< Back Butterflies and Human Development David Cowles Apr 17, 2026 “Our personalities dissolve into a soup, just like a caterpillar’s DNA, then reassemble according to an entirely different schematic, just like a butterfly.” 1750 words, 8 minute read You’ve heard about the famous Borneo Butterfly, the one who flapped its wings and closed O’Hare Airport for 4 hours. It’s called the Butterfly Effect; and this is not that! Nature is a many-splendored thing! All life on Earth is descended from a single DNA molecule, synthesized about 4 billion years ago. That single molecule is responsible for the enormous variety of life forms, from primates to parrots and poplars to plankton, in our biosphere. Some of us breathe oxygen, some carbon dioxide; a few of us prefer methane. Different strokes! 30 trillion cells, representing more than 200 distinct cell types (tissues), coordinate their activities to create a symbiotic environment for themselves and to support a single meta-organism, i.e. you! The individual cells reproduce and the meta-organism they support also reproduces. The key to life’s success is its ability to adapt and evolve as it reproduces. It all begins, of course, with the auto-reproductive double helix, but after that the world is only limited by the breadth of Nature’s imagination: meiosis and mitosis, sexual and asexual reproduction, symbiosis and endosymbiosis, etc. But nothing is more inventive than the lowly butterfly whose maturation process includes old fashioned Ovidian Metamorphosis …the transformation of a frog into a prince, a girl into a tree (Ovid), a caterpillar into a butterfly, or as we will see shortly, a cherubic child into a teen terror. Here’s how Claude (Anthropic) describes the process: “It all begins when a butterfly lays an egg on a plant. The egg contains all the genetic instructions for the entire life cycle. When the egg hatches, out comes a caterpillar — the larval stage. It munches on leaves almost constantly, shedding its skin (molting) several times as it grows. “Once the caterpillar has eaten enough and grown sufficiently, it forms a protective casing around itself called a chrysalis (not a cocoon — that's for moths). Inside, the caterpillar's body essentially dissolves itself . When the caterpillar seals itself inside the chrysalis, it releases digestive enzymes that break down most of its own body tissues — muscles, organs, and fat — into a nutrient-rich liquid, a kind of biological soup. “This process is called histolysis (histo = tissue, lysis = breaking down). At its most extreme, the interior of the chrysalis really does become something close to a cellular slurry. Remarkably, certain clusters of cells survive this process and use the nutrients from the dissolved tissue as raw material to build entirely new structures: wings, antennae, compound eyes, legs, and all the other features of an adult butterfly. “Once histolysis is complete, the reverse process — histogenesis — begins. After one to several weeks (depending on the species), the adult butterfly emerges from the chrysalis. It pumps fluid into its crumpled wings to expand them, waits for them to dry and harden, and then takes flight. The adult's main purpose is reproduction — finding a mate and laying eggs to start the cycle again. “Some studies suggest butterflies retain memories from their caterpillar stage, hinting that despite the dramatic physical overhaul, there is some biological continuity between the two forms. “True histolysis — where tissues are broken down into a nutrient slurry — appears to be exclusive to holometabolous insects: butterflies, flies, beetles, bees, wasps, ants, and fleas; this specific mechanism doesn't appear to have evolved independently in any other animal lineage that we know of.” However, there is at least one other organism that relies on a species of metamorphosis as a key component of its maturation process: Homo Sapiens . We enter the world like a house on fire. As they say in Texas, we’re ‘all process no content’…but we absorb data quickly and we sort it continuously. As we grow, we develop a functional map of the world and we come to understand our place in it – just in time for puberty to shake the etch-a-sketch, wiping out the image entirely. We start over but now with a different focus. Before puberty, we’re all about Nature, i.e. the World. We drink in data like a sponge and build ‘ice cream castles in the air’ (Joni Mitchell). There is no proposition too outlandish for us to entertain and if those propositions are logically contradictory or physically impossible, so what? It’s our Golden Age…if only we were old enough to enjoy it. Puberty turns us inside-out, literally! We are no longer interested in ‘this stupid world’; we are now hyper focused on the Self. The data we funneled during our first 12 years is now laser focused on just one subject: me! (What else?) Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? What is to become of me ? And oh yeah, Who am I ? Twelve agonizingly introspective years later, just as we’re perfecting our Narcissism – and loving every minute of it - the mirror shatters. Somehow and without realizing it, you’ve let the nose of an ‘Other’ into our hermetically sealed tent. You have a life partner, maybe children, a job, perhaps even a career, and bills to pay. Congratulations, you made it onto the treadmill; welcome to the rat race! We no longer see ourselves (↓), we still can’t see out into the world (↑), now we can only look side-to-side (↔); we can only see ‘other people’ – i.e. folks who share our predicament. Our focus now: Society! If your level of mental activity going forward is not what it once was, you are to be forgiven. There are contacts to be made, clubs to join, a golf swing to perfect; there are diapers to change and children to educate; there is a ‘check book’ to balance, a mortgage to pay, and a 401k to grow. There are career and corporate ladders you must climb all the while preparing your own teenagers to become responsible adults, just like you. The whole scenario would be horrific…if you were conscious of it. Be thankful for little mercies: you’re not! You party hardy ( Wayne’s World ). You exact revenge by living well ( The Great Gatsby ). You root for the home side and take pride in their triumphs. Meanwhile, without a shred of malice you screw up your marriage, your children, your career and oftentimes your health. And then what? And when what? You’re more than ready for Stage Four, but here things get tricky. Some folks get to Stage Four in midlife; I’m in awe. Many others, I am afraid to say, never get there at all or, if they do, when they do, they don’t realize they’re ‘not in Kansas (Stage Three) anymore’ ( Wizard of Oz ). Most of the rest of us get there but much later than we would have liked...at least in retrospect. So a belated Welcome to Stage Four ! Your mission now, should you choose to accept it, is to focus on God (substitute ‘higher power’, Gaia , or negative vacuum pressure, if you prefer). I say ‘God’ because I mean to refer to what is beyond this fickle World, this sorry Self, and even this Other but includes, integrates, transcends, and perhaps even redeems them all. You began life focused on Nature, the World; you matured past that on to an unholy obsession with your Self. Then, for better or worse, something distracted you. Was it a glint of light off a gemstone, the sparkle of gold, or the allure of an attractive member of your preferred gender? Something made you lift your head and so for the next umpteen years you looked only to the right or to the left. “No more cosmos, no more self!” You found Society! So far, we’ve marched in lock step with our cohort. 