< Back The Age of Sustainable Abundance David Cowles Mar 12, 2026 “We reject the status quo but we shrink from the future...” 1250 words, 6 minute read What are you waiting for? The Second Coming of Christ? (That’s been delayed.) The Apocalypse? (Mercifully postponed.) The Age of Aquarius? ( Hair notwithstanding, cosmologists tell us we have another 200 years to wait.) But according to Elon Musk, this is the dawning of the Age of Abundance…Sustainable Abundance! But that is, not everywhere, an occasion for celebration. “We are suffering just now from a bad attack of economic pessimism. It is common to hear people say that the epoch of enormous economic progress which characterized the… (previous) century is over; that the rapid improvement in the standard of life is now going to slow down…The increase of technical efficiency has been taking place faster than we can deal with the problem of labor absorption…” Does this sound familiar? Of course it does! You hear the equivalent every day. So would you be surprised to hear that this was written in 1930 by the famous economist John Maynard Keynes (JMK)? And that the previous century Keynes refers to is not the 20th but the 19th? The more things change the more they stay the same! “There’s nothing new under the sun.” It’s always about the Bulls and the Bears! And two things we know: (1) Discounting divine intervention, the Bears will ultimately win out; it’s called Heat Death; and (2) Until that time, it’s all Bulls! (Chicago, Pamplona, Wall Street) And yet… “There is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy…” (JMK) As a species, we struggle to imagine a future that is anything other than a thinly disguised version of the past. As a result, we form a vision of tomorrow that, so far as possible, recapitulates today, warts and all. And who isn’t dissatisfied with today? Who’s ever told a pollster, “I like things just the way they are?” ( Hint : No one!) ‘So far as possible’ – and to the extent that it’s not possible, we paint the future in the darkest colors possible. So we reject the status quo but we shrink from the future in so far as it differs from the status quo . It’s a wonder there’s ever been any progress at all…and it’s no wonder that so many cultures harbor the notion of a long lost Golden Age, before today’s problems became problematic. *** What we have here is a failure of imagination! Consider our Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) . As far as we know, all living organisms on Earth are descended from a single DNA molecule that synthesized about 4 billion years ago. That makes you a distant cousin of some pretty unusual characters: bacteria and slime mold, mushrooms and mosquitos, palm trees and penguins, whales and water bears …and my personal favorite, the kitchen sponge (natural, not synthetic). Idea : Restage Hamlet Act 5, Scene 1 with the Prince of Denmark holding a sponge in his hand instead of Yorik’s skull. You also have some pretty impressive ancestors hanging off your family tree – kids with cool street names like Dino and Dodo, Raptor, Sabretooth, and the Great Auk. I went to High School with Tom Roberts, a boy who claimed to be descended from Blue Beard, the pirate. You’ve got Tom beat six ways to Sunday! We see that the process of evolution responds to variations in the environment with incredible morphological and functional diversity. Yet when we consider the possibility of life on other planets and their moons, we assume that it will be similar to our own. Therefore, we search the heavens for Earth-like conditions as if life chooses its environment. The fact is, if there is extraterrestrial life, there is every chance that it will assume forms and behave in ways that none of us have ever imagined. *** We believe that the laws of physics apply everywhere in the known universe. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that’s true. We also assume that any intelligent life form, exploring the universe from its vantage point, would adduce the same laws. But not so fast! Even if physical processes are universal, there is no guarantee, no likelihood even, that other intelligences will model those processes the same way we do. An article in New Scientis t (3/3/2026) by Daniel Whiteson, a particle physicist conducting research at CERN and teaching at the University of California, makes the case: “Lately I have started to wonder whether physics is less a window onto universal reality and more of a mirror, reflecting the particular kind of minds we happen to have…Would alien scientists, shaped by a different biology or culture , arrive at the same physics that we have? Or might they develop something that works just as well, but looks utterly foreign – built on concepts and assumptions we would struggle to recognize?” *** The Catholic Church has long placed the basic human need to engage in meaningful, healthful and justly compensated work at the heart of its Social Magisterium. The advent of Sustainable Abundance will require a rethink! Ironically, the two great ideologies of ‘the previous century’ (the 19 th ), Marxism and Catholicism, are both centered around an outmoded concept of work. Yet both are utopian: It’s hard to imagine wage labor in Paradise. In fact, the relationship between human labor and economic prosperity is already starting to fray. The collective need for our work will soon shrink exponentially. Accordingly, our idea of a ‘meaningful life’ must expand to include much more than just wage labor…and that will take work of its own, a lot of work! So, fast forward 100 years from JMK: the torch has passed to a new generation…and Elon Musk picked it up (September 1, 2025): “ The elimination of scarcity will require tireless and exquisite execution. Some will perceive it as impossible. And plenty of others will laud every obstacle and setback we inevitably encounter along the way. But once we overcome this challenge, our critics will come to see that what they once thought was impossible is indeed possible… “Today we are on the cusp of a revolutionary period primed for unprecedented growth. And this time it will not be a single step but a leap forward for Tesla (sic) and humanity as a whole. The tools we are going to develop will help us build the kind of world that we've always dreamed of—a world of Sustainable Abundance—by redefining the fundamental building blocks of labor, mobility and energy at scale and for all.” As Industrialization was to the 19th century and Computerization to the 20th, so Artificial Intelligence is to the 21st. While a handful of pioneers are working to shape and extend this new technology, most of our energy will be spent debating and resisting its promise. According to our talking heads, we are to reject a Leisure Economy, fueled by Sustainable Abundance, in favor of a Labor Economy, motivated by economic insecurity and driven by Conspicuous Consumption. Yup, what we have here is a failure to imagine! A failure to imagine what is already coming…if only we’d let it. *** Giacomo Balla’s Abstract Speed + Sound (1913–14) doesn’t just depict a car rushing forward—it imagines a world where motion, technology, and sensory overload become the defining forces shaping human experience. In many ways, its fractured lines and vibrating energy anticipate future movements driven by high‑speed travel, digital acceleration, and the increasingly blurred boundary between human perception and machine‑generated environments. 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 If He Chooses to Do So David Cowles Oct 14, 2021 My previous ‘thought’ concerned God’s dual role as ‘Creator of heaven and earth’ and ‘comrade-in-arms’. Further reflections: How can God be the creator of a radically free universe and yet play a role in the evolution of that universe? The answer lies in standing an old proverb (‘Man proposes, God disposes’) on its head. In fact, it is God who proposes but ‘man’ (i.e., worldly events) that disposes. Consider God’s words in Deuteronomy (30:19): “I set before you life and death (God proposes). Therefore, choose life. (Man disposes)” My previous ‘thought’ concerned God’s dual role as ‘Creator of heaven and earth’ and ‘comrade-in-arms’. Further reflections: How can God be the creator of a radically free universe and yet play a role in the evolution of that universe? The answer lies in standing an old proverb (‘Man proposes, God disposes’) on its head. In fact, it is God who proposes but ‘man’ (i.e., worldly events) that disposes. Consider God’s words in Deuteronomy (30:19): “I set before you life and death (God proposes). Therefore, choose life. (Man disposes)” This is also a solution to the famous ‘Problem of Evil’ (how can a good and omnipotent God tolerate evil in the world?). It is often said that my freedom extends only as far as the tip of your nose. Likewise, God’s omnipotence extends only as far as the edge of his creation. Beyond that edge God is a free actor among other free actors. In the dual acts of Creation and Incarnation, God sacrifices his omnipotence in order to share in the lot of mortals (pathos). It is important to note that this sublimation of power on God’s part is entirely voluntary; it does not diminish his omnipotence in any way. In fact, it is an expression of it. God chooses to place limits on his omnipotence so that he can be a true Creator and a ‘fellow traveler’. Remember the old adolescent paradox, “Can God make a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it?” Well, surprisingly, that paradox turns out to have an answer after all: “Yes, if he chooses to do so.” 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.

