< Back Norman Lear Neo-Talmudic Sage of Democracy and Good Times Dr. Stephen Stern "Nobody wins democracy. It's not a possession, but a continuous process that requires everyone's participation." Norman Lear passed away at 101 after living a life that not only brought laughs to millions, but did so while dedicating himself to what Abraham Lincoln referred to as “the unfinished work of Democracy.” Here we show that not only is Lear’s work neo-Talmudic, prophetically midrashic, but that the way we frame him offers a different paradigm from which to expand understandings of democracy as more than the enlightened property based social contract understanding of community. A Young Jew Who Cared about Democracy Born in 1922, to a blue-collar Jewish family in New Haven, Connecticut, Lear’s father H.K.—he told people the “K” stood for King—brooked no dissent in the house. The kids dared not speak back and if his mother disagreed, she was told to “Stifle!” He had a hard time keeping down a job and always had a new scheme up his sleeve until he returned back from a trip to Oklahoma and was arrested for fraud. He was incarcerated until after Norman’s bar mitzvah. Lear’s mother and sister moved in with his grandparents, but Norman was circulated among relatives, never having a stable home. His escape was the radio, where he loved comedy, but found himself distressed by the antisemitic ravings of Father Charles Coughlin. Lear was a proud American, but knew that his Jewishness was leading to his exclusion. Graduating high school, Lear wanted to go to college, but after his release from incarceration, his father still had not been able to work steadily and the family had no money. So, Lear took a longshot and entered a contest sponsored by the American Legion with an essay entitled “The Constitution and Me” where he argued that his Jewishness did not keep him from being fully American, but rather informed his Americanness. He won a scholarship to Emerson College. He split his time there between the classroom and local burlesque house where he saw some of the greatest comics of the time including Phil Silvers and Red Buttons. Emerson being one of the nation’s leading dramatic schools, he was learning to act, direct, and write. He seemed destined for show business…and then came Hitler. When the war broke out, Lear, like so many other young Jewish men, felt the need to volunteer. He was a radio man and gunner in the army’s air force, flying many dangerous missions during the war. Indeed, at one point a bullet pierced his plane, killing the soldier next to him. In word and deed, Norman Lear was dedicated to promoting democracy and fighting fascism, hatred, and bigotry. Mostly In the Family After the war, he returned home, got married, and started working as a publicist. He moved to Los Angele, where he had a cousin whose husband, Ed Simmons, was trying to become a comedy writer. One night, the wives decided to go to the movies, leaving the guys home with the kids. After the little ones were in bed, Norman asked Ed what he was working on. It was a song parody. They had it done when their wives came home. Singing it for them, they thought it hilarious. Norman said they needed to sell it…now. So, they went downtown to a club where comedian Betsy Abbott was performing and between sets, approach her. She loved it and bought it on the spot for $25—a week’s salary for them. They decided to become a team. Writing a piece for Danny Thomas, they quickly became known in the industry and were picked up by Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Eventually, the team broke up and Ed went on to write for Carol Burnett. Norman wrote and started producing for a range of programs which allowed his family to live comfortably…and then he read an article in TV Guide. It was about a British program called “Til Death Do Us Part” about a conservative father and liberal son who argue about everything. It took Lear back to his own childhood and he knew he had to develop an American version. That, of course, became All in the Family, a groundbreaking show that Lear could not get picked up. It was too provocative, too edgy, too smart. He was discussing topics that serious news programs rarely touched on, much less a comedy. The network thought the seriousness would kill the laughs. It was run with a warning to audiences the first season, telling them about sensitive topics. It got off to a slow start, but where the public did not appreciate it, the critics did and after it won several Emmy’s, it became a hit. Archie Bunker was a blue-collar, bigot who hated liberals and minorities, but who loved his family including his wife Edith and his liberal daughter Gloria whose grad student husband Mike lived with them. The liberal Mike and the conservative Archie would fight nonstop, rehearsing exactly the debates that were happening around dinner tables across the country in the early 1970s. Archie’s frequent use of racial slurs alarmed the network and censors, but they brought an honesty and realism to the program which was also the pivot point around which the comedy revolved. There were no strawmen, no cartoon characters, but real people wrestling real problems. It changed television comedy forever. Instead of the screwball silliness of “Mr. Ed” or unrealistic domestic portrayals of “Father Knows Best,” we were seeing real America, warts and all. It was funny because it was true. But those laughs and that truth served Lear’s lifelong project of defending Democracy. A healthy democracy requires authentic debate, critical examination of a range of viewpoints. The American entertainment landscape was a falsely sterile ecosystem, devoid of real questions, new views, and authentic searching for solutions. Lear sought to change all that, to bring the town square, John Stuart Mill’s marketplace of ideas, to the small screen in everyone’s living room. Enlarging the Family Democracy requires freedom of speech because the truth will sometimes reside where we least expect it. We need to hear a wide range of perspectives and consider the insights they bring in order to keep from becoming trapped in our own cognitive bubble. Yet, America has a tragic history of silencing important voices. Lear’s love of democracy demanded that he increase the number of viewpoints in his comedy. He was not just going to look at white men on different sides of the political spectrum. When Edith’s outspoke feminist cousin Maude Findlay appeared in one episode, the reaction from fans was instant and overwhelming. She had to have her own show. Bea Arthur’s portrayal of the title character was fearless as it took on issues from substance abuse, to domestic violence, to suicide broke ground. The two-part episode in which Maude considers whether to get an abortion is one of the most important moments in television history. Lear replicated the All in the Family formula with the great Redd Foxx on Sanford and Son featuring junk dealer Fred Sanford in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. Maude’s maid Florida was another strong character who clearly needed her own program and Lear launched Good Times, featuring the first two-parent black family to be the focus of a television show in America. They lived in the notorious Cabrini-Green projects in Chicago and that led to an unexpected visit to Lear’s office by a group of Black Panthers who demanded to see the “White trashman,” Lear. They confronted him, asking why all of his black characters were poor when there were many well-off Blacks wealthier than most Whites. Lear knew they were right and knew what he had to do, another spin-off. The Bunkers’ next door neighbors, George and Louise Jefferson owned a chain of laundromats and the profits from them allowed them to be moving on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky. The Jeffersons, which was the longest-running series in television history was also the first to