12 years of the World, 12 years of the Self, and now Society – but for how many years this time? Let’s break it down. A very few of you will make the transition to Stage Four as young adults, many more will opt-in as part of a midlife crisis. Society tells us that we ‘owe it 40 years’ so Age 65 is a popular stepping off point. But lately 65 has become 72 and 72 has become 80. How come? Economics plays a part, of course; but also, many people resist the transition from Stage Three to Stage Four. Even after Society has lost interest in them and moved on, they embarrass themselves by clinging to the last vestiges of their social identities. It is truly pathetic but eventually even they succumb. Then there’s Team Alamo! These dinosaurs both dread and despise Stage Four. They do not believe that the contradictions of the early stages can be resolved in a higher synthesis. They are content to leave things as they are. Live and die, one and done, end of. We have mistakenly treated the Stages of Human Development (e.g. Erikson) as a product of steady organic maturation. We need to jettison that model. What’s going on here is genuine metamorphosis, a repeating cycle of histolysis-histogenesis. We are holometabolous – not on the DNA level of course; but at each of life’s phase changes, our rigid personalities, like a caterpillar’s genes, dissolve into a soup, where the traits are reassembled according to an entirely different schematic. We are just like a butterfly…or a Transformer: one minute we are Optimus Prime, next we are his supersonic spacecraft. After birth and before dying, most of us will undergo three nearly total reassemblies (c. ages 12, 25, and 65). We are likely to experience each as a catastrophe…and so it is; but each is also an opportunity. This is especially so of the final reshuffle. Now for the first time, we are empowered to take charge of our own evolution. We’ve waited (albeit unknowingly) for 65+ years for this. We should welcome, not avoid it, cherish, not resist, and make the most of it we can. After all, now that you know the World, the Self, and Society, why not get to know God (or a vegan substitute)? “The chance won’t come again!” (Bob Dylan) *** Odilon Redon Butterflies (1910) is an oil‑on‑canvas painting in which Redon presents butterflies as delicate, dreamlike forms floating in a luminous, atmospheric space, reflecting his shift toward vivid color and contemplative natural subjects. The work embodies Symbolism, using butterflies as metaphors for transformation and poetic reverie, and is housed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Abraham and Sarah David Cowles Jan 24, 2023 “We would not expect to find every human being alive today sharing DNA inherited from one particular ancestral couple, and yet, they do!” In Issue #6 of Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM, 1/15/2023), we introduced the concept of particularity , and we distinguished the particular from the systematic and the random . ( You can read it here .) Events are ‘systematic’ to the extent that they conform to the 3R’s (reason, regularity, and repeatability) but ‘random’ (the 4 th R?) to the extent that they are independent of any causal background. We posited the possibility of a third classification: the ‘particular’ (the 1P?). Events are particular to the extent that they are not the products of specific causal chains but are dependent on the general causal background. We’ve been told that life comes in just two flavors: vanilla and chocolate ; not true. It comes in just one! May I invite you to take a tour of my soft-serve ice cream factory? We make just one ice cream product: it’s our fresh cream flavor, but this product is also used as ‘stock’ for all our other flavors, including vanilla and chocolate. Just as fresh cream forms the basis of all flavors, so particular events may form the basis of all events. Systematic and random events are first and foremost particular events - particular events that satisfy certain additional conditions. We cited an example of a ‘particular event’ from the world of genetics. We called this event ‘Adam and Eve’ but in retrospect, ‘Abraham and Sarah’ might have been a better choice. You see, in Genesis 26, God promises Abraham that his descendants would “become as numerous as the stars in the sky”…and so they have! Let me explain. There are 8 billion people living on planet earth today, just 200 times more than in 1500 BCE (an average annual growth rate of 1%...put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mr. Malthus). Systematic thinking would lead us to expect that every one of our 8 billion co-habitants has DNA inherited from the 1500 BCE gene pool; and so they do. We would also expect today’s cohort to have some genetic information not found in the 1500 BCE gene pool, and that is correct as well. Such changes in the DNA code are the result of random mutations and natural selection. We would not expect to find every human being alive today sharing DNA inherited from one particular ancestral couple, and yet they do! Meet our ‘Abraham and Sarah’, nomads living unremarkable lives somewhere in Africa or the Middle East c. 1500 BCE. In all probability, they went about their business each day with little thought to the long term future; yet they unwittingly set off a cascade of events that directly impacts every single human being alive today. Kings and philosophers can only dream of having such reach or making such a difference. The event I’m calling ‘Abraham and Sarah’ did not disclose a particular causal pathway, but neither did ‘our common ancestors’ spring out of dust, de nuovo . Abraham and Sarah depends on the general causal background but not on a specific causal chain. The ‘event’ itself is neither systematic nor random; it is particular . Abraham and Sarah met, copulated, and gave live birth to offspring who, in turn, copulated and gave birth to offspring. As it’s worked out, this Abraham and Sarah now appear in the family tree of every human being living today. They are ancestors of us all. The event I’ve labeled ‘Abraham and Sarah’ is really a series of events reaching back to their births. The event includes their meeting, their mating, and their generating offspring who, in turn, lived to mate and reproduce. There is no sense in which we could say that this event was systematic . Any proposed causal chain would be frequently interrupted by random events: personal decisions, chance meetings, etc. Yet we cannot really say that the event is random either. A lot of unwitting cosmic preparation was required to make Abraham and Sarah even possible. Systematic events, to the extent that they are systematic, are caused by specific elements in the general causal background; random events, to the extent they are random, occur independently of any causal background. Particular events, on the other hand, are enabled by the general causal background but not caused by any specific elements in that background. In theory, systematic events are easy to cause and easy to prevent. Just mess with the causal chain. Random events, on the other hand, can neither be caused nor prevented. Particular events are also easy to prevent (just abort Isaac in the womb) but impossible to cause. The science of genetics includes a warehouse of particular events like Abraham and Sarah . Here’s another one of my favorites: Every single human being of European descent, alive today, has DNA contributed by Charlemagne (c. 800 CE)! “No, wait, that can’t be true. Now you’re just making sh*t up!” Sorry, no, not made up, true! The world is just not as neat as I, or you, or Horatio would have liked. ***** Image: Elements of image as seen in Messages in Christ short film “Abraham & Sarah.” 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 There Are No Theists in Foxholes David Cowles Feb 14, 2022 “There are no theists in foxholes,” at least not according to ‘conventional wisdom’. After all, even Dostoevsky had a death bed conversion! So, in this rare case, it turns out that conventional is, in general, correct. Or was he correct! I do not think it is correct any longer. Why not? What changed? “There are no theists in foxholes,” at least not according to ‘conventional wisdom’. After all, even Dostoevsky had a death bed conversion! So, in this rare case, it turns out that conventional is, in general, correct. Or was he correct! I do not think it is correct any longer. Why not? What changed? Prior to the late-20th century, most Westerners (Europe & the Americas) had strong religious upbringings. Or if they didn’t, their friends did! I’m not talking about the casual nod to ‘spirituality’ or ‘the force’ that passes for religion today. I’m talking about a set of beliefs and practices that permeated every corner of a young person’s life. While few of us were saints, none of us challenged the basic tenets of our faith. To us, they were as self-evident as the sunrise. And they came neatly packaged in their own language. I’m not talking about the ritual languages of Hebrew, Arabic and Latin. I’m talking about the rituals themselves, rituals marking life’s stages: Baptism/Circumcision, Ba-Mitzva/Confirmation, Marriage, and Death. I’m taking about the weekly (e.g., Sabbath) and yearly observances (e.g., Easter) that polka-dot each year’s calendar. I’m talking about daily prayer: both morning & evening, grace before meals, scripture reading or even the rosary at night. In my old neighborhood, the bells of the local Catholic churches (3 within walking distance of my house) rang out The Angelus, a Christian ‘call to prayer’, at 6AM, Noon & 6PM daily; and almost everyone stopped whatever they were doing in acknowledgement. I’m guessing that for most of us at that time, when push came to shove, these fundamental habits and beliefs would have trumped the lessons in philosophy and science that we learned later in life. Therefore, no atheists in foxholes! Not so today! For most of us, religion is no longer part of our existential core. We do not hold firm theological beliefs. We barely celebrate the ‘rites of passage’ and, for the most part, we ignore the annual, monthly, weekly, daily rituals…or we pay lip service to them. In their place, we have interiorized the assumptions and methods of science, the ethics of acquisition and consumption, and the language (most any modern Indo-European language will do) of subjects & objects (i.e., rulers & ruled, employers & employees, predators & victims, bourgeoisie & proletariat, etc.). Collectively, these habits of mind are now part of our existential core. Now, when push comes to shove and we crawl back into our core, it is science, not religion, that takes over. So today, for better or for worse, we may say, “There are no theists in foxholes!” 