< Back That Time You Told a Sunrise Lie Annie D. Stutley "...words are also just hollowed statements to avoid the truth. It’s far too tempting a cover-up. We love ideals, but we don’t like what they require." I’m a snooze-a-holic. I’m as devoted to hitting that snooze button as I should be to Jesus, and I love an extra seven minutes of shut-eye as much as I love the Oxford comma. Nonetheless, starting around 2013, I began each year with the same half-assed promise. “This year, I will wake up an hour earlier than everyone else in the house. I will pray. I will meditate. Furthermore, I will exercise. I will enjoy a cup of hot coffee in solitude, and by the time I rouse my disheveled bunch from sleep, I will be energized from an hour’s worth of care for my needs. Then I’ll hit my goals and win the day.” Of course, this never happens. Not one year, not one month, week, and not even one day. So this year, I didn’t even attempt to make the promise, not to save face, but because I knew it was a lie. But not just any lie. A sunrise lie. ***** I spend much of my time in my car. I have one kid in junior high and two teenagers, a cheerleader, a football player, and a swimmer. I’m editor and writer by day, Uber mom after 4 pm. In the evening, I take the long way home whenever possible, turning west to see what colors the sky has painted for me and how different they are from the night before. Even the average sunsets catch my breath. I’ve toasted the sunset on many, many occasions. I also love long lingering dinners. I read far too late into the night. And if I get an idea for a blog, an article, or a book at midnight, I write it down immediately. Some of my best prompts have come to me while I’m slathering retinol and nighttime moisturizer on my face. Subsequently, some of my best work happens shortly after. All of this is to say that I cling to a day until the very last second more than I’m energized by its start. I don’t spring out of bed. Ever. I’m reluctant to say goodbye, though. Every evening. Always. In straight talk, I’m a classic night owl. But I’m also realistic. The bulk of my life happens before the sun sets, and I can’t be late. ***** As I mentioned, much of my life happens in the car. More precisely, to and from swim practice with the Golden Boy. After one December practice, he collapsed into the passenger seat. He looked like he’d just swum the English Channel. No, he looked like he’d just fought the English Channel. His face was flushed. His hair was more tousled than usual. His breathing was heavy, and I could tell buckling his seatbelt required extra effort. Yet strangely, his attitude was not that of someone who’d just fought the English Channel. “Ma!” he exclaimed. (It should be noted for purposes of future historic reference that it was at this moment when I was demoted from Mom to Ma. Mommy to Mom was years ago. Bruh has yet to find its way into the boy’s son-to-mother vernacular.) “I just swam a 200 Fly and guess what my time was? 2:29.” My usual silence followed as I studied his expression, gauging the quality of a 2:29 200 Fly. It’s a necessary swim mom skill. All signs pointed to “2:29 for his age is a good thing.” “That’s great!” I smiled. “Well, it’s not as good as some people, but I’ve just started on this event.” “Yeah, but 200 Fly? You must have been so relieved when you hit the wall. How exhausting,” I said. “I don’t really think about the wall, actually. I just focus on the stroke. I mean, eventually I’m gonna hit the wall.” “Yeah, but doesn't it hurt your shoulders?” “Ma, pain is temporary. I’ll get to the wall faster if all I worry about is what I’m doing and not where I’m going.” Well crap... Here comes Baby Buddha again with all the big wisdom. So, I drove my pocket Yoda home, wondering from which interview of which athlete he just pulled such an inspirational message or if he’s just that wise after all. Mostly, I thought about another year of not toasting the sunrise and being unproductive. Do I really need to be a morning person, I asked myself. Again. And then I thought of a new question: is my obstacle really the snooze button? A few days later, I realized my obstacle was even more seductive than that. ***** Over the holidays I watch a lot of Hallmark Christmas movies. I find the predictability comforting. Girl from big city finds herself in a dilly of a pickle. Girl goes home for the holidays to regroup. Girl’s high school boyfriend still lives there. He builds staircases and lives in a giant log cabin. They fall in love…. again, but tomfoolery just before the town’s annual tree lighting almost breaks them up... again. But then they find the other piece of a long-lost, broken Christmas ornament in the town curmudgeon’s attic. They know it’s a sign they should get married. Girl leaves the big city forever and cans homemade cranberry sauce in a log cabin for the rest of her life. The End. But one particular ending caught my attention. Just before the snow began to fall as our rekindled high school sweethearts locked lips, the boy (I think his name was Edmond or the like) said to the girl, (whose name was probably Celeste or... Noelle, haha) “I love you.” And she said, “I love you, too -- everything it means to love you.” Wait. What? Does she mean leaving the city to live in a log cabin and can cranberries? Was that a subtle dig at a guy for whom she uprooted her life? Or, is our Hallmark heroine simply doubling down, admitting the reality of the challenge but vocalizing its worth so she can’t back out? I’d never spent so long questioning the subtext of a Hallmark movie. But schmaltzy, formulaic plot analyses aside, why the tacked-on disclaimer, Noelle? ***** We know words are often just words, hollowed statements for the sake of having said something. How many times have you said the following to someone you haven’t seen lately: “We should get together soon,” knowing full well you probably won’t. How many times have you spoken about a charity you want to give to or volunteer for, or a project you want to complete in your home? How often do you actually follow through? We want to get together with friends until it's too inconvenient. We want to give more until we realize its cost. I want to embrace my day and be productive until I realize how hard it will be. More notably, words are also just hollowed statements to avoid the truth. It’s far too tempting a cover-up. We love ideals, but we don’t like what they require. Every year I make this empty promise not because I want to see the sun rise, but because I don’t want to fight my day anymore in order to keep up. I want to “hit the wall” -- lots and lots of walls -- day after day. Only, I likely won’t, whether I wake up early or not -- not if I continue to spew words, tricking myself into avoiding the truth. The fact is, I’m not committed to hitting the wall. I’m intimidated by all of it -- the good, the bad, and the pain (though temporary) that I must experience to hit the walls I want to hit before I watch my last sunset. Words imply a message, whether we mean them to or not. Words hurt, inspire, disgust, and heal. Words carry so much power that we censor them. Or they unite so gloriously that we preserve them. But words, as moving as they can be, are truly worthless when the one who speaks them has no intention of giving them any meaning at all. In those instances, they’re no better than a sunrise lie. Every dawn begins with the best intentions, but unless the people for whom the sun has risen embrace the day, should the sun have bothered rising at all? ***** So this year, I didn’t say anything about waking up early or making any promises about some personal Kumbaya hour in the morning. But I know enough to know that I’m a night owl living in an early bird’s world. Yet, as I embark on my next event, I’m not going to worry about walls to hit or labels to achieve. This year, all I told myself, and all I’m saying to you is this: “I’m just gonna do my work and do it well.” Or, as the woman from that tiny town in the middle of nowhere Mississippi so wisely put it last May when I fretted about how in Sam hill I was going to house-train the golden retriever puppy I’d just adopted: “Oh, Darlin’,” she said. “You’ll get ‘er done. Just get ‘er done.” I won’t publicly pledge to wake up much earlier than usual this year. I will likely continue my affair with the evening star. But I will get ‘er done — and everything it means. What I’m doing and how I’m doing it is more important than where I’m going. It’s the work, not the goal. If the work is lackluster, I’ll never hit any wall anyway, at least not in due time. The statements we make are hard to live out, but if we actually do love ourselves enough to know a sunrise lie when we tell it, we just might refocus our energy where we need it most. We’ll hit that wall one day, and when we do, we may even spring out of bed to celebrate. Annie D. Stutley lives and writes in New Orleans, La. She edits several small publications and contributes to various print and online magazines. Her blog, " That Time You, " was ranked in the Top 100 Blogs by FeedSpot. To read more of her work, go to her website , or follow her at @anniedstutley or Annie D. Stutley-writer on Facebook. Previous Next

