< Back What is an Event? David Cowles May 10, 2026 “Events are the building blocks of Being; understanding them correctly is the key to unlocking the secrets of the Universe.” 1500 words, 6 minute read “Everything has a cause,” you can’t make it through an evening of network TV without hearing some ‘corner cop’ wax philosophical. Even the great Thomas Aquinas was taken it by the scam: the assumption of ‘causality’ forms the basis of at least one of his 5 proofs for the existence of God. Everything has a cause, but only if we fool ourselves into separating an act from its result. Vivisect an event (don’t tell PETA) and you end up with three pseudo-events which we label motivation , action , and result , respectively. But there are no such things! One hand clapping does not produce a sound. Such things only exist as stages in the unfolding of organic, indivisible, events. When you speak of cause and effect separately from action , you’re breaking a naturally occurring quantum of being into pseudo - event stages . In fact, an action is not ‘an event’ until you include its impetus and its legacy. Intention, action, and resolution are essential stages of every event. Applying Gregory Bateson’s all-purpose criterion to this problem, we can define an ‘event’ as ‘a difference that makes a difference’. An event unfolds in three phases: (1) it begins as a reverse image of an actual world, marked up to indicate areas targeted for change, along with a curated selection of values motivating that change; (2) it consists of the process of defining, modeling, prototyping, testing, and refining specific proposed changes; (3) It completes only when some version of those proposed changes is ‘superjected’ back into the world. Sidebar : Jesus final words at the moment of his death on the cross were simply, “ It is finished.” What is finished? The redemption of the Universe which began with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden. The Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost, and Eschaton are consequences of Christ’s redemptive act: i.e. the incarnation (birth and death) of God. Every event represents a change from its Actual World which in turn is reflected in the Actual Worlds of every event that follows it. That’s academic talk. On the mean streets of Hell’s Kitchen, we used to put it like this: “Nothing happens until a circumferentially challenged chanteuse expresses her existential angst in song.” We were tough kids back in the day! *** Alfred North Whitehead, probably the 20 th century’s greatest systematic philosopher, termed the immediate result of an event its ‘satisfaction, objective immortality, or superject’, depending on the point of view of the speaker. It’s what the event is, to itself and for the world. But perhaps you’re not talking about an immediate result; perhaps you’re thinking about so-called long term consequences . What’s the difference? A result is simply the climax of the event itself; a consequence is the reaction of the World to that event. Results are embedded in the figure , the event itself; consequences are embedded in the ground , the external world. An event controls, at least so far as possible, its result and therefore is solely responsible for its outcome. But an event has no control, or even influence, over how the external world reacts to it. Needless to say, no event is responsible for its consequences…just its result. I am reminded here of the Serenity Prayer , made popular by AA and other 12 step programs: “Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (consequences), the courage to change the things I can (results), and the wisdom to know the difference.” *** When I say, ‘result’, I don’t mean the Chicago thunderstorm that was supposedly triggered by a butterfly in Borneo; I just mean the displacement of air occasioned by a single flap of that butterfly’s wings. The Chicago thunderstorm is the alleged consequence of that flap, and in one sense it is, but it is a consequence that has been mediated by every other event in its rearview light cone. The flap factors into that dynamic but there is no way it ‘causes’ Chicago’s infamous weather patterns. On the other hand, the motion of a butterfly’s wing is not a ‘flap’ (an event) until air is displaced (a result). In the lingo of this essay, the result is a displacement of air, the consequence is a thunderstorm. *** Our modern Indo-European languages do extreme violence to the organic integrity of the event . We break Heraclitus’ famous flow into ‘atoms’ of matter/energy which we call ‘words’ and we link those words together according to a rigid template: Subjects → Verbs → Objects (SVO), “rite words in rote order.” (Joyce) An event is a quantum of Being, a part reflecting the whole - fun house , fractal, or monad-like ( Leibniz ). The Universe consists entirely of events, events reflecting and reflected. And what of Universe per se ? Is it just an inert, accidental accumulation of events? Of course not! If Universe exists as something other than a mental construct, it must itself be an event, albeit the event of all events. (Sorry, Bertrand Russell ) To paraphrase Stephen Hawking, “It’s events, all the way up…and down.” An event disrupts the status quo . In fact, the definition of ‘event’ requires the injection of novelty ( aka creativity) into the Heraclitean flow. On the other hand, the Universe is economical; each event inherits its unique environment intact and only modifies it (above) as necessary to support its Subjective Aim (below). There is no such thing as change for change’s sake. Universe guards its achievements jealously. Solidarity is a value (virtue) that enters into the calculus of every event and continuity is its primary manifestation. Consequently, events appear to be linked in logical sequences…which they are not! On the contrary, Being per se has two indispensable aspects: novelty, without which it would be inert, and solidarity, without which it would be chaotic. *** All events do have certain structural features in common. To qualify as an ‘event’, four things need to be present (again, I am indebted to Alfred North Whitehead for the terminology): (1) Actual World, i.e. the status quo ante apprehended as a nexus. (2) Subjective Aim (above), i.e. a potential realization of Good (e.g. Beauty, Truth, Justice ) in the context of that specific Actual World. (3) Act, i.e. the process by which the Aim pursues that realization. (4) Objective Immortality ( aka Satisfaction, Superject), i.e. the event as it is to itself and for others. Unfortunately, in our fetish to reduce things to a lowest common denominator and to deconstruct everything with molecular precision, we treat Stage 