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 Every You David Cowles Mar 28, 2024 “There is no me or you until there is a we…we co-actualize.” The Beatles said it best (they usually do): “ I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together…” ( I am the Walrus ) If not the Fab 4, then Jesus: ““…I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.“ (John 14;20)“ Both drew on a rich Hellenic-Semitic heritage. Parmenides (5 th century BCE) is widely acknowledged as the father of Western Philosophy. But fathers have fathers and Parmenides own ‘father’, intellectually speaking, was Anaximander (6 th century BCE)…the grandfather…the godfather…the OG. According to Heidegger, there is only one fragment of Anaximander’s writing extant and incontestably authentic…but it’s a blockbuster! That said, it is nearly inexpressible in modern English (but we’ll try, of course…that’s what we do). Anaximander himself struggled to state his idea clearly, even in the much more expressive language (Ancient Greek) that he had at his disposal. The nub of his idea was this: there is no ‘me’ or ‘you’ until there is a ‘we’. On our own, you and I are merely ‘virtual’ or ‘potential’ entities. We ‘co-actualize’. Come again? On our own we are each struggling to ‘become’ but in the process, we are crowding one another out of the spotlight of Being. Successful ‘coming to be’ is necessarily mutual. Properly speaking, the verb ‘to become’ should have no ‘singular’ form: we become, you (pl) become, they become. I am seeking to emerge as figure against the ground that is the World (you). But I cannot emerge organically out of an inert background. I cannot come to be until you are ; of course, you cannot come to be until I am . Can someone say, “We’re all in this together?" My ‘coming to be’ can only occur in the context of your ‘coming to be’ and vice versa. I can only be what I can be by letting you become what you can become, which you can only be by letting me become what I can become. Diagram that sentence! Anaximander solved the Problem of Other Minds 2500 years before Sartre, Searle, and Putnam laid siege to this apparently impenetrable fortress. We self-actualize only when we co-actualize. There is not a ‘problem of other minds’; there is a problem of ‘this mind’…my mind. Enter Descartes: “Cogito ergo sum” isn’t the half of it. It doesn’t go far enough; it didn’t get the job done. He should have positioned his famous dictum in a matrix, including such corollaries as: Sum ergo es. (I am therefore you are) Sum ergo summus. (I am therefore we are) Es ergo summus. (You are therefore we are) It’s a whole package! Would that we still had a Middle Voice verb form to help us express it! Co-actualize? Ok, with whom? Or what? It is not for me to say what sort of partner is required for mutual actualization: it’s a bit like the concept of a Higher Power in AA. Your Higher Power can be God, or Gaia , or the copper beech growing in your yard. It could even be Fido…or Fluffy. Put simply, your higher power is your higher power if it functions as a higher power…for you. It would be presumptuous to think that everyone should have the same higher power. (Monotheist bias?) One of the ingenious things about AA is the way it allows its members to curate their own recoveries. Within certain very broad guidelines, one size fits one. Likewise ontology: I can co-actualize with anyone (or anything) that can co-actualize with me. Earlier I mentioned Sartre, Searle, and Putnam, but the 20 th -century thinker who came closest to Anaximander’s great insight was Martin Buber; he wrote “at the foundation is the relationship." You and I are like reindeer who have accidentally locked horns. We each pull as hard as we can to disengage but, of course, we fail. Archeologists have discovered skeletons of reindeer with their horns still interlocked. What a way to go! Had those reindeer read Anaximander…or Buber, they would be alive today, frolicking across the tundra, their antlers bejeweled with daisy chains. Had each given its inter lock ator ‘reck’ (consideration), they would have resisted the urge to pull away from each other, and they might have escaped death’s vice-like grip, at least temporarily. But reindeer normally don’t read philosophy. Humans do…or at least we can! OG Anaximander and his shorty (is this the first time that Martin Buber has been referred to as a ‘shorty’?) showed us the way of co-actualization; so why aren’t we following it? “Why do the nations so furiously rage together?” (Handel) Why do we lock horns? Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Thrown David Cowles Jul 7, 2021 According to Existentialist philosopher, Martin Heidegger, each of us has been “thrown” into an alien and potentially hostile world. It is as if an ocean suddenly disgorged us onto a strange beach populated by strange creatures. But of course, it’s much worse than that because initially we don’t know what a beach, or even a creature, is and we have no previous life experience to draw on. According to Existentialist philosopher, Martin Heidegger, each of us has been “thrown” into an alien and potentially hostile world. It is as if an ocean suddenly disgorged us onto a strange beach populated by strange creatures. But of course, it’s much worse than that because initially we don’t know what a beach, or even a creature, is and we have no previous life experience to draw on. We have only this: a sense that we ‘are’, an instinctive desire to continue to ‘be’, and our basic bodily needs (food, water, etc.). Like a boy raised by wolves who does everything he can to ‘become’ a wolf, so we do everything we can to fit in with the alien creatures around us. We try our best to blend in and we do that by mimicking everything we see. Long after we’ve secured a place in this new society, we continue to mimic those around us. This behavior got us so far; why change now? The problem, according to Heidegger and his disciple, Jacques Derrida, is that no more 3% of our thoughts and utterances are really our own; the other 97% is mere mimicry. 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 Number 9 David Cowles Feb 23, 2026 “Aletheia Today decoded the Beatles’ Revolution 9… (and) we speculated on the Beatles’ choice of #9 to symbolize their revolutionary ideology. Why 9?” 1,500 words; 7 minute read In an earlier post, Aletheia Today decoded the Beatles’ Revolution 9 from their White Album (1968). At the end of that article we speculated on the Beatles’ choice of #9 to symbolize their revolutionary ideology. Why 9 and not 42…or 67? We noted that 9 is 3², the third member of the sequence 3^n, where n is a positive whole number. We also noted that the universe seems to be organized as a fractal , i.e. self-similar at all scales. If you accept that the universe is organized around the number 3 (e.g. Triangles in Plato’s Timaeus, Trinity in the Gospel of John ), then the idea that other orders of reality might be described using exponents of 3 (e.g. 3²) makes perfect sense. Sidebar : The best known 20 th century advocate of this ‘triangles all the way down’ theory, Buckminster Fuller, famously wrote: “Universe is plural and at minimum two.” He was wrong! Every 2 (x, y) is implicitly 3: (x, y, and xRy - the relationship between x and y, provided x ≠ y.) A universe consisting of two inert terms (x, y) is somewhere between impossible and meaningless. If x and y are part of the same universe, and not identical, then that universe must also include xRy which by definition cannot be reduced to either x or y (since x ≠ y); so Universe is plural and at minimum 3 (Council of Nicaea, 325 CE): Speaking of Nicaea, in Trinitarian theology, the Relationship between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is one of God’s three ‘persons’, along with the Father and the Son. In Marxist ontology, every thesis (x) is accompanied by an antithesis (y) and a synthesis (xRy). In Jewish spirituality, Kabbalah consists of 9 sefirot or aspects of Being, plus Keter (crown), the ineffable Godhead encompassing and grounding the 9 sefirot. The paradigm of Christian spirituality, the Lord’s Prayer , consists of three stanzas of three verses each: 3 x 3 = 9. Finally, the Christian spiritual practice known as Enneagram ( ennea = nine), outlined by Evagrius the Solitary toward the end of the 4 th century CE and refined by Jesuits in the latter half of the 20 th century, is based on an inner triangle (3,6,9) and an outer hexagon (1,4,2,8,5,7). Each of its 9 ‘sefirot’ corresponds to a different human personality type. Intriguingly, the repeating decimal 0.142857… is precisely equal