< Back Renga Cycle 1 20th century Western literature familiarized us with a writing style known as ‘stream of consciousness.' In this genre, writers simply record their thoughts (or pretend to). Result: we read as if we were thinking. Seven centuries earlier, Japan began experimenting with a ‘call and response’ style of poetry, created and transcribed collectively by a group of poets. Typically, the Renga-Master kicks-off with a three-verse, 17-syllable Haiku. Then another poet adds either another Haiku or, more traditionally, a Tsukeku (two verses, seven syllables each), as a response. If we credit the 20th century with the ‘stream of consciousness’ (Freud influenced) writing style, we must credit 14th century with a ‘stream of collective consciousness’ writing style (anticipating Jung). The Renga format is not rigid. For example, a second Haiku could occur before the first response. This is what’s happening in the Renga below, kicking off ATM’s Japanese Poetry Slam . Renga Cycle #1 Drip, drip goes the water How I wish I could use it To wash the world away. (Basho) One caw of a crow Turns all of the fallen leaves A deeper yellow. (Wright) (Please add your response in the comment box below. It can either be a 17-syllable Haiku or a 14 syllable Tsukeku.) 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 Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue Your content has been submitted Add to our haiku in the comment box below.

< Back Rabbi Shlomo David Cowles Sep 20, 2021 According to Hasidic Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach (1925 – 1994), “original sin” is rooted in gender inequality. According to Rabbi Shlomo, in the Garden of Eden, God spoke directly to Adam and through Adam, the ‘Rebbe of Eden’, to Eve. Eve’s innate sense of justice (we all have such a sense) told her that something about this arrangement was not right: “I wonder why he wouldn’t talk to me straight.” According to Hasidic Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach (1925 – 1994), “original sin” is rooted in gender inequality. According to Rabbi Shlomo, in the Garden of Eden, God spoke directly to Adam and through Adam, the ‘Rebbe of Eden’, to Eve. Eve’s innate sense of justice (we all have such a sense) told her that something about this arrangement was not right: “I wonder why he wouldn’t talk to me straight.” This created opportunity for the snake (injustice feeds on injustice): “If you eat the apple, (God) talks to you straight.” Understandably, this made sense to Eve. She ate the apple and the rest, as they say, is ‘history’…or in this case, ‘proto-history’. One single injustice (gender inequality) became the mother of all injustice. From a single act of gender bias it is too short a heap to the Holocaust. So, there is no such thing as a ‘small injustice’. Every injustice is the seed of all injustice. Therefore, it is our task and, indeed, the task of all creation, to remove all injustice, root and branch, from the world. Today, many people mistakenly regard Genesis as dated…and scientifically wrong; but what could possibly be more 21st century than Rabbi Shlomo’s interpretation? 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 BeHukkotai: Why Land is Different Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson Land is imbued with holiness, which means that, like God, it is beyond human measures of usefulness or control. As we prepare to close the Book of Leviticus, the Torah’s pinnacle, we are left with a message of responsibility, consequences, and possibilities. God presents us with the benefits of making wise choices and the consequences of choosing poorly. Then the Torah provides for the funding of the sanctuary and its staff: our participation with monetary support, pledges of animals or homes. But when it pivots to pledges of land, the Torah shifts gears entirely. Land, you see, is ours to borrow and to use. But humans presume they can own land. In reality, the land makes its claim on us, and we can either open ourselves to its ground rules, or we risk a rootlessness that leaves us clinging when the next sandstorm swirls. We are, as the book reminds us, “resident strangers ( Leviticus 25:23 )” on earth. The Land precedes us and the land will bury us when we no longer need our bodies. We are dust, and we return to dust ( Genesis 3:19 ). On some deeper level of reality, it is all just dust, earth, soil. Judaism directs our attention to the centrality of earth through the regular rhythms of Shabbat (seven days) Shmita (seven years), and Jubilee (seven Shmita cycles). In this last parasha of Leviticus, we are told that when we think we are selling the land, we are actually letting someone else live on it or use it for a finite duration of time. At the next Jubilee year, the land reverts to its designated, original family of caretakers. Land is inalienable, and we are meant to be too. If one consecrates their land after the jubilee, the priest shall compute the price according to the years that are left until the jubilee year, and its assessment shall be so reduced. And if one who consecrated the land wishes to redeem it, they must add one-fifth to the sum at which it was assessed, and it shall pass back to them. But if they do not redeem the land, and the land is sold to another, it shall no longer be redeemable. When it is released in the jubilee, the land shall be holy to the Lord, as land proscribed; it becomes the priest’s holding ( Leviticus 27:18-21 ). There is a holiness inherent in the land, a quality not subject to human dominion and not vaporized by human standards of utility. It is that holy something extra that means were are residents visiting the land, and its only really owner is God, who is also holy, meaning beyond human measures of usefulness or control. Jubilee comes every 50 years to remind us that the worth of creation is beyond our evaluation and does not emerge from ways we find it beneficial. “Proclaim release to all the inhabitants of the land ( Leviticus 25:11 )” because it is in recognizing that worth and value spill beyond the constraints of practical utility or human benefit that we, too, are released. Our worth and value spill beyond how we can be used too. Published with permission and minimal edits from hazon.org. Rabbi Dr. Bradley Shavit Artson is the Roslyn and Abner Goldstine Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and Vice President of American Jewish University. He is also Dean of the Zachariah Frankel College at University of Potsdam, training Conservative/Masorti rabbis for Europe. Previous Next

< Back Drumming to Inner Peace Magesh The biggest connection I made between music and spirituality was that they both focus on the present moment. When I managed to stay in the present moment in both the song and in life, I realized there was no time for anxiety. I've had a great career as a session musician. I played the drums for Lionel Richie, Rhianna, Ricky Martin, Nelly Fertado, Kimbra, and many other pop stars. I have also taught the drums and piano for over 20 years. (Although now all my teaching is online...thanks, Covid!) Playing music has taught me many things: the discipline of practice, how working hard yields results, and that, if you get lucky enough, your dreams may come true. Although I have done many cool things like playing on television, performing in multiple countries, and appearing in magazines, there was one thing that trumped all of these: playing music gave me inner peace. Here is how that happened… As an adolescent, my mind always moved quickly with racing thoughts. Looking back, it was probably teen angst and a good dose of old-fashioned anxiety. My older brother played music, too, and one day, he took me to the concert of a famous drummer. I can still vividly remember the performance. The drummer played to a sold-out auditorium of 1,000 people. His performance was so outstanding by the end, he received a standing ovation. I was mesmerized by it and also by the crowd’s reaction. At 14-years-old, I didn't know many things; what I did know was that