< Back Neti, Neti David Cowles Jul 11, 2023 “So clearly, God’s primary value, like Sartre’s, is freedom...strange bedfellows.” “I am not what I am; I am what I am not ; I can be whoever I want to be!” Wow! A Directory of Existentialist Clichés. Just what the world needs right now! But funny thing about cliches – sometimes they are true. That’s how they got to be clichés. Even Polonius was right some of the time. Our journey of self-discovery did not begin in a Paris café, sitting across from Albert Camus. It did not even begin with Jean Jacques Rousseau 150 years earlier. It began at least 7 millennia ago, and it was first expressed in Sanskrit: “ Neti, Neti (not this, not that)” - 7,000 years later it’s still our most profound statement of spiritual consciousness. ‘Neti, Neti’ has been translated into the philosophy of post-classical Europe as the via negativa , an ‘epistemology’ based on the idea that knowledge does not consist of knowing what-is but of knowing what-is-not. Both knowing and creating are like sculpting; they chisel away the undifferentiated block of marble to reveal the image concealed therein. I infer what is by knowing what is not! The via negativa is equally at home in Asian spirituality (the Vedas ), Christian mysticism (Nicholas of Cusa), philosophical anarchism (Kropotkin), modern existentialism (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, et al.), and the literary works of Sir Arthur Conant Doyle (Sherlock Holmes). But I am not content - I am not content just to be what I am not , what I used to be but never was, or what I’m coming to be but never will . Why, oh why, can’t I just be me? – The title song for my new, soon-to-be on Broadway, hit musical. Catchy, don’t you think? And timely too. I’m a boomer and from Kerouac to Derrida, I am part of that period of American culture when everyone was asking the same question: “Who am I?” So why can’t I be this me that I so yearn for? It seems so simple. But that’s not the kind of hairpin I am. Not-being is what I am. If I were to become something, be it a stone or a rose…or a crotchety old man (hmm), I would still not be me, obviously, and worse, I would not be at all. So let’s catch up! There is a world. I see it, feel it, taste it, smell it. I am satisfied that it exists: it is! But I am not that world. I know that I am because I am not that world and I know that I am not that world because I am : Sum ergo non sum; non sum ergo sum! In fact, I am not even in that world. I exist purely as the negation of that world. But surprise, I am no bomb thrower! No, I negate the world only in order to improve it (i.e., in order to bring it closer to being a true reflection of God’s will, God’s values). That’s the kind of hairpin I am! That’s my mission…should I choose to accept it. Genesis, Creation, Big Bang: there was nothing, aka chaos, the absence of order, of logos , of dike . Then God negated chaos ( fiat lux ), thereby introducing order (light vs. darkness) where there was none. Creation ‘proceeded’ in evolutionary stages (six such stages according to Genesis), each negating some aspect of the status quo ante . The ‘final’ stage of creation: creatures capable of continuing God’s creative mission on their own, creatures who can echo his creative mantra, “Neti, Neti!” God’s nature is negation, and we are ‘chips off the old block’. By nature, God is an iconoclast, an anarchist. Applied to ‘nothing’, negation generates ‘something’; applied to chaos, negation generates order. Contemporary physicists are proud: they have supposedly found a way to deduce something from nothing (‘negative vacuum pressure’). But they are about 13.5 billion years late to the party! God got there first. On the seventh day, God rested, not because he no longer cares but precisely because he cares so much. He took off the training wheels. It’s up to the created world now to determine its own destiny, but still, as the Vedas say, there is not a footfall of an ant that God does not hear. Deism is a sham, with all due respect to our so-called ‘founding fathers’ (sic). How could God lose interest in what he had lovingly created? Do humans lose interest in their children after they are born? Of course not, but on the other hand, good parents recognize that they are not their offspring, that their offspring need freedom to pursue the universal creative mandate in their own way. “God created the heavens and the earth.” Created! ‘Created’ does not mean imagined, designed, manufactured, or assembled. God is not a character in the Lego Movie ; he is not even a ‘master builder'. ‘Created’ means created . A true creature, be it a work of art or a universe, is independent of its creator. The universe is totally free and independent of God. God is a functionalist; he did not invest his creation with ornamentation. He is a minimalist; he invested no more in his creation than what is required to maintain a functional universe. So clearly, God’s primary value, like Sartre’s, is freedom. God and Sartre, strange bedfellows indeed! Image: La Madonna della Pietà. Michelangelo Buonarroti. 1498–1499. Saint Peter's Basilica, Vatican City 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! 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< Back What (or Who) R U? David Cowles Jun 19, 2025 “Celebrate what you are, knowing that it is ever changing, but embrace who you are, knowing that it is immutable.” “What do you want to be when you grow up?” That question was the bane of the Boomer generation, and I still hear adults ask it today. I can scarcely imagine a more damaging question! The assumptions it makes, communicates, and reinforces about life are spirit-robbing at the least. Based in part on memes like this, my generation conceived of life as a series of stages: you grow until you become what you will be; then you are what you are until you are not. Life, neatly packaged! Somehow, at some magic moment tucked in somewhere between your 16th birthday and your 31st, a bell rings, and you declare, “I am Spartacus and I will be Spartacus until the day I die.” You have found yourself! You have an identity! Congratulations! You know who you are, and you know where you fit into the jigsaw puzzle called ‘society’. You’ve taken your place on the Great Mandala. How awful for you! You might say your life ended before it began, except… Real Life doesn’t always follow IKEA’s schematics! But when it doesn’t, our reaction often includes anxiety, depression, even self-loathing. We are charting our own course, but we feel that we are not living up to someone else’s expectations for us.” When an adult asks you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” the expected answer is doctor , firefighter , or astronaut . A somewhat more thoughtful answer might be kind , creative , or wise . But either way, you are being asked to place yourself in a straitjacket. The pernicious assumption, of course, is (1) that you will someday become some thing , possibly just one single thing , and (2) that you will remain that thing throughout the remainder of your sad life. How far we’ve deviated from the existentialist ideal: “I know who I am, and I know that I can be whatever I want to be!” Our categories reflect the intuition that there is something about us that is variable and something that is fixed. According to ‘the standard model’, I am variable until I become fixed but, once fixed, I remain fixed for the duration. I am like molten metal being poured into a mold and left to harden. Molten, I am uber-plastic ; the choice of mold is a variable but from a very limited inventory of options; once poured, however, I am eternally inert. Our intuition is correct but our application of that intuition is fatally flawed. In fact, who you are and what you are completely disconnected. Who you are is fixed. You are