to 1/7. However, the high priest of the Number 9 is a virtually unknown philosopher/theologian (c. 1300 CE), Ramon Lull. As above, Lull’s ontology is fractal, but his underlying pattern is 9-fold. His life’s work is a detailed and complex ‘map’ of the universe with the number 9 as its unifying concept. Lull begins with 9 letters of the alphabet (B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K) arranged as nodes of a 9-gram. ‘A’ is the center of the circle, the ineffable El , Keter in Kabbalah (and there is no ‘J’ in the Roman alphabet). According to Lull’s scheme, A unfolds into 9 Avatars, each corresponding to one of nine core ‘subjects’ (substance), one of nine core ‘predicates’ (quality), and one of nine core ‘modifiers’ (adverb): A A A B God Goodness Whether C Angel Greatness What D Heaven Eternity Which E Human Power Why F Imaginative Wisdom How Much/Many G Sensitive Will What H Vegetative Virtue When I Elemental Truth Where K Instrumental Glory (Efficacy) How/With What Some of these associations are self-explanatory. For example, Human/Power/Why seems obvious. Likewise, Instrumental/Efficacious/How. Others are a stretch, but I think we can get there: God/Goodness/Whether (Cosmogenesis), Heaven/Eternity/Which (Judgment). And still others, to this head at least, seem impenetrable: Vegetative/Virtue/When. Lull’s Map of Nines expands, presumably indefinitely. Initially, each of his 9 core Subjects (above) expands into its own 9 pointed map, recapitulating the original map but at scale . For example, C, Angel, expands to the 9 Angelic orders; and E, Human, expands to the 9 classes/castes in the social hierarchy: God Angel Heaven Human B Mind Seraphim Premum Mobile Priests C Intellect Cherubim Stars Princes D Love Thrones Saturn Magistrates E Competence Powers Jupiter Doctors F Presence Virtues Mars Soldiers G Knowledge Dominions Sun Merchants H Providence Principalities Venus Craftsmen I Judgment Archangels Mercury Farmers K Justice Angels Moon Servants Imaginative Sensitive Vegetative B Reminiscence Memory Procreation C Argument Forethought Growth D Natural Arts Imagination Elimination E Proportionality Sense (Common) Digestion F Locality Sight Attraction G Caution Hearing Drive H Sexuality Smell Appetite I Acculturation Taste Knowing K Education Touch Life Elemental Instrumental B Orientation Pride/ Humility /Contempt C Generation Lust/ Chastity /Frigidity D Alteration Gluttony/ Sobriety /Asceticism E Generalizable Lying/ Honesty /Vain Speech F Alterable Obstinacy/ Constancy /Fickleness G Divisible Nosiness/ Caring /Sloth H Differentiable Envy/ Satisfaction /Emulation I Potential Wrath/ Forbearance /Obliviousness K Existential Frugality/ Generosity /Avarice The ‘Instrumental’ is the realm of the accidental continuum (Parmenides’ Doxa ). Therefore, it is not only necessary to designate the core Virtue in each category but also to mention the negative consequences of deviation, in either direction, from that ideal. Importantly, Lull rejects the Good vs. Evil paradigm of Gnosticism. Instead he follows the Augustinian tradition of Degrees of Goodness. Imperfection is a privation of perfection; evil is a privation of Good. The ineffable (A) manifests as 9 ‘core subjects’ etc. Each of these core subjects in turn unfolds in 9 different ways (e.g. angels as their ranks, society as its classes). Presumably, this process of 9-fold elaboration continues all up and down the ontological ladder. Lull’s universe may be best described in terms of origami, the folding and unfolding of paper, creating worlds. He is in good company. Parmenides , the father of Western philosophy, grounded his cosmology on Aletheia , the uncovering or unfolding of Truth. We can only scratch the surface of Lull’s system in this article. Like the 4 bases that make up DNA, Lull’s 9 ‘bases’ can be combined in myriad ways (genes) with complex and unexpected results. Of course, Lull’s system is only one attempt to develop a simple but heuristic model of the World, based on fractals. One immediately thinks of I Ching, Kabballah, Totem, Tarot, and the Standard Model of Particle Physics. All of which provokes a fundamental question: Can the World be meaningfully modeled via a classification scheme based on qualia ? Estimates vary but there are about 8 billion human beings alive on Planet Earth today. Another 100 billion have lived and died. Now imagine a public opinion poll: Q: Can the world be modeled based on qualia ? A: (living souls) 72% say No A: (dearly departed) 84% say Yes We happen to live at a peculiar time in the Intellectual History of Planet Earth. Since 1600 CE, especially in the North Atlantic Community, causality has replaced correlation as the explanatory principle of choice. Prior to Newton and Leibniz, folks took it for granted that things that looked alike, sounded alike, smelled alike, and behaved alike were in fact alike. Now we take it for granted that we live in an alienated world: Paraphrasing St. Paul, ‘what I wish to do I do not do and what I wish not to do I do’. Machiavelli heralded this new age when he separated ends from means. Ends can justify means only if they are essentially alienated from those means. Otherwise, what’s to justify? Without alienation, there is no separation between ends and means. No one ever asked Mother Theresa to justify her means by their ends; her means were her ends. They were of one cloth. Justification is only meaningful in the context of alienation. Models based on causality have produced huge material advances. Pragmatically, they have succeeded in predicting and duplicating a wide range of physical phenomena, but at the cost of massive alienation. I leave it to you, my dear readers, to consider whether they have been equally successful in helping us find deeper meaning in our lives. Are there unique phenomena, one-offs that can’t be predicted or reproduced? Are such phenomena related to one another by pathways outside the realm of physical causality, e.g. via their qualia ? What role, if any, do such phenomena play in our lives? Imagine you are standing on the floor of a forest. Beneath all the flora is the Wood Wide Web of roots and fungi that supports them. But look up. Foliage, the canopy of the forest, also plays a critical role in the evolution of events on the floor. The roots are analogous to causality, the foliage to correlation. Perhaps we would do well to pay renewed attention to patterns in the qualia we experience; they may contain keys to the meaning we’ve been missing for 400 years. And where better to begin than with Ramon Lull, the Beatles, and the number nine. *** Gustav Klimt’s Birch Wood is a masterclass in sensory immersion , utilizing a flattened, tapestry-like perspective that pulls the viewer directly into the dense verticality of the forest floor. By cutting off the treetops and focusing on the rhythmic patterns of the bark and fallen autumn leaves, Klimt emphasizes the tactile and atmospheric qualia of the woods over a traditional landscape view. The painting’s shimmering, mosaic-like application of oil on canvas transforms a natural scene into a meditative, near-abstract study of color and light. 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 Why Am I a Christian? David Cowles Apr 29, 2025 “I am a Christian because of just 15 words” Bertrand Russell was a mathematician, logician, philosopher, and political activist; sadly, he is most widely known for his best-selling polemic , Why I am not a Christian , which amounts to a tired rehash of the Problem of Evil. Not that evil is not a problem, philosophically and otherwise; but the subject has been delt with exhaustively by everyone from Moses (original sin) to Leibniz (best of all possible worlds) to Rabbi Kushner ( Why Bad Things Happen to Good People ). Russell offers nothing new and, as we shall see later, the Problem of Evil has a simple, two-word solution. My own view draws on these traditions. Susceptibility to Evil is the price Universe pays for its radical independence. Genesis says, “God created the heavens and the earth.” (1: 1) God did not wish them, dream them, imagine them, construct them, or manufacture them, but created them. As a result, the World evolves freely (in a value-oriented space). The much more important question is, “ How is it that there Good? ” A medieval Irish poet, traditionally St. Dallan, summed it up, “Naught is all else to me save that Thou (God) art.” In other words, without a transcendent source and measure of Good, precisely nothing has any value. “God saw that it was good.” (1: 10b) God, who is Good per se , the source of Good in the world, is also the ‘ concept by which we measure the good ’. (Apologies to John Lennon) When we say, ‘God is good’, we are using good as a noun, not as an adjective. Unexpectedly, Nietzsche agrees with Dallan: “One belongs to the whole, one is in the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole… But nothing exists apart from the whole!” ( Twilight of the Idols ) No God, no Good qua ‘good’! Atheists are fond