Book of Psalms says it best: “Happy is the man (sic) who does not follow the counsel of the wicked…the law of the Lord is his joy, and on his law, he meditates day and night.” We are ‘happy’ only to the extent that we participate in the Good, and participation in the Good is only possible in the context of Freedom. Luckily, we are free; we only just need to recognize that! “Submitting to His (God’s) governance and obeying his laws is freedom.” For Boethius, freedom and virtue are one and the same. Failure to act virtuously in a particular situation is testimony to the hold evil has over us. No one voluntarily does anything that is less than ‘good’; therefore, anyone who tries to do anything other than ‘good’ does so as a result of compulsion (imposed externally or internally). Compulsion is the manifestation of evil in the life of a human being (or any other entity endowed with free will). Boethius was a mere 1,400 years ahead of his time. Elsewhere in this issue of ATM, we looked at how Pope Leo XIII and Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre , both espoused similar views of freedom and compulsion. The popular Christian notions of Providence and Omniscience (foreknowledge) seem radically incompatible with this Freedom. Freedom suggests that we are the authors of our own acts. We might not control the outcome of events, but we are solely responsible for their initiation. We act! Providence , on the other hand, refers to God’s role in the unfolding of events (personal or cosmic). This is what Einstein meant when he asked if the universe ‘had a bias toward good’; it is also what the preacher means when she says that God has a ‘master plan’ for each of us and for the cosmos. It is under Providence that we’ll find the concepts of Divine Benevolence and Omnipotence. God acts! Omniscience refers to God’s foreknowledge of events. It assumes that God knows immediately and eternally every detail of cosmic history. This would appear to preclude all contingency and therefore eliminate any role for Freedom. We are presented with a ‘block universe’ in which everything that is to happen has ‘already happened’...in the mind of God. Nobody acts! Each of these concepts is vastly more nuanced than we have space to explore here. Each could consume volumes…and has. Still, based just on this thumbnail, it is hard to see how these three connotatively disparate concepts could apply jointly to a single reality. But perhaps that is the ‘consolation of philosophy’ – to see the synonym behind every antonym. The Consolation of Philosophy , Boethius’ masterwork, is divided into 5 books, each in turn further divided into chapters. The last chapter of the penultimate book and the entirety of the final book are devoted to one topic: “You are urging me to the greatest of all questions, a question that can never be exhausted…the oneness of providence, the course of fate, the haphazard nature of the random events of chance, divine knowledge and predestination, and the freedom of the will.” This area of inquiry remains a major focus, even today, of theological and religious speculation. In the end, if I understand him correctly, Boethius got it right, but his reasoning can be hard to follow. Rather than quote Boethius at length (as I did above), I think it would be more profitable for all concerned if I were to present an organized summary of his views on this topic. Boethius believed that Freedom, Providence, and Omniscience are, in fact, entirely compatible, but to see that we need to look at the world through fresh eyes: God is eternal ( aka timeless), God is good, God creates. The universe is real. It’s not a figment of God’s imagination, and because It is real , it is free. Real existence is only possible in the context of real freedom. To be is to be free. The created universe extends in both space and time. Even if that extension were infinite (Aristotle), that infinity would, in no way equal, or even resemble, eternity which is another name for God. ( See ATM’s Eternity vs. Immortality. ) From the perspective of the spatio-temporal universe (us), events may be sorted into past, present, and future . From the perspective of eternity (God), there is no past or future, just a single all-encompassing present. So, God ‘experiences’ all spatio-temporal events as happening immediately and simultaneously. From that perspective, events fit together perfectly. Each event makes a unique and irreplaceable contribution to the final pattern. Therefore, each event is ‘necessary’ in its relationship to other events and to the whole. There is no wiggle room here. On the other hand, a nexus of entirely different events could have generated the exact same pattern, in which case those events would each be ‘necessary’. The ultimate pattern harmonizes all events, regardless of their details, by resolving all conflicts into contrasts that perfectly instantiate God’s values. Therefore, we may say that the ultimate pattern of events is determined, while the specific events that form that pattern are entirely undetermined. Human beings (and perhaps other entities as well) are free to act (in the real pursuit of Good, i.e. God) or not (in the imaginary pursuit of ‘pleasure’, i.e. idols). Freedom acts in pursuit of God’s values; Providence harmonizes those acts into a pattern that perfectly instantiates those values; God has eternal knowledge of that pattern . From God’s perspective, it is the pattern that is ultimately real. The specific acts that form that pattern are the province of the created (i.e., free) world. Let us fall back on the old metaphor of an oriental rug. God prescribes the pattern and monitors ‘events’ to ensure that that pattern is emerging from the weave. We are the five-year-olds, working up to 16 hours each day, in dimly lit spaces, tying knots. We know nothing of patterns; our only concern is to tie a good knot. Ultimately, though, our efforts, however painful, are redeemed in the magnificence of the final design. Boethius offers us this consolation, only days before he is bludgeoned to death. Thank you, Mr. B! Image: Boethius woodcut. Holbein. 1537. 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 No Kids and No Curiosity David Cowles Dec 5, 2025 “Worship the pre-teens in your life and spend time learning from them and enjoying their company…for as long that is as you can stand them.” 1000 words, 5 minute read No parent or grandparent fails to notice that their kids’ insatiable curiosity wanes with the onset of puberty. In a recent study ( Psychological Science ) Radhika Santhanagopalan, Ph.D., discovered that as children aged, the tendency to avoid information grows stronger. Though 5- and 6-year-olds still actively seek information for its own sake, 7- to 10-year-olds are much more likely avoid learning something if it elicits a negative emotion. We learn to filter the truth from a very early age and apparently we were doing so even before the onset of Century 21. Recent findings ( Nature Communications ) reveal that central nervous system hubs grow and reorganize on a timeline that doesn’t map neatly onto the milestones we typically celebrate (e.g. ages 6, 16, 21, etc.). For this study, scientists compared MRI diffusion scans of more than 3,800 people, ranging from newborns to 90-year-olds; they found that our brains ‘molt’, i.e. shed one skin for another, at 9, 32, 66, and 83. The human brain experiences five distinct eras as we age, and each is defined by changes in our neural architecture that influence how we process information. What this means, according to the researchers, is that our brain’s connections wire themselves in pretty much the same way from birth to nine years of age. Then our neural architecture starts to organize differently as we enter adolescence, continuing through age 32. At this point, the brain’s structural development appears to peak, according to the study. “What we find suggests that the journey from childlike brain development (through age 9) to this peak in the early 30s is distinct from other phases in the lifespan,” says Alexa Mousley, the study’s lead author and a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge. At age 32, the brain’s longest rewiring era begins, marking the opening of the adult years. It’s at this point that brain architecture starts to stabilize compared with the previous phases, and Mousley says this corresponds to past research that found that there is also a “plateau in intelligence and personality around this time.” By the time of our first ‘molt’, we have begun to understand some things about information: (1) Knowledge is power. (2) Information is a tool. (3) Tools (e.g. information) can be weaponized. Between a 50 year old and a 5 year old, I’d choose to spend time with a 5 year old any day…I would that is if I could keep up. I can hang with my 50 somethings for months on end and never hear a fresh idea; I’m sure they would say the same of the time they spend with me. We sub-out our thinking to academia and the media. After all, creative thinking is a lot of work, and we have lost confidence in our ability and in our results. We are more than happy to let those ‘more qualified’ think for us. On the other hand, I can’t spend an afternoon with a 5 year old and not hear at least 3 fresh ideas. Not all of them will turn out to be Nobel worthy; but they do make me think. They show me the world in a new way, and isn’t that the point of it all after all? Sidebar : I’ve watched videos of incredible adults interacting creatively with groups of children. They’re awesome! But tellingly, none lasts more than 20 minutes; adults cannot hold their own with kids for longer. We see the world as a collection of symbols; we confront nothing on its own terms, we see nothing as it is in itself. Everything we experience is carefully protected by its semantic packaging. Adults understand how things are used , where they fit in , but they have no idea what things are . Jean-Paul Sartre focused his most successful novel, Nausea , on this