3, the naked Act, as the event entire…which it is not ! This categorial error is responsible for much of the confusion that is contemporary philosophy. *** Every event is a quantum of process, recursive process. Every event spans spacetime. Every event is coterminous with Universe. That said, most events are focused locally in time and space. There is a steep, non-linear gradient that works like a dissipative membrane, apparently distancing an event from its environment without sealing it off from the World. Every event begins with the Universe passing judgment on itself. That judgment is guided by the Transcendental Values (Whitehead called them ‘eternal objects’) that constitute ‘God’s Essence ’ (Sartre). God’s essence is simple: it is ‘ Good ’ per se . But as white light refracts to reveal its familiar rainbow of colors, so ‘Good’ refracts to reveal specific values we can recognize and relate to. These are sometimes known as the ‘Divine Values’. There’s no ‘official list’ but at a minimum, Beauty, Truth, and Justice make the cut. Events are quanta of actuality . They are recursive knots in the Norns ’ thread of Fate. Spacetime is virtual scaffolding on which events can be hung, ornament like, creating locus . An event may be focused in a region of spacetime but within an event itself there is no space or time. Properly understanding ‘events’ is a crucial first step in our effort to ‘do’ cosmology . Once we understand that every event is essentially introspective and superjective, certain persistent riddles ‘obviously’ evaporate: Freedom vs. Determinism Causality vs. Correlation Spacetime vs. Eternity Ends vs. Means Ok, don’t leave us hanging! How so? (1) Every event is 100% free and 0% determined; every event is causa sui and sui generis . Free! (2) There is no such thing as causality; there is creativity (novelty), continuity (conservation), and correlation (solidarity). Together they support the illusion of causality. (3) Spacetime is real but epiphenomenal; it is a powerful but arbitrary tool that allows us to order events relative to one another. (4) There are neither ends nor means; there are simply events. Events are the building blocks of Being; understanding them correctly is the key to unlocking the secrets of the 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.

< Back Parmenides, Zeno, and Whitehead David Cowles Feb 20, 2024 “Parmenides was the world’s first Existentialist, the first to ‘split the atom’, to separate Existence from Essence.” On Nature is Europe’s oldest substantially extant work of Systematic Philosophy. An ontological epic , it was composed in the 5 th century BCE by Parmenides of Elea, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, widely regarded as both ‘the father of Western philosophy’ and ‘the father of Western science’. The poem considers Being in two modes: the “Way of Truth” ( Aletheia ) and the “Way of Appearance” ( Doxa ). Aletheia is ‘Being on a budget’. It’s missing things we normally associate with what-is – things like extension (space & time), motion (including all forms of change, e.g. birth, death, growth), and qualia (sensations, perceptions, etc.). “What’s left?” Exactly! Parmenides isolates the ‘substance’ of Being from whatever extraneous and contingent ‘appearances’ it might assume. Here’s what he says about it: “…What-is is ungenerated and imperishable…whole, single-limbed, steadfast, and complete; nor was it once, nor will it be, since it is, now, all together, one, continuous … In what way, and whence, did it grow? Not from what-is-not…And what need could have impelled it to grow later or sooner, if it began from nothing? …It is not lacking, but if it were, it would lack everything…Therefore, it must either be completely, or not at all.” Parmenides was the world’s first Existentialist , the first to ‘split the atom’, to separate Existence from Essence. Aletheia is a continuous medium (it’s ‘simple’, it has no structure); therefore, the rules of Arithmetic apply. Zeno devised several paradoxes to prove that a world where Arithmetic (Real Number Theory) applies cannot accommodate ‘motion’ (change, growth) of any kind. Zeno proved that Olympic Gold Medalist Achilles can never catch up to a lowly Tortoise in a road race, provided the reptile has a head start. Nor can Greece’s great archers ever hit a target. “I shot an arrow into the air; it fell to earth I knew not where…” (Longfellow) Well, this poet didn’t know it, but he was on to something: he ‘knew not where’. Exactly! We can never know. Future is the perpetually receding final frontier. But Longfellow did not go nearly far enough. According to Zeno, he never shot an arrow and therefore no arrow ever landed…anywhere. Longfellow was on the right track…but he wasn’t Parmenides, was he? Aletheia is the substructure of Being . It‘s what it means ‘to be’, not what it means ‘to be something ’. In fact, ‘being something ’ is a form of ‘bad faith’ (Sartre) – it’s a way of not being , of burying freedom in inertia. Aletheia is the sound of one hand clapping! To account for actual experience, Parmenides needed another hand; he needed to give Being another aspect: “To come to be and to perish, to be and not to be, to shift place and to exchange bright color.” He called this aspect of Being, Doxa (Appearance). To exist in the mode of Doxa is to exist relative to other existents, to be amid others who are. In the mode of Doxa , ‘red’ is not just red; it is red in contrast to ‘blue’ and ‘green’. “…From here onwards learn mortal beliefs…they distinguished opposites in body and established signs apart from one another (language) …all things have been named light and night...” In Doxa , nothing is ‘necessary’, everything is ‘contingent’, while in the mode of Aletheia , whatever-is just is: there is neither necessity nor contingency. In Doxa , entities are perpetually becoming and perishing; as a result, they never really are ! So it’s Aletheia to the rescue! If Aletheia is Being without ‘beings’, Doxa is ‘beings’ without Being. Only together do they constitute a World. According to Alfred North Whitehead, any Systematic Philosophy requires three ‘undefined terms’: one, many, creativity - the one becoming many, the many becoming one. “In the midst of these is the goddess who steers all things; for she rules over hateful birth ( Doxa ) and the union of all things ( Aletheia )…” “…She devised Love ( Erota ), first of all the gods…” Love is logos . It is creativity. Erota is how ephemeral entities in Doxa come to experience the eternity of Aletheia . It is how Aletheia comes to see itself. Love changes everything, Love preserves everything. “But nevertheless you shall learn…how the things that seem