of saying, “We don’t need God to be good,” and they are absolutely right. Some would even argue that atheists are more focused on ‘being good’ than many undeservedly smug theists…and I won’t argue with that either. The problem is that we need to explain how it is that there is Good in the first place. If we are part of the Whole and if nothing exists which can judge the Whole, then Good , which requires discernment and discrimination, two types of judgment, cannot exist. You can’t be something that doesn’t exist, and according to Nietzsche, spokesperson for atheists everywhere, because there is no God, there can be no ‘Good’, at least not in the sense of a norm or value. I suppose something could be good accidentally, but we wouldn’t know it if there is no objective basis for such a judgement. What makes the good thing ‘good’ and how does it differ from something that is not so good? According to Nietzsche, nothing can be more or less good than anything else…we know “too much to argue or to judge” (Dylan). Or perhaps someone will say, “ Everything is good, the whole and all its parts.” Again, that is true, as far as it goes; to be is to participate in the Good. But again, that is a judgment. It requires something that is not strictly tied to what is, that has some distance, some perspective, and, according to Nietzsche, “There exists nothing which could judge the Whole.” Ancient Greeks and Hebrews alike, from Anaximander, the grandfather of Western philosophy, through John, the apostle ‘whom Jesus loved’, believed that the wellspring of all being is Love. “Greater love has no man (sic) than that he lay down his life for a friend.” (John 15: 13) To them, Love is not a fickle accident that occurs between two pre-existing entities: “He caught a glimpse of her across the crowded dance floor; it was love at first sight.” Rather, Love is the substructure, the logos , of everything that is. John says it best (as usual), “Without him ( logos ) nothing that came to be came to be.” (Jn. 1: 3) Of course, the World is full of situations where disordered elements self-organize to form more ordered structures (Jantsch). But this is always at the expense of increasing disorder in the environment (2nd Law of Thermodynamics). The price of local order is cosmic entropy. Even this is only possible because Order per se , the logos , pre-exists. Without Order it would be impossible to form intention or perform selection, both essential to the process of becoming . Plus, it is not at all obvious, to me anyway, that self-organizing quanta would uncover the phenomenon of Value, or generate a dimension of Virtue, in the World. Good per se must also be pre-existent. We appear to have wandered far from our topic; but not so. We are right where we need to be; I’ve simply been laying the groundwork: ‘Why I am a Christian’ boils down to just 15 words! “I am who am” (Exodus 3: 14) “In the beginning was the logos ” (John 1: 1) “God is Love” (1 John 4:16) “Jesus wept” (John 11: 35) I need to add just one assumption based on personal experience: there is ‘something’ rather than nothing! YHWH introduces himself to Moses as ‘Who am ’; if it turns out that nothing is , then we have turned onto a dead end. On the other hand, if it does turn out that there is not something but only nothing, then we’re no worse off that we were to start. We still need to account for the phenomenon and phenomena of naïve experience. So there is only one option that does not turn out to be a perpetual loop: Est! So we take Being for granted. But the ‘something’ we experience is not just any thing; it has some quite specific and counter-intuitive properties. For example, you might expect Being to be a uniform continuum or a smoothly graded hierarchy or a single quantum lacking any external relations and/or internal structure. But what I experience as being is not any of these things; it is an archipelago of entities (events) thinly networked with one another to form a whole. Furthermore, this architecture repeats on multiple scales, from atoms and molecules to cells and organisms, to societies and civilizations. Being is fractal. So I feel comfortable relying on ‘something is’ as a working hypothesis. To be is to be an entity (or an element of an entity). Every entity stands out from its background (‘I am’) and yet is continuous with that background (‘it is’). We have just turned Descartes on his head: Est ergo Sum . Am-ness is the substructure of Being as we know it, not a feature, and Am is who (not what) God is. God is the One who am and so the sine qua non of everything that is . To be is to participate in ‘Am’, which is ‘God’: “I am who am.” Before God can be ‘the creator…of all things’ ( Nicene Creed ), God must be their ‘pre-condition’. Order, logos , is co-incident with God. John goes on to say, “the logos was with God and the logos was God.” (John 1: 3) Being is ordered: ‘to be’ is to participate in ‘I am’ and ‘I am’ orders ‘what is’. Order ( logos ) is Being per se . I am because you are. I become by making room for you to become. We become, together; we are , together. Ironically, ‘to be’ is ‘not to be’. (Lie quiet, Hamlet!) Something becomes when it withdraws to make room for something else. Being is reciprocity; it is rooted in self-sacrifice. “I must become less that he (the other) may become more!” (John the Baptist re Jesus, John 3: 30). Being is not value free. Being is not neutral. On the contrary, God is good as well as Good. “Jesus ( aka the Christ, the Son of God) wept!” Of course he did. How could he not? John 11:35 is the one, only and final answer to ‘the problem of evil’ (above). We’re all in this together and God is in this with us. Being (God) is Order (Father), Love (Spirit), and Good (Son); they are all ultimately synonymous, they are God’s personae , God’s avatars, the face(s) of God in the World and so, because of just 15 words and what they signify, I am a Christian. Image: "The Mystic Nativity" by Sandro Botticelli, painted around 1500–1501 in oil on canvas, measures 108.5 cm by 74.9 cm (42.7 inches by 29.5 inches) and is housed in the National Gallery, London. 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 Bakunin and COVID 19 David Cowles Jun 20, 2023 “If someone says, “God told me to do it,” we confine them in a hospital setting. But if someone says, “I followed the science,” we elect that person to public office.” “I am guided by the science.” How often during the recent pandemic did we hear public officials recite that mantra? Meaning what? I have turned over my reason, my conscience, my moral authority, and my ethical duty to an amorphous collection of people and institutions guided by an ever-changing body of so-called ‘knowledge’? Once upon a time, folks used to say, “I am guided by my faith. I have turned over my reason, my conscience, my moral authority, and my ethical duty to God and to people and institutions sanctioned and guided by God.” Meet the new god (science), the same as the old God (YHWH). To the chagrin of many, there is no fundamental difference between “I am guided by the science” and “I am guided by the Word of God” ( aka the Bible, the Koran, etc.). In both cases, the speaker is subcontracting ‘moral responsibility’ to an external agent. It is a way of avoiding the always disappointing consequences of terrifying choices and timid actions. If someone says, “The Devil told me to do it,” we imprison them. If someone says, “God told me to do it,” we confine them in a hospital setting. But if someone says, “I followed the science,” we elect that person to public office. Yet, all three are really saying the exact same thing! As a 19 th century revolutionary, Mikhail Bakunin (1814 – 1876) might have been expected to hold the precepts of modern science in high esteem, and so he did! But, unlike many of his comrades, then and now, he was singularly not fooled by the ‘science made me do it’ fallacy. On the one hand, he wrote: “We recognize the absolute authority of science…” Then he added: “…but we reject the infallibility and universality of the savant …the savants form a separate caste, in many ways analogous to the priesthood.” Bakunin consistently excoriates Big Science: “Suppose a learned academy…charged with legislation…frames none but laws in absolute harmony with the latest discoveries of science…Such legislation would be a monstrosity…” “…Human science is always and necessarily imperfect…A society that would obey legislation emanating from a scientific academy…would be a society, not of men (sic), but of brutes.” “…A scientific academy invested with a sovereignty, so to speak, absolute…would soon end in its own moral and intellectual corruption…such is the history of all academies.” “A scientific body, to which had been confided, the government of society would soon end by devoting itself no longer to science at all, but to quite another affair…its own eternal perpetuation…” “The government of science and of men (sic) of science…cannot fail to be impotent, ridiculous, inhuman, cruel, oppressive, exploiting, maleficent.” I