who you are from the moment of your birth (or before) to the moment of your death (or after). Doubt me? Think about an early childhood experience. You were there then, weren’t you? Just like you are here now. Then is now but you is you! Who you are does not change because there is nothing to change. “We are the stuff that dreams are made of.” (Shakespeare) Like Odysseus, you are Nemo, no one; or in the words of M. Sartre, “You are not what you are, and you are what you are not .” You are the negation of what is in pursuit of what isn’t. You are the third leg of Bobby Kennedy’s famous triangle: “You see things as they are and you dream of things that never were.” That’s who you are. What you are is an entirely different animal. What you are is ever changing. In the language of Eastern spirituality, who you are is atman (soul), what you are is maya (attachment). According to the pre-Socratics, who you are is permanent, what you are is always in flux. According to the great heavy metal band known as Thomas (Aquinas) and the Scholastics , who you are is singular and ‘simple’, but what you are is ‘legion’ and complex. Across the globe and throughout recorded history, the intuition of permanence-in-flux is nearly universal. But we know better! The so-called Enlightenment flipped the script. Ground is now figure and figure ground. Who we are has become multifarious but what we are is now fixed. Should we be surprised then that identity is now fragile…but destiny immutable? The same cultural mutation that brought us bipolar disorder and schizophrenia also brought slavery, the assembly line, and the proverbial gold watch at retirement. We are all Daniel Webster, we are all Faust. We need no devil, no Mephistopheles; we have parents and teachers, influencers and role models enough for that. We will sell our souls ( who we are) for fame and fortune ( what we are): ‘Getting and spending’, we’ll ‘lay waste’ our powers (Wordsworth). And we will pretend to feel good about it, from the first graduation party to the last retirement send-off. We become what others expect us to be; we become what others want us to be. We live their lives, not ours. In Paul’s Letter to Ephesians (2: 10) we read that we are created to perform “the good works that God has prepared in advance that we should live in them.” Well and good, but we, our ‘enlightened selves’, have replaced God with Mammon. We allow others, the secular system , to define who (what) we are. But who are we really? We are the image and likeness of the ineffable God. Therefore, we too are ineffable. But we spend nearly every waking moment identifying ourselves with the labels others place on us, describing us as if we were a what and not a who . “I am…” is an oxymoron. Sartre’s existential anthropology (above) recapitulates Parmenides’ pre Socratic cosmology. According to Parmenides, Being consists of Divinity (goddess), Aletheia (truth), and Doxa (appearance). Re Aletheia , Parmenides wrote: “…What-is is ungenerated and imperishable, whole…and complete. Nor was it once nor will it be since it is now all together, one, continuous…Thus coming to be is extinguished and perishing not to be heard of. Nor is it divisible since it is all alike.” That’s who you are! But he characterized Doxa as “to come to be and to perish, to be and not to be, to change place (motion), and to exchange bright color.” That’s what you are! You can never alter who you are just as you can never preserve what you are. Instead, you leave behind fossil remnants of what you were…the detritus known as ‘your works (Ozymandias), your legacy’. So celebrate what you are, knowing that it is ever changing, but embrace who you are, knowing that it is immutable. Image: René Magritte, The Lovers I, Oil on Canvas, 54×73.5cm, 1928 Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Thrown David Cowles Jul 7, 2021 According to Existentialist philosopher, Martin Heidegger, each of us has been “thrown” into an alien and potentially hostile world. It is as if an ocean suddenly disgorged us onto a strange beach populated by strange creatures. But of course, it’s much worse than that because initially we don’t know what a beach, or even a creature, is and we have no previous life experience to draw on. According to Existentialist philosopher, Martin Heidegger, each of us has been “thrown” into an alien and potentially hostile world. It is as if an ocean suddenly disgorged us onto a strange beach populated by strange creatures. But of course, it’s much worse than that because initially we don’t know what a beach, or even a creature, is and we have no previous life experience to draw on. We have only this: a sense that we ‘are’, an instinctive desire to continue to ‘be’, and our basic bodily needs (food, water, etc.). Like a boy raised by wolves who does everything he can to ‘become’ a wolf, so we do everything we can to fit in with the alien creatures around us. We try our best to blend in and we do that by mimicking everything we see. Long after we’ve secured a place in this new society, we continue to mimic those around us. This behavior got us so far; why change now? The problem, according to Heidegger and his disciple, Jacques Derrida, is that no more 3% of our thoughts and utterances are really our own; the other 97% is mere mimicry. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Alice David Cowles In Looking-glass world, there’s plenty of there and then, but not a whiff of here and now. You remember Alice – the girl who chased a white rabbit down a hole and almost got her head chopped off by the Queen of Hearts! But did you know that later, when she was a bit older, Alice had another, entirely different adventure? Whenever Alice was bored, and she was often very bored – remember, in her day there was no TV, no smartphones and no video games – she would spend hours staring into the big mirror that hung on her living room wall. (I wonder if her parents limited her ‘screen’ time.) As she gazed into that looking glass, she could see a room on the other side. It looked just like her own living room…well, almost just like it. It looked just like it except that on the other side of the looking glass, everything was reversed! That’s right, reversed! If Alice stuck out her right hand to shake hands with the girl in the mirror, the girl in the mirror would stick out her left hand. If Alice wrote a note (from left to right, of course), the girl on the other side of the glass would write the very same note…but from right to left. Otherwise, everything looked exactly the same. But Alice wondered, “was it really the same?” After all, if right and left were reversed, maybe other things were reversed too. But how could she find out? “How nice it would be if we could only get into Looking-glass house,” she thought. And then, a moment later, there she was…on the other side of the glass! As expected, whatever Alice had been able to see in the mirror was just the same in Looking-glass house as it was in her own home. But what about everything she couldn’t see from her side? That turned out to be as different as different could be! Alice had been right to be suspicious of the mirror, after all. The mirror did not ‘reveal’ a world; it hid one. Alice immediately headed out of Looking-glass house and into its garden. She was not at all surprised to find flowers…but she was VERY surprised to learn that these flowers could talk! “…Can all the flowers talk?” Alice asked. “As well as you can,” said the Tiger-lily. “And a great deal louder.” Alice noticed a high hill in the distance. “I should see the garden far better,” said Alice to herself. “If I could get to the top of that hill: and here’s a path that leads straight to it…” Only it didn’t! No matter how hard Alice tried, no matter what turns she made, she always ended up right back where she started. But Alice was a very clever girl, so she decided to try a new plan. Instead of walking toward the hill and always missing it, she decided to walk in the opposite direction, away from the hill, to see where that would take her. Her plan succeeded beautifully. She hadn’t been walking more than a minute when she found herself at the base of the hill. So, it’s not just right and left that are reversed in Looking-glass world; it’s also to and from, forwards and backwards. At the base of the hill, Alice met the Red Queen. After some polite conversation, Alice and the queen suddenly started running. They ran hand-in-hand, as fast as they possibly could, for as long as they possibly could. But