feature a mixed-race couple that shared a bed. Lear continued to work to increase the number of perspectives he could mainstream. One Day at a Time humanized single mothers in an age of increasing divorce. Hot l Baltimore featured a stable gay couple and sought to humanize sex workers. Remembering Father Coughlin’s antisemitism that tried to silence him, Lear demanded that no voices be silenced. Neo-Talmudism Talmudic thought begins with the Torah and its mitzvot, the commandments Jews must obey. These are the fixed points, the undeniable stakes that ground rabbinic Judaism. But as a text, the Torah and associated books of the Tanakh, require interpretation. There is an active cognitive human element that must be added in order to glean wisdom from the words. Jews may be the People of the Book, but the Book is not passively absorbed. Indeed, quite the opposite, it is actively explored and interpreted by scholars in a wide range of ways. Unlike Christianity in which different sects are distinguished by their interpretations and fight (sometimes violently) among themselves over whose understanding is the literal truth, for Jews, God’s truth is too big to fit in any one interpretation. All of the different approaches unlock the various truths contained in the text. It is not subjectivism where anything goes, as it is tied to the text, but it encourages a creative stance toward unraveling the wisdom hidden within the words. This approach is profound in marrying an absolutism—the text itself is venerated—with perspectivalism—the text gives rise to multiple understandings, all of which are considered meaningful. It allows for an intellectual version of a choir in which different voices sing different lines, but harmonize or contrast in order to create a bolder sound that no one could imagine when hearing only one voice. The profundity of this dialogic approach stands in opposition to the Hellenic-Christian tradition. In it there is one and only one truth. It is the goal. The entire process is teleological, driven with a single end in mind—achieving a grasp of that one and only truth. But the Talmudic tradition sees the value laying not in the endpoint, but in the process, not in the knowing, but in the learning. As a result the great rabbi and philosopher Emanuel Levinas argues that beneath the commitment to the mitzvot, there exists one meta-mitzvah—discussion shall never cease. If the Sacred Text is a ball, then you can think of the Hellenic-Christian approach as a game of soccer, each trying to possess the ball and score a goal, thereby defeating the others who want the ball for their own. But the rabbinic approach is instead a game of hacky-sack where the ball is hared amongst all, each doing with it what they will—some scholars making impressively fancy moves twisting in unexpected ways—while other rabbis are more straightforward in being simple in how they pass to someone else. But all of them are engaged in a collective endeavor, seeking to keep the process going as long as they can, all focused on the ball but passing it among themselves. We can keep the game, but replace the ball. By changing the Sacred Text, we are no longer being Talmudic. Instead, we are being what we call “neo-Talmudic.” One can find neo-Talmudism throughout intellectual history, where some sacred text—be it a work of art, a social institution, or an ideal—is considered sacrosanct, yet is kept alive by constant reinterpretation. In fact, Norman Lear’s television legacy is a perfect example. For him, the sacred text is the democratic experiment that is the American experience. What Lear gave to us was a great game in which the circle of players included those from a wide range of backgrounds. Each got their chance to play, to demonstrate their skills and style in working with it as they would. Everyone else would watch and laugh in appreciation until it was passed to another who would then get their turn. One might say that much of his work exercises TV prophetic midrash, an approach that doesn’t base democracy only on property rights, but directs us to understand it as never ending discussion. No one gets to own the democratic discussion in Lear’s work. Norman Lear’s great insight was that nobody wins democracy. The American democracy that Lear loved with all of his being was not an end, a goal, a thing to be possessed. He realized that it was a process, a happening that required all of us. The point was not assimilation, homogenization, the disappearance of difference. That is what Hitler wanted. Democracy was, as Levinas pointed out, an unceasing conversation. The discussion must never end. But the only way to keep it going, was to have all of us—especially those who have been kept out—to become active parts of it. Norman Lear made us laugh, but he also made us think, and in doing so tried to make more of us part of “us.” Co-written with Dr. Steven Gimbel of Gettysburg College’s Philosophy Department. Gimbel is the author of “Einstein’s Jewish Science,” a one time finalist for the national Jewish book award. Image: Photo of Carroll O'Connor as Archie Bunker from the television program All In the Family.. Credit: CBS This piece was republished without edits with permission from the author. Dr. Stephen Ster n has authored Reclaiming the Wicked Son: Finding Judaism in Secular Jewish Philosophers, and The Unbinding of Isaac: A Phenomenological Midrash of Genesis 22. His forthcoming book, The Chailight Zone will be out later this year, 2024. Stern is an Associate Professor of Jewish Studies & Interdisciplinary Studies, and Chair of Jewish Studies at Gettysburg College. Return to Summer 2024 Previous Next

< Back Unintentional Consequences David Cowles Jul 12, 2021 Since I was 12 years old, I have found Greek Mythology baffling. What exactly is the role of the gods? I told my grandchildren that the Greek gods are like our Super Heroes, but even that analogy didn’t totally satisfy me. Now, more than half a century later, I think I’ve figured it out (with a major assist from Oswald Spengler). In Ancient Greece it is the gods who act, not the people. Individuals go through the motions, but their intentions are meaningless and their actions entirely without effect. Since I was 12 years old, I have found Greek Mythology baffling. What exactly is the role of the gods? I told my grandchildren that the Greek gods are like our Super Heroes, but even that analogy didn’t totally satisfy me. Now, more than half a century later, I think I’ve figured it out (with a major assist from Oswald Spengler). In Ancient Greece it is the gods who act, not the people. Individuals go through the motions, but their intentions are meaningless and their actions entirely without effect. Consider Oedipus. He goes through some of the most horrible experiences imaginable. But in no sense were the actions that led to these consequences intentional. In our culture, no jury would convict him of any crime. Not so in Ancient Greece. There guilt is imputed to him even though he lacked intent, or even consciousness, of what he was doing. In much the same way as salvation is imputed to us by God, regardless of our actions, according to Luther and Calvin, so guilt is imputed in Greek Mythology. Consider Troy. It was not the soldiers who determined the ebbs and flows and ultimately the outcome of this 15 year war; it was the gods. Compare this to the contemporary story of Job. Job is punished gratuitously but guilt is never imputed to him (except by his “Consolers”). We never doubt that Job is a good and just man, not in any way deserving of his trials. We evaluate Job as we would anyone today. If only he had had access to “the Innocence Project”. Not so, Oedipus. Sophocles encourages us to consider him guilty. THAT is the tragedy: that a man can be judged guilty of a crime he did not intend and of which he was entirely unaware. 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.