had to have genuine existence, permeating all things completely.” Was Parmenides laying the groundwork for the Gospel of John? “In the beginning was the Logos , and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God…All things came to be through the Logos .” (1: 1 – 3) Doxa is real, genuine, and universal…as is Aletheia ! Like “love and marriage” before the Summer of ‘67, they “go together like a horse and carriage”. In Aletheia , the Tortoise always leads Achilles. His head start is permanent, fossilized in amber or etched into a certain Grecian Urn. But in Doxa , Achilles smokes T’s reptilian a**. Doxa sounds like home. So why do we need Aletheia ? (Sound familiar? “Why do we need God ?”) But there’s a problem. In Doxa everything is ceasing or coming to be. Nothing is, now. There is no ‘Present’ and therefore no ‘Presence’. When everything is in flux, nothing really is. To be ‘present’ we need to step out of Heraclitus’ River of Time, but Doxa has no off-ramps. At most, ‘here and now’ is an infinitesimal point abstracted from the continuous flow, but that is certainly not what we mean by ‘the Present’. Aletheia converts the infinitesimal point masquerading as the Present in Doxa into an ‘infinite atemporal’ (eternal) line perpendicular to Doxa in Aletheia . That’s Presence! Combining Parmenides with Whitehead, we might attempt an even more general formulation of ‘process’. Every processional model of reality must include a principle of disjunction (‘or’ in the language of logic, “many” in Whitehead’s scheme), a principle of conjunction (‘and’, “one”), and a transformative function (“creativity”): ʌ, ˅, ↔ The one becomes many, the many, one; Being is Penelope’s loom. The ‘transformative function’? That’s Erota of course, Love. 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. The one becomes many, the many, one; Being is Penelope’s loom. The ‘transformative function’? That’s Erota of course, Love. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back How to Age Mathematically David Cowles Nov 12, 2024 “The last 20 years (25%) of your calendar life will only amount to about 6% of your experienced life…but you won’t see that coming!” Many children first encounter arithmetic when they struggle to understand the concept of age . When Aunt Mary asks, as she always does, “And how old are you, young man?” I can confidently hold up 3 fingers. (BTW, that gets me half way to a PhD!) Later, I will wrestle with the fact that even though I get older every year, I never seem to catch up to my siblings. How come? Eventually, the wonder of numbers will likely give way to the drudgery of drill but the question of how we age will continue to command our attention. By the time you hit double digits, you’ve already noticed that the insufferably long ‘year’ is slowly getting shorter. Thank God for that ! I couldn’t bear to wait another 10 years to turn 20. Fortunately, I won’t have to. I can ‘purchase’ future time with discounted dollars (i.e. shorter years). At 12 you put up a picture of Einstein on your bedroom wall. Time dilation is your best friend! After all, your life is dominated by a single subliminal goal: getting to the age of 21 as quickly as possible. If you’re precocious…or just posh…you may have already learned that time flows more slowly in the presence of stronger gravitational fields, e.g. in the neighborhood of a singularity (black hole). Your conception and birth is analogous to such a singularity. Time seems to flow more slowly close to that singularity and speed up as age distances you from it. This process continues into your 30’s as you pursue the 5 Ps of contemporary ‘personhood’: pay, pad, pension (401k), partner (significant other), and pet (or kids). As you drift, semi-conscious on your best days, towards Milestone 40, you may feel a tug: Could time possibly be moving a little too quickly? On your 40th birthday you may feel the first real jolt: “I have lived half of my expected lifetime!” Such a thought could be disconcerting, if we allowed it to be! Instead, you’re quickly comforted, “It took forever (quite literally) for me to get here (age 40) so ‘same again’ is OK by me.” It’s virtually forever ; I feel ‘intimations of immortality’ (Wordsworth). Oh, the delusions of middle age! We measure age in calendar years, as if our experience of time was uniform and linear, and as if various atomic clocks and astral cycles had some actual significance for our lives. As noted earlier, by age 40 I have lived half a lifetime (80 years), speaking objectively . However, I experience the full term of my life to date (e.g. 40 years) as ‘one lifetime’. Subjectively , therefore, I have a full lifetime (40 years) left to live. I have lived one lifetime (40 years) and it literally lasted forever. I have no awareness of ‘myself’ before I was conceived. Therefore, it feels to me that I have lived a lifetime and have a lifetime left to live. “What, me worry?” (Alfred E. Newman) At the age of 40, 40 years = one lifetime. At age 80, 40 years = one half-lifetime (0.5). Therefore by age 40, you have already lived 2/3rds of your experiential life: 1.0/(1.0 + 0.5) = 66.7%. There’s no such thing as ‘same again’; at best it’s ‘half again’…like in a London pub. What a rip-off! But if this is so for everyone, if this is the human condition , why isn’t everybody in the streets banging pots and pans? Nature is way too clever for that ! After the mid-point (age 40), the future seems to linger, shimmering on time’s horizon. As you move toward it, it seems to recede. If we were going to live forever, this is surely what it would feel like. Crossing ‘40 Mile Road’, you could get serious about your contracting lifeline. You gaze at the horizon, expecting it to meet you half way like the ‘Prodigal Father’; but it doesn’t! In fact, it scarcely seems to get any closer at all, no matter how long you walk toward it. You become complacent; is mortality a mirage after all? Danger, Will Robinson, danger! It’s a trick! Don’t fall for it! The future is not hanging idly on a cosmic corner; it is hurtling toward you…and at an accelerating pace: the last 20 years (25%) of your calendar life will only amount to about 6% of your experienced life…60 is the really the new 72, but you don’t see that coming! It’s la grande trompe d’oeil . As you approach the end of your life, mortality seems to recede; time itself inflates: “And indeed there will be time…time to murder and create and time for all the works and days of hands…” (Eliot). Of course there won’t be! Yet, this illusion (like most) is not without some factual basis. A 60 year old has a 20 year NLE (age 80) but 20 years later, a surviving 80 year old still has a 10 year NLE (age 