I, too, was going to be a famous drummer. After convincing my parents that my school grades would improve if they bought me a drum kit, (they didn’t!), I sat down in my bedroom to start my first practice session. As soon as I hit the snare drum, all my racing thoughts stopped. Just like that! There was no worrying about what was going to happen at school tomorrow, nor any worry about if the girl on the bus liked me; in fact, there was no worrying about anything. What there was, was the present moment each time I hit that drum. I remember feeling incredible peace as I launched into a basic rock beat. (The irony was this beat probably filled my neighbor with anxiety because it was as loud as a jackhammer!) I've read stories of Buddhist monks who achieved a blissful state of mind through constant meditation. I don't know if I reached that state of bliss, but my teenage angst definitely disappeared. By playing music and literally concentrating on one note at a time, I didn't have the time to be concerned about problems outside my bedroom door, and, after playing for just a few months, my self-esteem and confidence improved tenfold. This was simply because I was starting to sound great…or so I thought. My older brother was a professional musician. After I had been playing the drums for ten months, he opened my bedroom door and quite calmly said, “Your timing sucks. You should get some drum lessons.” After picking up the shards of my shattered self-esteem off the floor, I realized that maybe he was right. I booked a 30-minute lesson with a famous Australian drummer. I really thought this teacher would be impressed with my ability to play several types of drum beats. However, as I sat down to play, he said, “Your posture is all wrong.” How could I screw up sitting down? He then asked me to play something I was comfortable playing and to pretend that he wasn't there. I played a basic rock pattern, which, I thought, was decent. The instructor had a look on his face as if someone had just insulted his mother. Slightly in shock, slightly angry, he said something I didn't understand at the time: “How do you go about breathing?” “I usually just breathe in and out,” I replied. This actually made him laugh out loud because what he meant was how I breathed when I played the drums. After carefully explaining to me that drumming was an extremely intense physical activity, he suggested I breathe two counts in, two counts out. This changed everything for me. I don't know the science behind it, but the exercise slowed down both my heart rate and my mind, which, in turn, made me feel incredibly calm. I would go on to have lessons with this teacher for 13 additional years. I would be performing with some of the biggest artists in the world, and still, I’d go to my weekly drum lesson. When people asked me why I was still taking lessons as a top professional, my answer was always the same: “It makes me feel good.” The biggest connection I made between music and spirituality was that they both focus on the present moment. When I managed to stay in the present moment in both the song and in life, I realized there was no time for anxiety. I remember being 16-years-old and saying to my teacher, “What happens if I'm on stage playing a concert and I make a mistake?” Without hesitating, he said, “Once you make a mistake, that moment is over. You have to leave it in the past. If you focus on that mistake, it will only lead to more mistakes.” If that isn't a metaphor for life, I don't know what is. * Editor's Note: Music can play an important role in how we experience the world and communicate that experience to others. Be sure to check out The Meaning of Music in this issue of AT Magazine. Magesh has written for “Lessonface,” “Aeyons,” “The Modern Rogue,” “Euronews,” “The Roland corporation,” “Penlight,” and “Elite Music.” He writes several monthly publications on music education. In the past, Magesh has written for parenting, humor, mental health, and travel websites as well. Previous Next

But did you know that a 6th century Irish poet developed his own version of a ‘creed’…which I have named, the People’s Creed? < Back The People's Creed David Cowles Jul 12, 2022 But did you know that a 6th century Irish poet developed his own version of a ‘creed’…which I have named, the People’s Creed? You’ve probably heard of the Nicene Creed, maybe even the Apostles’ Creed. You’re less likely to be familiar with the Athanasian Creed. But did you know that a 6th century Irish poet developed his own version of a ‘creed’…which I have named, the People’s Creed? Philosophy has traditionally distinguished between the ‘essence’ of things (what is) and the ‘existence’ of things (that is). ‘Essence’ normally refers to the qualities, attributes, and values that characterize a particular event (or ‘actual entity’), while ‘existence’ is usually thought to be ‘value free:’ Is just is! (Bill Clinton notwithstanding). Right off the bat, this raises a few eyebrows. Can there be an ‘it is’ without a ‘what is?’ Or a ‘what is’ without an ‘it is?’ Can there be essence without existence or existence without essence? From Augustine to Aquinas to Leo XIII and beyond, it has been a bedrock principle of Christianity that Essence and Existence cannot be logically isolated from one another. Anselm of Bec (c. 1077), for example, attempted to use the relationship between essence and existence to prove the existence of God. Called his ‘ontological proof,’ Anselm defined God as the supreme Good (essence). His task: to prove that the supreme Good (i.e., God) exists! Anselm reasoned that existence is ‘better’ than non-existence (so existence is not value free after all). Therefore, for an entity to be supremely Good, it must exist. An entity, in all ways supremely good but lacking existence, is not supremely good because being and good are aspects of each other. According to Parmenides of Elea, the Father of Western Philosophy, whatever lacks something, lacks everything. (“On Nature,” Fragment 8) Good, without Being, lacks something. It lacks existence! And lacking existence, it lacks everything else (all qualities) as well, per Parmenides. Values (20th British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, called them ‘eternal objects’) are vacuous until and unless they enter into the constitution of an ‘actual entity.’ ‘Being’ and ‘Good’ are synonyms and both are synonymous with ‘God’ (God is the source of both, and in fact, is both ). In his great ontological poem, “On Nature,” Parmenides (above) spoke of two modes of being: Aletheia (the mode of truth) and Doxa (the mode of appearance). Aletheia is featureless: “…ungenerated and imperishable…all together, one, continuous.” In the realm of Doxa , on the other hand, things “come to be and perish…shift place and…exchange bright color.” One way (and just one way) to read this foundational work of Western philosophy is to understand Aletheia as the existence of things and Doxa as their essence . A half century later, Plato talked of ‘universals’ (variously translated as ‘forms,’ ‘ideas,’ or ‘ideals’) and ‘particulars’ (concrete objects and events that reflect those ‘forms’). Later philosophers talked of substances (existence) and accidents (essence). Immanuel Kant wrote of noumena and phenomena. Philosophers from the Idealist and Empiricist schools championed essence at the expense of existence. At one point in his career, Bertrand Russell held that the world consisted only of “universals” (qualities) and that so-called objects and events were merely intersections of those universals. Russell translated the insights of the Impressionist painters into philosophy. Think Monet. Existentialism tried to restore balance. Think Cezanne. Martin Heidegger distinguished Wassein (‘what it is’) from Dasein (‘that it is’). Jean-Paul Sartre made use of the essence/existence dichotomy to define God as the being whose essence precedes his existence and Man (sic) as the being whose existence precedes his essence. God knows ‘what he is’ before (logically precedent, not temporally precedent) he knows ‘that he is.’ His essence precedes his existence, He is what he is because what he is (e.g., good) is what it means to be God. Human beings, on the other hand, know that they are (‘Cogito ergo sum’), long before they have any idea who or what they are. No set of qualities can define what it is to be a human being. To be human is to transcend ‘mere qualities.’ With Jean-Paul Sartre, the most we can say is, “I am not what I am, and I am what I am not.” Now, Deconstruction ( aka , ‘The Case of the Disappearing Subject’) has brought us back full circle to Russell’s ‘universalist’ argument. According to the Book of Job, and my own experience, most human beings die without ever finding knowledge (i.e., without ever learning who they are). They die knowing that they were but never really knowing who they were. (Job 4:21) “ Resolved : Anything that exists is better than anything that does not exist.” Let’s see how our high school debate team handles this one! According to Anselm, existence is one quality among others. Essence is fundamental and it entails Existence. A 6th century Irish hymn, traditionally (but doubtfully) attributed to Saint Dallan, makes a similar argument but from the opposite perspective, the perspective of existence . Existence is fundamental and it entails Essence. Dallan argues that only the existence of God matters since everything of value (essence) flows automatically from God and God alone. Good is God’s nature. Good is the way God participates in the world, and God is the way Good participates. Without Good, there is no real God; without God there is no real Good. Good and God might survive as abstract ‘concepts’ (John Lennon) but neither can participate in any actual world without the other. Concerning God, Anselm wrote: “…You are wisdom, you are truth, you are goodness, you are eternity, and you are every true good.” And later, “Therefore, you alone, Lord, are what you are… ” You alone, Lord, are what you are! Powerful words. But what about you and me? Are we what we are? Just the opposite! According to J-P Sartre (above), we are not what we are, and we are what we are not . Ok, we’ve taken care of you and me and, oh yeah, God, but what about the chair in the middle of my bedroom? Where does it fit in? From the perspective of the world, it is a tool (if I want to sit down) or an obstacle (if I’m walking around in the dark). Being a ‘chair’ is being a tool/obstacle (opposite sides of the same coin). Like God, a chair is its essence. But is it God? Can I decorate it and worship it, elevate it and pray to it? Well, I could, but first amendment or not, I wouldn’t expect to remain unconfined for very long! Two reasons: (1) the chair consists of its own particular qualities (size, firmness, craftsmanship, etc.) but it does not embody any of the other qualities that make up the universe. Like an old Model-T Ford, you can get it in any color you want…as long as it’s black. (2) ‘Chair’ per se does not exist! It’s all hat, no cattle. If the chair does not exist, then what’s that dark space in the middle of my room? Roughly speaking, it’s a jumble of molecules, and each molecule is a jumble of atoms, and each atom is a jumble of subatomic particles, and each subatomic particle is a jumble of quarks. Then what’s a quark? Well, it’s either the ‘sound’ of a one-dimensional string vibrating or it’s an element in the constitution of a subatomic particle. So, take your pick: an idol with a very limited number of qualities and no existence, or a God that includes all qualities and exists through those qualities in the world. St. Dallan, on the other hand, begins his poem: “Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart, naught is all else to me save that Thou art . Thou my best thought by day and by night, Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.” Dallan’s poem, now a hymn but originally written in the form of a prayer, is also an ontology, a Creed . Sometimes called “Be Thou my Vision,” it is found in The Poem Book of the Gael , a treasure trove of early Irish verse. “Be Thou my Wisdom , Thou my true Word ; I ever with Thee, Thou with me, Lord. Thou my great Father, I thy dear son; Thou in me dwelling, I with Thee one… Be Thou my dignity , Thou my delight . Thou my soul’s shelter …” St. Dallan’s existentialism challenges duelist and essentialist ontologies head-on. Notice that every word Dallan uses to ‘describe’ God is a noun, not an adjective. In God, qualities are nouns. God is not only ‘just;’ God is Justice itself, etc. Only God is what he is! Our ‘accidents’ (qualities) are his ‘substance’ and his ‘substance’ (values) is our ‘accidents’. Superficially, essences, qualities, and accidents do not matter to this poet; all that matters is Existence, specifically the existence of God. That trust can only be attributed to his great faith. “Seek first the Kingdom of God…and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Mt 6: 33) I am immediately reminded of Job’s famous profession of faith: “I know that my vindicator lives and that on the last day he will testify on earth… Something I myself will view, what my eyes, not a stranger’s, will see.” (Job 19: 25-27) St. Dallan variously refers to God as “my Vision…my Wisdom…my dignity…my delight…(my) shelter.” He does not thank God for these graces, as others would because he knows that these qualities are God himself. God cannot cease being God! God is what he is! We can praise God, we can celebrate the fact that God participates in our world, but we cannot change God’s nature. God is good – live with it! Crudely stated, if God exists, Goodness is ours by virtue of God’s nature, but if God does not exist…then who cares? No God = no Goodness, Beauty, Truth, or Justice. Without God, whatever is, is, and that’s an end to it. Nothing is better - more beautiful, truthful, or just – than anything else. It is as meaningless to say, “Better days are coming,” as it is to say, “My best days are behind me.” There is no objective difference between shooting up a classroom full of 4th graders and volunteering at the school to tutor those same students. It’s just a matter of ‘personal taste.’ No judgment! The Old Testament Book of Judges repeats its famous ‘signature verse:’ “In those days, Israel had no king; every man (sic) did what was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 26: 25) Without God, we would need to rewrite Judges to read, “…every man did whatever he felt like doing.” Hmm, does this sound at all familiar? “If it feels good, do it.” (compliments of the years 1965 -1975) For Dallan, God is Vision, Wisdom and Dignity, per se , and specifically Dallan’s vision, wisdom and dignity, and ours too, of course! Anselm wrote regarding God: “Therefore, you are the very life by which you live, the wisdom by which you are wise, and the very goodness by which you are good to the good and to the wicked…” Good is God’s nature. He cannot but be good. Therefore, God is ‘no respecter of persons,’ be they good…or not so good. You bring good, God brings good; you bring not-good; God still brings good! I am reminded of a five-year-old boy playing ‘rock, scissors, paper’ with his Dad. After a few rounds, the boy volunteered, “I always choose rock.” Not exactly a winning strategy on the boy’s part…and yet, the boy is in good company. It is God’s strategy too ,“If I throw rock every time for long enough, maybe you’ll eventually thrown scissors, either out of your own boredom, to see what will happen, or out of your compassion for me.” You can keep throwing paper and, congratulations, you win…every time. But it’s a hollow victory indeed. God lets you win – boring and a bit humiliating - but hey, you won the toy (prize) didn’t you? Isn’t life all about who has the most toys? God always picks ‘rock,’ i.e., Goodness. He can’t help himself. He is good to those who are good, but he is just as good to those who are not so good. And like this five-year-old, he let us know early on that he was going to be his strategy. Surprisingly, this makes a lot of people mad…very mad…mad at God! They think that they deserve to be rewarded by God for their so-called goodness, and a major part of that reward should be to see others punished for their wickedness. Imagine this: you are Beauty, Truth, and Justice and yet people are mad at you! You can’t win for losin’ in the God-game – at least not if you’re God. We are like pre-teen children, we live to see our siblings punished, the more severely the better, even for the most minor transgressions. Of course, when we ourselves ‘run afoul of the law,’ we tend to be much more lenient. Suddenly, we hear a lot about the ‘forgiveness’ and ‘second chance’ that we deserve because we are ‘normally so good’… forgiveness and a second chance for us, but not for our ‘rotten brothers and sisters.’ We exist because we participate in God, who is Being. We are who we are because God, who is Good, participates in us. It is our response , freely given, to God’s Goodness that constitutes who we are. God is supremely good by nature; I am not! But I do have the capacity to be good, to make the right choices, and that capacity I derive directly from God. This is not just ‘any god.’ This is an explicitly Trinitarian God. In my relatedness (Vision), I recapitulate the Son ( logos ); in my consciousness (Wisdom), I recapitulate the Spirit; and in my identity (Dignity), I recapitulate the Father. Our lives are a direct participation in the life of the Trinity. Later in Dallan’s poem, we read that God is “power of my power” and “heart of my own heart.” God’s existence is the sole source of our ability to act upon the world (power) and to be acted upon by the world (heart). In grammar, we call these two modalities of being (power and heart) the ‘active voice’ and the ‘passive voice:’ we act, we are acted upon. But our relationship with God is neither active nor passive; it is perfectly reciprocal: “I ever with Thee, Thou with me, Lord…Thou in me dwelling, I with Thee one.” Consider the Eucharist: we incorporate the body of Christ at Communion, and by that very act we are simultaneously incorporated into Christ’s body. How can we describe this kind of relationship? It turns out that in many ancient languages (e.g., Greek, Old Norse) verbs had a third voice in addition to the active and passive voices. This third voice is usually referred to as the “middle voice” because, ostensibly, it falls ‘between active and passive.’ In reality, it transcends both. The middle voice is the voice of love, the voice of prayer, and the only voice we should ever use when speaking with God or about God…if only we still had a middle voice in our modern Indo-European languages. But back to Dallan’s text: “Thou mine inheritance”. Do I inherit God, or does God inherit me? I am reminded of Alice’s closing line in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Lookingglass : “Was the Red Knight part of my dream, or was I part of the Red Knight’s dream.” Thinking in the middle voice, our answer to Alice should be, “Both!” I inherit God, and, therefore, God dwells in me (“Thou in me dwelling”); God inherits me, and, therefore, I dwell in God (“I with Thee one”). It is the perfect middle-voice paradigm. Just as the spatiotemporal world is a projection of the eternal, so the eternal world is a roll-up of the spatiotemporal: “So that God may be all in all” ( I Cor. 15: 20 – 28). I interact with the world on the spatiotemporal plane (power and heart, active and passive voices), but I interact with God on the plane of eternity. According to Thomas Aquinas: “God alone is Good essentially…whatever belongs to others accidentally, belongs to Him essentially…Everything is called good by reason of the likeness of divine goodness belonging to it…Everything seeks its own perfection…(and) all things, by desiring their own perfection, desire God Himself.” God is Good, essentially, and it is the Good that is God that constitutes the raison d’etre for all other beings. Existence is the process of seeking perfection. Paraphrasing an ad for the US Army: “Being is the process of being all that you can be.” The urge to exist is the urge to be Good, to be like God, even to become one with God. But while all existents inherit God’s qualities, we are unconditionally free to appropriate those qualities in any way we wish. We may even reject them entirely if we choose to do so, or we may ‘modify them’ to achieve what we believe, mistakenly, is a ‘better end’ than God intended. We do know everything after all! Yet spatiotemporal relations constitute only one dimension of my being; I am also in an eternal relationship with God. God is existence! Therefore, whatever exists must participate in God. Whatever we transact with the world, we are simultaneously transacting with God. From Plato on, mainstream philosophy has struggled to reconcile essence and existence. Numerous extremely clever solutions have been proposed to account for both without slipping into dualism. But St. Dallan’s Creed asserts that this reasoning is for ‘naught.’ There is no conflict to be explained away, there is no dichotomy to be resolved. God’s essence conceptually precedes his existence, but at the same time, his existence physically entails his essence. It is a ‘virtuous cycle.’ So, St. Dallan’s ‘simple’ Irish poem is much more than a poem or a hymn or even a prayer; it is a creed! It defines and accounts for the key elements of Christian ontology: Creation, Incarnation and Salvation, and it does so in the context of a Trinitarian God. St. Dallan’s creed stands next to the Nicene Creed, the Apostles’ Creed and the Athanasian Creed; it is the “People’s Creed.” 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 Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. 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< Back Thoughts While Sleeping -- Number One David Cowles Jan 10, 2023 "Not all thoughts come while shaving..." Some creep in at night just as consciousness hovers between wake and sleep. For example... Birthdays : Only five stand out in my mind: my 12 th , mostly because it coincided with a major change in my physical circumstances (new school, new friends, etc.); my 30 th and my 40 th because they were predictably traumatic; and my 50 th, only because it’s the last time I can tell you where I was on that date. And now my 75 th . Age : Speaking of birthdays, yes, it’s true, I recently turned 75. I was initially reluctant to share that info with you; I’m afraid you’ll think less of me (and my ideas) now that you know how old I am. Come to think of it, this has been a concern all my life. More than most kids, I tried desperately to grow up fast. Then I tried to recapture the adolescence I had squandered. In business, I needed age to confer gravitas ; now I need to shed those years again. Like Penelope ( Odyssey ), I progressively weave and unweave the fabric of time, hoping to dodge fate (i.e., the ‘suitors’). Awareness : Speaking of age, how old was I when I was first aware of the sun? That first, non-thetic sensation of Sun’s brilliance or warmth - was it in utero , or on the ride home from the maternity ward? By age three, certainly, I would have been aware that I was aware of the sun – first as a concept, later as a word. I believe I was 10 when I first experienced myself being aware that I was aware that I was aware of the sun, which means that right now I am aware that I was aware that I was aware that I was aware of the sun . Does this go on ad infinitum ? At what point does it (or did it) cease to be meaningful? Time : Speaking of awareness, is it a seemingly endless progression of Russian dolls, each embedded in another, each embedding another? Or is it more like a series of freight cars, headed-up by an engine (Creation and/or Big Bang), trailing a caboose (Apocalypse and/or Deep Freeze). Is time awareness, awareness time? Light : Speaking of time, at age 10, when I was first aware that I was aware that I was aware of the sun; it hung in the sky like a beach ball. Next time I checked (age 25), it was a basketball. Then progressively, a volleyball, a softball, a baseball, a