“Right now, scientists and philosophers all over the world are engaged in the search for a ‘TOE’, a Theory of Everything…(but) we already have such a TOE.” < Back “Is God Dead?” David Cowles Oct 15, 2023 “Right now, scientists and philosophers all over the world are engaged in the search for a ‘TOE’, a Theory of Everything…(but) we already have such a TOE.” A grandchild recently surprised me with a question, “Isn’t God dead?” I hadn’t realized that Nietzsche’s tentacles stretched so far. Time Magazine posed the same question on its April 8, 1966, cover. At the time, the magazine was reporting on a handful of radical theologians who claimed to have invented “Death of God Theology” ( Theothanatology for short). In fact, first in The Gay Science (1882) and later and more famously in Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883), Nietzsche, the self-appointed cosmic medical examiner, had already pronounced: “God is dead!” No surprise really. As every superannuated hippie knows, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” Like a rebellious teenager taunting his parents, Nietzsche undoubtedly chose his worlds at least partly to shock his Judeo-Christian readers. Nonetheless, it is consistent with his overall philosophy. In the 1880s and then again in the 1960s, Christians were outraged. But why? Every year on Good Friday, Christians celebrate God’s death. Of course, ‘Nietzsche and the Death of God Theologians’ did not have Good Friday in mind when they coined their slogan. Still, their core concept should horrify no one. Today, we are asked to believe that the universe came to be, literally, in a flash. While we have well-developed theories of how the universe evolved, no one claims to know anything about why it came to be in the first place. So why is there something rather than nothing? Let’s start by looking at the world. What do we know about it? From one perspective, we see that it consists of discrete entities (objects, events) and relationships between them. From another perspective, we see that the world consists of qualities (colors, textures, values) and harmonies among them. Both perspectives are true. Entities differ from one other according to the various qualities they display, but qualities are not displayed in the absence of an entity. Without entities and qualities, there could be no Universe as we know it. So accounting for the Universe means accounting for entities (and their relationships) and qualities (and their harmonies). This is the project of Alfred North Whitehead’s Process Philosophy. To explain the world as we know it, Whitehead posited the existence of a single ‘super-entity’ that includes all qualities primordially and all entities consequently. Whitehead’s super-entity is the source of all the qualities that characterize the entities that constitute our world. It is every entity’s raison d’etre …its ‘subjective aim’, its purpose, its motivation, its goal, its destiny, and its fate. Stated differently, each entity defines itself in terms of its relation to the super-entity and in terms of its relation to its own unique, inherited Actual World. Guided by its ‘subjective aim’, each entity ‘decides’ which qualities it wishes to display and how it wishes to display them. (There is no requirement that consciousness be part of this process.) Each entity (including the super-entity) exhibits its qualities in a unique way which Whitehead called ‘subjective form’. The subjective aim conditions the subjective form, and together they constitute the entity’s identity. Entities share qualities, and shared qualities give Universe its solidarity. Every entity, of course, derives its qualities from the super-entity. Pursuing its subjective aim, each entity combines a variety of diverse qualities. The entity harmonizes those qualities so that they form an integrated, holistic pattern. That pattern is the ultimate expression of the entity’s identity and constitutes the entity’s unique objective contribution to the content of the Universe. Whitehead called this the entity’s ‘superject’. Some folks will recoil at the idea of a super-entity; the concept of God goes against their religion. They would be right to recoil if we were claiming any special ontological status for the super-entity, but we are not! This is the genius of Whitehead’s scheme: it conflates the sacred and the profane. The super-entity is an entity among entities. All the ‘rules’ that apply to ‘other entities’ apply equally to the super-entity. Our world is one world! In Whitehead’s terminology, the super-entity is not an exception to the rules, it is the paradigmatic expression of those rules. The super-entity is unique only in the sense that it combines all qualities and harmonizes them in the particular configuration we know as Summum Bonum . Whatever we say about the nature of the ‘other entities’, we need to be able to say about the super-entity as well. Likewise, whatever we say about the nature of the super-entity, we must be able to say about the ‘other entities’. At the end of the day, they are all first and foremost just entities, super or otherwise. Right now, scientists and philosophers all over the world are engaged in the search for a ‘TOE’, a Theory of Everything. The hope is that once we can explain all the fundamental features of Universe with a single, self-consistent theory, we will be able to resolve rather quickly the remaining paradoxes of physics and cosmology. Truth to tell, however, we already have such a TOE. It’s called Christianity . According to the Nicene Creed (325 & 381 CE), Christianity’s primary creedal document: God is the “maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible”. Jesus Christ is his “only begotten Son…true God from true God…consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made…By the Holy Spirit (he) was incarnate of the Virgin Mary…he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death and was buried…the Holy Spirit (is) the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.” This, of course, expresses the famous Christian doctrine of Trinity: one God, three Persons. But it also happens to be exactly what we’ve been talking about in this article. God the Father (Creator) is God-primordial, God the Son (Christ) is God-consequent, and God the Spirit (Holy Spirit) is God-superject. It is by the Father that we have a world (qualities), by the Son (Christ) that that world consists of entities ( logos ), and by the Spirit that we have ‘life’ (i.e., novelty, creativity, process). So is God, dead? You bet! And Jesus explains why (John 16): “If I do not go (die), the Advocate (Spirit) will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” Jesus Christ must ‘die’ so that his Spirit, God’s superject, may infuse the world - not by way of Creation or Incarnation but by Crucifixion (the “bloody sacrifice”), Resurrection, Eucharist (the “unbloody sacrifice”) and Pentecost. Jesus explains this in a parable (John 12: 24): “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” In ‘parable-speak’, the fruit is the superject of the seed. Without a super-entity to source qualities for other entities, there can be no world. But unless that super-entity is also an ‘other entity’ with its own unique superject, there is no way for those qualities to become part of the life of that world. So, if God eternal is also temporal (via Incarnation), then temporal entities (objects, events) must be eternal. Upon achieving Whitehead’s ‘satisfaction’, each entity contributes its unique superject, its ‘objective immortality’, to the ‘world without end’. Without an eternal dimension, the temporal world would auto-abort. Time is ‘perpetual perishing’ (entropy). On the other hand, without a temporal dimension, the eternal world would be devoid of content. The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Parmenides , (c. 475 BCE.), confronted this dilemma in his ontological poem, On Nature . In that poem, he describes the Way of Truth ( Aletheia ) and the Way of Appearance ( Doxa ). Re Aletheia , he writes: “What-is is ungenerated and imperishable, whole, single-limbed, steadfast and complete…it is, now, all together, one, continuous…Nor is it divisible since it is all alike…It is completed from every direction like the bulk of a well-rounded sphere…equal to itself from every direction…Thus coming to be is extinguished and perishing not to be heard of.” But re Doxa , he writes: “It has been named all things that mortals have established, trusting them to be true: to come to be and to perish, to be and not to be, to shift place and to exchange bright color…Everywhere the same as itself, but not the same as the other…Thus according to belief, these things were born and now are, and hereafter, having grown from this, they will come to an end.” For almost 2,500 years, philosophers (beginning with Plato) have debated the meaning of Parmenides’ paradox. Is he outlining a nihilist philosophy a la Nietzsche? Or does his model prefigure the Christian cosmology of John and Paul? In either event, Parmenides clearly understood