90). Unless you’re very fortunate, or read Aletheia Today , you will wake up one morning surprised to find that the mirage has vanished and that the singularity (death) is much, much closer than you’d imagined. Now it’s too late to save yourself. Relax and prepare to be elongated into a lonesome strand of spaghetti. What a way to go! The orientation of your ‘temporal field’ (like Earth’s ‘magnetic field’) suddenly flips. From birth your vision has been future oriented; without realizing it, you’ve understood the past in terms of that future: “I go to school to get a job; I work so I can retire, etc.” but you don’t realize that what you’re really saying is “I live to be spaghettified.” Now that you’ve crossed the event horizon, however, things are reversed; your vision is directed toward the past. From here on you’ll understand the future in terms of that past: it’s your legacy! Without meaning to, you’re literally tying up loose ends. Living has become estate planning. Borrowing from Proust, the future no longer creates new time; it redeems time past. You’re searching for some nugget of Goodness that might allow you to trick your way past St. Peter. Good luck with that! But in the meantime, “Wake up...please!” Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Ian Paul Contributor Ian Paul is a theologian, author, speaker, and academic consultant. He serves as Adjunct Professor for Fuller Theological Seminary ; Associate Minister for St Nic's, Nottingham , and Managing Editor for Grove Books . He is member of General Synod, a Mac user, and a chocoholic. He tweets at @psephizo . For a complete list of books he has either written or contributed to, go to https://www.psephizo.com/publications/ . Who Are the Antichrist, the ‘Man of Lawlessness’, and the Beast?

< Back Erin Gruodis-Gimbel Contributor Erin Gruodis-Gimbel is a playwright, author, and fact-checker based in New York. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Dramatic Writing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. You can find her writing at Beyond Belief, JAKE the Mag, COPY, and on post-it notes and legal pads scattered around her like a semi-intellectual aura. You can find her at eringruodisgimbel.com and erinxgg on Twitter. The Ease of Burden

< Back Can Design Help Form Faith? Giosafatte Ingrassia May 17, 2026 “The best Christian design does not ask to be admired. Its purpose is not only to be seen. Its deeper purpose is to point. It asks to be followed beyond itself.” I grew up in Calabria, in the south of Italy, where visible signs of faith were part of ordinary life. In our home there was Padre Pio on the wall, statues of Jesus and Our Lady, and the kind of religious images you do not really question as a child because they are simply there. At school, there was a crucifix. In my father’s car, there is still a small crucifix hanging beneath the rear-view mirror. Only later did I begin to realise that these things were not just decoration. They were reminders. Quiet ones, maybe, but reminders all the same. I moved to Rome as a teenager, the picture became more complicated. Rome is full of churches, sacred art, and Christian history, yet many people my age seemed more secular than those I had known in smaller towns in the south. Then, when I moved to London at twenty, the contrast became sharper again. Christian signs felt less assumed, less woven into public life. I did not have the language for it then, but Durkheim’s old distinction between the sacred and the profane later gave words to something I had already felt: the sacred can be present and still be ignored, or absent enough that its smallest sign begins to matter. Christian tradition has always understood that what we see can shape what we remember. Paintings, statues, icons, stained glass, rosaries, medals, church bells, and the rosoni, the great rose windows in old churches, were never meant to be mere decoration. They taught, reminded, and directed attention. They surrounded people with signs of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Beauty does not replace faith. But it can make the soul more ready to receive meaning. A church window, a crucifix, or a sacred image does not force belief. It simply asks us to pause. Studying psychology has made me less naive about attention. The modern world knows very well how trainable it is. Screens, adverts, notifications, billboards, and algorithms are constantly competing for our eyes. They do not simply show us things. They try to make us desire, compare, click, buy, and return. That is why visible signs of faith deserve to be taken seriously, even when they appear in ordinary forms: a mug, a phone case, a print, a shirt, or a tote bag. If the modern world is already using design to form our desires, Christians should not be embarrassed to ask whether design can also help form attention toward God. Of course, this can go wrong. Christian imagery can become shallow. It can turn faith into a vibe, a slogan, a costume, or just another consumer identity. A cross can be worn without being carried. A verse can be printed without being lived. That does not mean humour or modern Christian design should be dismissed. There is room for humour within reverence. Many of us have experienced enough divine irony in our own lives to know that faith is not humourless. But humour has to point back toward truth, not away from it. The difference is purpose. A Bible verse, a saint image, a crucifix, or a Christian phrase becomes meaningful when it serves remembrance, prayer, courage, truth, hope, or witness. The problem is not that faith becomes visible. The problem is when visibility becomes the whole point. Christian design should not make holiness fashionable; it should make forgetfulness harder. There is a line in ‘Excalibur’ where Merlin says that one of the curses of men is that they forget. The line has stayed with me because forgetfulness is not only a human weakness. It is a spiritual danger. We forget what is true, what has been given, what has been sacrificed, and who we are called to become. Christian life depends on remembrance. “Do this in memory of me” is not a sentimental phrase. It is at the heart of worship. Memory matters because love weakens when it forgets. Design cannot carry the whole weight of faith, but it can carry a reminder. A rosary, a crucifix, a verse on a mug, or a Christian image on a wall can interrupt the day’s ordinary drift. A gift with Christian meaning can do something similar. It may sit quietly on a desk, hang by a door, or be worn in public, but its purpose is not only to be seen. Its deeper purpose is to point. Sometimes a visible sign of faith does what awkward words cannot: it begins a conversation. It can cross the small distances that often keep people apart: accent, background, nationality, class, appearance. Beneath those differences is a shared human dignity, and for Christians, a soul made for God. A Christian object is at its best when it points beyond itself. It is not precious because it is religious merchandise, but because it may invite someone to remember Christ, to pray, to return, or to live differently. This question has become more personal for me as I approach confirmation. I am not thinking about design only as aesthetics, but as part of a larger desire to seek the Kingdom, grow closer to God, and deepen my relationship with Christ. Christian by Grace is only a small means toward that end. Its purpose is not to make faith look fashionable, but to help make faith visible in ordinary life. If even one design became the occasion for someone to remember Christ, pray, return, or ask a deeper question, that would be enough. So, can design help form faith? Not by itself. Not automatically. But it can help form attention, memory, witness, and return. Faith does not need to be loud, but it should not be invisible. The best Christian design does not ask to be admired. It asks to be followed beyond itself. Giosafatte’s bio: Giosafatte Ingrassia is a London-based psychology graduate originally from Calabria in southern Italy. He is the creator of Christian by Grace ( Hot Link to https://christianbygrace.com ) a Christian visual design project built around making faith visible in daily life through Scripture, sacred symbolism, humour, devotional art, pilgrimage, and everyday reminders. 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 Hunt for Hidden Variables David Cowles Sep 14, 2025 “Perhaps social scientists will be first to identify the elusive factors that drive unexpected results.” Physicists love to talk about ‘hidden variables’, most often to save their classically trained backsides from the vicissitudes of Quantum Mechanics. Even Einstein hoped that particle physics would someday identify hitherto unknown factors that would provide a classical explanation for quantum weirdness: “God does not play dice!” Except, of course, he does! In fact, he’s Head Boss in the Craps Pit at Bellagio. Despite his rather Puritanical facade, there’s nothing God enjoys more than a good game of chance. But how do you get to experience the rush of ‘hitting 6 (or 8) the hard way’ when you’re supposedly omniscient and omnipotent? In the prose prologue to the epic Book of Job , Satan challenges God to a wager and God cannot resist, even though it’s guaranteed to generate a heap of trouble for everyone concerned, including God himself. If there was ever someone in need of an intervention, and a referral to GA, it’s God! Sidebar : God bets on Job’s character…and God wins! Job’s righteousness proves to be unshakeable. But Job is so righteous that he has no qualms about shining the light of Justice back on God himself. “Didn’t see that coming!” So…not so omniscient after all? Turns out, God’s gnosis ends where Job’s praxis (and yours) begins ( aka ‘free will’). Ultimately Job calls out God for his callous disregard and, after a trial lasting almost as long as OJ’s, God changes his plea to nolo contendere . Accordingly he is required to restore Job’s assets, pay punitive damages, and absorb court costs . Prior to his bet on Job, which backfired big time, YHWH went all in on the Big Bang. Right now, he’s ‘white knuckling’ it. Things have not gone exactly as hoped…but we’ve used up less than 12% of our allotted game time; so ‘better days are coming’…and they better come soon! But back to the hunt for hidden variables. Unfortunately for Einstein & Co., no one has put forward a persuasive hidden variable model to account for quantum weirdness. Worse, John Bell, et al. have proven mathematically that any viable hidden variable theory would have to satisfy some very narrow conditions. One such condition: God’s omniscience and omnipotence must include Job’s (and your) praxis – there can be no room whatsoever for free will . But we just demonstrated (above) that this is apparently not how things work in the real world. So we may just have to accept Alfred E. Newman’s Conjecture : Things are weird, so what, me worry? But while physicists have failed miserably in their search for hidden variables, political scientists might be having better luck – a ray of sunshine may be peeking through the dark clouds of chaos theory. Perhaps social scientists will be first to identify the elusive factors that drive unexpected results. The job is two-part: (1) demonstrate that there are unidentified factors that drive unexpected results and (2) identify those factors. For example, election outcomes are notoriously hard to predict . Don’t get me wrong: it’s often possible to forecast results based on last minute snapshots ( aka polls) that measure voters’ intentions ‘on election eve’. But it is impossible to deduce those results from objective (sociological) data. You can ask would be voters who they plan to support on election day, and you may get a straight answer. But absent such a veridical declaration, there is no way you can predict voters’ individual or aggregate behavior. No matter how much you know about a voter, you cannot reliably predict how that individual will vote. Take the last 7 US Presidential Elections, for example. Some proved easy to forecast based on final polling, some not so much, but in no case did voters’ actual behavior validate our predictive models. Anyone who thinks they can predict how Hispanic males will vote in the 2026 midterm elections is whistlin’ Dixie . How come? The answer may lie in hidden variables . Political Science is based on certain assumptions: (1) people will vote according to their ‘best interests’ (as they perceive them), (2) people will vote for candidates they think will do the best job in public office, and (3) people will vote for candidates that agree with them on the issues. Turns out, none of these is true! So we must search for hidden variables if we hope to understand the actual behavior of electorates. Our search spans 66 years and 300 miles, from an Irish Donnybrook in Boston to a Muslim-Jewish standoff in New York City. It’s 1959 and Boston University Political Science professor, Murray Levin, has decided to do a deep dive into Boston’s upcoming mayoral election. It seems a poor career choice. The election is widely viewed as a mere formality. The cognoscente have already sworn-in their candidate. A native of South Boston, President of the Massachusetts State Senate, and runner-up in the previous mayoral election, John E. Powers is the mayor