while she was running, Alice noticed something strange: the trees and the other things around them never changed; they seemed to move right along with them. Finally, the queen stopped, and Alice flopped to the ground breathless beside her. Then she noticed, “…We’ve been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!” Alice complained to the queen, “…In our country, you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you ran very fast for a long time as we’ve been doing.” But the queen replied, “Now here, you see, it takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” Next, Alice encountered the White Queen and her majesty looked quite the mess. Alice did her best to help the queen tidy up, and then she suggested that the queen might like to hire a maid to help her stay neat and clean in the future. The queen offered the job to Alice, “Two pence a week and jam every other day.” Imagine getting by on an allowance of two pennies a week! I guess pennies could buy a lot more in Alice’s time. But Alice didn’t object to the low wage; instead, she protested that she didn’t like jam, “Well, I don’t want any to-day at any rate.” “You couldn’t have it if you did want it,” the queen said. “The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today …” Alice objected, “It must come sometimes to jam today.” “No, it can’t,” said the queen. “It’s jam every other day; today isn’t any other day, you know.” “I don’t understand you,” said Alice, obviously puzzled. “That’s the effect of living backwards,” the queen explained. “It always makes one a little giddy at first.” Then the queen decided to tell Alice more about what it’s like to live on her side of the glass. “Memory works both ways,” she said. “I’m sure mine only works one way,” interrupted Alice. “I can’t remember things before they happen…What sorts of things do you remember best?” “Oh, things that happened the week after next,” the queen replied. The queen pointed to the King’s Messenger, “He’s in prison now, being punished, and the trial doesn’t even begin till next Wednesday, and of course, the crime comes last of all.” Before Alice could object to this unfair treatment, the queen began screaming. Alice rushed to comfort her, “What is the matter? Have you pricked your finger?” “I haven’t pricked it yet,” the queen said. “But I soon shall.” And sure enough, a moment later, she did just that! But let’s get back to the matter of the jam. Alice explained to the queen that she did not like jam, “Well, I don’t want any to-day at any rate.” Remember what the queen said? “’You couldn’t have it if you did want it…the rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today .” So, in Looking-glass world there is a past (yesterday) and a future (tomorrow), but never a present (jam today). Later, Alice found herself in a shop where every shelf seemed to be overflowing with interesting things to buy. But whenever she walked up to any particular shelf, that shelf was always completely empty. The shelves that are there are always full, but the shelf that is here is always empty! In Looking-glass world, it seems you can have all the jam you want…just not now ; and you can buy anything you want…just not here . The stores are always brimming with merchandise, but always out of whatever it is you want. In Looking-glass world, there’s plenty of there and then, but not a whiff of here and now . Later, while visiting Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Alice sees the Red King. He is asleep. “He’s dreaming now,” said Tweedledee. “And what do you think he’s dreaming about?” “Nobody can guess that!” Alice replied. Alice is depending on the difference between inside and outside to keep her thoughts, and the king’s, private. But Tweedledee knows better. The way Looking-glass world works, inner and outer could be reversed; or the distinction could be wiped away entirely. Either way, Tweedledee knows that in Looking-glass world, anyone can see what you’re thinking just by looking at you. “Why about you !” Tweedledee continued, returning to the content of the Red King’s dream. “And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you’d be?” “Where I am now, of course,” said Alice. “’You’d be nowhere,” replied Tweedledee. “Why you’re only a sort of thing in his dream!’” (It seems that Shakespeare listened to Tweedledee’s podcasts because in one of his most famous plays, The Tempest , he wrote, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”) “If the King were to wake,” added Tweedledum. “You’d go out – bang! – just like a candle!’” Toward the end of her stay in Looking-glass world, Alice met the famous Humpty-Dumpty. Like any good girl of her day, Alice knew her nursery rhymes backwards and forwards, so when she met Humpty, she was immediately worried about his safety. “Don’t you think you’d be safer down on the ground? That wall is so very narrow!” In response, Humpty Dumpty growled. “Of course, I don’t think so. Why, if I ever did fall off – which there’s no chance of – but if I did…the King has promised me – with his very own mouth…” Here Alice interrupted, “To send all his horses and all his men…” Moments later, a crash shook the forest from end to end and soldiers came running, first two or three, then ten or twenty, finally thousands. So many that they seemed to fill the whole forest! The king had kept his promise. But would his horses and his men be able to put Humpty together again? Maybe not on our side of the looking glass, but on the other side…who knows? At the end of her adventure, when Alice was once again safely back on her own side of the mirror, she thought about her experience and said to her pussycat, “’Now, Kitty, let’s consider, who it was that dreamed it all…it must have been either me or the Red King. He was part of my dream, of course – but then I was part of his dream too!’” David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Share Previous Next

< Back Childhood Lost David Cowles “Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, but children are from the planet Mercury.” Everybody ‘loves’ children, well almost everybody. People spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for the privilege of raising a baby to adulthood. Then they spend tens of thousands of dollars to hire others to raise that baby for them: baby sitters, nannies, au pairs, governesses, teachers, camp counselors, scout leaders, coaches, etc. I was loved as a child, but I was bundled off to camp (day, then overnight) for a full 8 weeks every summer for 11 long and lonely years (age 3 through 13). At the time, I was told that it was ‘for my own good’ but later my parents admitted that it was really ‘for their own sanity’. Do you ever watch YouTube videos of competent adults interacting with children? Some of them are awesome! But have you noticed that they all have one thing in common? They never run more than 20 minutes! Because that’s the maximum amount of time that an empathetic and motivated adult can interact happily and constructively with a child. How come? Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, but children are from the planet Mercury. To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, “They’re hot!” Mars and Venus have ‘years’ roughly similar to Earth’s; Mercury’s ‘year’ lasts only 88 days! Yup, children are from Mercury…definitely. Objectively, children ‘move and grow’ (not just physically) 4 times faster than we do (365/88 > 4), but that means subjective time flows 4 times more slowly for them than it does for us. What we call ‘an 8 hour day’ feels like 32 hours to a child. Alternatively, a child works a full 8 hour shift just between the hours of 9 and 11 in the morning. No wonder child labor is so profitable: 4x the productivity, ½ the cost (wage)! Suppose someday we do find intelligent life elsewhere in our Universe; now imagine that life operates with a sense of time that is ‘distorted’ (vs. ours) by 400%. Can you envision any problems? Well, we don’t have to wait for SETI to find out; it’s already happened. Every day, flocks of storks bring babies from Mercury and deliver them to Terrestrial parents to ‘raise’. My maternal grandmother told the story of an elementary school teacher who said to her, “Marguerite, I know you mean well…but you don’t do well!” For the most part, Earth parents do ‘mean well’…at least they mean to mean well…but almost all of us fail to ‘do well’. John Lennon captured the gist of the problem on his Working Class Hero album: “As soon as you’re born, they make you feel