One of life’s great ironies is that people who live near water are not always very good swimmers, if they are swimmers at all. And this is how it was on this island. < Back The Sultan and the Sea David Cowles Jul 12, 2022 One of life’s great ironies is that people who live near water are not always very good swimmers, if they are swimmers at all. And this is how it was on this island. (The events in this story happened a long time ago. We know about them only because the story has been passed down over the centuries by members of a religious group known as the Sufis.) Once upon a time, a young but very wealthy Sultan lived in a luxurious palace. He lived alone, but he was well taken care of by the palace staff - the folks who took care of the palace and kept things humming - including the Sultan’s Trusted Assistant and best friend, a man who had cared for the Sultan since birth. The Sultan’s life was lavish, but lonely…and, oh so boring! I mean, nothing ever happened. Nothing. No? Ok, did you ever see the movie, Groundhog Day ? Well, that’s what life was like for this Sultan. Each day was a nearly perfect copy of the day before. Things were so monotonous that the Sultan never knew whether it was Monday or Thursday, or even if today was still today and not yesterday…or tomorrow. “Who cares? What’s the difference anyway?” he thought. Today would begin for the Sultan just like every day began. Oh, did I mention that today was the Sultan’s 25th birthday? No matter, birthday or not, nothing would change, nothing ever changed, no matter what day it was. Sure enough, shortly after dawn, his assistant woke him up and poured a pitcher of warm water into a large basin so that the Sultan could wash his face and hands. Every day, the Sultan would immerse his face in the water for a few seconds; then his assistant would hand him a dry towel. “Today, will be just like every other day,” the Sultan thought, sighing. Did he just think that? Or did he mumble it under his breath just loud enough for his assistant to overhear? We’ll probably never know for sure. As expected, this day did begin just like every other day…until it didn’t! Something happened. Even though nothing ever happens in the Sultan’s world, something happened today! The Sultan immersed his face in the water as he did every morning, but today, when he lifted his face out of the water, he realized that he was no longer in his palace… not by a long shot. The Sultan found himself wet, naked, and gasping for breath on a deserted and unfamiliar beach. All alone – no Trusted Assistant to wipe his wet face. After laying there a while, trying to figure out what was going on and trying to gather his strength for whatever was to come, he spotted three young women walking up the beach towards him. Would these women be friendly or hostile? Or even worse, would they just ignore him and walk on by, unconcerned? But as it turns out, this might have been the Sultan’s lucky day after all. The women did stop, and they were friendly. One of them even-handed the Sultan her scarf so that he could tie it around his waist to cover his private parts. Of course, the women were all questions and of course the Sultan told them his story and of course they didn’t believe him, not one word. I mean, would you? They whispered among themselves and concluded that he must have escaped from a prison transport vessel as it passed through near-by waters. Even so, the women invited the Sultan to follow them home, and of course, he eagerly accepted. And what a home it was! It was a palace even grander than the Sultan’s own. Turns out, one of the women on the beach was a princess. As a guest of the King, the Sultan was bathed, fed, and offered a place to rest from his incredible adventure. But if the Sultan thought that this was going to be his new home, he was sorely mistaken. The King and the Princess had no idea their visitor was a fellow royal. Remember, they thought he was an escaped prisoner. He might have been a thief, a murderer even, or worse yet, a revolutionary…or God forbid, an anarchist. Yikes! Anyway, he was not welcome to stay for long in the King’s palace. Instead, the Princess took him to a small cottage at the outskirts of town. There, the Sultan met a couple whose business was making and repairing the large nets used on the island for fishing. At the Princess’ urging, they agreed to take him in and teach him their trade. In exchange, the Sultan agreed to stay and work for them for 10 years. Turns out, the Sultan was a good learner, and soon he was tying nets as proficiently as the other members of his newly adopted family. Thanks to the Sultan’s skill and hard work, his new family became quite prosperous. 10 years passed quickly, and the Sultan was finally ready to begin his new life. The net-makers were grateful to the Sultan for his hard work, and they gifted him a tidy sum upon his departure. The Sultan and the net-makers said goodbye, but only after a long and tearful embrace. The Sultan thought to himself, “This is the way goodbyes should be. I wish I had had a chance to say goodbye like this to my Trusted Assistant, my friend.” But there was no looking back for the Sultan. He hiked into town, rented a small room, and used the net-makers’ gift to open a small shop below it. The Sultan proved to be a gifted trader, as well as a skilled net-maker, and soon his shop was bustling; once again, the Sultan was prosperous. One day, while he was puttering around the shop, a woman walked in who would later become his wife. She walked straight up to the Sultan and began to ask very intelligent questions about his merchandise. It was love at first sight…for the Sultan! Not so much for the bride-to-be. But the Sultan had been through a lot. Though still young, he was beginning life from scratch, for the third time! He had finally found love, and he wasn’t about to give up on it now. Sure enough, his favorite customer soon became his fiancée. Once married, she gave birth to 6 children, 3 boys and 3 girls. The children grew, and eventually, they began having children of their own. Soon the Sultan was surrounded by a pride of children and grandchildren…and he loved every one of them with an intensity he never thought possible back in his Palace. One day, his 75th birthday as it happens, the Sultan decided to do something he hadn’t done since he arrived; he decided to go for a swim. It was the Jubilee (50 year) anniversary of his unceremonious arrival on the island. He invited his retinue of children and grandchildren to accompany his wife and himself as they retraced the Sultan’s first steps on the island. Now, one of life’s great ironies is that people who live near water are not always very good swimmers, if they swim at all. And that is how it was on this island. The Sultan had not been back to that beach, or any beach, since the day he arrived. Soon they were at the very beach where the Sultan had washed ashore 5 decades earlier. The Sultan walked slowly into the waves. Once the water was up to his waist, he dove in headfirst, but when he went to lift his head out of the water… We have all had unexpected, and sometimes unwelcome, experiences in our lives. They startle us at first, but for the most part, we muddle, though. The Sultan had two such experiences. The first occurred on his 25th birthday, when he put his face into the basin of water, only to find himself stranded on a foreign shore. I mean, has that ever happened to you? The second is happening right now. On this 75th birthday, surrounded by his family, the Sultan dove headfirst into the sea; but when he pulled his head up out of the water, guess what, he found himself back in his old Palace, a full wash basin in front of him and his assistant standing by with a dry towel…as usual. Suddenly, the Sultan caught a glimpse of his reflection on the surface of the water. What did he see? Challenge Answer the five questions below and be entered in a drawing for a $100 gift card. ( Hint : there are no right or wrong answers.) We will report the results in Issue #3 of AT Magazine (9/1/2022). The gift card drawing will occur on Labor Day 2022. 