phenomenon. In one scene, his hero encounters the roots of a tree as they are, in and for themselves alone, for the first time. As adults we apply a complex ontological grid to our perception of the world. We impose our own Great Chain of Being: adults > kids > pets > other animals > plants > ‘ stuffies ’. Children are born Hasidim – they perceive the same divine spark at the core of everything they encounter (animate or otherwise). What we call playing , they’d call ‘releasing the Shekinah ’…if only they could pronounce it. Ludo = Laudo . Since Plato, Westerners have thought in terms of classes and their members. There is a class of objects known as ‘chairs’; they all serve a common function though no two of them are identical. Children know no classes. They learn how to ‘classify’ from adults. Initially, every object, every person is its own class. Ab initio , every noun is a proper noun. But as they ‘grow up’, they gradually internalize the Platonic categories of the adults around them. Children routinely nominalize adjectives. To the extent that we internalize Plato’s categorical scheme, we lose contact with ‘things in themselves’. Children have no role in society. They serve no function (unless ‘being cute’ qualifies). Each is an independent entity immersed in a sea of independent entities. The way our contemporary languages are structured, children must learn about classes in order to communicate. They must learn to identify ‘ a chair’ rather than just ‘ that chair’. Seniority offers us a chance to rediscover ourselves, but of course we no longer have any idea where to begin. Perhaps the best you can do is to worship the pre-teens in your life and spend time learning from them and enjoying their company…for as long that is as you can stand them. *** Norman Rockwell’s Grandpa Listening in on the Wireless (1920) shows a young boy demonstrating an early radio set while his grandfather, dressed formally, leans in with a mixture of amusement and genuine wonder. The grandfather’s tentative posture and wide-eyed expression reveal an older man momentarily returning to childlike curiosity as he engages with new technology. Rockwell uses this intimate, intergenerational moment to highlight how learning—and delight—can flow from child to adult just as naturally as the reverse. 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 Be Half There David Cowles “'Be Here Now,’ cried Baba Ram Dass in the ‘60s. But was that good advice?” Can you imagine what life would be like if we actually had to live it? Fortunately, we don’t! Ok, maybe we ‘half-live it’. At every juncture in life, you’re ‘half-there’. A part of you is always stuck in a remembered past while another part of you is already looking back from an imagined future. You see yourself not as you are, but as the peculiar complex of culturally defined roles you’ve adopted – i.e. your personae, your masks. You’re not a point, you’re not just ‘who you are, what you are, when you are’. Like an orbiting electron, you’re schmeared out over space and time. Just listen to yourself: “Next time…next time I’m in Maui, next time I come to this restaurant, next time I drive north in rush hour. “Last time…last time we visited Hawaii, last time we ate in this restaurant, last time I drove north in rush hour. “Back then…when I was Tweedledee…then when I become Tweedledum.” Whatever it is we’re doing, we’re simultaneously comparing it to something we did in the past, something we might have done in the present but didn’t, something we could yet do in the future. We’re also comparing our actions with culturally expected norms: “Big boys don’t cry,” and with the supposed actions of our icons: “WWJD?” Many spiritual teachers have observed these phenomena and railed against them. “Be Here Now,” cried Baba Ram Dass in the ‘60s. But was that good advice? To experience the present moment with no option to bury yourself in memories or hide yourself in fantasies or comfort yourself with counterfactuals or justify yourself via social norms (“just doing my job”) would be unbearable. We manage life by believing that we are redeeming the past and improving the future (whatever that might mean). We are ‘making a contribution’, certain as we are that ‘better days are coming’. We are leaving footprints in the sand, ripples on the surface. We are sustained by our memories (faith), we are energized by our visions (hope), and we are ever reliant on ‘the kindness of strangers’ (love). We do not act alone but as members of a community and we are proud of the socially defined roles we play within that community. “I am someone!” you say. ( Sidebar : when I was in my mid-20s, my mother once said to me, “You’re not people!” Later, I became ‘people’; thanks, Mom?) You are a student, spouse, parent, teacher, butcher, baker, candlestick maker…sequentially or all at once. You find your precious ‘identity’ by overlaying a stack of social filters. Can people change? Of course they can! Just change the filters. But can people really change? Of course they can’t! There’s nothing to change. We are relieved to know that some features of the past are done and gone, never to be repeated, but we are also comforted knowing that the present has inherited some familiar features from that same past. Believing we can make the future qualitatively different from the present gives our lives purpose. Solidarity with others gives us a sense of security. These dispensations allow us to relativize the horror of real life. But flash! Those dispensations can be taken away. Future courts may have the power (constitutional and technological) to sentence serious offenders to relive a year, or two, of their lives. In this state, you can’t modify your behavior and you can’t alter the course of events in any way. Pain cannot be averted; boredom cannot be relieved. You must simply relive it all, all alone, as it was, with full knowledge that there is no pony hidden beneath the pile of excrement. Essentially, you’ve become a character in an ‘anti-version’ of It’s a Wonderful Life . You are watching an unedited narrative of you , but you are watching it from the inside, from the perspective of a real character in the movie. Jimmy Stewart experienced the world as it would have been had he not lived in it; you get to experience the world as it is because you lived in it. You are fully engaged, emotionally and intellectually, feeling every slight, every bruise, as if you were feeling it for the first time…but knowing that you’ve experienced it all before and that you’ll go on experiencing the same until your sentence is up. How is such a thing possible? Actually, it’s pretty simple once the bot brain barrier has been breached. Carbon and silicon; they go together like peanut butter and bananas. Ads for You - the Movie tell it all: “Cringe as you watch yourself repeat the same mistakes. Blush as you relive those legendary awkward moments . Tremble in anticipation of reliving past pain; cry as you watch yourself hurt others.” Without its dispensations, life is unbearable. Defendants dread nothing more than hearing, “…And so I sentence you to be yourself for a term of one full year.” It is well known that convicts sentenced to play the lead role in You - the Movie invariably return to court after a month or two. Sentenced to ‘real life’ for one year, they ask the judge to ‘commute’ their sentence…to ‘death by lethal injection’. 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 Next

< Back A Simple Christmas Deidre Braley "There comes a time when our souls need more respite than even the traditions of Christmas can offer us." The last couple of years, I have begun advocating for ‘simple Christmas’ with my family. It comes from the purest intentions but always leaves me, at the last minute, feeling like a scrooge who was just too lazy to ‘do’ Christmas right. The result is that I spend way too much money in way too little time and that I jam-pack our remaining yuletide days with parties and people [and our bellies with so much sugar that we need to detox for the first quarter of the new year]. But I can’t shake the frustration of being carried along on the wave of the holidays. In the pursuit of Christmas cheer, I feel pulled ever farther from holy joy. The extra baubles, the extravagant gifts that I’ll just be vacuuming around for the next year, and the endless packing of our traveling circus caravan [that is, our family] - all of that ‘cheer’ leaves me gasping for air and dreaming of the middle of January when I can finally observe Christmas the way I want to: resting in the margins with a quietly expectant heart. And my heart can be neither quiet nor expectant when every marginal moment is filled with details and lists and talking and calculating. It takes time to prepare my heart for holy reverence. I cannot celebrate and commune with and rest in the glory of the Coming Lord while simultaneously watching The Christmas Prince on Netflix. I just can’t. The thing is, we are so tied up in Christmas as a culture that the notion of ‘simple Christmas’ seems simply impossible. Christmas has become something that we do, not that we observe, and by golly, we want to do it up right. That means leaving no Christmas movie unwatched, no cookie unbaked, no party unattended, and no gift ungifted. Don’t get me wrong - it’s not that I don’t like the traditions and festivities that come along with Christmas. In fact, I love them. I cry every year when I hang our ornaments on the Christmas tree, remembering the origins of each and listening to John Denver’s Rocky Mountain Christmas spin on the record player. I close my eyes and dream of my grandmother while I knead her special butterscotch rolls, praying they’ll turn out half as good as hers always were. And I always try to tune in to CBS for the Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman specials. What is it about these rituals that makes them matter on such a personal level? It’s that they make us feel connected to something timeless, even as time continues to strip away and change everything else in our worlds. When we tether ourselves to tradition, we express our deep desire to be grounded and anchored to something meaningful - something that will remain steadfast and dependable, year after year. But there comes a time when our souls need more respite than even the traditions of Christmas can offer us. I remember the first year that I realized I no longer had ‘the Christmas Spirit.’ I entered the season with eager anticipation of the cheer it would bring, but to my dismay, I found my soul wasn’t responding to all the Christmas goodness the way it once had. I wanted it to feel the same. I wanted that spark, that cheer! Where had it gone? I looked for it everywhere; I listened to more songs. I made more party plans. I put more presents under the tree. But it didn’t give me more holiday cheer. If anything, it just made it all the more elusive. In my journal that December, I wrestled with the change: Why do I feel Like Christmas Is something to be caught And caged Like a bird That must sing for me? Perhaps, as the years pass and the realness of this world settles heavily upon the magic we once cultivated from tradition, the answer is not more of the same, but less. I am not a minimalist, per se, but I am intrigued by the idea of stripping back all of the layers of our lives until we find only what’s essential resting there, waiting to be nurtured. So often, we get confused and end up nurturing not the thing that’s most essential, but rather what’s most visible. So, when we’re lacking cheer, we think that it must be because we need more lights on the tree or piles of cookies on the counter. So, we string. And we bake. And we feel perplexed and frustrated when it doesn’t work. See, when we lean in to more of what culture says will make us happy, we’re only adding more layers, and, in turn, we distance ourselves even further from what’s truly essential. The effect is that our minds, bodies, and spirits begin to dry out. We reach the end of Advent feeling completely malnourished. Our culture has nearly extracted the ‘holy’ right out of ‘holiday.’ It’s been quite effective at convincing us that we don’t need it - that holiness is outdated, archaic, and boring. As a result, any of us who actually want to try ‘simple Christmas’ this year might find it much harder than pulling off a regular ole cultural Christmas. It will go quite against the grain and, I imagine, be a little off-putting to some. But in the stripping back of what we think brings us cheer, might we be able to discover joy instead? What if we try it together? What if we make this thing - ‘simple Christmas’ - a movement? What if we agree to strip back all the layers of our holiday cheer this year so that we can discover the essential nature of holy-day joy, instead? What would that even look like? Surely, it would look different for everyone. For me, it might look like planning to purchase a single, intentional gift for each of my beloveds (rather than a whole slew of them), and to take pleasure in wrapping each one with love. It might feel like turning down an invitation from an acquaintance to drop by their Christmas party and instead spending that time playing outside with my children or sipping hot caramel tea with a book splayed across my lap. It might sound like instrumental hymns or silence in the place of Jingle Bell Rock. It might taste like a nourishing meal enjoyed with a few close friends, rather than a lavish spread of hors d'oeuvres that took days to prepare. Whatever it may look like on a practical level for each of us, we can all begin by viewing our holiday choices through these same lenses: Does this bring me closer to the rush, or closer to the holy? Does this settle my soul, or send it spinning? Does this prepare my heart to be able to commune intimately with the Lord? Am I rejoicing in the Lord and his goodness, or am I placing my hope of joy elsewhere? Does this feel like an obligation to meet, or a gift to savor? When we begin to examine our holiday practices and embrace only those which nourish (that is, the essentials), we strip back all the other things that distance us from what we really desire: a quietude in our hearts that allows us to commune, rest, and celebrate with our Savior. A holiness that transcends time and, behold! It makes even the simplest of moments tender with beauty and meaning. What might ‘simple Christmas’ look like for you this year? What are your essentials, and what can you release? What will it take in order for your soul to be able to exhale the chaos and inhale Christ? This season, let’s try it together. May we all enter into Advent with the assurance that holiness is not seasonal, joy won’t disappear with the Christmas decorations, and that deep restedness is only one humble yes away from Jesus’ invitation to just be with him. Deidre Braley is author and host of The Second Cup blog/podcast, where she loves to teach people that Jesus is for them, not against them. She has a monthly newsletter on Substack and her subscribers enjoy weekly content that focuses on communing with Jesus and others, creating beauty when it's hard, and celebrating this weird and wild life. She serves as editorial advisor on The Truly Co. Publication, and has been published in both The Truly Co. magazine and Joyful Life magazine. Deidre has also recently published her 2022 Advent Guide and invites you to follow along with her during this season of anticipation. Previous Next

< Back Every You David Cowles Mar 28, 2024 “There is no me or you until there is a we…we co-actualize.” The Beatles said it best (they usually do): “ I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together…” ( I am the Walrus ) If not the Fab 4, then Jesus: ““…I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.“ (John 14;20)“ Both drew on a rich Hellenic-Semitic heritage. Parmenides (5 th century BCE) is widely acknowledged as the father of Western Philosophy. But fathers have fathers and Parmenides own ‘father’, intellectually speaking, was Anaximander (6 th century BCE)…the grandfather…the godfather…the OG. According to Heidegger, there is only one fragment of Anaximander’s writing extant and incontestably authentic…but it’s a blockbuster! That said, it is nearly inexpressible in modern English (but we’ll try, of course…that’s what we do). Anaximander himself struggled to state his idea clearly, even in the much more expressive language (Ancient Greek) that he had at his disposal. The nub of his idea was this: there is no ‘me’ or ‘you’ until there is a ‘we’. On our own, you and I are merely ‘virtual’ or ‘potential’ entities. We ‘co-actualize’. Come again? On our own we are each struggling to ‘become’ but in the process, we are crowding one another out of the spotlight of Being. Successful ‘coming to be’ is necessarily mutual. Properly speaking, the verb ‘to become’ should have no ‘singular’ form: we become, you (pl) become, they become. I am seeking to emerge as figure against the ground that is the World (you). But I cannot emerge organically out of an inert background. I cannot come to be until you are ; of course, you cannot come to be until I am . Can someone say, “We’re all in this together?" My ‘coming to be’ can only occur in the context of your ‘coming to be’ and vice versa. I can only be what I can be by letting you become what you can become, which you can only be by letting me become what I can become. Diagram that sentence! Anaximander solved the Problem of Other Minds 2500 years before Sartre, Searle, and Putnam laid siege to this apparently impenetrable fortress. We self-actualize only when we co-actualize. There is not a ‘problem of other minds’; there is a problem of ‘this mind’…my mind. Enter Descartes: “Cogito ergo sum” isn’t the half of it. It doesn’t go far enough; it didn’t get the job done. He should have positioned his famous dictum in a matrix, including such corollaries as: Sum ergo es. (I am therefore you are) Sum ergo summus. (I am therefore we are) Es ergo summus. (You are therefore we are) It’s a whole package! Would that we still had a Middle Voice verb form to help us express it! Co-actualize? Ok, with whom? Or what? It is not for me to say what sort of partner is required for mutual actualization: it’s a bit like the concept of a Higher Power in AA. Your Higher Power can be God, or Gaia , or the copper beech growing in your yard. It could even be Fido…or Fluffy. Put simply, your higher power is your higher power if it functions as a higher power…for you. It would be presumptuous to think that everyone should have the same higher power. (Monotheist bias?) One of the ingenious things about AA is the way it allows its members to curate their own recoveries. Within certain very broad guidelines, one size fits one. Likewise ontology: I can co-actualize with anyone (or anything) that can co-actualize with me. Earlier I mentioned Sartre, Searle, and Putnam, but the 20 th -century thinker who came closest to Anaximander’s great insight was Martin Buber; he wrote “at the foundation is the relationship." You and I are like reindeer who have accidentally locked horns. We each pull as hard as we can to disengage but, of course, we fail. Archeologists have discovered skeletons of reindeer with their horns still interlocked. What a way to go! Had those reindeer read Anaximander…or Buber, they would be alive today, frolicking across the tundra, their antlers bejeweled with daisy chains. Had each given its inter lock ator ‘reck’ (consideration), they would have resisted the urge to pull away from each other, and they might have escaped death’s vice-like grip, at least temporarily. But reindeer normally don’t read philosophy. Humans do…or at least we can! OG Anaximander and his shorty (is this the first time that Martin Buber has been referred to as a ‘shorty’?) showed us the way of co-actualization; so why aren’t we following it? “Why do the nations so furiously rage together?” (Handel) Why do we lock horns? 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.