small, by giving you no time instead of it all.” My parents gave me plenty of time…sometimes more than I would have liked. But 100% of my parents’ time only accounted for 25% of my time. That left plenty of opportunity for anxiety, depression, sadness, boredom and, of course, my favorite, mischief. Children are born virtually immobile and 100% dependent ‘on the kindness of strangers’ (that’s us , BTW). They have no map of our world; they do not know our customs or our language. They don’t even know what language is, or what it does. Children are ‘barbarians’ – not just metaphorically, but also literally (they don’t speak a word of Ancient Greek). Six Mercurial years (18 Earth months) later, most children are mobile, communicative, and incipiently self-sufficient, leaving their parents bewildered and spent…and advertising on Indeed for Help! Yet as every parent knows, 18 months is still early innings . According to the anthropology of the Hopi, children are born (or stork delivered) with two questions in mind: “Who am I? Why am I here?” Big questions! You may still be asking those same questions, even at your overly advanced age. At best, these questions are not easy. So, of course, we want to help. We want to help our children know themselves and fulfill their purpose in the world. But to help, we would need to know ourselves and our purpose, and of course, we don’t! So instead, we teach our kids what we were taught. Our parents failed us, and we want to make sure our children get no less from their parents than we got from ours. Sounds reasonable? Ok, how’s this for a home mission statement: “The purpose of life is to make a constructive contribution to society…to leave the world a better place. The purpose of childhood is to learn to be an adult who can make such a contribution.” Put this on the fridge instead of a list of rules (and consequences). Harry Chapin said it best, “He’d grown up just like me. My boy was just like me.” ( Cat’s in the Cradle ) Unlike many of us, Chapin’s hero-narrator ultimately realizes his own life’s failures; he regrets them as they appear in him but especially as they are reflected in his son. Be careful what you wish for. Chapin’s hero wanted a son who would grow up to be just like him and he got just that! Too late, he realizes that he failed to make the most of his own life’s opportunities, and much worse, he realizes now that he has ensured his son will never optimize his own life potential either. What hubris we display, wanting our children to relive our lives! As youngish adults ourselves, we ask (force) them to internalize our own still unexamined ethos: “Grow up, get an education, raise a family, earn a living, make a career, contribute to society, leave a legacy.” And how did that work out for you ? Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Next

< Back Atheism and London Buses David Cowles Feb 28, 2023 “If a UK political party were to adopt ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ as its manifesto, it would likely get no closer to the House of Commons than the Tower of London.” I have nothing against Atheism...or atheists. I’m not one, but some of my best friends are. Have you met Schopenhauer, Bakunin, Nietzsche, and Sartre! But not all atheists are besties . Richard Dawkins, the famous evolutionist and legendary ideologue, for example, is not! In 2008 – 2009, Dawkins funded the Atheist Bus Campaign in response to contemporaneous adverts sponsored by Evangelical Christians. No one remembers their ad, but everyone remembers Dawkins’ response. Imagine you’re preparing to board one of London’s iconic double decker busses and as the bus pulls up, you notice this ad plastered on its side: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Dawkins’ meme gives Atheism a bad name! First, the very notion of a ‘campaign’ in this context is disturbing. If there is no God, why would anyone spend their hard earned cash to convince other people of that fact? Who cares? I can understand a campaign for civil rights or disarmament but I cannot get my head around a ‘campaign for atheism’. Julian Baggini, author of Atheism – A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2021) anticipated my objection. He argues that atheism is not just a negation of theism; it has its positive side as well: “…the atheist is almost always a naturalist, believing that there is only the natural world and not any supernatural one…the natural world is all there is.” Still though, this doesn’t quite explain why this ‘anti-religion’ should itself become a ‘proselytizing faith’. But enough with the speculation: “There’s probably no God.” Probably? So let me get this straight, I’m supposed to make the most important decision of my life (God or no God) based on mere probability ? Confirmed theist Blaise Pascal (c. 1650 CE) might have agreed with Dawkins (‘there probably is no God’) but Pascal went one step further, asking: What if I’m wrong? What if there is a God after all? I’m about to throw away the greatest gift this universe, or any conceivable universe, could ever confer (eternal life) based on a probability ? So Pascal did the math, and he came to the only possible conclusion (Pascal’s Wager is not a conjecture; it’s a mathematical fact): P * ∞ = ∞ where P is any number greater than 0 and no greater than 1. Pascal reasoned as follows: first, either God exists (Y)…or he doesn’t (N); second, either I believe in God (Y)…or I don’t (N). He looked at all the permutations and realized that all zero-out, except one: “I believe in God (Y) and God exists (Y)!” Y*N = 0, N*Y = 0, N² = 0…but Y² = ∞. If God exists, all I have to do is believe and I win the jackpot; and if God does not exist, nothing matters anyway so who cares? There’s no downside to faith. Probability doesn’t enter into it! Once you understand the rules of the game, there is only one possible bet. But back to the bus. The 2 nd leg of Dawkins’ illogical syllogism is even more dangerous. To suggest, as Dawkins does, that ‘God’ is a major source of ‘worry’ for theists is totally counter-factual. It is the prospect of a world without God that is ‘worrisome’…actually terrifying. Even Marx acknowledged that religion is an effective opiate. Fact is, people who believe in God, rightly or wrongly, derive a great deal of comfort from that belief. Maybe they shouldn’t but they do. Sorry, Richard! The final leg of Dawkins’ infernal triangle is the most pernicious. “Now…enjoy your life.” I don’t think I’ve been told to ‘shut-up and smile’ since I was 8 years old. The underlying assumption appears to be that ‘enjoyment’ is the purpose and meaning of life. I dream at night; sometimes those dreams are pleasurable. Is that the sort of enjoyment Dawkins is talking about? Doesn’t work for me! I’m looking for something more out of life than ‘Sweet Dreams’. It may be that ‘to sleep, perchance to dream’ is all there is, but I’m not going to accept that without a fight. I’ll side with Dylan Thomas: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” One thing for sure. I’m not going to spend my money trying to persuade you that dreaming is as good as it gets. Why would anyone do that? Without God, life is perpetual worry. ‘Enjoyment’ doesn’t enter in. Psalm 23 : “Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you (God) are by my side.” What adult (or even teen) can doubt that we are walking through the valley of the shadow of death? The Psalmist draws courage from the belief that we are accompanied on our journey by God, the death-slayer. From what does Richard Dawkins draw courage? A rare single malt? No judgement here: I have done! But there is an even more disturbing message buried in Dawkins’ meme, and it harks back to Rome’s bread and circuses, Marx’s opiate, and Huxley’s soma. If a UK political party were to adopt ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ as its manifesto, it would likely get no closer to the House of Commons than the Tower of London. It’s hard to imagine a more reactionary platform! Beauty, Truth, and Justice are what give life meaning. The ‘function’ of God is to make these objective values operative in our world. They are normative, always and everywhere, in every possible universe, regardless of anyone’s personal predilections. The purpose of life is the advancement of values, not personal pleasure. Have you heard this one? “ On earth as it is in heaven! ” Catchy, don’t you think? Now that’s a slogan I’d pay to put on the side of a bus! 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.