the problem: a purely eternal world must be featureless, while a purely temporal world must self-destruct. But back to our story. Primordially, all qualities exist in God in perfect harmony, no conflicts! So consequently, all entities must exist in God in perfect harmony. All conflicts must be resolved into contrasts, and all contrasts must contribute to God’s harmony. Every temporal entity is initially responsible for its own subjective aim, and ultimately responsible for its own superject. Pursuant to that aim, each appropriates the combination of qualities that it wishes to exhibit and determines how it wishes to exhibit them to achieve satisfaction, its superject. That is our work and when it is done, God takes over. It is God who harmonizes each entity’s superject, including his own, with the superjects of every other entity. This is what we mean by Grace. As a result of Grace, every entity shares in eternal life. That is what we mean by Salvation. Finally, our participation in the Consequent Nature of God is what we mean by the Kingdom of Heaven. From our earliest musings, humans have been confronted with the task of explaining how it is that there is a world and what purpose that world has, if any. Christian theology answers those questions. It offers a comprehensive model…and the model works. But could there be other, non-Christian, atheistic solutions? Aren’t there secular models that accomplish the same thing? First, as far as I know, there are not! But second, and much more importantly , any such model would have to account for the presence of qualities (Values) and entities (Creation). It would have to account for the occurrence of solidarity and novelty. It would have to bridge temporality with eternity. Would such a model be anything other than‘ Christianity by another name ’. So now I can answer my grandchild: “God is not dead, And it’s a good thing too, Or there’d be no me… And there’d be no you.” David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Harvest Issue 2023 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. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Grace Krzenski Young Writer Winner, Winter 2023 Grace Krzenski is a junior at Cabrini High School, New Orleans, where she enjoys studying science and English. Grace is on the varsity Cabrini basketball team, and in her spare time enjoys reading, playing basketball, and spending time with family and friends. She is looking forward to attending college somewhere in the southern states to study marine biology. Integrity vs. Life

< Back The Future of Art in the Age of AI David Cowles Nov 21, 2024 “There is no civilization without novelty and no novelty without art." “A poem should not mean but be.” (Archibald MacLeish) In our lingua-centric culture, there is a tendency to want to translate every meaningful experience into a well-formed string of words (sentence). “What does this poem/painting/partita mean ? What did we learn from this experience?” This tendency is exacerbated by pedagogues who tell us that something is real only to the extent that it can be represented in language. In reality, some aspects of human experience lend themselves to linguistic representation and others don’t. When language functions as Representation we call it prosaic ; when it functions as Art, we call it poetic . Confusion stems from the fact that language plays a dual role. On the one hand, it is our culturally chosen medium of explication; on the other, it is its own artistic medium. In its purest form, we call ‘linguistic art’, poetry (or verse ). But poetic language drives other art forms as well: for example, drama and choral music. Further, the poetic use of language can transform even the driest explication into an artistic masterpiece ( Moby Dick ). Imagine you are the new Schopenhauer. Your magnum opus might be titled, “The World as Art and Representation”. Good news! You can skip the writing part. Everything you need to say is in the title. To understand the significance of this duality, we need to turn to Heidegger…of course! He defines Art as that which shows you something new about the world. Language can do that (poetry)…but so can music, painting, dance, etc. What can we say about the world? It is ever new (Art) and always the same (Representation). Representation must then be the antithesis of Art. One can only ‘represent’ what is already conceived, so what is ‘ready for representation’ is never new and therefore cannot be Art. A ‘poem’ cannot mean anything…and still be a poem! Together, Art and Representation function as Penrose Tiles. They perfectly template one another and together they can cover an indefinitely large surface without any pattern ever repeating. It is fun to be alive after all! (Thank you, Roger) But back to MacLeish. A poem should not mean but be. What would be an example of a poem that means something? Verse that could be translated into another medium (e.g. prose) with no appreciable loss of content (information). Consider the fine art of translation. A poem that is merely ‘translated’, conserving its denotative content, is no longer a poem. But in the hands of an Ezra Pound or a Seamus Heaney a poem can be translated into another poem with its own fresh ‘aha moments’. Recently, I received a newsletter from Rob Howard, Founder of Innovating. He was discussing AI generated art in general and Coca-Cola's AI-generated Christmas ad in particular. Is AI generated ‘art’ any good? Can it be? Is it even Art? How will AI impact the broader Art world ? His questions answer themselves. He writes, “Anyone can now make nearly Hollywood-quality video with a text prompt!” A text prompt! No drawing, no filming, no voice over. And quality? Check! But Art, no! An AI generated ‘painting’ can never, ever be Art because it merely reproduces information that pre-existed in the prompt. Concept precedes execution. Therefore, nothing new can be attributed to the art work itself. If the execution of all ‘works of art’ in all media (image, sound, etc.) is subcontracted to AI Bots, at least as we know them today, then we will be condemning ourselves to the be world’s first ‘art-free civilization’, which is an oxymoron. Or are we? The fact that novelty will no longer emerge through the execution of ‘a work of art’ does not preclude the possibility that new things will happen, new discoveries be made, or that people will experience what’s happening in new ways. Today, painters are translating their visual ideas into code (i.e. prompts); likewise composers with their musical thoughts. This artificial state-of-affairs cannot continue for long though. Soon artists will have to learn to think, and create, in code. Prompts will be the new medium of artistic expression, and all artists will need to learn to think in code. Have you ever mastered a foreign language? For the longest time, you translate what you hear back into your mother tongue; likewise, you compose your answers in English before you deliver them in perfect French. Then one day you don’t. You can speak and hear without the need of an internal translator. You think in French now. (You, not me, quelle domage !) On the other hand, my AI Bots are innately multilingual. In fact, if I type more than a few French words in a row, my Bots assume I’ve renounced my American citizenship and relocated to the EU. Silly Bots! Now I’ll need to spend my time persuading them that I’m still the same old Okie from Muskogee (Merle Haggard). Or perhaps I’m just feeling carbon entitled . I don’t mean to minimize the situation. Moving from finger paints and the recorder to ‘code castles in the air’ will not be an easy transition. We will need a new mindset, and it will require a huge epigenetic adaptation. But the alternative is far more daunting: the disappearance of human culture and civilization as we know it…because there is no civilization without novelty and no novelty without Art. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. < Back Kandinsky: The Painter of Other Worlds David Cowles Oct 15, 2022 The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. All art forms have a fascination with alterity , the idea of the other. Many 20th century painters explored this idea in depth. Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944), however, stands out as a painter who devoted his entire career to the exploration of other worlds, and who developed a tool kit and a language to help us continue that exploration. It’s 1910 and a young Russian, Wassily Kandinsky, is starting to paint. Even in his earliest works, Kandinsky explores worlds that differ from the world of ordinary experience. Part dream, part hallucination, part fantasy, Kandinsky’s early works preserve the identity of the subject and the structure of the ground, but he makes the two nearly interchangeable, and he invests the whole with a dynamism, a palette and a perspective unlike anything we would ever call mundane . The name of a 1911 work, Romantic Landscape , sums up this early period. As Kandinsky’s work matured, his landscapes became more abstract, and the relationship of colors and forms became the real subject of his painting. Then in 1913, in Painting with White Border , Kandinsky experimented with a new technique. He situated his imagined world within another, wider world by means of a “white border.” While he is not yet exploring substructural worlds, he is moving conceptually toward the recognition that the world of subject-object, space-time, and sense perception is situated in a much broader cosmos. Later that same year, Kandinsky began to paint canvases without any representational features. Light Picture and Black Lines begin a new era. No longer is Kandinsky abstracting from the world of everyday experience and reformatting that world according to a new logic and a new aesthetic; now he is creating (or unveiling, aletheia ) entirely novel worlds via paint. In 1919, he painted White Oval , a rounded rhombus containing an entire physics of fanciful forms, situated within a dark, vague border that suggests nearly empty space. This world is like a womb, self-contained within the larger body aka ’reality’. Modern cosmologists might recognize this as a bubble universe, an apparently self-contained and finite universe that is really just one “bubble” in a foam of bubbles (all universes, similar or not so similar to our own). During this period, Kandinsky regularly organizes paintings around irregular geometric shapes. For example, Red Oval (1920) depicts what cosmologists might call a brane, a space situated within a higher dimensionality. In Red Oval , all the inhabitants link to the brane (or to something else that links to the brane). Some objects link to the brane at one end point only, others at both end points; does this remind you of today’s strings ? Objects may equally well link to either side of the brane, or they may run through the brane like arrows. All the activity in this world takes place in or just above/below this brane. Compared to the higher dimensional universe in which it is situated, the brane is something like a pancake. Beginning in 1922, Kandinsky’s paintings show the influence of the Bauhaus. However, he incorporates that influence into his own style. In the Black Square (1923), he inserts the architectural forms of Bauhaus into his brane-world. During this period, Kandinsky’s painting becomes increasingly dynamic, and he begins to explore motion as a “thing in itself.” In Yellow Accompaniment and One Center (1924) the subject of the piece is dynamics. The colors, forms, and constructed objects just serve to make otherwise invisible ‘motion’ visible. Remember Zeno’s Paradox , the work of an early Greek philosopher of the same name. Zeno demonstrates that the phenomenon of motion is not possible in any world where the axioms of arithmetic apply. Zeno’s radical conclusion, attacked anew by each generation of mathematicians and logicians, remains unrefuted…2,500 years later. Kandinsky seems to accept both Zeno’s conclusion and the challenge it poses. Kandinsky’s canvasses illustrate the reality of motion, but only in worlds where the axioms of arithmetic do not hold. Using paint, Kandinsky offers us a syllogism: (1) Motion can only be real in a world where the rules of arithmetic do not hold; (2) Motion is real; therefore, (3) the rules of arithmetic do not hold. (I know a bunch of third graders who will be very happy to hear this news!) Accent in Pink (1926), for example, depicts a brane-world, inhabited not by shapes but by bursts, eruptions of color. Kandinsky paints these bursts in cross-sections so that the viewer actually sees the eruptions in process. He anticipated by decades the concept of a ‘block universe’ where time consists of a sequence of slices off the block. Can you say, “Cheese?” Music had a profound influence on Kandinsky, and his works began to take on the quality of musical composition rather than architecture. At the same time, Kandinsky began to explore the semantic nature of artistic forms. In Levels (1929), Kandinsky creates a hieroglyphic language, a kind of Rosetta Stone, and adds a grid to help the “reader” decipher the “text.” Striped (1934) and Delicate Accents (1935) continue this trend, but the apex of this period may be Succession (1935), which presents symbols on a grid reminiscent of musical notation. In the context of other worlds, Kandinsky is here exploring the notion known today as “It from Bit” (Wheeler). Reality is information. It is essentially a code; perceptions are merely clues to that code. But it is with Movement 1 (1935) that Kandinsky's embrace of other-world cosmology ripens fully . This canvas presents a fantastic assemblage of branes, self-contained mini-verses, hieroglyphs and geometric forms of varying dimensionality linked by strange, string-like objects running throughout. From 1935 on, Kandinsky’s works are predominantly characterized by these elements. Until recently, philosophers exploring the idea of ‘other worlds’ were limited by the notion that any viable world must be self-consistent. Beginning with Movement 1 , Kandinsky rejects that assumption. After all, Emerson wrote that “…Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” and literally no one has ever accused Kandinsky of having a ‘little mind.’ Moving forward, Dominant Curve (1936) presents a chaotic variety of topologies, somehow co-existing harmoniously on the representational plane of a canvas. It suggests that a multiplicity of inconsistent realities may lie beneath the more routine world we accept as real. Those of us raised on Heisenberg, Godel, Bell, and Feynman will not find any of this the least bit surprising. Might it be that the treasured consistency we claim to find in our world is put there by us? Grouping (1937) continues to explore this theme; it explicitly shows these incongruous regions co-existing and in some strange way, perhaps even using that incongruity to reinforce one another. Could it be the case that meta-reality is the consistent interaction of many worlds, at least some of which lack internal consistency? Capricious Forms (1937) situates a foreground of perpetually moving and morphing organic entities in a static, rectilinear background. Kandinsky is using the elements of his multi-verse to construct a universe that reminds us, at least in some ways, of our familiar world. He may be suggesting that our rectilinear world is emergent from, or a special case of, this sub-structural multiverse. All of which leads naturally to Thirty , another 1937 piece, that suggests 30 unique solutions, some rectilinear, some organic, some musical, some hieroglyphic to the basic problems of ontology. Like M Theory, Thirty suggests that there may be more than one right answer to the riddle of cosmology. Finally, Around the Circle (1940) begins with a somewhat typical assemblage of unexpected ontological entities, all approximately coplanar. But then it adds a window which suggests a sort of “wormhole,” an escape into another far-off multiverse which is itself a collection of varied, yet perhaps subtly different, entities. From Kandinsky’s window, one can see into Carroll’s Looking-glass World. With this work, Kandinsky suggests that dimensional democracy may not only exist within worlds but also between worlds; the process of deconstructing classical reality could turn out to be infinitely regressive. Kandinsky avoids the temptation to offer his own systematic ontology; that is not the job of the artist. The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. This Kandinsky did, brilliantly! At one time, it was in vogue to classify worlds as “real” or “imaginary.” For many centuries, Parmenides' “Way of Seeming” was misunderstood as an illusion compared to his eminently real “Way of Truth.” But that facile way of thinking won’t cut it anymore! Today, we know that we have to take all worlds into account in order to understand the universe. As we continue on this intellectual journey, we would be well advised to return to Kandinsky for inspiration. His paintings provide us with rich and varied models of alterity . Image: Movement I. (1935). Wassily Kandinsky . Public Domain David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall '22 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Deus Absconditus David Cowles Nov 22, 2022 “First, pay the cancellation fee and cash in your first-class ticket to Lhasa.” The Intellectual History of the West is a protracted game of hide-and-seek: God hides, we seek. The game can end in only one of three ways: Eureka! I found Him (or at least, I see his reflection). (Theism) I can’t find him; there is no God! (Atheism) I haven’t found him yet . I’m still looking, but the bartender just gave ‘last call’. (Agnosticism) God has not ‘absconded’; he is hiding, but he’s hiding in plain sight. God is here, right here, right under our noses. Some ‘see’ him; some don’t. God is like that, he’s a Gestalt. Magic says, “ Now you see it, now you don’t!” Theology says, “ Either you see it, or you don’t!” What is it that I’m supposed to see? Value. Do you see ‘value’ (e.g., beauty, truth, justice) in people, in things, in events? That’s