Healthcare is a problem and not just in the US. Everywhere cost and quality battle; everywhere both are losing. But as in so many other things, the US is the bell cow. Healthcare - AI First Healthcare is a problem and not just in the US. Everywhere cost and quality battle; everywhere both are losing. But as in so many other things, the US is the bell cow. Healthcare has been an issue in the US since the mid-60’s and it has perhaps been issue #1 over the last 40 years. Today, it consumes almost 20% of our GDP but 30% of that cost is spent on treatment that is not appropriate for the patient’s actual condition. We’ve tried provider networks, we’ve tried managed care, we’ve tried consumerism, we’ve tried wellness – nothing works! Surprised? We know that government control, price fixing, supply rationing, and demand management never work…ever, anywhere, for almost anything. So why should healthcare be any different? What does work, almost always, almost everywhere, for almost anything? Technology. Why not give it a go? Lord knows we’re tried everything else. Now don’t get me wrong. Doctors know a lot; they know how to do a lot of things. But the system is structured so that this knowledge rarely benefits the typical patient during a typical interaction. ‘Patient management’ takes the place of genuine care. So, need a brain transplant? Come to the US! Have a skin rash? Rub mud on it…under the supervision of a qualified holistic healer, of course. Or add an AI Bot to your care team and see what happens: Healthcare & The Titanic “We have the technology to transform healthcare…we just need the will to deploy it and we will begin to build that will only once we stop moving furniture.” Can AI Save Healthcare? “What was once a healing art has become physiological engineering… the healthcare system treats me as if I were a cheap knock-off of the 6 million dollar man.” My MD Should Be a Bot “AI is 4 times better at diagnosing complex medical conditions than MDs. This…could be the death knell for the traditional practice of medicine.” My PCP Should Be a BOT “Dr. Bot would handle patient in-take, conduct the initial interview…order appropriate tests, and offer a preliminary diagnosis…” Who's Afraid of an HMO? “HMOs dumbed down quality and erected formidable barriers to care… (so) why would anyone want to bring them back?” Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

< Back Sufi Beatles David Cowles May 30, 2026 “The Beatles give us a model for the sanctification of everyday life…saints live in Time Square too.” I don’t care about the Beatles. I don’t care about their fantastic music, their chaotic lives, their internal conflicts, their sad break-up or even John’s premature death. I only care about the work, the corpus , the lyrics they left behind and they “lead you to an overwhelming question” (Eliot): Do the Beatles’ songs and films contain coded messages with hidden meanings? The Beatles may be the most iconic cultural phenomenon of the post-WW II era. Whether their corpus is to be taken at face value as pure, mindless entertainment, or whether it should be mined for cutting edge philosophical, cosmological, and spiritual insights, is absolutely central to any Intellectual History of this period. And no one is more outspoken on this issue than the Beatles themselves. And their answer is a resounding No! Over and over again, the Beatles have told us that their music is just that, music, i.e. that ‘accidental lyrics’ are subservient to ‘essential melodies’. They repeatedly made fun of fans seeking wisdom in pop culture and they dropped ‘fake clues’ throughout their work just to further confound misguided seekers. But of course, this is exactly the behavior you’d expect from someone concealing dangerous truths. Those of you who frequently fly Air Aletheia (thank you, BTW) know that we have zero regard for the opinions of creators . The job of the creator is to create, and creation is always a blend of inspiration and perspiration. It is someone else’s job to evaluate, explain, or analyze the work. As St. Paul pointed out, there are those who speak in tongues and those who interpret tongues. They are separate charisms. (1 Cor. 12: 10b) A full exploration of this question would be book length and might easily begin life as someone’s PhD thesis. Not mine! In today’s 1750 words, I can only hit a few highpoints, but a somewhat broader treatment can be found in the essays that make up the June 2025 issue of Aletheia Today Magazine . I will not waste my ‘precious’ words on the Beatles’ spiritual odyssey or on the intellectual roots of their wisdom. Instead I will attempt a deep dive into what Lennon called a “throw away song,” Glass Onion : I told you about strawberry fields You know the place where nothing is real Well, here's another place you can go Where everything flows Looking through the bent-backed tulips To see how the other half lives Looking through a glass onion . An onion, glass or otherwise, is a powerful metaphor for human nature. Onions don't have a core in the way that apples do. Instead, an onion is made up of concentric layers of ‘leaves’ wrapped around a small, tightly packed center that is just the youngest, most tightly wound, of those leaves. To paraphrase Stephen Hawking, et al., it’s leaves all the way down. Like onions, human beings have no core. We consist of concentric layers of ‘masks’, the faces we prepare to meet the faces that we meet (Eliot), carefully crafted to hide our true identities… from ourselves as well as from others. Fundamentally, each of us is neant (nothingness, Sartre , pure negation, the void. “Everything flows” is the signature meme of Heraclitus of Ephesus (in Modern Turkey), the pre-Socratic precursor of Process Philosophy (Whitehead) and an early bridge between Asian mysticism and European materialism. “Nothing is real” is an implied critique of British Empiricism, perhaps inspired by the Hindu concept of maya . I told you about the walrus and me, man You know that we're as close as can be, man Well, here's another clue for you all The walrus was Paul The song appears to mock the theory, popular at the time, that Paul McCartney had died and been replaced by a doppelganger. That myth was in part based on lyrics contained in an earlier song, I am the Walrus . In fact, however, the citation draws our attention to the older song’s mystical core: “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.” This in turn reads as a reprise of Jesus’ Farewell Discourse as reported in John 13 – 16, especially “I am in my father, and you are in me, and I am in you.” (14: 20) Standing on the cast iron shore, yeah Lady Madonna trying to make ends meet, yeah Looking through a glass onion Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah (yeah, yeah) Looking through a glass onion The onion is a metaphor for the many elaborate disguises that conceal the existential singularity that is our ‘core’ (or anti-core). Most onions are opaque; they do the job nicely. But the Beatles are proposing something different: a glass onion that would allow us to see through each other’s masks right down to our shared core. Just imagine! You keep your masks and I keep mine, but they are transparent now and we can see through them right down to our common core. There is a strong parallel here with the New Testament Book of Revelation . John of Patmos, the purported author, is allowed to see eschatological reality (the existential void) but only by breaking in succession the 7 seals that conceal that reality from the world ( What did John See ) . The glassification of the Beatle’s onion is the ontological equivalent of the breaking of John’s seals. In both cases the existential core is made manifest. But in John’s case, the masks (seals) must be destroyed (broken). According to the kinder, gentler Beatles, those masks may be left in place; they need not block our view of ultimate reality. In the practice of meditation, beginners often complain of incessant distractions. The tendency is to resist them, like smashing John’s seals, but a better practice is just to let them be: don’t fixate on them, don’t feed them with your attention, just let them come…and watch them go. Glass Onion suggests we adopt a similarly tolerant attitude toward our masks. ‘Mother Mary, Lady Madonna’ plays an outsized role in Roman Catholic theology and in Beatle-ology. In an earlier post on this site Mother of God , following guidance from Pope Leo XIV, we spoke of Mary’s dual role as Jesus’ mother and the first fruits of his redemptive act. Who better to be first to see through the glass leaves? The Beatles give us a model for the sanctification of everyday life. Holiness does not demand that we live ascetic lives in isolated desert huts; saints live in Time Square too. On the other hand, there remains a cosmological role for the guru, the shaman, the holy man (sic) of God. Thomas Merton wrote that a few scattered contemplatives, praying continuously, hold the universe together. Drawing on ancient Sufi tradition, reprised by Shakespeare in King Lear , the Beatles refer to their shaman as a fool . I told you about the fool on the hill I tell you man, he's living there still. The role of the fool is the most transparent part of this song. He is in every respect a traditional Sufi master and his appearance near the end should remove