ping pong ball, and now I regret to say, a pinball. When I first saw the sun, it was as if I stood on Earth; then Mars…now Pluto. Time is a rocket ship, headed into deep space, accelerating as the sun’s gravitational attraction weakens. Dark : Speaking of light, the first soft rays of sunset are beguilingly beautiful. The bright blue sky is tinged with various shades of orange and even green. Clouds reflect, earth inflames. I am grateful to have been alive, however briefly, and I cling to the last drop of light, poised on the horizon like a pinball, a drop on the rim of total darkness. And speaking of the dark… 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 Groundhog Day David Cowles Jan 31, 2023 “You are not Joey...there are no magic kingdoms in your future. No, you are face-to-face with the darkest days of winter.” December 25, Christmas Day. We’ve been looking forward to it for months and it didn’t disappoint: presents and ribbons and trees and presents, Mall Santa and Real Santa and carols and cookies, and…did I mention presents? Later that afternoon, since you’ve successfully resisted your spouse’s (or parent’s) repeated pleas to help clean up, you find yourself with nothing to do. In fact, you’re bored…bored on Christmas! Is that even a thing? While you’re speculating on the metaphysics of boredom, you happen to look out the window… And it’s dark, real dark, the windowpane’s ice cold. The ground is frozen solid, if not snow covered, and you suddenly realize you have nothing to look forward to now until spring (Easter) – not like Joey across the street whose parents take him skiing every weekend and whose grandparents are taking him to Disney World in February. You are not Joey! (How often do you have to remind yourself of that each year?) No, you do not have to face ski lodges, hot cider and cocoa, and there are no magic kingdoms in your future. No, you are face-to-face with the darkest days of winter. Poor you! You happen to live in a liturgically impoverished culture. We celebrate just four points on the calendar: the two solstices (c. 6/21 and 12/21), days of maximum (or minimum) daylight; and the two equinoxes (c. 3/21 and 9/21), days when the durations of light and dark are equal. Think of that! At equinox, no matter where you live on the globe, north or south, pole or equator, the sun rises at 6 AM and sets at 6 PM (adjusted for the modern convention of time zones). It’s a marvelous thing. But I digress… Like most cultures, we cluster our important religious and secular holidays around the times of these astronomical extremes; we call them Christmas, Easter, Midsommer (July 4 th ), and various ‘early harvest’ festivals. But none of this relieves the tedium of long cold winters. Had you been born into a liturgically richer culture, you might be celebrating eight points on the calendar rather than just four. Many cultures recognize what we call Cross Days as major feasts. Cross Days occur, roughly, on the days that bisect the four intervals between solstice and equinox. Although our culture doesn’t recognize these Cross Days as ‘major feasts’, their shadows are still all around us. Halloween, for example, bisects the fall equinox and the winter solstice. Similarly, May Day in the spring. The remaining axis (2/1 and 8/1) is a bit more problematic. Lammas Day, August 1, is celebrated in the Celtic and Jewish traditions. February 2 is celebrated in Celtic tradition as Imbolc (Lambs’ Day, also St. Brigid’s Day), in Christian tradition as Candlemas (the presentation of Jesus in the temple), and in secular tradition as Groundhog Day . You know the story. The groundhog emerges from his hole and assesses prospects for the coming weeks. If he sees his shadow, then it’s back underground for another six weeks of winter; but if he doesn’t, then get ready for an early spring. Call it what you will, February 2 is a pivot point in the celestial calendar. It occurs right in the middle of the darkest, coldest period in the North American almanac. It is a time when hope is in short supply. We need something to keep us going. (Teacher friends of mine say that February is by far the hardest month for class management .) Are we there yet? No, but we are halfway. February 2 marks the end of the end and the beginning of the beginning. If nothing else, it delivers a psychological boost. We’re desperate for good news. We hope that the Groundhog will deliver but, if not, we’ve still enjoyed his festival. 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 Fact to Fiction David Cowles Jul 14, 2021 Following up on my previous post, in Ancient Greece the concept of the individual as actor had not yet emerged. Human beings were the passive pawns of forces beyond their control, or even their ken. A late 20th century movie, “The Gods must be Crazy”, could easily have been set in Ancient Greece (rather than contemporary Africa). In fact, you could view Greek Mythology as the first Literature of the Absurd. Following up on my previous post, in Ancient Greece the concept of the individual as actor had not yet emerged. Human beings were the passive pawns of forces beyond their control, or even their ken. A late 20th century movie, “The Gods must be Crazy”, could easily have been set in Ancient Greece (rather than contemporary Africa). In fact, you could view Greek Mythology as the first Literature of the Absurd. As Greek mythology gradually transitioned from ‘fact’ to ‘fiction’, it was replaced by Roman pragmatism and the Christian ethic of personal responsibility. Thus began the Age of Reason, the culture of cause and effect. Not until the 20th century was this world view seriously challenged: by Artaud, Ionesco and Beckett (“Waiting for Godot”), by the short stories of Sartre and Camus, and by the novels of Alain Robbe-Grillet. 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 Football and Quantum Mechanics David Cowles “This is what we do on Sunday nights and Mondays during football season: we play 'what if' and 'if only'.” The scoreboard clock reads 00:00: Philadelphia Sunshine – 27; Buffalo Blizzard – 26. Game over? Yes…and no. Time has expired, but the Blizzard scored a touchdown on the last play of the game, so they still have a chance to add one or two PATs ( points after touchdown ) to their score. So, yes, the game is ‘over’ but we still don’t know who won. It’s like most 21 st century US presidential elections; better still, it’s like any Iowa Caucus! (Heck, they’re still looking for Paul Simon to tell him that he won the 1988 caucus after all; and as for the 2020 caucus, well, they’ve just stopped counting.) But I digress. According to the rules of the NFL, the Blizzard can kick a short field goal for one point; game tied! Overtime! Or they can run (or pass) the ball into the end zone for two points. All eyes are on the coach; will she go for one point, potentially sending the game into OT, or two, letting everything ride on just one play? Power outage! (Hey, it’s Buffalo; it snows!) Even cell service is disrupted. We won’t know the outcome of the game until the power comes back on…or until the newspaper gets delivered in the morning…or the morning after that. Et voilà , you have the longest game ever played…even though it ended hours ago! Did I mention, I have houseguests? Huge football fans – they invited themselves for a ‘sleepover’ so they could be ‘closer to the stadium’ where the game was to be played. Irony : Because of the forecast of heavy ‘lake effect snow’ in Buffalo, it was decided at the last minute to play the game in Philadelphia, where it’s always sunny; but I’m still stuck with my houseguests! Who knows for how long now! It could be worse. At least my guests and I can communicate; we all speak football fluently. Traditionally after every game, fans are required to spend 36 hours reflecting on why what happened, happened (WWHH). If only this … If it hadn’t been for that . Would-a, could-a, should-a. It’s what we do! Normally, this sort of retrospective is only possible once the outcome of the game has been determined. Simply put, how