1. The Sultan disappeared from his Palace on the morning of his 25th birthday; he returned on his 75th. How old do you think the Sultan was when he got back to his Palace? (Choose one answer only.) He was 25 when he put his face into the basin of water, so he must still be 25 when he lifts his face back out. _____ He lived on the island for 50 years. He was 75 when he dived into the waves, so he must still be 75 when he picks his head back out. _____ Other (please comment): ________________________________ 2. How do you think the Sultan feels about what’s happened to him? (Check all the answers that you think are true.) He’s happy to be home in his palace at long last. _____ He’s angry that his life was turned upside down like this. _____ He misses his wife and kids and his life on the island. _____ He is grateful for this chance to live two full lives. _____ 3. What do you make of the Sultan’s Trusted Assistant? (Check all the answers that you think are true.) He had nothing to do with the Sultan’s disappearance from the Palace. _____ He is responsible for the Sultan’s disappearance? _____ He did it because he was angry with the Sultan. _____ He did it to teach the Sultan a lesson. _____ It was his 25th birthday gift to the Sultan. _____ When the Sultan returns to the Palace after 50 years, how old is the Trusted Assistant? He’s the same age he was when the Sultan was 25. _____ He’s 50 years older now than he was on the Sultan’s 25th birthday. _____ 4. Now that the Sultan is back in his Palace, will his life be different from it was before his great adventure ? (Check all the answers that you think are true.) No, nothing will change; things will go back to being just as boring as they were before the Sultan disappeared. ____ Yes, he will leave his Palace every day to look for the family he left behind on the island. ____ Yes, he will leave his Palace every day, looking for new romance, hoping to start a new family? _____ Yes, will adopt orphans to live with him in the Palace. ____ Yes, he will learn a useful and productive trade. ____ Yes, he will move out of the Palace entirely and turn it into public housing for the homeless citizens of his realm. ____ Yes, he will turn the Palace into a $1,000/night luxury resort. ____ 5. Our story occurs in two places: in the Sultan’s Palace and on the Island. Which is real and which isn’t? (Check one answer only) Only the Sultan’s palace is real; the island is not: _____ Only the island is real; the Sultan’s Palace is not: _____ Both the island and the palace are real: ____ Neither the island nor the palace is real: _____ Please feel free to elaborate on any of your answers (optional): Please submit your answers to editor@aletheiatoday.com. Be sure to put Sultan and the Sea Challenge in the subject line and tell us who you are and how we can reach you (name, email address, and phone number) so that your name can be entered into the $100 gift card drawing to take place on Labor Day. 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 Do you like what you just read? 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< Back Lao Tzu David Cowles May 24, 2022 Do we live life or does life live us? "Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them…Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like." – attributed to Lao Tzu. Do we live life or does life live us? Should we let life live us (as Lao Tzu seems to recommend)? Do the events of the world follow one another according to their own inexorable logic? Are we just onlookers? Is life, after all, a 'spectator sport?' The spirituality common to most cultures warns us against the 'idolatry of the ego.' "We are not the world," after all. We imagine that we are the air traffic controllers of our own lives, stacking up planes and landing them in a particular order on particular runways. That is not who we are! But neither are we passive passengers, landing safely or not, according to processes beyond our ken or control. So, if we are neither air traffic controllers nor mere passengers, who the heck are we? We are pilots! The plane, its crew, its passengers, its destination, its air speed, and its prescribed route are all givens (ticket sales, flight plans, FAA regulations, etc.); but pilots are nexus (pl) of these givens. We are the ones entrusted with the implementation of the plan, or the ad hoc modification of that plan in case of emergency . Most often, passengers enjoy a smooth flight, an on-time arrival, and a safe landing. Occasionally, passengers may arrive safely, but only after enduring delays, turbulence, and a bumpy landing. Rarely, but sadly, a plane and its passengers will not arrive at all. We are both in the world and of the world, but we are not the world. Without the FAA, a flight plan, and willing passengers, there would be no flight; but without the pilot there would be no take-off and no landing. We are both the subject and the object of everything we do. (As pilots, we are also passengers.) We can (and do) try to alter the course of events, but often it is our own course that is altered by our actions, while the world continues on its merry way. We do not rule the world, but neither does the world rule us; it is "not the boss of me." The Serenity Prayer, hung on the walls of many American kitchens and recited many times each day (e.g., during meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous), strikes the right balance: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." What are the things we cannot change? For the most part, we are powerless to avoid life's vicissitudes; nor can we alter the fate of things to come. Under the weight of these vicissitudes, we often ask, "Where's God?" But knowing that our fate and the fate of the universe is sealed, we can only say, "Thank God!" Personal, as well as cosmic, salvation is 'in the bank.' We cannot change the origin or the destination of our journey (point A and point B): we are where we are now, and we will be where we will be then. These are our 'givens' which we cannot change. But we can influence the course of the journey, for ourselves and for all our 'fellow travelers.' We can determine 'the shape of things to come,' if not the things themselves. We can also change the way we experience our journey. We pilots have been given a take-off time ('now') and a destination ('then'). But we have not been given a flight plan. Once again, we are reminded that 'life does not come with a user's manual.' It is up to us to determine the route we take and the way we experience events along the way. Jean-Paul Sartre used the term 'facticity' to describe Point A. Facticity is the mis-en-scene of any novel event. Alfred North Whitehead used the phrase, 'actual world' to the same effect. Either way, our starting point is a given. We use two different phrases to describe our end point; i.e., the fate of things to come. We call the fate of spatiotemporal events "Heat Death" (the annihilation of all that is). We are quite confident that this fate is hardwired and cannot be deflected. On the other hand, we call the fate of events outside of space and time, i.e., eternal events, the "Kingdom of Heaven." Once again, we believe that this fate is built into the structure of Being itself. Fortunately, we cannot change the character of the Kingdom or alter the fact that it will come. Thank God, because otherwise we would surely mess things up! Take a letter to Lao Tzu. Neither activism nor quietism is best. The optimum life strategy is 'engagement.' We did not choose to be here (wherever here may be) and we cannot control the warp and woof of events along our way. We can, however, determine our own trajectories; and we can choose how we experience the journey. We can hide from life, or like the 'Prodigal Father,' we can rush to embrace it. We can also influence the journeys of the entities around us. We can (and will) create new obstacles for them; but we can also "make the rough places plane." How we live and experience life can give options to others. Image: Laozi by Zhang Lu ; Ming dynasty (1368–1644) 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 To Know, Love, and Serve David Cowles May 14, 2026 “…Everything I do begins with a primal appetition for the Good, manifest as Truth, Beauty, and Justice. Where I go from there is up to me (free will).” Ah, to be back in the 50’s, attending an RCC Parochial School! In those days, there were ready made answers to all life’s big questions, and we knew where to go to get them. The Baltimore Catechism was our Bible; it functioned as a primitive form of AI and it included our TOE (Theory of Everything). Although focused on theology, the catechism was not at all reluctant to weigh-in on matters of philosophy and cosmology. Like the Old Testament Torah three millennia earlier, our Catechism was the definitive Users’ Guide to Living on Earth. Interested in eternal bliss? Just follow instructions: shake vigorously, pour generously, apply liberally, relax - let go and let God. It is a persistently recurring error in the Abrahamic religions to think that the Users’ Guide is only for confessional believers, as if there were two ‘Worlds’ – one for believers, one for all others. Rather, we are all still searching for answers and we are all equally called to live ethical lives, irrespective of our various ideologies. “I’m not religious but I’m spiritual,” has become a popular, if denotatively dubious, cliché. It’s one of those memes where N=1: everyone who says it means something different by it. But there is at least one ‘person’ who is entitled to use the phrase meaningfully and consistently and that ‘person’ is a ‘corporate person’: Alcoholics Anonymous. AA is agnostic re religion, but it is nothing if not spiritual. Its archenemy is the inflated ego, the illusion (or dream) of control that abides in each of us, curled up like Kundalini at the base of our spines. In the real world, there are things we can change and things we can’t: wisdom is knowing which is which and virtue is having the serenity to accept what we can’t change and the courage to change what we can. ( The Serenity Prayer ) In the Wild West, a few ‘woke’ bars required their patrons to check all guns at the door; AA asks you to check your ego, i.e. to sub out your ego function. But subcontract to whom? Some will be comfortable saying ‘God’ but others are invited to locate and designate their own Higher Power (HP). And when it comes to Higher Powers, AA is agnostic. If YHWH, Creator of Heaven and Earth, is not your cup of tea and if Jesus is not ‘just alright’ with you, no problem. Find a person, place, or thing, process or pattern that works for you. Your HP might be the ancient oak at the corner of your street or an elephant you’ve bonded with at the zoo. You may not be religious but you do have faith – faith in your Higher Power. Immediately, a great weight is lifted. You’re no longer ‘required’ to accumulate possessions, amass power, maximize pleasure, manage those around you; you no longer have to rule the world. You have turned that part of ‘being you’ over to your Higher Power; but now what? Every sequence of events ends the same way, “But now what?” 400 Blows , one of my top 10 favorite movies, ends with an iconic shot of its 13 year old hero the moment after he has realized his lifelong dream. It is as universal a symbol of the human condition as the cross. So now what? “Class, please open your catechisms to Section One: God and Me : “Who made me? God made me. Who is God? God is the Supreme Being who made all things. Why did God make me? To know him, love him, and serve him…” How do we know God? Through reason, revelation, and exploration. How do we love God? In prayer and through charity. How do we serve God? By caring for his creatures, everyone. All roads lead back to the question of identity and purpose: Who am I? Why am I here? What am I to do? Prior to 1960, there was no such thing as an identity crisis…“and you knew who you were then.” (Archie Bunker) Then came Vatican II… Now don’t get me wrong: Vatican II was a wonderful thing…until it wasn’t. It was absolutely necessary to reframe RCC’s unique weltanschauung in rotes, rites and roles suited to the culture and psychology of post WWII society. Vatican II got a whole lot right but many of its most important, and least fortunate, consequences were neither intended nor foreseen. ‘That it was’ ( Dasein ) proved to be more significant than ‘what it was’ ( Wassein )! Vatican II shattered the illusion of intellectual hegemony. If Alpha can be questioned, why not Beta ? If Gamma can be reframed as Delta , why not as Epsilon ? Traditionally (and euphemistically), the Church’s weltanschauung did not suffer from a lack of clarity or structure, but it was broadly felt that the joints needed to be more flexible, more adaptable to fluctuations in the cultural milieu. Please do not be offended if I liken myself to the Grail King of Christian literature. According to legend, the health of the King reflected and was reflected in the health of the Kingdom. The Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, and I, a single cell in that body, are mirror images of one another. I was 12 years old when JP II issued the call for Vatican II. Need I say more? Ok, I’ll say more. With the reins of childhood loosening rapidly, my newly discovered freedom quickly devolved into a kind of chaos from which I barely emerged, both bloodied and bowed, at age 14. Likewise, my doppelganger , the Church saw its new found flexibility pushed to the boundaries of schism…and beyond. Without its structural rigidity and ideological self-certainty, Church teaching became a collection of propositions to be weighed alongside other propositions in the scales of public opinion. There is not a single proposition of RCC dogma that is persuasive on its own. (I pardon your sarcastic guffaws!) What makes RCC dogma intellectually compelling is the way in which its propositions fit together to form a jaw dropping, Gaudi-worthy edifice. By themselves, however, many of these propositions are counter-intuitive, scientifically unverifiable, and culturally awkward; worse, they feel irrelevant to ‘real concerns of real people’, the meme that dominates political discourse in the US today. Recently, I was mansplaining this idea to a family member who asked, innocently, “Is that how you live your life - knowing, loving, and serving God?” (Don’t worry, I won’t be trying on any undeserved haloes any time soon!) But I thought to myself, “What else could I be doing? Should I be doing? What else is there to do?” I mean, after shedding all my ego attachments ( as if ), what else is left? Ok, sure, I could be consuming, corrupting, and destroying but that seems unlikely to satisfy my hunger for meaning. Purpose is conferred by an ‘other’ that transcends the self. Every action – mine, yours, an amoeba’s, or an electron’s – is a reaction to the world that was and an anticipation of the world to come. (Bobby Kennedy: “I dream of things that never were and ask, why not?”) Every action is motivated and steered by values that reside in your HP. According to Thomas Aquinas, et al., from God’s eternal perspective, Value is simple…and singular: the Good . But just as white light refracts to generate a rainbow in spacetime, so Good manifests in various specific contexts as Truth, Beauty, and/or Justice. So everything I do begins with a primal appetition for the Good, manifest in the World as Truth, Beauty, and Justice. Where I go from there is up to me (free will). If I choose, I may turn Truth into propaganda, Beauty into pornography, and Justice into power. I can corrupt my Higher Power’s values to serve the interests of the ego I have not fully shed after all. But none of this is knowing, loving, or serving my HP, God. I ‘know God’ when I seek Truth; I ‘love God’ when I foster Beauty; I ‘serve God’ when I restore Justice. So I ask again, if not this, what? 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 Applied Camus David Cowles Aug 7, 2026 “I think Camus gets himself into some serious trouble here…he lets dreaded ‘objective values’ slip back into his system.” 1750 words, 8 minute read In an earlier post, Camus , we explored the philosophical reasoning behind the philosopher’s vision of the Absurd including rejection of concepts like ‘the future, consequences, and transcendent and/or objective values’. With no objective values and no concern for the future, we are left to live life entirely as we wish. “Everything is permitted.” (Nietzsche) Of course, that does not mean that we must behave as libertines. Each of us is free to fashion a code of ethics for herself. But we must not imagine that these private codes have any objective justification or that they constitute a ‘categorical imperative’, i.e. that they are in any way binding on others…or even on one’s self: Ethics is however I am choosing to behave at a given time. Hmm, sounds like me in the ‘60s…or now! That said, Camus devotes the second half of The Myth of Sisyphus to sketching styles of life that might be consistent with living out the implications of the Absurd. I think Camus gets himself into some serious trouble here…he lets dreaded ‘objective values’ slip back into his system; for example: “I cannot conceive that a skeptical metaphysics can be joined to an ethics of renunciation… I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living …A man’s rule of conduct and his scale of values have no meaning except through the quantity and variety of experiences he has been in a position to accumulate …For on the one hand the absurd teaches that all experiences are unimportant, and on the other it urges toward the greatest quantity of experiences.” Sheer gobbledygook, am I right? Let’s enumerate the errors: (1) “I cannot conceive” – who cares what Camus ‘can conceive’ if we are all independent actors responsible for our own lives; (2) “What counts” – value judgments are not discarded, they are front and center here; (3) “Values have no meaning except through the quantity and variety of experiences” – so values do have meaning after all, as long as they are ‘Camus approved’; (4) “All experiences are unimportant” – except that the quantity and variety of those unimportant experiences is what gives life meaning: (∞*0) ≠ 0. First, Camus dismisses the possibility that asceticism and the Absurd could be compatible. This seems strange. If there is no objective value in the world, why mightn’t someone renounce that world (short of suicide), relish his solitude, and focus on his ‘inner self’? Practitioners of Taoism and Zen, well acquainted with the Absurd, often follow this practice. Even more disturbingly, Camus substitutes ‘quantity’ and ‘variety’ of experience for the forbidden ‘quality’. But aren’t quantity and variety themselves a kind of quality? Is ‘large’ a quality or a quantity? Quantity on my home scale, quality putting on a suit of clothes. If, as Camus asserts, more of some things is better than less, doesn’t quantity then become a value (a quality) in itself? One recalls a particularly crass expression from the 1980s: “Whoever dies with the most toys wins,” as well as Gatsby’s famous exclamation: “Living well is the best revenge”. Perhaps not our loftiest ideals…but values nonetheless, and values apparently considered objectively binding by Camus. The philosopher further explains that the quantity of our experience replaces any consideration of quality only so far as we are conscious of those experiences: “For the mistake is thinking that that quantity of experiences depends on the circumstances of our lives…To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them…A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them. All experiences are indifferent in this regard.” So ‘quantity’ is not a variable after all? Are you dizzy yet? Camus now introduces a new ‘transcendent value’: consciousness! Not the abstract phenomenon of consciousness but the act of being conscious of a particular experience. Conscious experience is certainly different, qualitatively, from ‘unconscious experience’ (whatever that might be). But is this not precisely the goal of Taoists, Zen Buddhists, and cloistered monastic orders? Is it not the case that many have renounced the world precisely in order to become more conscious ? To immerse one’s self in the hurly-burly of life may not be the best way to heighten consciousness. “Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.” (Wordsworth) Camus continues, “To the absurd man a premature death is irreparable. Nothing can make up for the sum of the faces and centuries he would otherwise have traversed.” Where are these faces, where are these centuries, where is this sum? They can’t be in the future because, as we show in our earlier essay, Camus rejects the category of ‘future’ entirely. And what about death? Doesn’t that bring us all back to zero? And doesn’t 0 = 0, whether it’s (3 – 3) or (300 – 300). Either way, 0 = 0 and it doesn’t matter how you got there! Arithmetic is a Markov Chain. Earlier, Camus referred to experiences as ‘accumulated’. What suggests to Camus that experience can be totalized in this way? Death is not an experience that you ‘add’ to other experiences. In fact, death is not an experience at all. Death is the absence of experience and, even more viciously, the annulment of all experience. So how are we to live in such an absurd world? Camus details several options, but he makes it clear that this does not constitute an exhaustive catalogue of possibilities. First, Don Juan. “Don Juan” is a collector of experiences. He seeks a long, varied and intense life: “Don Juan has chosen to be nothing”, i.e., to lose himself in himself. In fact, as we shall see, all of Camus’ absurd heroes choose to be nothing. This seems odd. What is choosing to be nothing but suicide…or at least renunciation…the two options vehemently rejected by Camus (above)? Second, the Actor: “The actor has three hours to be Iago…Never has the absurd been so well illustrated…There is no frontier between being and appearing… In those three hours he travels the whole course of the dead-end path that the man in the audience takes a lifetime to cover.” Third, the Conqueror. This is the man of action, but Camus acknowledges that the project of the conqueror is ultimately futile: “Nothing of the conqueror lasts, not even his doctrines.” Ozymandias : “Nothing beside remains.” (Shelley) As Camus repeatedly points out, death is inconsistent with objective values. If death is the final reality, then values are meaningless. On the other hand, if meaningful values are a reality, then death must be odd man out. (John Donne) Camus suggests that death is not merely the absence of value but the ‘exaltation of injustice’. Here he’s right: of course it is! It’s the primordial injustice. But this observation is revealing because ‘injustice’ implies ‘justice’. By acknowledging injustice, Camus has once again let the camel’s nose of objective value into the tent of the Absurd. What is Justice if not a transcendent value that gives meaning to existence? Finally, Camus turns to art and the artist. He proposes an ‘absurd aesthetic’: “An art in which the concrete signifies nothing more than itself… The absurd creator…must give the void its colors.” Dada? Rothko? Pollock? Camus is to be praised for his analysis of the Absurd. His description of the human condition takes a back seat to no one’s. Yet his project, in the end, fails. Try as he might, he cannot escape the need to let values seep into his scheme. This raises a question: Is it possible to talk about the world in any non-trivial way without making reference to Value? And if not, does that mean that values are indeed real or is this merely an invitation to remain silent In the course of our lives, we are confronted with facts we think we know, people we think we meet and judgments we think we make. From these nearly universal experiences, three great philosophical questions organically emerge: What is the nature of ‘knowledge’? What is the nature of ‘the other’? What is the nature of ‘value’? These questions form the basis of Philosophy’s Big Three : epistemology, ontology and ethics/aesthetics. They also give rise to the three great ‘null hypotheses’: skepticism, solipsism, nihilism. Camus incorporates the null hypotheses: “The method defined here acknowledges the feeling that all true knowledge is impossible. Solely appearances can be enumerated…” Here he is channeling Parmenides’ contrast of Aletheia (Truth) with Doxa (Appearances) . “In one of its aspects, eternal nothingness is made up precisely of the sum of lives to come which will not be ours…” Camus is anticipating Hugh Everett’s Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics . Or is he summarizing Robert Frost’ s The Road Not Taken ? In either case, the World consists solely of possibilities: ‘pure potentiality’ ( Aristotle), ‘the wave function’ (Schrödinger), ‘the sum over histories’ (Feynmann). When we actualize any one potentiality, when we collapse the wave function, we consign the alternative paths to ‘eternal nothingness’. “Now I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds. (Oppenheimer…misquoting the Bhagavad Gita .) So life as we know it, like monogamy, consists of actualizing one path and forsaking all others. By actualizing one reality, we destroy all potentiality. E sic pluribus solo unum – is that the real absurdity of life? “In an absurd world, there can be no scale of values, no value driven choices or value based preferences.” In that case Camus’ world cannot be absurd after all, littered as it is with value based preferences. So give Albert an A in Ontology but, sadly, a D in Ethics, or as Sister Martha Mary used to write at the bottom of my report cards: “Needs improvement.” 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 Beyond Gertrude Stein David Cowles May 11, 2023 “The agony of childhood is only incidentally related to bad parenting. The Prince and the Pauper are, above all else, children, and childhood is exile.” As ATM frequent fliers already know, we are big fans of Gertrude Stein. In my view, she is one of only a handful of truly original 20 th century prose writers. So the title of this article, Beyond Gertrude Stein , gave me pause. There’s precious little ‘beyond GS,' but here goes… Famously, Ms. Stein wrote, “We are always to ourselves young men and young women.” No matter how old or young we are ‘objectively,' we feel ourselves as ‘young men and young women.' I’m 23 and free! I can go anywhere and do (almost) anything. In our culture, the range of so-called ‘age-appropriate’ behaviors is broadest during the period we define as ‘young adulthood.' Age consciousness is lowest and, therefore, so is age-related tension. This is our period of maximum chronological mobility . This is our golden age! Even so , society always has its expectations: “These are the best years of your life, don’t waste them; if you plan to have a family, you better start soon; I ran into Betty at the supermarket, her Mikey is already a junior partner.” Nuisances, no doubt, but a far cry from the boot camp of childhood or the super max of seniority. Still, even a nuisance can cause tension; that’s why I always keep a fly swatter in my desk drawer. When we were in nursery school, we were all pretty much the same; so it is again now that we’re all on Boot… I mean Shady… Hill. “Damn girl, is that you? Weren’t you in my play group at Humpty Dumpty Academy?” In fact, a bunch of us HD grads are matriculating at SH now, getting ready for that final ‘final exam.' From nursery school to nursing home, about 3.5 miles I’m told, but oh, the adventures we had on the way! We had a million different jobs; we traveled to a million different places; we met a million different people; we had a million different kids, some of whom still visit on holidays. At