any lingering doubt re the Beatles’ mystical intent in Glass Onion . I mean, how else could you possibly interpret this? “Day after day, alone on a hill The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still But nobody wants to know him, they can see that he's just a fool And he never gives an answer But the fool on the hill sees the sun going down And the eyes in his head see the world spinning around …” I can’t imagine anything I’d rather have as my epitaph. Sadly, I don’t merit it. Well here's another place you can be Listen to me Fixing a hole in the ocean Trying to make a dovetail joint , yeah Looking through a glass onion. “Can God make a rock too heavy for him to lift?” Superlatives, like infinities, lead to logical contradictions. Nordic culture had a handle on this 500 to 1,000 years before its southerly neighbors (us). Tasked with fashioning an ‘unbreakable chain’ the Norse realized that they would need to use ‘exotic materials’, e.g. the sound of a cat’s footfall, a woman’s beard, a fish’s breath. Intuitively, the Norse understood that arithmetic needed to expand beyond the set of Real Numbers to include trans-finite and imaginary numbers in order to be useful in the construction of real world models. Bumper Sticker : “Real World – not Real Numbers!” Operations that are impossible according to conventional topology (above) might become possible once transparency (and permeability) is universal. It's a goal, It's a goal, It's a goal , It's a goal, It's a goal , It's a goal, It's a goal. The song’s final line recalls an enthusiastic radio announcer broadcasting a soccer match. A goal, of course, is a singularity: all play stops and resets. The fact that this meme repeats exactly 7 times may recall the 7 seals from Revelation (above). Rather than making fun of the pseudo-mystical, the climax of Glass Onion utterly trashes our secular culture. An archipelago of contemporary sporting events has taken the place of a lifelong quest for meaning and redemption. Isn’t progress grand! The cry of the sportscaster replaces the call to prayer and the sound of angels smashing the locks on the gates of knowledge. We have become a pitiful lot indeed. Of the Beatles’ many triumphs, none tops the successful hiding of the entire Sufi cannon in a string of pop songs and movies ( Yellow Submarine ). In 2200 CE, when the Intellectual History of the 20 th century is rewritten for the umpteenth time, now by colonists on Europa, the authors will marvel at how so much information could have been so successfully hidden from view in an age as sophisticated as ours. The credit does not go to the Beatles’ cryptologists. In many ways their codes are Hardy Boy transparent. But like any good magician (Magi = Sufi) they have distracted us…in this case with glorious melodies, ear catching poetry, psychedelic imagery, and their own deflecting, self-deprecatory commentary. But enough is enough! It is high time, in fact it’s long past time, to break the seals and enjoy the fantastic insights embedded in the Beatles’ corpus. Welcome! 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 Mary Poppins, Sufi Master David Cowles The story of Mary Poppins is the story of one small boy’s initiation into the teachings of Sufi spirituality and the secrets of Sufi mysticism. When the initiation of Michael Banks is complete, Michael has come, at least in some measure, to know the mind of God. Not bad for seven-years-old! How does one come to know the mind of God? From reading children’s stories? Maybe! In 1934, P.L. Travers, an Australian, wrote one of the most famous children’s books of all time, Mary Poppins . But this is no ordinary nursery fable. Mary Poppins is a tale steeped in tradition and rich in the lore of Sufi mysticism. Sufism is a spiritual tradition with deep roots in Islam, but it is not bound to any one religion’s traditions, any one geographic region, any one ethnic group or any one historical period. Sufism is synonymous with certain mystical and spiritual traditions and practices that span cultures. The story of Mary Poppins is the story of one small boy’s initiation into the teachings of Sufi spirituality and the secrets of Sufi mysticism. When the initiation of Michael Banks is complete, Michael has come, at least in some measure, to know the mind of God. Not bad for seven-years-old! Upon Mary’s arrival at 17 Cherry Tree Lane, Michael peers into her luggage, a carpet bag, and is “more than surprised to find it was completely empty.” When Michael’s older sister Jane articulates this discovery (“Why…there’s nothing in it!”), Mary responds by systematically extracting a host of personal items, including “a small folding armchair.” Michael in turn whispers to Jane, “But I saw…it was empty.” (Later, at the climax of the story, Michael will ‘see again’…but this time he sees ‘something’ rather than ‘nothing.’) And so, Michael and Mary quickly establish the philosophical framework for the dialog…and adventures…to come: When is seeing believing…and when isn’t it? (epistemology); What is real…and what isn’t? (ontology). Take the matter of the carpet bag, for instance. Is it empty, or isn’t it? From one perspective, it is: peering in, Michael sees nothing. That’s epistemology! But from another perspective, it is not: it contains all the items needed to furnish a small apartment. That’s ontology! In a sense, every systematic philosophy turns on the relationship between epistemology and ontology: ‘thinking’ and ‘being’ according to the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Parmenides. But back to Mary Poppins ! Is there really a conflict between what Michael sees (epistemology) and what Mary does (ontology)? Only if you subscribe to the underlying premise that one cannot extract large objects from an empty bag! Consider the long-running TV series, “Doctor Who.” The central ‘character’ in this story is something called ‘The Tardis.’ From the outside, The Tardis is a typical English phone booth. But on the inside, The Tardis is a vast hexagonal space that accommodates multiple characters and events. And that is precisely that sort of commonsense tenet that Mary Poppins challenges! There is no effort here to challenge the reality of Michael’s perceptions or of Mary’s actions; the challenge here is strictly to the appearance of contradiction between the two. This is not a book about magic (at least not in the usual sense of that word) nor illusion, delusion, or fantasy. This is a book about epistemology and ontology. Mary Poppins consists of a series of tales, adventures told or orchestrated by Mary, designed to wean Michael from the mother’s milk of commonsense and replace it with something much stronger: a willing recognition and acceptance of mystical reality! By the final chapter (West Wind), Mary has achieved her goal and is free to move on. It is the first day of spring, and the east wind that blew Mary to Cherry Tree Lane in the first place has finally given way. Westerly weather is the signal for Mary Poppins to depart. As she prepares to leave, Mary presents Michael with her compass. In an earlier chapter (“Bad Tuesday”), Mary used this compass to travel instantaneously to the four corners of earth with Jane and Michael at her side. Later in that same chapter, Michael’s misuse of the same compass summons menacing creatures from those same four corners. But now, as the story ends, Mary feels able to trust Michael with that compass. Her mission on Cherry Tree Lane has been accomplished. The passing of the compass from Mary Poppins to Michael Banks signals that the central conflict of the story has been resolved. Sufism lives on, its torch passed to a new generation. Michael has been initiated. He has transcended his (our) childish commitment to naïve realism and can now be trusted to understand the power of the compass and to use it judiciously. A good story? Yes! Just a story? No way! Michael Banks’ initiation into Sufism is more than just a story; it is a sacrament. According to the Roman Catholic Church, a sacrament must be both symbolic and efficacious. Mary Poppins is about the conversion of Michael Banks (symbolic), but it is potentially about the conversion of everyone who reads it (efficacious). I am reminded of a 1984 movie, The Never-Ending Story . The hero, a young boy named Bastian, hides in an attic, reading a book. (The book he’s reading, by the way, is entitled, The Never-Ending Story.) First clue! Bastian is also a character in that book. Second clue! And, final clue, that book is about the real-life adventures of a real-life hero who, of course, also turns out to be none other than Bastian, the very same. We’re definitely not in Kansas anymore! If we read Mary Poppins in the proper spirit, we will gradually realize that each one of us is also Michael Banks! And like Michael, we may come to see reality, at least to some extent, as God sees it. Some background is in order. Sufism is a family of spiritual doctrines and practices that vary widely across geographical, cultural, and historical landscapes. Mary Poppins reflects a particular school of Sufism associated with a Euro-centric group known as the Carbonari. If you’re thinking ‘pasta carbonara’ right now, and getting a wee bit hungry, you’re on the right track. Pasta Carbonara is the pasta of the ‘charcoal workers,’ i.e., the pasta of the