can we identify the causes of an outcome we don’t yet know? To salvage this hyperextended sleepover, we need to be able to talk football, but apparently, we can’t. Edwin Schrödinger to the rescue! A century ago, he placed the world’s most famous cat, alive and kicking, into a soundproof box – don’t worry, it was ventilated – and he set up his experimental apparatus so that the life or death of the cat would be determined by the occurrence, or not, of a totally unpredictable quantum event. Where was PETA? At any point in time the cat could be alive or dead; we don’t know. But instead of throwing up our hands, Schrödinger suggested we treat the cat as both alive and dead. Decades later, Richard Feynman applied this same technique to the entire field of quantum phenomena: he called his technique, “Sum over Histories." One of my visitors happened to be a quantum mechanic. He told us all about the Quantum Qat ; much obliged! He suggested we apply Schrödinger’s method to our ‘Football Game from Limbo’. First, assume that Buffalo has won the game; then reverse it and assume that Philly has prevailed. Here’s how it works: Assume Buffalo won! They won because their receiver made a one-handed, fingertip catch in the end zone, dragging his toes to stay in bounds. They won because Philly missed a chip shot field goal in the second period. They won because somehow the refs missed a Buffalo defender’s flagrant interference with a Philly pass receiver in the end zone. Now assume Philly won! They won because one of Buffalo’s touchdowns was brought back for a dubious ‘holding’ call. They won because Buffalo fumbled the ball on Philly’s five yard line. They won because Philly’s QB broke not one but two open field tackles to score on a busted play. This is what we do on Sunday nights and Mondays during football season: We play ‘what if’ and ‘if only’. It’s fun, and we’re confident that our collective wisdom somehow enriches the noosphere. So six events, each highly improbable in its own right, but each perfectly capable of determining the outcome of the game. If only we knew the outcome! All six of our ‘what if, if only’ events happened, there’s no changing that! But the meaning and significance of these events depends on the illusive outcome. Cosmology is like a good murder mystery: until we know who dunnit , we can’t separate the clues from the red herrings. We know the putative causes , we know their potential effects, but we can’t assess their actual impact on the outcome of the game because we don’t know that outcome…yet. Under these circumstances, can we call them ‘causes’ at all? All we can say for sure is that these six events preceded the game’s outcome. Post hoc ergo propter hoc? When results are known, events become causes; until then, they are just events. In and of itself, each of the six key events is complete and determined. What is not determined is the meaning or significance of those events. Games are fun to watch, and stats are fun to study, but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters, that has meaning and significance outside the game itself, is the final score. There are no style points in American football. Only the final score transcends the game itself. It is the outcome of the game that converts some events into causes and others into anecdotes. So are we prepared to say that causality proceeds backwards from the effect rather than forward from the cause as normally assumed? It’s tricky. Results do follow causes in time, but events do not become causes until the effects themselves are known. Hmm. All we can say is this: there are events and, eventually, there are outcomes, and we know that those outcomes are massively related to the events that preceded them. To know which events among those precedent events, if any, deserve to be ranked as ‘causes’, you’ll need to put on your canonical conical science ‘cap’…yup, the one with the propeller on top! That’s it. We need to go back in time, change the result of a single play and see if and how that change impacts the results. We would need to do that for each of our so-called ‘causes’. Then we would need to try changing two or more events at once, measuring the impact of each combination, and so on. We have identified six events that, we think, might have been determinative of the outcome of the game. There are six potential causes , which can occur in 64 possible combinations, but with only two possible outcomes (no ties allowed). The engineering is daunting but, assuming you’ve licked the time travel thing, and assuming you don’t require any juice from the Greater Buffalo Power Grid, the conceptual problem is fairly simple. So far… Events do not happen in isolation. Our six causes occur in a sequence. Flipping the first event (A) may impact or even determine the outcome of the game; it also potentially impacts the other five events. A change in the value of A may independently trigger changes in the values of B, C, D, E, and/or F. How so? Event A, however it turns out, impacts the crowd, impacts player attitudes – the famous momentum – and impacts both teams’ subsequent strategic moves (play calls). A change in the value of A may (or may not) trigger a change in the value of B and the other four events. But a change in the value of B may trigger independent changes in the values of C, D, E, and/or F. And so on… As you can see, by changing the value of one event, A, we’ve triggered an ontological avalanche . But is this even what we mean by causality ? The phenomenon we call a football game is an example of a ‘chaotic system’. That is not to say that events happen at random; they do not! In fact, as we have seen, the causal bonds are incredibly strong. But unfortunately, they are ultimately indecipherable. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men and all the computing power on Planet Earth cannot convert a football into a deterministic algorithm. A butterfly flaps its wings on the 30 yard line and Gronk drops a pass in the end zone. Causal, yes; predictable, no! Event chains are not linear algorithms, they are massively nonlinear webs. But for us to make sense of the game, to have something to talk about, we have to talk about ‘highlights,’ and we have to link those highlights in a more or less straight line to the final score (once we have a final score). Does anyone think for a moment that this so-called analysis has anything to do with reality? We selected six putative ‘causes’ of the game’s output. Why not eight, or just 4? In fact, in our nonlinear world, every single thing that happens during the game, on or off the field, may cause the outcome. We live in a non-linear world – that’s a fancy way of saying, our lives are chaotic. What a surprise! But in order to function in this world, we often find it desirable to treat it as though it were a lattice of parallel causes. We function, we have fun, and we get stuff done, but we are relying on a model that is only accidentally related to the real world. A better model of an NFL game exists…but you won’t like it. There are approximately 120 plays in a typical NFL game. Each one of those plays is causa sui . Nothing is causally dependent on anything else. There are correlations all over the place, but no causation. Each play is a reaction to everything that’s happened up to that point in the game: the score, the location of the ball, the injuries, the sequence of plays called and the results of those plays, etc. But no event is in any way ‘caused’ by those things. Every play is unique; every play evolves freely and in unanticipated ways. Last night I saw a player go for an interception, miss, fall to the ground, get up, run back and tackle the receiver. Write an algorithm for that! Each event arises in reaction to proximate history. The closest thing (and it’s not even close!) to ‘a cause of Event A’ is the sum of everything that happened in the game prior to A. So, post hoc ergo propter hoc is as good as it gets. Everything causes everything else! In a massively nonlinear system, sequence is the closest we can come to causality. Football is, indeed, a metaphor for life – perhaps that’s why we’re so invested in it. Today’s a new day. You are the OC (offensive coordinator) of your life. What play will you call? How well will you execute? How will you modify your ‘play’ in response to unanticipated events during the day? How will you feel about the result? Do your best, stay safe, and good luck! (Let us know how it all works out.) Previous Next