presumptive. But it’s Boston 1959, so the race will not be uncontested. Registrar of Deeds, John Collins, throws his hat in the ring along with several better known denizens of the under card. No matter, a campaign is de rigueur …but proforma . A primary is held and, as expected, Powers gets 50% more votes than his closest rival, who turns out to be Collins (above). November is shaping up to be a snoozefest. Fast forward 6 weeks, “Collins routs Powers!” - 56% to 44%. Powers carried only 4 of Boston’s 22 Wards. Powers doubled his primary vote total, but Collins quadrupled his. Even more shocking, 10% of those who voted for Collins in the finale had voted for Powers in the preliminary. If Powers could have just held on to those voters, the contest would have been a toss-up. (If you’re looking to explore ‘why and how’ Collins was able to turn things around in just 6 weeks, you may want to look at my earlier piece on this race, Political Alienation . On the weekend after the election, Professor Levin and his team interviewed 500 Boston voters, drawn from every corner of the City. Before 1959, demographics had always played the key role in Boston politics. And after the Collins era (8 years later), they would dominate Boston politics again, eventually catapulting the City onto the front page of every American newspaper (resistance to ‘forced busing’); but not in 1959. Levin’s study showed that religion, income, and ethnicity played no significant role in 1959’s results. Collins won the votes of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews (there were no avowed atheists or agnostics in Boston in 1959), high, middle and low income residents, Irish, Italian, Yankee and African American voters. He ran the table. Folks who wouldn’t normally share a sidewalk with each other shared a voting booth. It turned out that Boston voters had something in common that was stronger than their economic, religious and ethnic conflicts. According to Murray Levin, that mysterious X factor was ‘political alienation’. Perhaps Professor Levin’s most astonishing finding was that the majority of voters in Boston’s Mayoral election that year did not think their chosen candidate would do a better job as mayor than his opponent. This tendency was especially prominent among Collins voters! The conclusion is inescapable: people voted for Collins, not because they thought he would do a better job than Powers, but for some other reason: et viola , a ‘hidden variable’! Fast forward to NYC 2025. Democratic Socialist, Zohran Mamdani, u pset liberal former Governor, Andrew Cuomo in the Mayoral primary. Not close; in fact, similar to the Powers-Collins first round spread, 66 years earlier and 300 miles Northeast. Now they are scheduled for a rematch this November. The result is unpredictable, but already we see evidence of a hidden variable at work: there is a significant disconnect between voters’ personal positions on issues and their policy prescriptions for the City. A recent NYT survey asked voters to consider 4 issues: (1) raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers, (2) hiring 5,000 more police officers, (3) strengthening rent control and focusing its benefits on lower income tenants, (4) making municipal bus service free to all riders. Surprisingly, almost exactly 70% of voters favored each of the first 3 policy changes and 60% favored the 4 th . Any self-respecting poly sci wonk would assume that a voter who favored higher marginal tax rates, more police on the streets, more robust and/or better focused rent control, and free service for all who ride the City’s buses would also think that the City should move to enact these policies. But that wonk would be wrong! Only on the subject of soaking the rich did voters’ policy prescriptions match their personal preferences: c. 70% of all voters favor increasing taxes on the wealthy and 70% think that the City should actually implement this policy. What seemed like a tautology amounts to front page news (or it would if there were still any ‘front pages’). On the other three initiatives (more police, stronger rent control, and free bus service), voters’ public policy prescriptions did not match their personal policy preferences. It turns out, that in spite of a c. 70% personal policy preference, only 63% think the City should actually hire more police officers and only 61% want the city to make proposed changes to its rent control program. Regarding free bus service, 60% personally favor the change but only 45% think the City should actually eliminate fares on City buses. How is that possible? As in Boston 1959, voters in NYC 2025 have something more in mind than personal policy preferences. This unknown quantity may well influence their votes on election day. Only problem: I don’t know what it is that’s top of mind with these voters or how it might influence their votes. I can conclude, however, that ‘scientists’ have finally demonstrated the existence of hidden variables…but it’s social scientists, not physicists! *** Giovanni di Paolo’s The Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise (1445) is a luminous Sienese panel that unites two episodes from Genesis in a single circular vision. Inside a mandorla of radiant gold and stars, God appears as an architect of the cosmos, surrounded by concentric bands of celestial spheres and the zodiac, signifying His supreme ordering of the universe. At the lower right, Adam and Eve are driven from Eden by a flaming sword, underscoring the fall from perfect creation to human exile and the enduring power of divine decree over both nature and human destiny. 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 Winner of the Haiku Challenge We're pleased to announce Richard Blankenship as the winner of the Haiku Challenge from our June 2022 issue. Check out his clever, 17-syllable poem: Somewhere in the void, souls sojourn naked, awake. We are Resplendent. Congratulations, Richard! Send your haiku to editor@aletheiatoday.com. Previous Share Return to the Table of Contents, Beach Issue Next Return to the Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Be a Bee Why ‘milk and honey?’ Why not ‘sour grapes and corn mash?’ Turns out, it’s all about the honey! David Cowles I owe the better insights (below) to Rabbi Aharon Loschak of Brooklyn, N.Y. For those that are ‘not so good,’ I take full responsibility: Small businesses in the United States are increasingly organized as pass-through entities, i.e., they pass net business income straight to their owners or investors. (Marx’s worst nightmare!) As a result, only these individuals—and not the entity itself—are taxed on the revenues. 