Carbonari, the Sufis. While many Sufi schools focus on meditative practices and ‘inner awakening,’ the Carbonari believe that Sufism can and should be a transformative factor in everyday life. They embrace an ethic that has been compared to primitive Christianity, and they can even become politically active when devotion to that ethic so dictates. The Carbonari influence in Mary Poppins is immediately evident. As early as Chapter 2 (The Day Out), we are introduced to Bert (played by Dick Van Dyke in the movie), a “Match-Man” in the book, a “chimney sweep” in the movie, both charcoal workers, both Carbonari. Carbon workers of all kinds represent Sufism throughout the literature and practices of the eponymous Carbonari. The prominent role of Bert in Mary’s Sufi community explicitly identifies the Carbonari ideology that underlies this work. On her first day at 17 Cherry Tree Lane (East Wind), Mary changes “a dark crimson fluid” (wine like?) variously into strawberry ice, lime juice cordial, milk, and rum punch. From our knowledge of Christianity (Roman Catholic doctrine in particular), we recognize this as Transubstantiation: during the celebration of the Roman Catholic Mass, bread and wine are transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ. Mary does the same thing on Cherry Tree Lane. Of course, a skeptic might object that the dark crimson fluid merely appears to be various things to various people, according to their personal tastes and desires (idealism?). P.L. Travers is too smart to fall for that trap. She anticipated this objection. Long before J.K. Rowlings, Travers knew well the hardness of a muggle’s heart, and so, she met the skeptics’ objection head-on. Jane Banks (who tasted the lime juice cordial) entreats Mary Poppins not to give it to the twin babies in the nursery: “Oh, no, please. They’re too young. It wouldn’t be good for them. Please!” Mary ignores Jane’s well-intended plea, of course, and “…tipped the spoon toward John’s (baby’s) mouth…and by the few drops that were spilled on his bib, Jane and Michael could tell that the substance in the spoon this time was milk.” I wonder how many Roman Catholics receiving Holy Communion on a Sunday have as much faith in the reality of Transubstantiation as Jane and Michael did that day on Cherry Tree Lane! But back to Chapter 2 (The Day Out). Bert, the match-man we met earlier, is drawing two-dimensional chalk pictures on a sidewalk. One of his panels depicts a particularly idyllic country scene. “Why don’t we go there – right now – this very day? Both, together, into the picture. Eh, Mary?” And so, they do! What follows is a fabulous ‘country day’ experience, complete with afternoon tea and a ride on a merry-go-round. This section deserves a special note. Throughout her book, Travers leaves clues to let us know that what Jane and Michael are experiencing is real, not an illusion, fantasy, or dream. The first example of this is the drops of milk on John’s bib; later, encounters with gingerbread, paper stars, and snakeskin will serve the same function. “The Day Out” contains a similar, but totally unintended, clue – this time not for Jane and Michael but for us, the readers! Long after Travers wrote Mary Poppins , mathematicians confirmed that Travers’ account of dimensionality is accurate. Information, it seems, is a two-dimensional quantity; all the information contained in a three-dimensional space can actually be mapped onto two dimensions. Think hologram; think black hole. A two-dimensional chalk drawing can, in fact, encode all the information needed to generate a three-dimensional space and a four-dimensional experience (time added). In Chapter 3 (Laughing Gas), Mary and the children pay a visit to her uncle, Albert Wigg. Imagine their consternation when they find Uncle Wigg, not with his feet on the floor, but rather floating in air! Mary is not surprised. She’s seen this before. Whenever Uncle Albert laughs on his birthday, he fills up with what he calls “laughing gas” and overcomes the force of gravity. Of course, Jane and Michael are astonished…but not for long. Soon something strikes them as funny, and they too leave their feet and join Uncle Albert “on the ceiling”. “‘Well!’ said Mr. Wigg, looking very surprised indeed. ‘Don’t tell me it’s your birthday, too?’ Jane shook her head.” Mr. Wigg can only transcend gravity once a year. Jane and Michael are not so restricted. It seems that even by Chapter 3 Jane and Michael are farther up the Sufi hierarchy than Mary’s uncle. But what of Mary herself? “‘Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins, do come up,’ interrupted Michael. ‘Think of something funny…’“ “‘Ah, she doesn’t need to,’ said Mr. Wigg, sighing. ‘She can come up if she wants to, even without laughing – and she knows it.’“ In Chapter 8 (“Mrs. Corry”), Mary takes the children to a gingerbread shop. There, they purchase “a baker’s dozen” of gingerbread slabs, each of which comes with a “gilt paper star.” As they leave the shop, Jane and Michael “turned and looked behind them”. The shop had disappeared…but not the gingerbread. This is another example of that important teaching technique employed by Mary (and Travers). Just as in Chapter One, the drops of milk on John’s bid prove that the apparent metamorphosis is actual trans-substantial, so now in Chapter 8 it is the gingerbread (and gilt paper stars) that prove that the gingerbread shop was real and not an illusion or a dream. But back to the story. Jane and Michael carefully put their gilt paper stars in safe places in their room. Later that night, as they pretend to sleep, they see Mary, rummaging through their belongings. She leaves the house “…carrying a market basket, and in the basket was something that seemed to give out a faint, mysterious light”. Shortly, we learn that the basket contains the children’s paper stars. Mary meets Mrs. Corry and her helpers from the shop, and together they climb a pair of ladders and begin gluing these paper stars to the sky, where they “began to twinkle furiously”. Astrogenesis? Jane and Michael get out of bed, look through their belongings, and find that their stars are indeed gone. (In this case, it is the absence of the stars that proves the reality of the experience: the empty tomb.) Mary and Mrs. Corry have affixed them to the sky, where they twinkle like every other star in the night. Jane asks, “What I want to know…is this: Are the stars gold paper, or are the gold paper stars?” Jane’s question is the lesson of this chapter. She assumes that either stars are gold paper or that the gold paper is stars. Her thinking is linear. If stars and gold paper are the same, then either one is the origin of the other. Jane doesn’t consider the possibility that both propositions could be true simultaneously. The same logic is at work in the Christian doctrine of Eucharist. The communicant incorporates the body and blood of Christ in the form of a wafer of bread and a sip of wine, and by that, every act the communicant is incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ. Likewise, Tanya, a foundational work of Hasidic Judaism, states: When you think a thought, you are greater than that thought. But when that thought is of Torah, which is rooted in God (and is God), that thought is greater than you, and you become absorbed into the thought, and in this way you and God are one. There is another lesson encoded in this episode. An implicit commonsense assumption underlies Jane’s inquiry: a “thing” must consist of an immutable substance and a function (attribute?) consistent with that substance. By extension, everything in the world can be analyzed into “x” and “not x”: stars and not stars, paper and not paper. Though Jane does not realize it, her question is really a reductio ad absurdum for any such logical dualism. Her question proves that the notion of an underlying substance with a self-consistent function is nonsensical. The world is indefinitely mutable. Anything, made of any substance, can fulfill any function. As we learn from modern-day Structuralism, the totality determines the function of each of its parts, and any “thing” can perform any function within that totality. We are discovering that the same might be true of the animal (human) body, but that is a topic for another essay at another time. Finally, several chapters involve dialog between animals and humans. In Chapter 4, (“Miss Lark’s Andrew”) Mary speaks at length with Andrew, Miss Lark’s dog, but Jane and Michael cannot understand their conversation. Later, however, in Chapter 10 (Full Moon), Jane and Michael converse freely with the animals. These strange phenomena are explained in Chapter 9 (John and Barbara’s Story). John and Barbara are infant twins…and they are entirely conversant in the language of animals and even of nature (e.g., sunbeams and wind). P.L. Travers explains that all babies are omniglots, speaking and understanding the language of all creatures, animate and inanimate (if indeed that is even a valid distinction). All babies are natural (uninitiated) Sufis, sharing from birth in God’s knowledge. Unfortunately, by about the age of one, almost all children forget their universal knowledge of language and struggle now to learn just a single language, their parents.’ Mary is helping Jane and Michael relearn the language of creation. Here we have a case of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny. According to Genesis, early humans enjoyed a universal language and the very first humans apparently communicated with animals as well. There may also be a suggestion here that from God’s perspective, we still live in Eden. Perhaps it is not that Eden vanished or that we were driven out; perhaps we have always been in Eden all the time but, like Jane and Michael, we have just forgotten how to see it. C.S. Lewis suggests something similar in The Great Divorce. Chapter 10 (Full Moon) is the critical turning point in the story. Jane and Michael are now able to dialog with animals (at the zoo). And at the end of this chapter, they finally come to accept without reservation that the experiences they’ve had with Mary are real, not products of a dream or a fantasy or an illusion. While at the zoo, they are introduced to a great King Cobra, Hamadryad, “the Lord of the Jungle.” For the first time in Mary Poppins , we meet a creature who is apparently further advanced in the Sufi hierarchy than Mary. For the first time in the entire story, Jane and Michael are formally instructed in Sufi doctrine…but not by Mary Poppins, rather by the great teacher himself, Hamadryad: “Tonight, the small are free from the great and the great protect the small (the lion and the lamb in Isaiah)... It may be that to eat and be eaten are the same thing in the end (Eucharist)… We are all made of the same stuff…the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star – we are all one, all moving to the same end.” “Remember that when you no longer remember me… Bird and beast and stone and star – we are all one, all one… Child and serpent, star and stone – all one.” Hamadryad presents Mary with one of his shed skins as a birthday present, and he writes on it an inscription: “A Present from the Zoo.” The next morning over breakfast, Jane and Michael tell each other about the marvelous “dream” each one had the night before. Soon they realize that they both had the same dream. Jane immediately grasps the enormous import of this discovery: “We can’t both have dreamed the same thing… Then it couldn’t have been a dream at all… It must have been true.” But the power of commonsense (naïve realism) is overwhelming, especially when you’re older than 7. Jane, frightened by her own thought, walks back her profound insight; she concludes, “Then it must have been a dream…after all.” But not so fast! Only now is it time for the climax! Michael Banks, “staring, open-mouthed at Mary Poppins…pointed, and Jane also saw what he was looking at. Round her waist, Mary Poppins was wearing a belt made of golden scaly snakeskin, and on it was written…’A Present from the Zoo.’” There is no longer a shred of doubt in Michael’s mind that the experiences he has had with Mary have been real…no matter how much those experiences violate the canon of “commonsense”. The conversion of Michael Banks is complete. But what about us? Are we converted too? Was this beautifully symbolic sacrament efficacious as promised? 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. Share Previous Next

< Back Leaving the World a Better Place David Cowles Feb 22, 2024 “Wanting to leave the world a better place testifies to good intentions, but…it doesn’t cover the cost of a latte at Starbucks.” Once upon a time, everyone knew exactly what to do. It was written out for you: in the Bible, on your family’s refrigerator door, and on the blackboard at school. Doing these things was good; not doing them was bad. Life was simple. Then God died. (Or, same, same, you went off to college.) Suddenly, rules became suggestions and behavior became arbitrary. Without God, or an acceptable substitute, the world seems devoid of meaning, and actions apparently lack purpose. In haste to free ourselves from rigid, rule-based morality and, of course, from God, we have painted ourselves into a bit of a corner: If nothing has any meaning, why do anything at all? Or, if we can’t ‘not do’ something , why choose to do one thing instead of another? Purposeful action is intentional . Intention intends, selectively. The formation of intentions presupposes relevant values . Every intention, often unknowingly, embodies a complex of values. Intent begins with an assessment of ‘what is’ from the vantage point of ‘what ought’ to be (value); action is an attempt to move the ‘is’ closer to the ‘ought’ – i.e., to make the world a ‘better’ place (value). But there is no more ‘ought’! If I choose to do X, knowing I could have done Y, I have made a decision. That decision could be unconscious and random, or conscious but random, or conscious and intentional. Intent implies goal, and goal implies value. Nietzsche laid the ground rules: No values, no right actions! Caught out, world-class philosophers began tripping over themselves to manufacture a secular ethics to deal with this hole in the soul of philosophy. How can I resolve the ‘value paradox’ (above) without letting anything transcendental , or ‘God’ forbid, supernatural into the tent? To replace the ancient trifecta of divine values (Beauty, Truth & Justice), A.J. Ayer proposed kindness , Camus - variety , Marx - equality . All fail, not because there is anything wrong with these ‘values’ per se , but because they are in fact values and a ‘value’ can only be a normative if it is transcendent. But per Nietzsche, nothing transcends the world; therefore, there can be no ‘values’ worthy of the concept. The moral rigor of Nietzsche devolved into a century of ‘bad faith’ – a proliferation of subjective tastes intended to take the place of now forbidden, objective values . To state the challenge simply, now that there’s no God, and therefore no duty, how do I get myself out of bed in the morning? Perhaps because “I want to leave the world better than I found it?” How laudable! And innocuous. Who could disagree? Who wouldn’t want a better world? But for that very reason, it’s a tautology. Wanting X and X being ‘better’ are synonymous. I designate X as ‘better’ by wanting it. No one wants ‘what’s worse’. Worse, perhaps in some aspect or for some period of time, but not ‘net worse’ overall? No way! So ‘wanting to leave the world better than I found it’ is denotatively identical to ‘wanting to live in the world as long as possible’. But even so, there are problems: How do we define ‘better’? What makes one world better than another? Will everyone agree that World A is ‘better’ than World B? Is 2024 ‘better’ than 1924? How do we measure ‘better’? Immediately better or better long term? How long-term? A day, a decade, a millennium, the cosmic lifespan? And how would we measure that ? And who qualifies as ‘everyone’? – white males, living in the US and owning real property there? Or every human being on the face of the earth? Or every human being who will ever live on Earth? All primates? All mammals? All organisms? What about ET, inorganic matter, and our silicon-based cousins, our Bots? Not enough for you? Ok, then try this: how do you connect any given action with any desired result? I’d like to reduce my carbon footprint, so I facilitate the development of alternative energy sources, only to find out years later that these alternatives have consequences much more harmful than the greenhouse gasses they were intended to reduce. Kierkegaard was right: every action is a leap in the dark! The world being how it is, and inertia being inertia, results often do seem to mirror intentions, even if imperfectly. But does this mean that the intentional acts caused those results? Correlation is not necessarily causation (Hume). In an earlier age, ‘doing the right thing’ was often incompatible with ‘living a long life’: Only the good die young . Consider the martyrs and the heroes. Consider those who ‘laid down their lives for a friend’. In that world, value might find itself in conflict with life itself, and sometimes value wins out. Less so today! Without a robust notion of ‘value’, we are less inclined to self-sacrifice. The quantity of my life (longevity) has replaced the quality of all life (virtue) as the preferred measure of any action. ‘Wanting to leave the world a better place’ testifies to good intentions, but only ‘good intentions’; it doesn’t cover the cost of a latte at Starbucks. It’s no guide to ‘right action’. Virtue may be found only in the act itself, including just its immediate, hardwired consequences – what Alfred North Whitehead called the event’s satisfaction , which in turn functions as the event’s objective immortality in the world. And beyond the event itself? “Here there be monsters!” 