every stage of life, we experience age-related tension. We must be what we are not: a baby, a child, an adolescent, etc. Naively, we assume that people can and should just be themselves whatever their age, but, of course, you can’t ever ‘just be yourself,' not at any age. You must always ‘prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet’ (Eliot). At least you’re in good company! These days even God ‘prepares a face.' He caught Moses’ attention in a ‘burning bush’; he confronted Job ‘out of the whirlwind’; and he revealed himself to Elijah as a ‘still small voice.' Imagine that the course of one’s life is like a sine wave. The peaks correspond to the periods of greatest age-related tension, the troughs are energy sinks . Once I am at rest in an energy sink, I’m ‘trapped’…but blissfully so, and young adulthood is the mother of all such sinks! From here, no matter which way I move, tension can only increase. This is as close as I’m ever going to get to my ‘Octopuses’ Garden in the shade’ (Beatles), and we cling to it…desperately. Growing up, I had a perfectly acceptable life. Nevertheless, when I left home ‘for good’ at age 18, I felt as though a tremendous weight had been lifted. I was surprised; I had not known that I was carrying such a heavy load. Many times over the next decade, I remarked to friends, “My worst day since leaving home was better than my best day before .” Had my parents overheard, this would have been hurtful. They did what they could to make my childhood a positive experience. In retrospect, nothing they might have done differently would have made much difference. The agony of childhood is only incidentally related to bad parenting. The Prince and the Pauper are, above all else, children, and childhood is exile. We sojourn in a foreign land! Like most ‘60s kids, I hungered for independence; even so, I did not anticipate the extent of the physical relief it would bring. At the age of 23, I found myself splashing about like an empowered infant in my newly discovered Kohler ‘energy sink.' From nursery school to nursing home, you’re prodded all along the way to ‘act your age.' But how? We’re not born with a sense of ‘age.' It might sound crazy, but you have to learn to be an infant (“be cute…or else”), a kid, an adolescent, an adult, a geezer. From this data, Stein concluded that ‘young adulthood’ is our ‘natural age,’ but there is nothing intrinsically special about it. Society has made it special by glorifying it. We have only minimal behavioral expectations of young adults. ‘Don’t shoot someone’ is a far cry from ‘drink your milk’ or ‘ring the nurse when you need to move your bowels.' It’s not so hard/being me/now that I’m finally/23! Of all life’s stages, young adulthood is when we’re least conscious of age. We’re old enough now to do most anything we want (except run for president), but we’re still young enough to ‘indulge our inner child’ when necessary. You can hobnob with septuagenarians at a morning board meeting and then join a pick-up basketball game with 14-year-olds in the afternoon. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for all our lives! Free at last…at least sort of. Stein takes this to mean that “we are always to ourselves young men and young women.” Actually though, we’re ageless! Being expected to “act your age” is tension-generating at every age, albeit least so in young adulthood. On the other hand, it sucks being five…or, God forbid, 75! Image: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973). Gertrude Stein, 1905–6. Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 32 in. (100 x 81.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Gertrude Stein, 1946. (47.106) © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

Explore Aletheia Today's Groundhog 2025 issue: where philosophy, theology, and culture intersect. From Mark’s Gospel to Parmenides, faith, and love—thought-provoking insights await! Inside Resurrection 2025 Philosophy Freedom and/or Democracy? “Who is Peter Thiel? Conservative, libertarian, or 21st century Marxist?” The Eternal Present “The Present is…a series of concentric circles, with its axis perpendicular to linear spacetime…” Theology Is There ‘True Religion’? “We confuse a person’s right to express a hairbrained idea with the notion that that idea should be taken seriously.” Credo Ut Intelligam (Believe Me, I understand.) "I first believed, and only then, and only on the foundation of that belief, did I come to understand." Miracles “…Everything that happens happens only once…there is nothing under the Sun that is not new! Being and novelty are synonymous.” Ephesians 2:10 “In this one verse…St. Paul proposes a radically new model of what it means to be a human being.” Culture & The Arts How is the Cosmos Like DNA? “Most humans share about 96% of their DNA coding with common swine; politicians share 98%.” I Led 5 Lives “Everyone is right in their own eyes; therefore everyone else must always be wrong. Sound familiar? No wonder the world’s in a perpetual state of war!” Spirituality Quantum Theology Causation cascades through the cosmos until... New Life Through Pain "New life brings with it the joy of unquenchable hope, but a careless memory forgets that, like childbirth, new life comes only through great trial and, at times, pain." Hidden Hope in Spring’s Awakening Though hidden, life prepares for emergence in spring. Everyday Resurrections: The Divine Pattern of Healing and Transformation "Do you know that as a human being created in the image of God, you can experience everyday resurrections as part of God's pattern of healing and transformation?" 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 Home Alone “Macaulay Culkin is ‘every boy’ and his Home Alone family is ‘America’s family’ – except it’s not!” David Cowles Another season of holiday specials has passed, but it was reassuring to see that the Home Alone movie franchise remains alive and well. In addition to being immensely entertaining, these films prompt some ‘AT ( Aletheia Today ) worthy’ questions, beginning with, “How do we come to know about the world we live in?” Seriously? Isn’t the answer obvious? We know about it because we live in it! Living is knowing, right? Well…maybe not: Imagine you’re a toddler. You’re certainly living in the world…but how much do you really know about that world? On the mappa mundi you drew for your Park Avenue therapist, 60% of the ‘canvass’ was taken up by your house and yard. The scrub pine at the corner of your lot was the tallest landmark, and your so-called ‘caretakers’ were pictured as giants. You are in the world, but your knowledge of that world is rudimentary at best. But come on! You're a toddler; you’ll learn, right? How? By living, of course. But if our knowledge of the world came from living in it, our maps would look more like Escher than Euclid! Things would recede geometrically from here and now. Bostonians could be forgiven for mistaking the Connecticut River for the Mississippi. Once upon a time, it’s possible that people did learn about the world by living in it…but not now! Today we learn about the world, not from our experience of that world but from representations projected at us by the media. Roland Barthes called such images mythologies . What’s a family and what’s it like to live in one? Turn on the TV and find out! Most of us grew up in families; many of us live in families now, but we don’t trust our experience. For our ideas about family, we rely on television and the movies. The contemporary American family has been defined for us by shows like Leave It to Beaver , The Simpsons , and Modern Family . Of course, we don’t live on the set of a TV sitcom. My own dad was less like Phil Dunphy than he was like Sir Robert ( Downton Abbey ), but I never expected to grow up like Prince Charles. I might have hoped to grow up like Luke Dunphy. Confronted with these images, we have two options: either (1) we ignore actual experience and imagine that our own families are ‘just like’ these sitcom families, or (2) we honor our experience and accept that we live in ‘failed families’. I think I do a bit of both, but either way, we do it to our detriment. Today, our social scientists are focused on the twin phenomena of Entitlement and Privilege . Our media diet certainly reinforces both. But it sets our socio-economic expectations as well. Macaulay Culkin is ‘every boy’ and his Home Alone family is ‘America’s family’ – except it’s not! The McCallister family is rich. Rabbit rich! They are unapologetic ‘one-percenters’. They live in a McMansion in a posh Chicago suburb. In 2023, the estimated price tag was a mere $2,800,000. Plus, the family can afford (money and time) to take an extended vacation in Europe. (Two vans to the airport; parents fly first class.) Both parents work, but the nature of that ‘work’ is posh-vague. Suffice to say, neither works in a sweat shop, coal mine, or cube. Economists estimate that in 2024, a family would need an annual income of at least $750,000 to support such a lifestyle. Yet, the Home Alone franchise encourages all of us to imagine ourselves Growing Up McCallister . Nice work if you can get it. The McCallister Life is the way life’s z’posed to be. It’s the way all of us were meant to live. According to Bernie Sanders, our actual lives fall short because our patrimony has been stolen from us by greedy robber barons. Sadly though, most of us locate the fault, neither in the stars nor in the social system, but in ourselves. “What’s wrong with my parents that they did not provide me with the McCallister lifestyle? What’s wrong with me that I cannot provide that lifestyle for my own children?” These questions seem ‘natural’, if self-denigrating, but they are anything but. They contain anaerobic assumptions that will not survive exposure to oxygen…or sunlight. First, the questions assume that the McCallister lifestyle is within the reach of median members of society. Of course, there are Families McCallister, and in a sense, any family could be a McCallister Family (they could hit on a scratch card, for instance), but such outcomes are at best loosely related to the skills, efforts, abilities, or virtues of the beneficiaries. Somebody’s got to win life’s lottery, but, Immanuel Kant and Bernie Sanders notwithstanding, not everyone can win. That’s not how lotteries work. Second, and even more perniciously, the questions assume that the McCallister lifestyle defines ‘the good life’. It is good to live in a mansion in a monochrome neighborhood. It is good for siblings to have their own rooms (and not to share). It is good for families to spend the holidays in Europe. Sez who? The consequences of these hidden assumptions are nothing short of ‘socially catastrophic’. Think I exaggerate? Think again! We have decided to view life in terms of winners and losers. That’s problematic at best. Do winners earn immortality? Then what’s the point? We have told all participants that they will win or lose based on their performance on a ‘standardized test’ called childhood. What the players don’t know is that their answer sheets are shredded the minute they are turned in; no one will ever even look at them. Winners and losers will be determined instead by a secret algorithm unrelated to test scores. After a suitable interval, our beloved founder, Gordon Oliver Day, enters the exam room to announce the results. James Astor – winner; Jonathan Baskin – loser; and so on through the entire roster. (Note: there are many more losers than winners.) After tears of grief, the losers are left to mourn: “I’ve let myself down, and not just myself, but my parents, my coaches, my teachers and any future spouse(s) and children.” After tears of relief, the winners begin to compare notes and quickly realize that they did not all perform brilliantly on the test; they begin to intuit that something else must have intervened in the selection process. Their euphoria turns to insecurity…or even guilt. In the down-under film Hunt for the Wilderpeople , the 12-year-old lead says, “I didn’t choose the Skux (gangster) life; the Skux life chose me.” Kevin McCallister might have said the same thing about the Posh life. So, we’ve managed to create a value system in which we are all designated ‘losers’, at least in our own minds. Not easy to do but we’ve done it. Brilliant! I’m not done! I’m not rich, but I’m not poor either. I have a ‘nice’ lifestyle; I’m ‘satisfied’. But it’s not the McCallister lifestyle. So I am dissatisfied with being satisfied, and I take every opportunity to mimic the Family McCallister. Some people ask, “What would Jesus do?” I ask, “What would Kevin McCallister (or his parents) do?” So, I buy a house bigger than I need…or can afford, and I take the family on a trip to Europe, even though I have no interest in things European. These are the things one does if one wants to think of oneself as an honorary McCallister...or Dunphy. Like everyone else in the game, I was dealt an average hand. It was all I needed. But I squandered it by trying to live someone else’s life. Looking back, I wish I had paid more attention to the Rolling Stones : “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time, you just might find, you get what you need.” Image: Home Alone. 20th Century Fox. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to Yuletide 2023 Previous Next

< Back Kaddish David Cowles Aug 24, 2023 “God is our fellow traveler. He suffers along with us; we are simpatico… like Bill Clinton, God feels our pain.” It is a commentary on our times that entering ‘Kaddish’ in a search engine is more likely to deliver an Alan Ginsberg poem of the same name than the 2,500-year-old prayer on which Ginsburg’s poem is based. Not that I have anything against Ginsberg; after all, he was Bob Dylan’s John the Baptist. Ginsburg’s Kaddish is great, but so is the original! The Kaddish is a prayer that observant Jews recite at the death of one who is loved and/or a member of the House of Israel . Praying over the dead is certainly not a uniquely Jewish practice. Both in Pharaonic Egypt and in Buddhist Tibet, for example, it was customary to recite long prayers over the body of one dead or dying. These ancient funerary rites are preserved for us in each culture’s distinctive Book of the Dead . The stated purpose of such prayers was to guide the departed soul through the After World , to deliver it unscathed into ‘Objective Immortality’ (Whitehead’s term). Fast-forward, in many Christian churches today it is still customary to pray for the souls of the ‘dearly departed’, that they may ‘rest in peace’, and that their spirit may be ‘borne by flights of angels’ unto the ‘bosom of the Lord’. Kaddish is different! It is certainly meant to benefit the deceased, but it is also intended to benefit the mourners and, perhaps less expectedly, to benefit God. According to the underlying eschatology, every death rips a hole in the fabric of Being. As such, it causes the pain of loss which is felt by all those in the ‘society’ of the deceased, i.e., co-religionists, friends, relatives, and of course, that member of every society, i.e., God. In Eastern cosmologies, the divine is ineffable and utterly transcendent (Nirvana); in Classical cosmology, we are effectively gods’ pets, sometimes loved but often mistreated. For the most part, the gods regard us as an inferior life form. There are no ‘civil rights’ on Mount Olympus. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, however, God is our fellow traveler. He suffers along with us; we are simpatico . God sees the suffering of his people in Egypt, so he acts to free them. In the New Testament, God suffers and dies on a cross for the sins of the world ( pecata mundi )…our sins! We are God’s creatures, but we are also his co-conspirators. Our relationship is governed by a series of Covenants (cosmic constitutions). Torah should be read, not as an elaboration of the Ten Commandments but as ‘the Civil Rights Act of 1564 BCE’. We are responsible to and for God, as God is responsible to and for us. So, of course, it falls to us to comfort God in our moments of shared grief. In fact, these are the times when our role as God’s comrades may be most evident. Kaddish means ‘holy prayer’ in Aramaic (the language of its composition). It begins, “May the great name be exalted and sanctified ( kadash ).” As in the Christian Lord’s Prayer, the Name of God is God’s presence in the world, his ‘role’ in society; it is to be ‘hallowed’. According to the Magid of Mezritch, we are ‘limbs of the Shekinah ’ (God’s Presence); so, like Bill Clinton, God feels our pain. A Christian parallel is found in the Mystical Body of Christ . Any death dims God’s light in the world. Reciting Kaddish restores it. According to Rabbi Dovber Pinson, “the function of Kaddish is to comfort the Divine Presence.” We are comforted as well. We have been basking in God’s light ( Ohr ), as reflected ( Chozer ) by our beloved; now we can experience that same light directly ( Yashar ). Every experience requires both Light (God) and Vessel (us). In the cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead, this ‘Light’ corresponds to God’s Primordial Nature (the source of all values) while ‘Vessel’ points to God’s Consequent Nature (the objective immortality of all Events). The alignment of Light and Vessel is Meaning. In other words, events (vessels) acquire meaning from the values (light) they manifest. Vessel without Light is Kelipa - concealment, division, separation, randomness, negativity, darkness, death, and void. Is that all ya got? It is popular today to say that we don’t need God. Ok, maybe not, but Kelipa gives a sense of what the world would be like without Light, i.e., without God’s Presence . Genesis’ second verse describes such a world: “…Without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” Reciting Kaddish rescues us from Kelipa (‘Deliver us from evil’) and it enables us to see the Great Name through the events of the day (‘our daily bread’). “May his Kingdom be established…and may his Anointed One (Messiah) come soon…May it happen in your lifetime and in your days…” This is undoubtedly a reference to Job (19: 25 - 27): “As for me, I know that my redeemer lives and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust…and from my flesh I will see God…my own eyes, not another’s, will behold him.” “Amen. May his great name be blessed forever and for all eternity.” At this, the climax of the prayer, God is comforted, the wounded world is healed, and the gates of Gan Eden , the ultimate destination of all souls, have opened wide to greet our comrade. “May there be abundant peace ( Shalom ) from Heaven and…may he (God) make peace for us...Amen.” Shalom is one of the names of God, so when we pray for peace, we pray for God’s Presence. Roman Catholics celebrate shalom , “the peace that the world cannot give” every day in Eucharist. So a tip of the cap to Alan Ginsberg but an invitation to all of you to pray the Kaddish for me when my turn comes. Shalom! Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. 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< Back Quantum God David Cowles May 28, 2024 “What would it mean for the Proposition “God exists” to be both T and F…or neither T nor F?” A 6th century CE Irish poet (St. Dallan) is credited with “Naught is all else to me save that thou art.” The author framed the intellectual history of Europe in terms of a single question: Does God exist? On one side, there are those who argue that the concept of God is non-phenomenal, illogical, or even monstrous. Atheism is their ‘theology’. On the other side, folks believe that God is evident in Nature (biology, cosmology, etc.), or deducible via a chain of logical reasoning, or the subject of irrefutable personal experience. Theists! Most of us are neither pure atheists nor pure theists. We believe that the ‘God Hypothesis’ either does or does not adequately account for the details of our experience. But we admit we might be wrong, or if we don’t admit it, we credit our conviction to Faith , and Faith this is only possible via the gift of God’s Grace. Therefore, Faith is God believing in God! Both Sartre and Camus (‘The Ex-Men’), fierce rivals but affirmed atheists, admitted that it is possible that God does exist. However, they agreed that it would make no difference either way. They turned our Irish poet on his head. Were they inclined to ‘hymn’, they might have intoned something like, “That thou may be is naught to me.” It makes no difference one way or the other. Now I like to think of myself as a would-be existentialist, but I must part company with my idols on this point. Anything that is makes a difference; if something doesn’t make a difference, then it isn’t. It does not exist! (Whitehead) In other words, you cannot both exist and make no difference; to say so is to misuse the vocabulary. Clever lads, this might have been exactly their point! “Sure, you can have your God if you insist, as long as you understand that your ‘God’ can’t make any difference.” Of course, ‘a god who makes no difference’ is not God; in fact, that’s the very definition of an idol. Anything that makes no difference is nothing at all. Mistaking what is not for what is (and vice versa) is what Whitehead called, The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness . May I explain? I dreamt I spilled a glass of scotch ( quelle domage ). Next morning, I found that there were no wet surfaces in my apartment and that my supply of scotch was not abnormally low. My dream was real, but the scotch I spilled was not…because it didn’t make any difference (left no trace). Others, however, have refined the middle position into a more coherent theological stance known as agnosticism. Broadly speaking, agnostics come in two flavors. Strawberry Spice believes that the existence of God is merely unknown; Pistachio Spice believes that the existence of God is fundamentally unknowable. So would you agree that we’ve pretty much covered the field? There can be lots of nuances but, fundamentally, these are our three options: atheism, theism, agnosticism. There are no other possibilities, right? Wrong! There would seem to be at least two other possibilities: (1) God neither is nor is not; (2) God both is and is not. Ok, these are solutions, but they make no sense…do they? And anyway, they violate the Law of the Excluded Middle: Every well-formed proposition (P) must be either True (T) or False (F). In these cases, P is (1) neither T nor F or (2) both T and F. The Excluded Middle – says who? I can’t find it anywhere in the Torah and, oh yeah, it’s flat out wrong! In Quantum Field Theory, a bit can be both ‘1’ and ‘0’ at the same time; it’s called superposition and it’s what makes quantum computing possible…and what keeps Schrödinger’s superannuated cat alive, at least potentially. So do we say that P = both 1 and 0 or do we say that P = neither 1 nor 0? When you put it like that, it’s clear that our ‘two’ new solutions are really the same solution expressed in different terms. There is only one non-binary solution…but it’s a doozie. How might this apply to the matter of God? What would it mean for the Proposition “God exists” to be both T and F…or neither T nor F? If P is both T and F, it might imply that there is a higher order Value, call it X, that subsumes both T and F. If so, then there is a something more general than Being (ⱻ or ~ ⱻ) itself: (ⱻ and ~ ⱻ). This is the realm of the mystic: Nirvana, Keter, Ein Sof . If P is neither T nor F, it implies the existence of meaningful propositions to which the categories True and False do not apply. Like quiet Wittgenstein! 20th century British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, defined Propositions as ‘lures for feeling’. True and False are subjective forms that apply to just a small subset of these Propositions. In effect then, all language is poetry. As such, it is only occasionally concerned with propositional truth. More often, propositions take the form, “Look dere ! See dat !” See what? Something that relates, metaphorically, to everything that is. The job of the artist-philosopher is to find local patterns that resonate with the pattern that is universe. i.e. “to see a world in a grain of sand…” (William Blake) Fortunately for Bach, Joyce, Kandinsky , et al., the World has just such a fractal structure. Patterns repeat at all scales. The challenge is to identify those local patterns that scale-up to the whole. Each of us is challenged to be William Blake: ‘to hold infinity in the palms of our hands’. At the end of the day, theology is about something much bigger than ‘being/not-being’, it’s about ‘harmonics’, about finding the pattern(s) that connect the infinitesimal with the infinite. Once you’ve found those patterns, it matters not whether you call the result ‘God’…or not. You have found ‘what is’ (Ex. 3: 14). You have found, “I am” (John XX). You have found the Being that animates every being, the one thing that all things share. God is not a ‘thing’; God is not a ‘being’. God is Being: “It is, God is.” God is not in all things; God is the common essence of every thing. 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? 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< Back Christianity David Cowles Jun 11, 2021 In an earlier post, we talked about the need to think ‘complementarily’ in order to understand the cosmos and our place in it. We spoke, for example, of the need to understand sub-atomic entities as both waves and particles. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, we need to think of the entire universe in such terms. In an earlier post, we talked about the need to think ‘complementarily’ in order to understand the cosmos and our place in it. We spoke, for example, of the need to understand sub-atomic entities as both waves and particles. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately, we need to think of the entire universe in such terms. For example, I own a pair of socks. For the most part, I wear them “outside-out and inside-in”. But thanks to the miracle of topology, we have the option to reverse this relationship. If we choose, we can wear our socks “inside-out”. My grandfather, for reasons known only to him, did this on a daily basis; and I must admit I’ve done it more than once merely out of carelessness. On a much deeper level, the topology of the sock is also the topology of the universe. ‘God’ (however you understand that term) is either the totality – not the sum – of all the entities and events that we call universe OR God is a transcendent being in whom that we call universe subsists. This formulation is characteristic of almost all the world’s religions. Christianity, however, turns the sock inside out. God (“The Father”) is still the entity that transcends or totalizes the events we call universe. But God (“The Son”) is a quantum entity within that universe. That is why Catholics, rightly in my view, call Mary “the mother of God”. Here’s where complementarianism comes into play. Christian theology ‘asks’ (or demands) that believe that the sock is at all times simultaneously both outside-out and inside-out. That reality itself is also God (“The Spirit”), which is God manifest (not always perfectly but always to some extent) in each and every event in our universe. 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.