95 percent of U.S. businesses are pass-throughs, but this isn’t about tax codes! Toward the end of his days, Moses tells the Jewish people that they are about to enter the land promised to their forefathers (the Patriarchs) ... a land flowing with milk and honey. Why ‘milk and honey?’ Why not ‘sour grapes and corn mash?’ Turns out, it’s all about the honey! A bee’s primary function is to pollinate flowers, collect nectar, and make honey. It’s no exaggeration to say that honeybees make the world go round. On the other hand, honeybees are also famous for their stingers. Just ask any dad, two steps ahead of his own child, as both run out of the park, terror-stricken by a buzz. Parents tell their children that bees are largely harmless because they only use their stingers in self-defense. Unless they feel threatened, they will not strike first. Just stand still, mind your own business, and chances are you’ll be fine. Chances are …cold comfort indeed! But point taken: the bee is only concerned with making honey and will only use its stinger when something gets in the way of that goal. Like the bee, we are also tasked with collecting sweet things. Like the bee, we have a mission: assemble the materials of life, carefully ensuring that those materials are renewable, of course, and then build the City of Dioce ( Read " Ectaban " here. ) , i.e., make them into something luscious. Never forget who you are in the process of life. You are ‘bee,’ so ‘be bee’ with every ounce of your bee-ing! If something interferes with or threatens your mission, i.e., you, it may be stinger time …but only as an act of self-defense. Self -defense? Yup, your mission is who you are. You are what you were sent to do. Anything that threatens your mission threatens you. To defend your mission is to defend yourself. Notice I didn’t say, “defend your property.” Your property is not you! Your mission, on the other hand, is – it’s your seat in the world. Without property, you are still you; without a mission, you are not: Contendo ergo sum. You are, but you are in the context of an actual world. Your mission is your seat in that world. Without that seat, there is an unbridgeable chasm between you and the world…which means there is no you. So, defend your mission, defend yourself; build the city, make honey! (That’s the principle behind Judeo-Christian martyrdom…but let’s not go there …yet.) Consider the special place of honey in Jewish dietary practices: though it’s secreted from a non-kosher animal, it’s still kosher. This is in stark contrast to the rule that “all secretions from a non-kosher entity are also not kosher.” The Talmud explains that honey isn’t really a secretion from the bee’s body because the bee is a pass-through entity . As such, the honey retains its botanical quality and so is fit for kosher consumption. In other words, it’s not about you; it’s about your mission. You are on a mission and the fate of the created universe rests on that mission. You are obeying Kant’s Categorical Imperative: you do what all must do in order for all this to be all this. You are also honoring the message of St. Paul to the Christian community at Ephesus: “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.” (Eph. 2: 10) As with the calling of Jeremiah, God makes it clear that it’s all about the mission. First the mission, then the missionary. No missionary without a mission. The potential for ‘bumper-sticking’ is endless. All of this ties in with the question of identity, a persistent theme in ATM. “ Who are you ?” the Caterpillar asked. On one hand, you are Alice, a little girl with a very fertile imagination. On another hand, you are a bee, popping islands of honey (order) into an unbounded sea of disorder (entropy). Everything you think is you is not you: your body, your personality, your education, your possessions, your upbringing, etc. Everything you think is not you is you: how you transform the world, how you inject order into chaos, how you act as a missionary on behalf of the Kingdom of God. 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 The Myth of the Maze David Cowles Sep 3, 2024 “Have you ever found yourself in a small, brightly lit room?” It’s something out of science fiction…or a primetime network cop show. You’ve just awakened, but not in your comfortable bed in your familiar bedroom. Today, you find yourself naked in a small, brightly lit room…and then you notice: your memories have been wiped. Well, partially wiped: you have no ‘thetic’ memories, memories of who you are or what the world is like; but you’ve retained all your ‘non-thetic’ memories. If you could walk, talk, swim, or ride a bike, you still can. You may even be able to chew gum at the same time. But you can’t recite the alphabet, add a column of figures, or discuss the Fall of Rome. Bummer! Fortunately this room has a doorway that opens out onto a corridor. Instinctively, you begin to explore. One corridor leads to another and then to another. Corridors branch off from each other. You wander aimlessly, with no fixed direction. Soon you realize that there are other people in these corridors. They don’t threaten you; in fact, for the most part, they pretty much ignore you. Apparently, each person is pursuing a personal agenda – but what agenda? Exceptions prove the rule: every so often you meet someone who seems interested in you , who tries to engage with you. Should you trust these people? Or fear them? How should you respond? Then things start to get interesting. Up to now, it’s been just ‘another tequila Sunday’ (excuse me, a what?).The bare and empty corridors begin to fill-in. They are punctuated with ‘stations’: food stops, drink stops, stations with free VR headsets, music stations, movie stations, stations with video games, handball courts, etc. You’d be reminded of a casino complex in Vegas or luxury seating at an NFL event, if you knew what they were. You could get used to this! Time goes by. You’re comfortable…but perplexed. What is all this? What’s going on? Do these corridors lead anywhere? If so, where? And why? And who are these ‘other people’ anyway? Gradually, you build your ‘social map’. Each person you meet is unique. But they seem to cluster into 4 fairly distinct groups. You might think ‘middle school cliques’…if you had any idea what a ‘middle school’ was. One group is frantic; they’re fixated on one thing only: We’ve got to get out of this place…if it’s the last thing we ever do! (Where’d that come from?) “Where are they going?” you wonder. “What’s out there?” Another group seems in no hurry to leave; they just want to understand! What’s it all about, Alfie? (Who’s Alfie ?) Folks in the third group don’t seem to care where they’re going or why they’re here. They’re