God, or if you prefer, the reflection of God. It’s true, no one can see God face-to-face, but if I can see God’s reflection in the cosmic mirror, isn’t that just as good? Either way, I know he’s there. What kid has not called out, “I found you, I see your reflection in the mirror?” You see him…or you don’t. If you do see him, worse luck, because you can’t unsee him. Once seen, always seen! When you open your eyes in the morning, God. When you’re in your office, there he is. Watching TV, he’s there. Even as you slide into the dream world at the end of your day…et voilà! Every time you make a value judgment, you invoke God. The reflection of God in the world is what we call ‘value’. Whenever you experience ‘value’ in some object or event, if you do , you’re seeing God’s reflection. Everything has value. To be is to have value, but value varies. When you say that something is ‘better’ than something else, you’re seeing God’s reflection more clearly in the one than the other. Better is a function of Good and Good is God ! Everything is good because everything reflects God. But “now we see (God) through a glass, darkly” (I Cor. 13:12). The Good that is God is more faithfully reflected on some surfaces than on others. We may surmise that Mother Theresa better reflects God than Josef Stalin. May we turn to physics for an analogy? Just an analogy . God is the Higgs Boson of value (God : good :: Higgs : mass). If you like, God is ‘the cosmic field’ that imbues all things with value, just as the Higgs is a field that imbues some things with mass. To be is to have value, and God is the sole source of value, so to have value is to reflect God. Nietzsche did not believe in God, and he was intellectually consistent about it; he did not believe in value either. According to the ‘standard model’, all mass is attributable to the Higgs Boson. According to Judeo-Christian theology, all value is attributable to God. But just as some particles are ‘heavier’ than others, so some experiences are ‘better’ than others. “… On earth as it is in heaven.” In heaven everything is - fully, completely, perfectly. And on earth? On earth, things are generally not full, complete, or perfect. Heaven is a permanent state of Being ; earth is a perpetual process of Becoming …and Perishing . Either way, God is there. For believers, God is a supernova; his light floods the cosmos. Once you see it, you can’t miss it. For non-believers, he is a black hole. You can’t ever ‘see’ a black hole, but you are subject to its persistent gravitational pull anyway. Seeing may be believing, but believing is also seeing. Where must I go (nowhere), what must I do (nothing), to see this supernova? First, pay the cancellation fee and cash in your first-class ticket to Lhasa; then make your spouse happy: tear down the dilapidated shed in the backyard that was ‘someday’ going to be your hermit’s cell. Then, “Do not move, let the wind speak, that is paradise.” – Ezra Pound; or “Be empirical, look!” – The Beatles. Image: Flaring Black Hole Artist Concept: This artist concept illustrates what the flaring black hole called GX 339-4 might look like. Infrared observations from NASA WISE reveal the best information yet on the chaotic and extreme environments of this black hole jets. Secondary Creator Credit: NASA Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! 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 Covid 20 David Cowles So we were told that COVID-19 came from bats. By the summer of 2020, it should have been obvious that this was wrong. COVID-19 has behaved in some very unique ways that most probably reflect the effects of ‘human engineering’. Now the scientific consensus is shifting. So we were told that COVID-19 came from bats. By the summer of 2020, it should have been obvious that this was wrong. COVID-19 has behaved in some very unique ways that most probably reflect the effects of ‘human engineering’. Now the scientific consensus is shifting. Even Fauci says that the virus may have leaked from the Wuhan lab and President Biden, to his credit, is aggressively pursuing that hypothesis. If correct, it means that the Chinese are working on biological weapons they could use against the US and other countries in the future. If the uncompleted COVID virus did this much damage, think of what havoc the completed version might bring. Could COVID-20 be around the corner? Previous Next

“The Gospel of Mark is no biography…It’s a call to action, a manifesto, a How-To manual for non-violent guerilla warriors everywhere, 1st century…or 21st.” < Back Marx vs. Mark David Cowles Apr 15, 2024 “The Gospel of Mark is no biography…It’s a call to action, a manifesto, a How-To manual for non-violent guerilla warriors everywhere, 1st century…or 21st.” The New Testament Gospels of Matthew and Luke are recognizable as biographies of Jesus. We may be forgiven for expecting the same from the shorter and darker Gospel tucked in between them. I mean, of course, the underappreciated Gospel of Mark. Mark was almost certainly the first Gospel written and many of the episodes recounted in Mark also appear in Matthew and Luke. It is very likely that the authors of these two later Gospels had prior knowledge of Mark’s version of events. The author of Mark is believed to have been a close confidant of Peter, lending additional authenticity to his account. For these and other reasons, I am inclined to view Mark as the most literal account of the goings-on in Israel c. 30 CE. The Gospel of Mark is no biography, not even by ancient standards! It is a call to action, a manifesto, a How-To manual for non-violent guerilla warriors everywhere, 1st century…or 21st. Looking for some modern parallels? Lenin’s What is to be Done , Giap’s People’s Army, People's War , Hoffman’s Revolution for the Hell of it . After a very brief intro, Mark kicks off with “After John (the Baptist) had been arrested…” John’s arrest and eventual beheading by Herod is a pivotal moment in the history of the ‘Good News (Gospel) Movement’. (Mark 1: 14) Think Kent State, Ruby Ridge, and Waco. Jesus had previously been anointed by John (and the Holy Spirit) to be his ‘successor’ (1: 9-11). Following that baptism, Jesus retreated to the desert for 40 days of introspection, prayer, and preparation. Think Fidel Castro in Oriente Province. “Last chance to back out, Jesus. Put your great talents to constructive use. Accumulate wealth and power, and do good if you must, but do so within the system.” We’ve all been there ! Thanks, but no thanks! So, “…Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the Gospel of God: ‘The time has come; the kingdom of God is upon you…’” And with that, Jesus began to build his spiritual army, beginning with Andrew, Peter, and the Sons of Thunder, James and John. (1: 14–20) You cannot build a successful para-military movement with words alone. To win the adherence of the people, you must demonstrate concretely what life would be like under your proposed ‘new world order’. The Black Panthers did this with their Breakfast Program in the 1960’s. Apocalypse Now (Director’s Cut) shows local schools run by the Viet Cong and highlights the rich civic life in areas under their control. So, Jesus and his still tiny band of followers went throughout Galilee performing good works: teaching, counseling the afflicted (exorcism), and treating the sick. (1: 21-26) The life of a guerilla leader is a double edged sword. On the one hand, you cannot build a successful revolutionary movement without intimate contact with the people you hope to serve. On the other hand, such contact brings with it security risks. Almost immediately, Jesus learns to live on the run. After a disastrous campaign rollout in the synagogue at Capernaum, he hides in the home of Andrew and Peter and meets with the people of the area only after dark. (1: 29 – 34) Sidebar : Mark doesn’t tell us what happened at Capernaum, but we know from other sources that Jesus proclaimed a Jubilee , i.e., a total redistribution of productive property (e.g. farmland), in accordance with a mandate ( mitzvah ) found in Torah (Leviticus 25: 10). It is often said that Social Security is the ‘third rail of American politics’: touch it and you die! Jubilee might be the 3rd rail in 1st century Israel. Next day, Jesus “…got up and went out to a lonely spot and remained there in prayer,” but to no avail. Peter finds him and warns, “They are all looking for you.” So Jesus decides, “Let us move to the country towns in the neighborhood…So all through Galilee he went, preaching in the synagogues and casting out the devils.” (1: 35 - 39) At that time, Jesus cured a leper. Mindful of the risk involved, he swore his beneficiary to strict secrecy, “Be sure you say nothing to anybody.” (1: 44) Dilemma : it’s all well and good to perform good works under the cloak of secrecy…but then how do you build a popular movement? Jesus hits upon a middle course: “Go, show yourself to the priest.” But “…The man went out and made the whole story public; he spread it far and wide until Jesus could not show himself in any town…” (1: 