wonder what he really thinks! Sidebar : Notice what is missing from Bakunin’s blistering critique. Nowhere does he mention the undemocratic way in which academy members are chosen, nor the fact that members are almost all white males, middle-aged or older. (He does decry the fact that they all come from the privileged classes .) Today, organizations like Antifa treat Bakunin as an intellectual forebear, but would he recognize himself in their ideology? As an intellectual, Bakunin paid the required homage to the scientific spirit, but as an ‘eternal anarchist’, he distrusted everything , including science itself: if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him! Science, theology, theology, science, church, state, tomato, tomato! It is institutionalization per se that is the enemy. Marxism replaced the Judeo-Christian God with a pantheon of new deities: the State, History, Science, etc. Not Bakunin. For him, atheism is atheism, period. Importantly, Bakunin does not confine his Critique of Scientific Reason to the institutional side of science; like Beowulf, he confronts Grendel in her den: “…Science can grasp and name only the general significance of real facts, their relations, their laws – in short that which is permanent in their continual transformations – but never their material, individual side, palpitating so to speak with reality and life…Science comprehends the thought of reality, not reality itself: the thought of life, not life. That is its limit, its only really insuperable limit because it is founded on the very nature of thought…” Bakunin’s thought spans the length and breadth of western philosophy. The distinction he draws (above) is both reminiscent of Parmenides ( Aletheia and Doxa ) and anticipatory of Sartre ( en soi and pour soi ). Sartre’s best known novel, Nausea , is centered on the main character’s realization that Being incessantly and inevitably overflows the margins of ‘being’. Like Sartre, Bakunin finds value in art that is missing from science: “Science cannot go outside of the sphere of abstractions. In this respect, it is infinitely inferior to art…art in a certain sense individualizes the types and situations which it conceives…” Summing up, Bakunin writes: “What I preach then is, to a certain extent, the revolt against science or rather against the government of science… to remand it to its place so that it can never leave it again.” Such language! Reminiscent of God exiling Satan in Dante and Milton, even of God enchaining the sea in Genesis and Job. In recent years, science has been uncharacteristically center stage in our public forum. To some, it is, at least potentially, omniscient, and omnipotent. To others, it is a ‘hoax’. Still others acknowledge their dependence on science, even as they view it with a measure of distrust. Very few of us arrive at the nuanced assessment of science achieved by Bakunin almost 200 years ago. Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back You Can’t Get There from Here David Cowles Jan 11, 2024 “What do 200 trillion sparks have to do with one idea?” In 2024, a brand new supercomputer will be ‘turned on’. Big deal! Except that this computer, called DeepSouth , has been built to mimic the human nervous system. For example, it is capable of more than 200,000,000,000,000 synaptic operations per second, which is on par with the estimated rate of operations in the human brain. Cool beans! But none of this helps us answer the fundamental question: how do 200 trillion synaptic operations turn into an idea for the next issue of Aletheia Today Magazine ? Our interaction with the world consists of holistic quanta of experience. We have no sense of 200 trillion electrical phenomena when we shout, “Eureka!” What do 200 trillion ‘sparks’ have to do with one idea? You just can’t get here from there! Whether you call them ‘buds’ (James) or ‘events’ (Fuller) or ‘actual entities’ (Whitehead), each quantum of experience seems whole . How do you break down the Wow! response to a beautiful sunset? Yet, contemporary science wants us to believe that that such a quantum of experience is simply an ‘emergent property’ of trillions of synaptic firings. But how? Objection : Perhaps consciousness is an accidental and unnecessary byproduct of neurobiology; perhaps it has no function. But then, how would it have evolved if it didn’t confer some sort of adaptive advantage? One current model talks of ‘consciousness’ as a ‘global workspace’ that allows us to dream up novel juxtapositions and test them out. It has a function! Question : How would the Wow! experience change if just one of the 200 trillion operations per second did not occur? If 10 did not occur? If 10 billion did not occur? When is ‘wow’ no longer Wow! and what takes its place? So, the quantum of experience we call Wow! cannot just be the product of 200 trillion independent events but does this mean that there is no connection between Wow! and our neural processes? Have we put the ghost back in the machine (Ryle)? Of course not. Wow! is all about the activity of our neural net…but not in the way that materialists (above) suppose. Rather, the Wow! response itself organizes the activity of our neurons so that they can support that Wow! There is no experience of Wow! without a physiological analog, but there is no coordinated (patterned) neuronal functioning without a Wow! (or some alternative experiential equivalent, e.g. Yuck! ). Materialists want us to accept an A → B model of reality; idealists prefer A ← B. But in fact, neither is correct. A better model would be A ↔ B. The relationship between 200 trillion synaptic firings and the experience of Wow! evolves dialectically; but that is not to say that the two are identical…or even congruent. Our neurons are always active but without ‘experience’ their firings are uncoordinated; they are just idling, they are noise. Wow! is the response of my whole organism to its whole ‘world’. It sends a shock wave across my neural net. It stimulates the orientation and coordination of synaptic firings so that I can have a conscious experience of Wow! Analogy : An ordinary piece of metal is exposed to a magnetic field. Immediately, its jumbled molecules align and the metal fragment itself now becomes a magnet. So Wow! aligns neurons. Those of us who speak modern Indo-European languages have learned to shoe horn all experience into the syntax of active/passive voiced verbs. Billy hit Johnnie; Johnnie was hit by Billy. What could be simpler? Except that, as every parent knows, real life events are rarely so clear cut. Events involve relations between two or more parties. But it is as true to say that the event designates its parties as it is to say that the parties determine the event. To describe events as they happen in the real world, we need another verb form, a ‘voice’ between active and passive, a ‘middle voice’. The Middle Voice verb form is used to describe an interactive relationship between two or more parties. The Middle Voice is the voice of reciprocity, mutuality. In rare, ‘degenerate’ cases, an event may take on an active/passive character, but our language forces us to treat every event as degenerate…with disastrous consequences. It prompts us to ask: Was ‘original sin’ really an incident of apple eating or was it the building of the Tower of Babel several generations later? The engineering triumph of Babel came at a price: language lost its ability to communicate, i.e., to model interactive events. Would it surprise you to learn that Indo-European languages (and many others) were ‘born’ with a mature Middle Voice. In fact, it is possible that Middle Voice was the primary proto-syntactical verb form. But in our eagerness to conquer the planet, and enslave each other, we allowed the Middle Voice to atrophy. We confront a similar dilemma whenever we encounter a Gestalt . Given the opportunity to view the same configuration of elements in two different ways, each revealing a different pattern, most of us will experience only one such alignment at a time. The two competing ‘faces’ of a Gestalt correspond to active/passive polarity. What’s figure? What’s ground? The Middle Voice is comparable to seeing both sides of the Gestalt at the same time. It's not easy, but it’s reality, and IRL, figure and ground are always interchangeable; they are co-subjects. So we have a lot of thinking to do! How is it that holistic experiences and quantum events co-modify? And how do they do it? How do we learn to keep both sides of a Gestalt in mind at the same time? How do we move past the ‘syntax of slavery’ (active/passive voice) to communicate our vision of a communitarian world, steeped in justice, where a wolf can lie down with the lamb? Rousseau’s Peaceable Kingdom ! One thing’s for sure: You can’t get there from here! 