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 A Jewish Approach to Cognitive Dissonance Shalvi Waldman "I would like to be an intellectually honest spiritual seeker, a warm and loving and dynamic wife and mother, a supportive friend; but at the end of the day, I look in the mirror, and see an annoyed and tired dish rag, and all I want to do is have a cup of coffee and a bar of chocolate. Warm dynamic spiritual seeker aside, anyone who stands between me and my mug is in for it." Chabad.org invites the readers of Aletheia Today to read this article in full by following this link . Return to our Beach Read 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back Tantum Ergo St. Thomas Aquinas Apr 15, 2023 Sing, my tongue, the Savior’s glory, Of His cross, the mystery, sing; Lift on high the wondrous trophy, Tell the triumph of the King: He, the world's Redeemer, conquers Death, through death now vanquishing. Born for us, and for us given; Son of man, like us below, He, as Man with men, abiding Dwells, the seed of life to sow: He, our heavy griefs partaking, Thus fulfils His life of woe. Word made flesh! His word life-giving, Gives His flesh our meat to be, Bids us drink His blood, believing, Through His death, we life shall see: Blessed they who thus receiving Are from death and sin set free. Low in adoration bending, Now our hearts our God revere; Faith, her aid to sight is lending, Though unseen the Lord is near; Ancient types and shadows ending, Christ our paschal Lamb is here. Praise for ever, thanks and blessing, Thine, O gracious Father, be: Praise be Thine, O Christ, who bringeth Life and immortality. Praise be Thine, Thou quickening Spirit, Praise through all eternity. (Thomas Aquinas by Sandro Botticelli .) Between antiquity and modernity stands Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1225–1274). The greatest figure of thirteenth-century Europe in the two preeminent sciences of the era, philosophy and theology, he epitomizes the scholastic method of the newly founded universities. Like Dante or Michelangelo, Aquinas takes inspiration from antiquity, especially Aristotle , and builds something entirely new. Viewed through a theological lens, Aquinas has often been seen as the summit of the Christian tradition that runs back to Augustine and the early Church. Viewed as a philosopher, he is a foundational figure of modern thought. His efforts at a systematic reworking of Aristotelianism reshaped Western philosophy and provoked countless elaborations and disputations among later medieval and modern philosophers. Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, 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 Tarot David Cowles Oct 6, 2025 “Tarot can be seen as a paradigm of Judeo-Christian spirituality. So deal me in…please!” It is hard to pick up a deck of Tarot cards without triggering associations with ordinary playing cards : the time you won big at the Black Jack tables in Vegas, the time you lost a game of strip poker at camp. Playing Cards are such a fundamental part of our culture that it is hard to imagine a time without them. And yet they were not introduced to Europe (from the Islamic world) until late in the 14th century CE. 100 years later, the first Tarot decks emerged, like seemingly everything else, in Northern Italian city states like Milan. Disney Movie : DaVinci, Machiavelli, and Savonarola are playing cards with members of the Medici family in Florence; the stakes: Middle Earth (Europe). Spoiler alert : Savonarola lost more than his clothes! Tarot modified the original deck to give it a distinctly European and Medieval character and to open up the possibility of applications beyond mere games of chance. Sidebar : History is fraught with ‘false flags’. Take the Renaissance, for example. Supposedly, it marked the rebirth of classical culture; actually, it killed it. Tarot has a similar biography. It turned Medieval Culture into a 15th century version of a Marvel comic and it confined Christendom to a pavilion at ‘Epcot Firenze’. All this 100 years before Cervantes’ great ‘Requiem for the Moyen Age’, Don Quixote . So ‘this is the way the Middle Ages end, not with a bang but a snicker ’. But there’s much more to Tarot than this! A standard Tarot deck consists of 78 cards. They are usually divided into 56 cards of the Lesser Arcana and 22 cards of the Major Arcana. Cards in the Lesser Arcana vaguely resemble the playing cards we inherited from Islam, the cards we knew and used to love…until that last trip to Atlantic City. They’re grouped in 4 suits (Swords, Wands, Cups, and Pentacles) of 14 cards each (vs. our standard 13), including 10 cards in each suit with associated numerical values (A – 10) and 4 additional cards in each suit corresponding to personages in a paradigmatic medieval court (King, Queen, Knight and Page). Completing the Tarot Deck are the 22 ordered cards of the Major Arcana, forming what’s called the Fool’s Journey – a metaphorical path of physical and spiritual development. Two analogies spring to mind: the Via Crucis or Stations of the Cross and El Camino de Santiago , aka The Way. We might view Tarot as ‘polite penance’ or ‘posh pilgrimage’ – spiritual practices well suited to the less devout and more affluent leisured classes emerging in Renaissance Italy. And speaking of journeys through life’s stages, fast forward to the mid-20 th century and meet Erik Erikson, a psychologist who divided the human life cycle into 8 stages, beginning with Infancy (0 to 18 months) and running through Seniority (Age 65+). Erikson associates each stage with a specific emotional dichotomy and a particular developmental milestone. For example, for children ages 6 through 11, the emotional challenge is Industry vs. Inferiority and the milestone is Competence . But back to Tarot: the very first card in the Major Arcana is a tipoff that we’re not in Vegas any more. The card is numbered 0 (rather than 1) and the ideogram on the card is known as The Fool – not the most auspicious way to begin a journey… or is it? My reading of the Major Arcana is that they divide life’s course into 4 rather than Erikson’s 8 stages with every journey beginning at the same spot, Ground Zero , i.e. with The Fool (#0), i.e. ‘everyman’ (sic). This is not King Lear’s Fool. This is you and me and every other sentient being in our own personal state of nature – each of us, fresh out of the womb, experiencing the world with no pre-conceived categories to guide us. The first stage takes us through puberty, and it consists entirely of our introduction to the category of the Other, i.e. other people. In our initial encounters, the Other assumes the forms of Magician and High Priestess, emphasizing the Transcendence of the Other in the experience of a newborn. Sidebar : There’s a world, there’s me, and now there’s another ‘me’ who is not me ? One of my favorite games with < 1 y.o. grandchildren is to show them their image in a mirror and watch them trying to figure out what’s happening. Of course, we are all surrounded by mirror images of ourselves 24/7, no reflective surface required. 