more than happy just to enjoy this world and all it has to offer. Why would anyone want to leave? Who cares what’s out there? Or why it’s there? Or why we’re here? Being here is a gift! Enjoy it, prolong it, be grateful for it. Our final group doesn’t seem to care about any of this. They are focused on each other. “How can I help? What can I do to make your time here better?” (Whatever ‘better’ is!) Like any prison, this one ‘encourages’ you to join one of the ‘gangs’; you probably don’t want to do your time here as a lone wolf. To survive, you’ll need to create an avatar…choose an identity…and then keep your head down! But which identity? What turns you on? What floats your boat? Are you motivated by accomplishment, by knowledge, by enjoyment, or by service? Who R U? Or better yet, who do you choose to be? Ok, it’s a nice fable. But what’s the point? I mean, have you ever found ‘yourself naked in a small, brightly lit room’? A room with ‘a doorway that opens out’ into a maze of unmarked corridors? Have you? If you did, who did you choose to be? 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 Pando David Cowles Feb 23, 2023 “How are you at riddles? Let’s see!” Riddle #1 : I’m black and white and red all over; what am I? Guess : A newspaper! Well, good try, but we don’t allow archaic constructions in this game, and nobody uses the word ‘newspaper’ anymore, so your answer is disallowed. (If we allowed ‘newspaper’, we’d have to allow Old English words from Beowulf , et al. and that would be quite messy.) Answer : A blushing zebra. Try again? Riddle #2 : I’m a living organism, I weigh 40 times more than a Blue Whale, and I’m at least 5,000 years old (but who’s counting?); what am I? Guess : A dragon? The Loch Ness Monster? The Blob? All good guesses but none correct. Answer : A Quaking Aspen. Get it? “A Quaking Aspen,” hilarious…right? Not so much? Well, no wonder; it’s not a joke. It’s a Quaking Aspen for pity’s sake! Not just any Quaking Aspen as it turns out; it’s a particular Quaking Aspen that answers to the name of, you guessed it, Pando . (Do all trees have proper names…or just this one? Do they know their own names like dogs and cats?) Being Pando : What’s it like being me? Well, I’m one tree, but I have more than 40,000 stems (you’d call them ‘trunks’). I cover 100 acres. And in case you were wondering, my pronouns are he and him , but my sexual orientation, sadly, is still unknown (I reproduce asexually). I’m 40,000 trunks, each trunk a clone of all the others, each tapping into a common root system, but each with its own bark, its own crown (foliage), its own lifecycle (not 5,000 years…maybe a few hundred), and each with its own personal survival challenges (weather, fire, predators, parasites, disease, human beings, etc.). So, what’s it like being Pando ? It is not easy to enter the intellectual life of a tree. There is little doubt that trees communicate with each other, recognize nuclear family members, care for the young, the sick and the elderly in their midst, and proactively share available resources (e.g., water). Nutshell : trees engage in eleemosynary behavior. Their motto: Do Ergo Sum . More than most members of a certain unnamed animal species I know well, they love their neighbors as themselves . But it is hard to imagine what sort of ideation accompanies this activity. Obviously, it would be non-verbal. The activity of trees seems clearly intentional…but is it conscious? To whatever extent Pando is ‘aware’, is that awareness solely at the level of the organism itself or is it distributed among its member off-shoots? Are we talking Federal Reserve (central bank) here…or are we talking Blockchain? (Lie quiet Hamilton, I mean that is Alexander Hamilton.) Or is it both? But back to Matthew : “Love your neighbor as yourself .” As yourself! ‘As’ is different from ‘like’. ‘Like X?’ I recognize the dignity and equality X (i.e., the other). ‘As X?’ I recognize myself in the other. For Pando , ‘as’ and ‘like’ are synonymous. Pando is simultaneously self and other. All of which brings us back to that “certain unnamed animal species” we met earlier. According to Jesus ( Matthew ), we are to love our neighbors as (not like) ourselves. Is that an ethical ideal? Or does it reflect an ontological reality? Am I Pando ? (Or at least Pando-like ?) Am I one among the 8 billion living stems of a single organism? (This has been an insight of mystics, East and West, for millennia.) Am I my sister as well as my sister’s keeper? Do I automatically do unto myself what I do unto others? On this site, we have repeatedly argued that reality is inherently recursive. Accordingly, we live in a universe with a curved (vs. flat) ontology – not ‘just’ a curved topology. Karma is real. It’s not a reaction to an action, it is embedded in the action itself. Well, food for thought all around. But whether we are Pando-like or not, we can agree that human beings have a lot to learn, not only from Pando , but from trees generally (trees which, BTW, share 50% of our DNA ). 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 Oswald Spengler David Cowles Jun 28, 2021 In his seminal work, The Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler (c. 1920) both predicts and explains the global conflict in which we are now embroiled. He divides world history into a number of distinct “ cultures/civilizations”. That’s not unique to Spengler. What is unique is the classification scheme he uses. For example, he speaks of a Magian culture and a Faustian culture. In his seminal work, The Decline of the West, Oswald Spengler (c. 1920) both predicts and explains the global conflict in which we are now embroiled. He divides world history into a number of distinct “ cultures/civilizations”. That’s not unique to Spengler. What is unique is the classification scheme he uses. For example, he speaks of a Magian culture and a Faustian culture. Magian civilization springs from the Middle East and includes the “major” religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and several others. He describes these ideologies as having a world view and not being tied to the land. Faustian civilization, on the other hand, is the civilization of Europe and North America since the Renaissance. This civilization is fiercely tied to the land (fatherland, motherland, patriotism, nationalism, colonialism, and ultimately imperialism). Christianity had a Magian origin but in Spengler’s view has been co-opted by Faustian culture. Islam, however, remains Magian. As a result, we don’t understand each other. We are instinctively hostile to one another and voila, the state of world affairs today. 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.