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 The Gospel of Luke David Cowles Feb 28, 2022 In the Gospel of Luke, a lawyer questions Jesus: “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29) The question resonates through all eras and across all cultures. Our mental apparatus is tuned to notice differences among otherwise similar entities; we find it much harder to pick out similarities. Intelligence tests given to children often ask them to distinguish differences: e.g., which of these shapes is not like the others? The same tests given to adults (e.g., MCAT and LSAT) are more likely to ask them to find similarities (i.e., analogies). In the Gospel of Luke, a lawyer questions Jesus: “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29) The question resonates through all eras and across all cultures. Our mental apparatus is tuned to notice differences among otherwise similar entities; we find it much harder to pick out similarities. Intelligence tests given to children often ask them to distinguish differences: e.g., which of these shapes is not like the others? The same tests given to adults (e.g., MCAT and LSAT) are more likely to ask them to find similarities (i.e., analogies). Human beings classify. It is how we organize (and therefore understand) the external world. The story of creation in Genesis produces a classification matrix: light vs. dark, earth vs. sky, water vs. dry land, humans vs. other animals, etc. Sigmund Freud explored this phenomenon in Totem and Taboo; anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss traced the origins of social order to totemic classifications. Animal, vegetable or mineral? Red, green or blue? White, black or brown? Sometimes the ability to classify is crucial to survival (friend or foe?). But the ‘classification habit’ (like most habits) can put us in a straight-jacket. This is especially so when our classifications are hierarchical. Now we are not only saying that y is ‘different’ from x, but we’re saying that y is ‘better’ than x! When differences of ‘kind’ become differences of ‘worth’, we are on a very slippery slope. Of course, there are perfectly valid value differences: e.g., Billie Jean King vs. Bobby Riggs (I date myself), but when we equate differences with gradations of worth, things do not go well for us. Consider color. Some of us have a ‘favorite’ color but few of us would say that one color is intrinsically ‘better’ than another. We imagine the color spectrum horizontally. But when we apply the same logic to racial differences, for example, we sometimes get a very different result. In the minds of many, white, black and brown are imagined vertically, not horizontally. The classification problem goes beyond race. It extends to our view of humans vs. other primates, primates vs. other mammals, mammals vs. other animals, animals vs. plants, plants vs. inanimate objects. So, who is my neighbor? My family, my village, my tribe, my nation? What about our pets? What about the buffalo and the deer that fed generations of Native Americans? What about the forests that are the lungs of our planet? What about alien life forms on other planets? What about inanimate objects (celestial and terrestrial)? In so-called Eastern religions, it is common to find the concept of ‘sacred creation’, i.e., the notion that everything that is shares the same ontological structure and status and therefor qualifies as “my neighbor”. The Judeo-Christian tradition in the West is grounded on the same idea: everything that is, to the extent that it is, is a participation in the Goodness and Being of God (Augustine, et al.). However, the classification habit dies hard. To some extent, Gnosticism is to blame. For some reason Westerners have tended to gravitate toward vertical classification systems that contrast the material world (evil) with the spiritual world (good). 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 Anxiety and Depression David Cowles May 21, 2024 “Who knew that kids could be trained to put more pressure on themselves than any adult would dare?” The first half of the 20th century is a bonanza for students of intellectual history; just scratch the surface: Science - Relativity and Quantum Mechanics Psychology - Freud, Jung and Adler Painting - Cubism, Surrealism, Dada, and Abstract Art Literature (English) - Pound, Eliot, Joyce, and Stein It’s too soon to reflect on the post-War period but suffice to say, when we picked our heads back up after VJ Day, we found ourselves in a very different world. In retrospect, we might as well have been shipwrecked on a deserted island. The old world was gone, wiped away, but the new world was ‘on backorder’. Consider a human cell. Most of our cells have prescribed functions, but stem cells are capable of assuming any genetically permitted identity that meets the needs of the organism. Post war society was like a pluripotent stem cell. Anything could happen… …And it did! The post-war period has no shortage of chroniclers and commentators. To name just a few: Jacques Ellul, Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan, Jacques Derrida, Byung-Chul Han. Who? Byung-Chul Han (BCH) has written extensively on postmodern culture. In a series of books (e.g. The Burnout Society ) he documents our transition from a duty orientation to an achievement orientation. Late 19th and early 20th century psychology focused on the problem of neurosis , a symptom of what BCH calls ‘disciplinary society’. Today, we are more concerned with anxiety and depression. According to BCH, these are the wages of an ‘achievement society’. Byung-Chul Han traces the evolution and impact of this shift. For example, when raising children, we are now much less focused on their ‘following rules’ and much more focused on their ‘standing out’. Once upon a time, the worst thing a parent could say was, “Why can’t you be more like other kids?” Today, a parent might say, “Why aren’t you less like other kids?” The pressure to conform can be stifling but the pressure to stand out…terrifying. Once upon a time, parents were only too happy to raise a mini-me. If a child graduated high school (or college), stayed out of jail, married, raised a family, and found steady employment, parents were satisfied, ‘proud’ even. It was taken for granted that children who followed this path would be self-sufficient and better off financially than their parents. Today, parents don’t so much care if their kids are ‘good’ as long as they’re ‘exceptional’. The economic assumptions underlying the pre-war model are no longer generally valid. Playing by the rules doesn’t work. Most young people, despite their best efforts, will not achieve the degree of financial security their parents enjoyed. My father and I had a contentious relationship; what’s new? One time though, he hit the nail on the head: “I don’t understand your generation with all its talk about ‘finding yourself’. ‘Who am I?’ – I never asked that question; I always knew who I was.” Exactly! The All in The Family theme song captured my father’s mind-set: “And you knew who you were then…” Yup! My father was a good citizen who obeyed the rules and was quite happy to follow the path society laid out for him. And it worked for him…more or less. Neurosis is a product of repression, whether self-imposed or enforced by others. The creative impulse runs up against the prohibitions of the super-ego…or the ‘super-state’, i.e. society’s repressive apparatus, beginning with parents. Depression and anxiety, on the other hand, are the product of frustrated self-expectations. While neurotics may harbor rebellion against social constraints, depressives buy into society’s expectations, hook, line, and sinker…and only then find that they can’t ‘measure up’. Byung-Chul Han traces the transition of Western culture from a ‘disciplinary’ orientation to an ‘achievement’ orientation. Who knew that kids could be trained to put more pressure on themselves than any adult would dare? We live in a society structured in part by socio-economic class. But the classification scheme has changed. Bourgeoisie/proletariat, white collar/blue, 1%/99%, have morphed into something much, much more insidious: Winners & Losers . ‘You proletarian, blue collar, 99%-er’ doesn’t have quite the school yard sting of ‘You Loser ’. Winners and Losers – it’s not just a matter of comparing 401 k balances. Winners are beautiful, sophisticated, successful, popular, smart, creative, affable; Losers are…losers. In 1950, a parent who could say, “My son (sic) has a steady job at the local factory,” would enjoy some social capital. Not so today. “My child is a neurosurgeon, an investment banker, a CEO, a published author, a full professor,” generates capital now. Worse, absent the ability to make such claims, you have no social capital at all…you Loser ! Yup, the ‘sins’ of the children are visited on their parents! Once upon a time, society had room for people all up and down the socio-economic ladder. Everyone made a contribution, and everyone merited respect. Today, losers get no respect. Industrial can has replaced Judeo-Christian should as our ethical ideal. Worse, can has been turned into its own version of should : should be rich, should be beautiful, etc. The hapless teen today is in danger of self-identifying as a double loser. I am not just ‘a mess’, I am ‘an immoral mess’. I am immoral because I am a loser. In a classic display of the so-called ‘Protestant Ethic’, we have come to equate success with virtue. But don’t blame Calvin. As far back as the Book of Job certain folks argued that material success was a sign of God’s favor. Our culture bombards us with ‘positive messaging’: “Be yourself, be all that you can be, nothing is impossible!” But what if I don’t know or like myself, what if this is all that I can be, or want to be, and what if nothing else seems possible to me? What then? “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?... Maybe it just sags like a heavy load, or does it explode? ” (Langston Hughes) 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.