"ChatGPT can be smart, but it can never be holy. In being an e-being, precisely because its intelligence is artificial, it is necessarily alienated from the Divine. It can only be 'as if,' never truly as." < Back ChatGOD Steve Gimbel and Stephen Stern Ph.D. Sep 1, 2023 "ChatGPT can be smart, but it can never be holy. In being an e-being, precisely because its intelligence is artificial, it is necessarily alienated from the Divine. It can only be 'as if,' never truly as." A lawyer was recently exposed for using the artificially intelligent chatbot, ChatGPT, when the brief he submitted was discovered to be filled with precedents that do not exist. ChatGPT is capable of writing like us, incorporating the collective beliefs of humanity as they appear on the World Wide Web. The problem, of course, is that some of what is out there on the Net is not true, and ChatGPT is incapable of filtering out the false. The ability to mirror our linguistic capacity without our critical faculties is dangerous if we use it as the lawyer did, for matters of fact, but it is wonderful for other uses, specifically sparking spiritual insights. ChatGPT and its artificial brethren may make lousy lawyers, but they can be fantastic prophets. Traditionally, we conceive of reality as having three distinct levels. The objective domain is comprised of all the things of the world—tables, chairs, human bodies with complex eyes… all of the perceptible objects. Above the objective stands the metaphysical realm, consisting of that which lies beyond our ability to observe, including necessary entities like God. Below them both sits the subjective dimension, consisting of the lived inner experience of conscious beings like us. Philosophy and religion for centuries have been dogged by a persistent problem: if we are trapped in our minds, only having direct access to our inner thoughts and experiences, how do we know anything beyond our own thoughts? Couldn’t all of the objective and metaphysical entities just be figments of our imagination? Couldn’t we be nothing but brains in vats with false ideas pumped in by an evil demon? Can we know anything true about material reality and what supposedly resides beyond? American Pragmatism is the philosophical movement based on the central ideal that metaphysical truth is grossly overvalued. What matters is not what is necessarily true, but rather what has “cash value,” that is, what works in the world. Metaphysical truth is just so European. We Americans don’t care for the high-falutin’ abstract conceptual essences of things, but rather for the practical, the effective, the operational. We are in a world with things to do. Forget the abstruse, embrace the tools that actually get stuff done. So, when pragmatist William James looked at religion in his Varieties of Religious Experience, he eliminated the European concern for objective justification for religious belief and focused just on the experience itself. Get rid of the question about the validity of Aquinas’ and Anselm’s proofs for the existence of God and start from the undeniable fact that people have spiritual experiences that shape their lives. The question James examines is not whether these experiences are true or false, but rather one of meaning—what are these experiences like and what are the effects they have on people’s lives. Some religious experiences occur in moments of quiet solitude: when praying, meditating, or at random times when we are unexpectedly struck by something we cannot explain. But some come from interactions with people we seek out exactly for their ability to help us experience them—spiritual guides like Hindu yogis, Jewish tzaddikim, Buddhist sages, Muslim hakims, Zoroastrian magi, and Christian prophets. They lead us to epiphanies, to spiritual awakening. These insights are not mere facts describing the world, but rather experiences of appreciation and realization. It is not that we leave knowing something we did not know before, but rather experience a shift in our perspective. We still see what we saw, but now we see it differently; we see it more clearly, we see it as more interconnected, we understand it at a deeper level. ChatGPT as an e-being, as a virtual intelligence, is the ultimate pragmatist. The essence of its artificial existence has severed all connection to the true and false because it does not live in the material world of chairs, tables, and beer mugs where truth resides. ChatGPT is caught in the Web. Its “truths” are the beliefs expressed on the wide-open internet, where anything can and is said. It cares not for the reality beyond its reality but is built to do one thing and one thing only: figure out how language is used to accomplish human tasks and perform them without humans being involved. Human students write essays, so go write an essay without the student needing to do the class readings. Human journalists write stories about events, so go write stories without humans having to research them themselves. Human lawyers write briefs, so go write them without human lawyers needing to do anything but bill their clients. But now, consider this one: human spiritual guides create sermons that lead other humans to have cherished insights about religious matters. Figure out what sorts of word combinations lead to generating understanding and create new combinations that will have this effect. If we see the purpose of our spiritual teachers as making us think in a way that generates wisdom and allows us to live more meaningful lives, that is something a chatbot could actually do quite well. They can see which sorts of passages have the most influence on us and create new versions. They can figure out how we are inspired and continually inspire us. This strikes us as cheap, as dirty, as mere spiritual manipulation. We prize the wise because we believe that their ability to stir our souls comes from the fact that they have a superior connection to the Divine. They provide penetrating astuteness because they have access to the truth that we lack. They are sagacious because they are holy. ChatGPT can be smart, but it can never be holy. In being an e-being, precisely because its intelligence is artificial, it is necessarily alienated from the Divine. It can only be 'as if,' never truly as. And thus, it can only give us virtual facsimiles of wisdom, not the real deal. It is like the false prophet, the huckster pretending to be sacred when they are, in fact, profane in order to profit from being thought a prophet. ChatGPT is built precisely to be this sort of fraud, to be a fake human whose work we can substitute for our own, pretending to have done the necessary labor so that we can get the reward without breaking an intellectual sweat. But that is the opposite of what happens when we use it as an e-prophet. When we read an inspirational passage from ChatGPT and are truly inspired, gain spiritual insight, see the world differently, then we have actually done the real work. Regardless of the source of the passage, we really are changed. In this case, unlike with the plagiarizing lawyer or student, it is the effect, not the cause, that is important. William James’ brilliant philosophical move, transferring talk of religious experience out of the realm of the metaphysical and into the purview of psychology, is transformational. Religion is no longer about truth or faith but about feeling and human-lived experience. If we adopt the pragmatic perspective that inspires that move, then the fact is that the origin of enlightenment, the source of our new wisdom, the cause of our ability to see the world in a deeper and more interconnected