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 Being David Copperfield David Cowles Oct 17, 2023 “Most of us would rather be a well-drawn character in a Stephen King novel than a real person.” When I began writing David Copperfield , I knew I had my work cut out for me. To capture the panorama of life in 19 th century England, I needed to invent dozens of unique and interesting characters: Aunt Betsey, Mr. Murdstone, Tommy Traddles, Uriah Heep, Mr. Micawber, and of course, Agnes Wickfield, to name just a few. Each of these characters, even Davey himself, needed a backstory and a constellation of motivations to account for their actions. Each character needed to be memorable but also believable, a tall order for any author. Nevertheless, my novel was well received. Now I am starting work on an autobiographical sequel. I’d planned to follow the same plot line, but I’ve already realized that this won’t work. Two problems: first, my hero…that’s me! (Ok, anti-hero, if you insist.) I’m no David Copperfield. To the extent that my character has a backstory and a personality that explains his behavior…that character is not me! Sigmund Freud notwithstanding, nothing accounts for my actions. Authors rely on characters’ backgrounds to explain their behavior. I do what I do. I was made in the image and likeness of God: “I will be what I will be.” (Exodus 3: 14) Most of the time, my actions do follow well-worn tracks. I find it’s easier to do what folks expect. Until I don’t! My life story starts out as a real page turner, suddenly morphs into a head scratcher, and ends up dusty and half-read on the shelf of someone’s rarely visited library. My second problem is you! Who R U? I need to know if I’m to include you in my novel. Are you really an alter-ego (a mini-me) or are you just a cardboard cutout rescued from the set of The Truman Show ? Have you passed the Turing Test? If not, I can test you right now. Luckily, I just bought a Manhattan skyscraper for this very purpose. So, please walk to the edge of my roof and tell me, what do you see on the sidewalk directly below? No? What are you afraid of, a gust of wind? You’re a 250-pound fire plug and today’s totally calm! Even my flag is limp. No, you’re not afraid of some imaginary gust; you’re afraid of yourself. You know that you could just as easily jump off the edge of my roof as not. Probably, you won’t; but maybe, just maybe, you will. It’s a chance you’re not willing to take. The stakes are unaffordably high. That uncertainty is what makes a life interesting…and a novel unreadable. Ok, you will? Great. And so you walk right up to the edge and give me a detailed report. Thank you; now I know that you are cardboard after all. Only a fictional character would throw caution to the wind. Or… perhaps you’re just very brave, or macho, or have a keen sense of balance; perhaps for some reason, you are anxious to please me and so you comply with my utterly unreasonable request. Or perhaps you are a real person and just pretending to be a piece of cardboard. As I stare at my still blank monitor, I realize that I am already embroiled in two of philosophy’s most intractable problems: (1) Other minds, and (2) Free will. We’re in love with determinism ! We love destiny, God’s will, and the laws of physics…anything so long as it’s not me . It’s the ultimate free lunch: order without responsibility! The Devil made me do it, so I’m not to blame, but boy-o-boy, did I ever enjoy myself in the process. Sin without its wages: ‘volunteer work’. Thank you, Lucifer, for the free ride! So, there will be no Autobiography, at least not in the mode of David Copperfield . Perhaps I could cobble together a curriculum vitae with a dramatis personae , but don’t expect any explanation of my actions or the actions of any of my characters. We are most definitely not in search of an author! Most of us would rather be a well-drawn character in a Stephen King novel than a real person. Being real is messy, unpredictable, and always disappointing. We’d love to have a persona we could rely on: “That’s just the sort of hairpin I am!” What better way to justify everything I do while taking responsibility for none of it? We all want to ‘be someone’. Tracy Chapman, Fast Car , “I had a feeling I could be someone.” Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront , “I coulda been someone.” Ricky, Boyz in the Hood , “I want to do something with my life; I want to be somebody.” So, we measure ourselves against various fictional characters. Speaking for myself, I’m not as good a dad as Father Knows Best , as good a kid as Leave it to Beaver , as good a spouse as The Good Wife, as good a criminal as The Blacklist , as good a friend as Cheers , as good a dog as Lassie . Yet I judge myself in comparison to these imaginary beings; and of course, I come up short! My celluloid heroes are smooth; they know who they are, their behavior is consistent, their lives have meaning. By comparison, I’m more of a hedgehog, a ball of sharp bristles, concealing endless contradictions, masking noxious self-doubt. My life is a meander, not a journey. Imagine Odysseus without his Ithaca – that’s me… and you too, unless you’re one of Jim Carey’s props. I can no more measure up to my fictional idols than wooden Pinocchio could measure up to Geppetto’s idea of ‘a real boy’. I am not just ‘less than’; I am entirely ‘other than’. Less than? Ok, I can improve. Other than? There’s nothing I can do. I’ll never be a rhinoceros. But I can surely die trying! Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Being and Nothingness David Cowles May 12, 2022 But there are holes in this Swiss cheese. First, while it is true that ‘events’ constitute the universe, what we’re calling ‘events’ (above) are rarely primordial events. William H. Gass, in his Introduction to Gertrude Stein’s The Geographical History of America , wrote, “Life is rearrangement.” Gass attributes this idea, if not this exact sentence, to Ms. Stein. According to this view, our lives consist of elements (events) and many of these elements seem to be shared by other people: one other, many others, most others, perhaps even all others. For example, growing up, we may be fed by a mother, punished by a father, taught by a teacher, babysat by a neighbor, etc. These ‘events’ are elements of my human life and, I assume, of many, but not all, other human lives; therefore, they are elements of ‘human life’ per se . The solidarity we experience as ‘society’ may be attributed at least in part to this vast network of shared elemental experiences. How many such elements are there? The number is uncountably large, but it is many, many orders of magnitude smaller than the number of distinct human lives that these elements can generate. “Life is rearrangement.” Think of the events that make up my life as words in a dictionary even larger than the OED. Only a few of these words are involved in the constitution of a single human being, but some of those same words turn up in others. The ‘rules’ by which these events can be combined to form a human life is the syntax of being human, while the number of unique human persons is analogous to an anthology of the complete works of an entire culture. But there are holes in this Swiss cheese. First, while it is true that ‘events’ constitute the universe, what we’re calling ‘events’ (above) are rarely primordial events. Usually a ‘society’ of events come together to share a common ‘superject’, i.e., meaning. So an event in your life, ‘X’, can fulfill the same function in my life, ‘Y’; both event-clusters have a similar meaning, ‘M’, but the route to ‘M’ in ‘X’ is very different from the route to ‘M’ in ‘Y’. While two individual paths may result in a common superject, the differences in those paths will significantly impact the further evolution of ‘X’ and ‘Y’. So,’X’ and ‘Y’ each emerge from their own unique Actual Worlds, they converge along the way to share a common superject, only to diverge again so that in the end, ‘X’ is entirely other than ‘Y’. Second, while both ‘X’ and ‘Y’ project ‘M’ as it is viewed by ‘Z’, ‘M’ has a different function in ‘X’ than it has in ‘Y’. ‘X’, and ‘Y’ share ‘M’ in ‘Z’, but ‘M’ in ‘X’ is radically different from ‘M’ in ‘Y’. Like families on your cul-de-sac , our lives can look very much alike from the outside, but they are always radically different when doors are closed and the shades are pulled down (i.e., on the inside). In fact, ‘M’ in ‘X’ is always different for ‘X’ than ‘M’ in ‘Y’ is for ‘Y’. Therefore, while our lives, considered socially, may overlap, those same lives, considered ontologically, can share no elements in common. Not only is every person unique, every primordial event that constitutes that person is unique; it has a unique function in ‘X’, though it may have a shared function for ‘Z’ (understood as all others, collectively). As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in Being and Nothingness , being-for-others has nothing to do with being-for-itself. As being-for-others, we are helping to build an all-encompassing web; as being-for-itself, each of us stands, alone, on the edge of Kierkegaard’s abyss and and on that edge, none of us has anything in common with anyone else, except the abyss . 