45) Unable to execute the public campaign he’d originally planned, Jesus turns to the task of building out his cadre, beginning with Levi son of Alphaeus (2: 14). “He then went up into the hill country and called the men he wanted… He appointed 12 as his companions, whom he would send out to proclaim the Gospel…” (3: 14) And he continued to teach: “No one puts new wine (revolution) into old wine skins (institutions); if he does, the wine will burst the skins and then wine and skins are both lost.” (2: 22) So much for trying to work within the system. “Fresh skins for fresh wine!” Our first bumper sticker. Next comes what is perhaps the most human scene in all of scripture. When you read about a great teacher or a fierce revolutionary, a grown man to boot, you don’t imagine his mother dragging him home like a naughty 8 year old to eat his supper: “He entered a house; and once more such a crowd gathered around them that they had no chance to eat. When his family heard of this, they set out to take charge of him; for people were saying he was out of his mind.” (3: 20-21) After this, it’s no surprise that Jesus was forever belittled by his former neighbors whenever he returned home: “Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and the brother (or cousin) of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” (6: 3) It is no wonder then that “he could work no miracles there.” (6: 5) Of course, Jesus’ relationship with his family was evolving. His mother was with him at the foot of the Cross and she played an important role in the Good News Movement. Jesus’ ‘brother’, James, became the leader of the Church in Jerusalem. Like any persecuted revolutionary, Jesus learned to communicate with his followers via a sort of code. We call these teachings parables . It turned out to be a brilliant strategy. It’s hard to find evidence of treason or blasphemy when a man is simply telling homespun tales of everyday life: a sower of seeds, a bedside lamp, a mustard seed. (4: 4-34) Think Prairie Home Companion . Over time his inner circle grew to understand the full significance of these coded messages. Sidebar : The traditional interpretation, that the use of parables was Jesus’ way of adapting his message to the sophistication level of his audience, is ridiculous…not to say chauvinistic. Jesus’ followers were thoroughly familiar with OT scripture and perfectly capable of engaging in theological speculation. Obviously, Jesus used the parable form for security reasons. While Jesus’ message was encrypted, his good deeds were not. Even as he honed his revolutionary skills, Jesus and his apostles continued to do good works throughout the countryside. It is important to note that according to Mark, Jesus never leaves his ‘home base’ of Galilee, except to flee north to Lebanon, Syria, and the Trans-Jordan. Never that is until his final push into Saigon…I mean Jerusalem. Mark defines Jesus-stan as Galilee, Southern Lebanon, the Golan, the Decapolis (10 nearby Greek cities), and the East Bank of the Jordan. Notably missing: Judea and Jerusalem. YHWH didn’t raise no fool! Now it's time to put this thing into 2nd gear: Jesus sends his 12 apostles in pairs to perform good works and to proclaim the Gospel. His instructions are telling: “When you are admitted to a house…stay there until you leave those parts.” In other words, keep a low profile; above all, do nothing to call attention to yourselves. By all accounts, the apostles’ mission was a great success, so great that when they rejoined Jesus, the crowds were even larger than before. To escape the press, Jesus frequently retreated onto the Sea of Galilee in a boat. Then he and his apostles would show up first here, then there, all along the shore, like 21st century ‘pop-up’ marketers. We’re I handling Jesus’ PR, I might call them “Wisdom Raids!” These hit and run tactics provided some temporary relief, but eventually, like Cornwallis at Yorktown, Jesus finds himself ‘trapped’ by the crowd. It’s coming at nightfall, the people have not eaten, and the apostles are understandably concerned. “Give them something to eat yourselves,” Jesus counsels. So they feed 5,000 with just 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish; and to make the point even clearer, they collect 12 large baskets of scraps at the end of the meal. No one went hungry! The significance of the multiplication of loaves and fishes cannot be overstated. It is the only pre-resurrection miracle reported in all 4 Gospels. In fact, a second, similar but not identical, story appears in both Mark and Matthew. 4 Gospels, 6 ‘multiplications’. The Evangelists clearly saw the Multiplication as a mission-defining moment, on a par with Transfiguration, Transubstantiation, and Resurrection, but we can only guess at how they understood it. Three things, I think, can be said with certainty: Feeding the masses is a paradigmatic revolutionary act. It provides a concrete foretaste of the kingdom to come. (“Give us this day our daily bread.”) The details of the story have symbolic significance. Jesus fed the crowd with 7 pieces of food (the Sabbath #), he fed them in groups of 50 (the Jubilee #), and he gathered the scraps into 12 baskets (the Zodiac #...and the # of the tribes of Israel). All concerned, Jesus, the apostles, and the evangelists, understood this as heralding a new phase in Jesus’ ministry. Where acts of charity had previously been focused on individual beneficiaries and performed in relative secrecy, now Jesus was feeding a huge crowd, and he was doing so in full public view. It’s happening! So, the establishment turned up the heat. A cadre of Pharisees and Doctors of Law ( aka Scribes) were dispatched from Jerusalem to gather evidence against this Jesus. So, “he left that place and went into the territory of Tyre. He found a house to stay in and would have liked to remain unrecognized.” (7: 24) How could anyone have missed this ? Tyre is not ‘down the road’ from Galilee; it’s a three-day journey…minimum. It’s in Lebanon for crying out loud! Clearly, Jesus is on the run; he’s hiding out! When Jesus left Tyre, he did not make a bee line for Galilee. We can only speculate as to his reasons. Instead, he goes in the exact opposite direction, north toward Sidon and then east through the (Greek speaking) Decapolis. Essentially, he circles Galilee…from a very safe distance…and he re enters from the East. Master tactician! He’s outflanked his enemies. We don’t know how long Jesus was absent from Galilee, but when he returns, it’s clear that little has changed in his absence. He is immediately faced with another hungry crowd and with nettlesome Pharisees pressing him for a sign . Again, Jesus feeds the crowd, this time using a different ratio of loaves and baskets. Clearly, the numerology is symbolic…and significant; but if you’re struggling to crack the code, take heart - the apostles didn’t have a clue either…much to Jesus’ consternation: “‘Do you still not understand? Are your minds closed? You have eyes: can you not see? You have ears: can you not hear? Have you forgotten? When I broke the 5 loaves among the 5,000, how many basketfuls of scraps did you pick up?’ ’12,’ they said. ‘And how many when I broke the 7 loaves among the 4,000?’ They answered, ‘7.’ He said, ‘Do you still not understand?’” (8: 17-21) Was Jesus talking to his apostles…or to us? On the first day of his public ministry, Jesus proclaimed a Jubilee at the synagogue in Capernaum. It failed…and he was very nearly killed. For the next 3 years, Jesus’ message never changed (Jubilee now!); but his strategy did. Like Joshua (Jos. 6), Jesus lived out his message in concrete deeds and communicated that message symbolically, even liturgically. Again, Jesus takes his band north, to the region around Caesarea Philippi. There is no record of Jesus entering the city; probably due to security concerns, he confined his activity to the surrounding villages. But Jesus clearly knew that he could not remain north of Galilee forever, playing cat and mouse indefinitely; eventually he would have to confront the political and religious authorities in Jerusalem. But when? In preparation for the final event, Jesus returned to Galilee but “wished it to be kept secret.” (9: 31) Taking refuge in a ‘safe house’ in Capernaum, he confronted the fallacy of ideological purity with his apostles. Throughout history, revolutionary movements have failed by insisting on an unreasonably strict orthodoxy. Jesus sought to avoid that pitfall. John had complained that another man, not of Jesus’ party, was doing good works in the area. “Do not stop him…for he who is not against us is on our side.” (9: 39) In other words, we’ll take all the help we can get, whatever we can get. So the time has come, Stage Three : the ‘assault’ on Jerusalem. As Jesus approaches the City, he pauses to set up a base camp in Bethany, apparently a Good News stronghold. Jesus understood logistics; he was not going to out-run his supply lines. Next day, his advance team orchestrates the first century version of a ticker tape parade, replete with palm branches