20+ cards later this still seems magical to me! Stage One ends when we encounter the Other as our peer partner in a relationship of romantic Love. In between we meet the Other in more secular guises: Empress (mom), Emperor (dad), Hierophant (teacher, guru, mentor). Stage Two corresponds to adolescence. It poses three challenges: Mobility (Chariot), Strength, and Interiority (Hermit). Before puberty, we are weak, we rely on others for our movements, and we wear our hearts on our sleeves. With adolescence we need to assume responsibility for our own actions (Chariot), develop a quiet self-confidence (Strength), and experience the beginnings of an inner life (Hermit). With adulthood, we enter Stage Three, the realm of Industry, Commerce and Procreation. Like the Christmas elf, we place our inner Hermit on the shelf. We are immersed, if not submerged, in the realm of Chance (Wheel of Fortune), Responsibility (Justice), Consequence (Hanged Man) and Mortality (Death)! Finally, we’re ready for Stage Four, the atemporal Eschaton (Parousia, Apocalypse, Eternity). Stage Four is reminiscent of the Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead . It consists of milestones ‘on the silk road’ from Immanence to Transcendence. Step one, let go of our attachments (Temperance); step two, confront evil (Devil); step three, overcome pride (Tower, Babel?); step four, reject Narcissism (Star); step five, smash idols (Moon). In truth, these 5 steps are all forms of iconoclasm. We have ‘misplaced concreteness’ (Whitehead), mistaking things that are immanent for Transcendence. With step six, we embrace sensuality and joy (Sun), a foretaste of the Transcendent. At step seven, we pass judgment on ourselves and our world and we are ready to let ourselves be judged by others in turn (Judgment). The final card in the deck (World) completes stage four; but it is also the climax of the entire journey. And what a journey! We all start off as the Fool - tiny, defenseless, and bald (no hair, Hawking) - a quantum of being. Ideally at least, we all end up with the same reward, i.e. The World. Not too shabby! Sidebar : The Old Testament Book of Job outlines a similar trajectory. Job is living a successful and virtuous life (Immanent), but he loses everything and is brought back to the state of nature (#0). He is Fool-again ( a la Joyce) – so ‘foolish’ in fact that he dares to confront God (Transcendent) face to face, judging and submitting himself to judgment (#20). As a result, he inherits the World (#21). Orthodox Christianity has for the most part taken a dim view of Tarot. At worst, it is ‘magic, demonic, and wicked’; at best it is a dangerous but frivolous distraction. Even so, the climax of the Fool’s Journey must have come as a bit of a shock: the final reward is not Paradise (Heaven) but the World. On the one hand, the Book of Revelation does speak of a New Jerusalem, so there is room for a new World in orthodox eschatology. However, Tarot’s utter lack of any reference to Heaven, or to Hell for that matter, must have been disconcerting to some. We cannot resist the temptation to see this aspect of Tarot as an omen. Machiavelli is about to turn Christian ethics upside down (‘ends justify means’). Out of Machiavelli’s head will spring the full bouquet of isms characteristic of the our Enlightenment era: Capitalism (Smith), liberalism (Locke), utilitarianism (Mill). socialism (Bentham), communism (Marx), pragmatism (James), fascism (Mussolini), secularism, and moral relativism. Of course, pockets of resistance persist: Existentialism (Sartre), Organism (Whitehead), and Hasidism (Buber) to name just three; but there is no denying that Mechanism ( La Technique – Ellul) is the dominant Spirit of this Age. But to blame that on Tarot is a bridge too far. At most, Tarot is a sign and harbinger of things to come. That said, we can embrace the profound human insight and the ultimately optimistic eschatology of Tarot without sacrificing any Judeo-Christian principles in the process. In fact, Tarot can be seen as a paradigm of Judeo-Christian spirituality. So deal me in…please! *** Image: Agnes Pelton — Awakening (Memory of Father (1943 Agnes Pelton’s Awakening (Memory of Father) (1943) is a luminous abstraction expressing a mystical experience of loss and transcendence. Soft radiating light rises from a central form, suggesting the soul’s ascent and a bridge between earthly grief and spiritual renewal. The painting embodies Pelton’s vision of awakening consciousness—where personal memory transforms into a universal, serene illumination. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Applied Camus David Cowles Aug 7, 2026 “I think Camus gets himself into some serious trouble here…he lets dreaded ‘objective values’ slip back into his system.” 1750 words, 8 minute read In an earlier post, Camus , we explored the philosophical reasoning behind the philosopher’s vision of the Absurd including rejection of concepts like ‘the future, consequences, and transcendent and/or objective values’. With no objective values and no concern for the future, we are left to live life entirely as we wish. “Everything is permitted.” (Nietzsche) Of course, that does not mean that we must behave as libertines. Each of us is free to fashion a code of ethics for herself. But we must not imagine that these private codes have any objective justification or that they constitute a ‘categorical imperative’, i.e. that they are in any way binding on others…or even on one’s self: Ethics is however I am choosing to behave at a given time. Hmm, sounds like me in the ‘60s…or now! That said, Camus devotes the second half of The Myth of Sisyphus to sketching styles of life that might be consistent with living out the implications of the Absurd. I think Camus gets himself into some serious trouble here…he lets dreaded ‘objective values’ slip back into his system; for example: “I cannot conceive that a skeptical metaphysics can be joined to an ethics of renunciation… I must say that what counts is not the best living but the most living …A man’s rule of conduct and his scale of values have no meaning except through the quantity and variety of experiences he has been in a position to accumulate …For on the one hand the absurd teaches that all experiences are unimportant, and on the other it urges toward the greatest quantity of experiences.” Sheer gobbledygook, am I right? Let’s enumerate the errors: (1) “I cannot conceive” – who cares what Camus ‘can conceive’ if we are all independent actors responsible for our own lives; (2) “What counts” – value judgments are not discarded, they are front and center here; (3) “Values have no meaning except through the quantity and variety of experiences” – so values do have meaning after all, as long as they are ‘Camus approved’; (4) “All experiences are unimportant” – except that the quantity and variety of those unimportant experiences is what gives life meaning: (∞*0) ≠ 0. First, Camus dismisses the possibility that asceticism and the Absurd could be compatible. This seems strange. If there is no objective value in the world, why mightn’t someone renounce that world (short of suicide), relish his solitude, and focus on his ‘inner self’? Practitioners of Taoism and Zen, well acquainted with the Absurd, often follow this practice. Even