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 Thai Food and a Salad David Cowles Jun 26, 2026 “It was a light shrimp dish that lit up my mouth like a bonfire…a good bonfire.” 1600 words, 8 minute read When Thai food first came to Boston, yup way back then, I couldn’t wait to give it a try. Asian, spicy, fresh, what’s not to like? Even so, I was absolutely blown away by my first experience. All I can remember now is that it was a light shrimp dish that lit up my mouth like a bonfire…a good bonfire. I never tasted shrimp (or anything) quite like this before…or since. I was in heaven (literally, as it turns out). So I called my dad with whom I had a ‘complicated’ relationship, “You’ve got to try this!” And so we did, and it was good, very good, and I was crestfallen. And so began a 50 (yes, 50) year quest to duplicate ‘my first time’. A lot of meals, mostly mediocre, a few awful, with a couple of great surprises mixed in…but nothing with anything in common with my original. I won’t (further) bore you with details of my life’s other quests; suffice to say, they are legion…and they’ve all come up snake eyes, which has led me to draw some conclusions about life itself: Mysticism aside, there is no such thing as ‘present experience’. As much as I seem to ‘be here now’ (Ram Dass), I am in fact almost anywhere else. Whenever I ‘should’ (who says so) be lost in a luscious swill or sumptuous bite, I am instead comparing it to other tastes I’ve had at other times and other places. “Good, but not as good as Prague.” If my experience is net positive, I immediately begin to redecorate the room, revise the menu (or at least our orders), train new wait staff, soften the lighting, and sorry my friend, make some changes to the guest list. I seem to be enjoying myself here and now, but actually I am savoring the experience I imagine I will have at the same venue on some future date. Of course no such experience will ever occur. Most likely, I’ll never set foot in this restaurant again but, if I do, I can be certain of one thing: it will disappoint. On the other hand, if my experience is even a titch below par, ‘I dream a dream in time gone by’ ( Les Mis ): the last time I had veal parm, the first time I had this wine, and oh, remember the 1963 Margaux we paired with foie gras on that rainy afternoon in Lyon? I’m not a curmudgeon, copious testimony to the contrary; in fact, I have been criticized for conferring ‘exaggerated praise’. But I know good and I recognize it in many places: Giotto and Gaugin, Wagyu and Big Mac, Neiman’s and Walmart…you get the picture. I know good, but I also know best, and this dish, sir, is NOT the best! (Lloyd Bentsen) A few disappointing culinary experiences will not rob life of all value and purpose. But applying this ethic beyond the protective gaze of the maître d’ just might. Suppose Georgie and Mandy’s first marriage is just ‘prep’ for their second; suppose Henry decided after all that he loved his first wife best; suppose you work 80,000 hours at a job that is not the job you wanted to be doing. Recently, however, I experienced something that forces me to revise my outlook: a salad! Not metaphorically, literally ‘a salad’, and not my first salad, not by a long shot. In fact, I would describe myself as something of an aficionado : Lobster Cobb in NYC, Antipasto in Boston’s North End, Greek Salad in Tarpon Springs, Pizza Topping in London. I’ve even fantasized opening a super high end restaurant called Salads, Salads, Salads where every item on the menu would be… But the salad that changed my life was made at home, thanks to my amazing spouse. Granted, it featured ‘local farm fresh’ veg and ‘up market’ versions of everything else…but nothing out of the ordinary. (No, I won’t be sharing the recipe: that’s not the point!) On a particular day, a particular combination of thoughtfully curated ingredients, mixed and dressed in a particular way, changed my view, not just of salads but of life itself. Unlike most everything else I’ve enjoyed in my life, the experience of ‘this salad’ was incomparable . No point asking my spouse to make it again. It wouldn’t be the same. No question of tweaking the ingredients; there’s nothing to tweak. It’s perfect and, drum roll please, it can’t be made more perfect ! Everything else , from salads to sunsets, is something else . Not better, not worse, but incomparable. My recent experience with this perfect salad will never be repeated or surpassed, but perhaps I may have other experiences of perfection. Some of those experiences may even include ‘local farm fresh veg’, but none of them will be the same as, or comparable to, what I now call my Salad Zero (S/0)…although some may be ‘incomparably perfect’ on their own. Now, you wouldn’t be reading this on Aletheia Today unless my experience resonated beyond the dining room. What if we can apply my culinary epiphany to, well, everything? *** Good comes in comparative forms (better, best); perfect does not. Something cannot be ‘more perfect’ than something else unless that something else is imperfect . ‘Perfect’ cannot be compared with ‘perfect’. There is only one Perfect and whatever is ‘perfect’ reflects (or shares in) that Perfect. So who do we know who’s perfect? Oh yah, God! God is perfect, a trait shared with S/0, but God is also Perfection per se - something a salad, even a perfect salad, cannot be. God is perfect. God is Perfection. As such God is singular, unique, and incomparable. Other entities (e.g. salads) can be perfect; they are also singular, unique, and incomparable. But they are not Perfection per se . That’s uniquely God. Whenever I have an experience, my immediate tendency is to evaluate that experience by comparing it with others. The moment I do, I am no longer ‘here now’ - I am no longer living my ‘present’ life. But very occasionally, one encounters something that ‘pushes back’, that refuses ‘comparative valuation’, i.e. something like S/0. I cannot compare Salad Zero to ‘other salads’; it only bears a superficial relationship to any of them. What then can I say about S/0? “I had it once and I will never have that experience again.” I cannot compare S/0 to other salads or dining fare because it defines its own category, a category of one. Other experiences may be perfect; if so, each of them in its perfection will have defined its own ‘category of perfection’ of which it will be the sole non-null member. Nerd Corner : There is a set of ‘things that are perfect’ (Whitehead’s Kingdom of Heaven). God is the paradigmatic member of that set, so is S/0, so is everything else that is perfect. But these things are not mere elements, they are also sets, but unlike the Set of All Things Bright and Beautiful , they are sets that contain, and can contain, only one non-null member. What defines a salad as ‘perfect’? It is any salad for which no addition or subtraction of ingredients or modification of technique would produce a ‘better’ product. Different, certainly; good, possibly; but better? Impossible or, ‘better’ still, meaningless . I hope to have many more salads in my lifetime and some of them will probably be good, perhaps very good. A few may even be ‘perfect’ in their own right. But none will be the ‘same as or better than’ Salad Zero . Improving on a bad experience should be easy; improving on a good experience is harder. But improving on a perfect experience is impossible. In fact, the concept itself is meaningless. Obviously, you can’t improve what is already perfect. *** But I beg your pardon, I promised you a rose garden, and I have not delivered…yet: Ray Stevens was right after all, “Everything is beautiful…in its own way.” (The beautiful manifests the Good but Beauty per se is a manifestation of Perfection, God.) For most experiences, we lack a unique conceptual category: “There are no words for this.” We are left to assign each new experience to a familiar if ill-fitting category. Every time we do so, we fall prey to Whitehead’s Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness , the original sin of the human condition. In that ‘misplaced’ context we find something comparatively good…or not. But perhaps there exists a category, undefined and for now at least ineffable, that has ‘this experience’ as its only non-null member. Leap : The Universe consists not of naked events but of sets of events. Each event is a member of a unique set of which it is the only non-null member. Each event is ‘perfect’ in relation to that set. Every event is its own paradigm. Therefore, the Universe consists of sets of events, each of which is perfect in the context of that set. Postscript : Have I become a Platonist? Not really. My perfect sets are not Plato’s pre-existent Forms. In my model, events create their own categories, their own sets, their own Forms. In the full flower of my grandiosity, I might even say, “I stood Plato on his head (apologies to Marx and Hegel). Forgive me, everyone! 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.