fashion is irrelevant. All that matters is that we are changed for the better, not how we came to be changed. And the one thing that artificial intelligence coupled with big data is good at is figuring out how to get humans to predictably react to words. It can figure out what sort of disinformation will get us to vote certain ways and what sorts of triggers will get us to buy certain products. Yes, we ought to be very concerned about these misuses. But that is because these are matters based on facts. But if we are talking about images that inspire awe, jokes that make us laugh, or in this case, inspirational passages that give us insight, then the case is completely different. When it comes to the cases of generating human emotions, what matters are the emotions. If James is correct in moving our understanding of the religious into the realm of the experiential, then we should welcome the rise of our new e-prophets. Steve Gimbel is a Professor of Philosophy and affiliate of Jewish Studies at Gettysburg College. Gimbel has authored Einstein’s Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion & Isn’t That Clever: A Philosophy of Humor and Comedy ).” Dr. Stephen Stern is the.co-author with Dr. Steve Gimbel of Reclaiming the WIcked Son: Finding Judaism in Secular Jewish Philosophers, and the author of The Unbinding of Isaac: A Phenomenological Midrash of Genesis 22 , Associate Professor of Jewish Studies & Interdisciplinary Studies, and Chair of Jewish Studies at Gettysburg College. Return to our AI Issue Table of Contents Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? 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E. C. Argus < Back E. C. Argus Contributor E. C. Argus is a Catholic Christian citizen of planet Earth, engaged in a life-long quest to understand reality as a player in God’s great rescue project. She hopes her small takes on the greatest story ever told might bring light to someone’s darkness or help to lift a burden from someone’s bowed shoulders. She spends a lot of time outside, in awe of the complexity and beauty of the natural world. She makes a living creating and teaching the performing arts. Judas Taught Me the Beatitudes

< Back Peace at Any Price David Cowles Jun 29, 2023 “We cannot bring about a permanent peace while continually preparing for war, but unilateral disarmament is probably not the answer either.” Growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s, I was steeped in an ideology that is almost absent from global discourse today. I’m not talking about fascism or communism, still alive and well in some circles, but something ultimately much more radical: pacificism. The experience of two world wars with all their attendant horrors, culminating in the Holocaust, had apparently cured humanity of its taste for war. The dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan was the coup de grace . War had become unthinkable at last. The nations of the world came together and formed the United Nations (UN), which was to oversee the peaceful arbitration of all future disputes. Peace at last! Churchill and Truman ceded Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union rather than confront Stalin. England validated Gandhi’s strategy of non-violence by withdrawing from the Indian subcontinent. Colonial powers rapidly, and for the most part peacefully, dismantled their empires. A permanent homeland was created for Israel. A ‘Reign of Peace’ had replaced the ‘Thousand-Year Reich’ and the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’. What could possibly go wrong? It was the dawn of a much anticipated golden age – no matter that war was still raging in parts of Asia (e.g., Korea). It was a time of slogans: “Ban the Bomb,” “Peace at any Price,”and “Better Red than Dead.” Western politicians seriously proposed and campaigned on platforms of Unilateral Disarmament . The world was divided again, but this time it was ‘reactionary war mongers’ vs. ‘naïve utopian peaceniks’. The golden age of peace turned out to be more like a half-holiday. The Cold War, the nuclear arms race, ‘duck and cover’ drills, the Hungarian Revolution (1956), Castro’s Cuba, and the launch of Sputnik kept peace from breaking out. Then came Vietnam and the global revolution of the late 1960s. The peace movement became the anti-war movement, which in turn became Ho Chi Minh’s 5 th column in the US. In less than 20 years, war, supposedly unthinkable, had become the new normal…again. The idea of ‘waging peace’ did not begin on August 6, 1945, with the bombing of Hiroshima. It turns out to have much older roots. The Hebrew nation that Moses led out of Egypt conquered Jericho, the Gotham of its day, without a single Hebrew casualty (as far as we know). Joshua combined a revolutionary ideology with a network of spies and secret agents and God-scripted military tactics worthy of General Giap himself. Ian Fleming should have written a book about him (call him “J”). Once settled, the Hebrews did not build massive fortifications or raise a standing army like other nations. Nor did they choose to put their fate in the hands of warrior kings. In fact, the embryonic Hebrew state in Canaan was not a ‘government’ at all by our standards. It was a remarkable blend of theocracy, democracy, and anarchy. The books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel can be read as ‘founding documents’ for all the major political ideologies of the most recent quarter-millennium (1770s – 2020s). Speaking of quarter-millennia, the great social experiment we recognize as proto-Israel lasted approximately that long (c. 1300 – 1050 BCE). Like any historical period, the Age of Judges had its ups and downs. Without permanent institutions of government, a ruling class, a standing army, fortifications or naturally defensible borders, Israel was forced to rely on charismatic leaders (judges) who emerged on cue and ad hoc to defend the Holy Land. Scholars and theologians disagree as to whether the Mosaic revolution was intended to be national, regional, or global. Suffice to say that it succeeded nationally and influenced regionally but failed internationally. It would be another 2,000 years before the Kingdom of Joshua (albeit much altered) could reasonably be said to extend ‘to all corners of the known world’ (Christendom). As Trotsky would have predicted, had he lived in the time of the Judges, the people of Israel were not content with their unusual, if successful, constitution. Like all of us in our adolescent phase, the people of Israel wanted to ‘be like everyone else’ – they wanted a King, and so Samuel, the last of the Judges, inaugurated Saul to be Israel’s first king. How did that work out? Fast forward 500 years. Jerusalem has been sacked, and Israel’s most prominent citizens exiled to Babylon. Should’ve listened to YHWH! We cannot bring about a permanent peace while continually preparing for war, but unilateral disarmament is probably not the answer either. How about changing the conversation, focusing on things that would make war intrinsically unprofitable…and so ultimately unthinkable? Prosperity: the overall wealth of the people, justly distributed. Ecology: the overall health of the planet and reasonable protection for all its species. Progress: the rapid development but thoughtful deployment of new technologies. Discovery: the exploration of the universe by telescope, radio antennae, space probes, and space travel. No imaginable war could be consistent with any one of these priorities. Consider the war in Ukraine: how does it contribute anything positive toward any of these objectives from the perspective of any of the combatants? It is a classic lose-lose proposition. In fact, since WWII, all our wars, win or lose, have led to a similar result - no result at all. Korea is still Korea, Vietnam is still Vietnam, Cuba, Cuba, Latin America, Latin America, the Middle East, Northern Africa, and of course, Afghanistan. War has become as irrelevant as it is unthinkable. And yet… 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.