more disturbingly, Camus substitutes ‘quantity’ and ‘variety’ of experience for the forbidden ‘quality’. But aren’t quantity and variety themselves a kind of quality? Is ‘large’ a quality or a quantity? Quantity on my home scale, quality putting on a suit of clothes. If, as Camus asserts, more of some things is better than less, doesn’t quantity then become a value (a quality) in itself? One recalls a particularly crass expression from the 1980s: “Whoever dies with the most toys wins,” as well as Gatsby’s famous exclamation: “Living well is the best revenge”. Perhaps not our loftiest ideals…but values nonetheless, and values apparently considered objectively binding by Camus. The philosopher further explains that the quantity of our experience replaces any consideration of quality only so far as we are conscious of those experiences: “For the mistake is thinking that that quantity of experiences depends on the circumstances of our lives…To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them…A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them. All experiences are indifferent in this regard.” So ‘quantity’ is not a variable after all? Are you dizzy yet? Camus now introduces a new ‘transcendent value’: consciousness! Not the abstract phenomenon of consciousness but the act of being conscious of a particular experience. Conscious experience is certainly different, qualitatively, from ‘unconscious experience’ (whatever that might be). But is this not precisely the goal of Taoists, Zen Buddhists, and cloistered monastic orders? Is it not the case that many have renounced the world precisely in order to become more conscious ? To immerse one’s self in the hurly-burly of life may not be the best way to heighten consciousness. “Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.” (Wordsworth) Camus continues, “To the absurd man a premature death is irreparable. Nothing can make up for the sum of the faces and centuries he would otherwise have traversed.” Where are these faces, where are these centuries, where is this sum? They can’t be in the future because, as we show in our earlier essay, Camus rejects the category of ‘future’ entirely. And what about death? Doesn’t that bring us all back to zero? And doesn’t 0 = 0, whether it’s (3 – 3) or (300 – 300). Either way, 0 = 0 and it doesn’t matter how you got there! Arithmetic is a Markov Chain. Earlier, Camus referred to experiences as ‘accumulated’. What suggests to Camus that experience can be totalized in this way? Death is not an experience that you ‘add’ to other experiences. In fact, death is not an experience at all. Death is the absence of experience and, even more viciously, the annulment of all experience. So how are we to live in such an absurd world? Camus details several options, but he makes it clear that this does not constitute an exhaustive catalogue of possibilities. First, Don Juan. “Don Juan” is a collector of experiences. He seeks a long, varied and intense life: “Don Juan has chosen to be nothing”, i.e., to lose himself in himself. In fact, as we shall see, all of Camus’ absurd heroes choose to be nothing. This seems odd. What is choosing to be nothing but suicide…or at least renunciation…the two options vehemently rejected by Camus (above)? Second, the Actor: “The actor has three hours to be Iago…Never has the absurd been so well illustrated…There is no frontier between being and appearing… In those three hours he travels the whole course of the dead-end path that the man in the audience takes a lifetime to cover.” Third, the Conqueror. This is the man of action, but Camus acknowledges that the project of the conqueror is ultimately futile: “Nothing of the conqueror lasts, not even his doctrines.” Ozymandias : “Nothing beside remains.” (Shelley) As Camus repeatedly points out, death is inconsistent with objective values. If death is the final reality, then values are meaningless. On the other hand, if meaningful values are a reality, then death must be odd man out. (John Donne) Camus suggests that death is not merely the absence of value but the ‘exaltation of injustice’. Here he’s right: of course it is! It’s the primordial injustice. But this observation is revealing because ‘injustice’ implies ‘justice’. By acknowledging injustice, Camus has once again let the camel’s nose of objective value into the tent of the Absurd. What is Justice if not a transcendent value that gives meaning to existence? Finally, Camus turns to art and the artist. He proposes an ‘absurd aesthetic’: “An art in which the concrete signifies nothing more than itself… The absurd creator…must give the void its colors.” Dada? Rothko? Pollock? Camus is to be praised for his analysis of the Absurd. His description of the human condition takes a back seat to no one’s. Yet his project, in the end, fails. Try as he might, he cannot escape the need to let values seep into his scheme. This raises a question: Is it possible to talk about the world in any non-trivial way without making reference to Value? And if not, does that mean that values are indeed real or is this merely an invitation to remain silent In the course of our lives, we are confronted with facts we think we know, people we think we meet and judgments we think we make. From these nearly universal experiences, three great philosophical questions organically emerge: What is the nature of ‘knowledge’? What is the nature of ‘the other’? What is the nature of ‘value’? These questions form the basis of Philosophy’s Big Three : epistemology, ontology and ethics/aesthetics. They also give rise to the three great ‘null hypotheses’: skepticism, solipsism, nihilism. Camus incorporates the null hypotheses: “The method defined here acknowledges the feeling that all true knowledge is impossible. Solely appearances can be enumerated…” Here he is channeling Parmenides’ contrast of Aletheia (Truth) with Doxa (Appearances) . “In one of its aspects, eternal nothingness is made up precisely of the sum of lives to come which will not be ours…” Camus is anticipating Hugh Everett’s Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics . Or is he summarizing Robert Frost’ s The Road Not Taken ? In either case, the World consists solely of possibilities: ‘pure potentiality’ ( Aristotle), ‘the wave function’ (Schrödinger), ‘the sum over histories’ (Feynmann). When we actualize any one potentiality, when we collapse the wave function, we consign the alternative paths to ‘eternal nothingness’. “Now I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds. (Oppenheimer…misquoting the Bhagavad Gita .) So life as we know it, like monogamy, consists of actualizing one path and forsaking all others. By actualizing one reality, we destroy all potentiality. E sic pluribus solo unum – is that the real absurdity of life? “In an absurd world, there can be no scale of values, no value driven choices or value based preferences.” In that case Camus’ world cannot be absurd after all, littered as it is with value based preferences. So give Albert an A in Ontology but, sadly, a D in Ethics, or as Sister Martha Mary used to write at the bottom of my report cards: “Needs improvement.” Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.