and Hosannas, through the by-ways of Jerusalem. Jesus ended the day at the Temple but, as it was now quite late, the precincts were largely deserted; so he retreated to Bethany for the evening. Next day, Jesus again returned to the Temple; he struck the stalls of the bankers and retailers who had set up shop on sacred ground. Again he retreated to Bethany at night, only to return to the Temple next morning, all the time teaching the people in parables and disputing with the Pharisees and Doctors of Law. Like most revolutions, the Good News Movement was about to come to a seemingly bitter end. Two days later, Jesus would be executed, and the persecution of his followers would begin, just as Jesus had predicted. Ultimately, only two apostles escaped martyrdom, Judas who took his own life, and John who died a natural death, probably at a very old age. Sidebar : Jesus tried valiantly to prepare his followers for what was about to occur. He even gave them post-Resurrection tactical advice: “…I will go before you to Galilee.” (14: 28) As always, Jesus knew the value of a good strategic retreat; but at the time he was ignored. Understandable – there was a lot going on! So the order was repeated after the Resurrection to Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of James, and Salome. Apparently, the renewed directive never made it to Peter and the rest: “They said nothing to anybody, for they were afraid.” (16: 8) Outside of Mark, there are reasons to believe that the apostles did not follow Jesus’ order, at least not immediately, with predictably disastrous results. But this revolution was like no other. It did not die with its leader. It lived on in the hearts of the people and it has re-rooted itself, time and again, all over the globe. Jesus sowed the seed, and unlike the infamous fig tree (11: 12-14), it yielded fruit, both in and out of season. We are perpetually rediscovering the wisdom of Jesus’ teachings and the justice of his agenda. Last year (2023) marked the 175th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto…and the milestone passed largely unnoticed, at least in North America. Is that because we’ve moved on? From Marx to Mark? 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 . Click the image to return to Holy Days 2024. 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. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

Suppose we were to express our generation's secular worldview as a 'creed,' how would it read? < Back Competing Creeds David Cowles Jul 13, 2022 Suppose we were to express our generation's secular worldview as a 'creed,' how would it read? Christians are often chided for believing things that are, well, “unbelievable.” Maybe so — but is any of it any more unbelievable than what is generally, and for the most part uncritically, accepted as “Gospel” today, in our supposedly post-Christian era? I do not mean to insist that either model is necessarily right or wrong; rather, I want to point out that the two models are of a similar logical, epistemological, and ontological order. The fact is that our world is a many-splendored thing; it would be surprising if it did not require creative categories of explanation. 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. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Mark A. Villano Contributor Mark A. Villano has an MDiv from Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He has ministered at parishes and campus ministry centers across the country, including at the University of Texas, UCLS, Ohio State University, and Yale. He has an MFA from the School of Cinematic Arts at USC and served as Director of Creative Development at Paulist Productions. Currently, he is Director of Mission and Ministry at Marymount California University, south of Los Angeles. Burn the Candle

< Back War...or Peace David Cowles Jun 27, 2023 “Now at last, we’re in a position to fix all of God’s mistakes!” You’ve heard of the Thirty Years War and the Hundred Years War; these cute historical nicknames make it seem as though war is an exception to the rule, the rule of peace . On what planet? The first recorded war was about 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. It is likely that there were wars before then, but our records only go back so far. Since the first recorded arrow was shot into the air, it is barely an exaggeration to say that the genus homo has been in a perpetual state of warfare. War against whom? We have met the enemy and he is us . - Pogo Just in my few short years (75 to be exact) my homeland has been involved in wars in Korea (3 years), Vietnam (15 years), Iraq and Afghanistan (30 years combined). But this litany creates the false impression that these 48 years of warfare were punctuated by 27 years of peace. Nothing could be further from the truth. Lest we forget, there’s Guatemala, Lebanon, Cuba, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Ukraine, etc. Not to mention the Cold War! And we’re only talking about my homeland, one nation. There are over a hundred other nations we need to survey. All in all, I think it’s fair to say that I have lived my entire lifetime in a world at war. Looking back, my parents and grandparents didn’t have it much better. So we fight? So what? All animals do, so do plants and other life forms. It’s the biosphere itself that’s bellicose, right? Wrong! Emphatically wrong! Animals kill animals of other species for food. They may fight with members of their own species over conjugal rights, etc. but those conflicts are rarely group affairs, and they rarely result in any deaths. Generally speaking, plants and fungi have a symbiotic relationship. They can’t live without one another. But sometimes a particular fungus will harm (and even kill) a particular colony of plants. Animals feed off plants (and, rarely, vice versa), but animals and plants are engaged in a planet wide symbiotic pageant as they recycle each other’s carbon and oxygen. So why is homo the odd genus out? Natural selection, of course, survival of the fittest; where else do you think all these cool Bond-like adaptations came from? Nope, sorry, not from natural selection! Gene mutations still occur, but civilization has so broadened the spectrum of ‘reproductive fitness’ that physical evolution may have slowed to a crawl. Taking its place: cultural evolution. Humans adapt the environment to their needs to a much greater extent than they are adapted (genetically) to the needs of their environment. We are the only species on Earth ever capable of making large-scale adjustments to our environment. At the same time, we are the only species who, to some degree at least, can consciously direct its evolutionary course. We find ourselves in a uniquely advantageous situation. Our species’ evolved ability to transform its environment, combined with our recently discovered ability to alter our genetic code, has created a truly unimaginable opportunity. Given any ‘problem’ we can choose whether to alter the environment or the genotype or both : Adaptation goes Exponential! Now at last, we’re in a position to fix all of God’s mistakes! (Perhaps that’s the whole point of the last 14 billion years, the age of the universe, or at least the last 4 billion years, the period of life on Earth.) When we were kids, we literally scheduled times to fight, between homework and Little League. Rival gangs of 8-year-olds (can a group of 8-year-olds be called a ‘gang’?) would agree to meet at such and such a place at such and such a time, and bring your wooden ‘swords’ and ‘spears’. There was no animosity between the rival gangs (we were all friends, separated into gangs by accidents of geography, school choice, etc.). There was no intent to injure anyone, and it was exceedingly rare for someone even to get hurt. Still, it was crazy fun! I feel as though I’ve grown into an adult world that mimics my old neighborhood – minus the lack of animosity. Bigger boys, bigger toys! Wars feel more and more like the scheduled events of my childhood. World War II was scheduled at Versailles (1919). Vietnam was scheduled at Dien Bien Phu (1954). Afghanistan was scheduled when Russia withdrew (1989). Iraq II was scheduled the day Iraq I ended (1991). I could go on! So-called ‘peace’ seems to be the equivalent of Mom calling you in for dinner. It’s just an opportunity to regroup…and rearm. Now, the stakes are incalculable, the risks overwhelming, and the prospects of success, infinitesimal. Yet, there is just one ray of hope . Prior to the end of WWII, all war was all out war: no holds barred! Poison gas, atomic bombs, everything goes. Korea was perhaps the first consciously self-limited war. Since then, for all its horror and brutality, every war has been fought according to Marquis of Queensbury rules. Perhaps this is a first flicker of recognition that war has lost its usefulness as an instrument of social change. For the sake of the human experiment, we can only hope. Image: Pablo Picasso. 1937. Museo Reina Sofía , Madrid , Spain 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.