< Back Is Techno-Optimism a New Religion? David Cowles “This is the first time I’ve seen AI presented with all the trappings of a new Aquarian theology.” I consider myself, on the whole, a techno-optimist. Of course I have concerns, but they are not the concerns of a techno-pessimist…or a techno-nihilist. Recently, however, I came across an intriguing but disturbing document from a16z (Marc Andreessen). The Techno-Optimist Manifesto reads for all the world like the foundational document for a new religion. Think Torah , the Gospel of Mark , the Book of Mormon … or even the Communist Manifesto ! Much has been written about AI, pro and con, some of it right here on Aletheia Today , but this is the first time I’ve seen AI presented with all the trappings of a new Aquarian theology. The human proclivity to idolize, fetishize, and demonize is seemingly boundless. Let’s help ourselves to a few ‘free samples’ from this ideological banquet: “We are being lied to. We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything. We are told to be angry, bitter, and resentful about technology. We are told to be pessimistic…We are told to be miserable about the future.” This is a stinging, and for the most part accurate, indictment of contemporary techno-nihilism, wrapped as it often is in the language of humanism and social justice. But then begins the New Catechism : “ We believe everything good is downstream of growth. And so the only perpetual source of growth is technology…We believe technology is a lever on the world – the way to make more with less…We believe free markets are the most effective way to organize a technological economy. “We believe the market economy is a discovery machine, a form of intelligence – an exploratory, evolutionary, adaptive system.” So, the economy is a biological organism. It evolves, it adapts to its environment, and it adapts its environment to itself. It functions intelligently; it’s mind, it’s a kind of brain. “We believe markets, to quote Nicholas Stern, are how we take care of people we don’t know…” Is this Techno-Optimism’s answer to the Great Commandment and the Parable of the Good Samaritan? “We believe Artificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher’s Stone – we are literally making sand (silicon) think.” Are we? Did someone make ‘ash (carbon) think’? Neural networks think. Perhaps even individual cells within those networks. (BTW, if silicon is AI’s carbon correlate, what is the AI correlate of the biological cell?) But the individual C or Si atoms by themselves? That’s more of a stretch. “We believe technology is the solution to environmental degradation and crisis. A technologically advanced society improves the natural environment, a technologically stagnant society ruins it. If you want to see environmental devastation, visit a former Communist country. “We believe that technology ultimately drives…what Buckminster Fuller called ephemeralization : ‘Technology lets you do more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing’.” Hmm, maybe that’s how God made the Universe! Something from nothing . Anyhow, this new religion is sounding better, isn’t it? “We believe the measure of abundance is falling prices. Every time a price falls, the universe of people who buy it, get a raise in buying power, which is the same as a raise in income…We believe we should push to drop prices across the economy through the application of technology until as many prices are effectively zero as possible, driving income levels and quality of life into the stratosphere.” I’m naïve, and proud of it, but even I can’t swallow this . Unfortunately, our ability to manufacture new ‘must-haves’ and to restrict the flow of capital and goods to preserve social hierarchy is boundless. I don’t care what I have as long as I have more than the Joneses. I must have someone to look down my nose at or what’s living for? (Ok, maybe we do need a new religion after all!) “We believe that advancing technology is one of the most virtuous things that we can do…We believe in deliberately and systematically transforming ourselves into the kind of people who can advance technology. We believe in adventure . Undertaking the Hero’s Journey, rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering dragons, and bringing home the spoils for our community…” What good is any new creed without ethics? The Manifesto goes on to provide a litany of moral qualities that the new faith extols. It reads like something out of Nietzsche. For brevity’s sake, I’ll just list them in the order in which they appear: ambition, aggression, persistence, relentlessness, strength; merit and achievement, bravery, courage, pride, confidence, earned self-respect. The Manifesto goes on to extol certain values: local knowledge, information, variance, interestingness, risk-taking, individualism, radical competence, competition, evolution, life, truth. This new religion is not shy; it is not afraid to take on the big issue: The Meaning of Life . But for my money, here it comes up short: “Material abundance from markets and technology opens the space for religion, for politics, and for choices of how to live, socially and individually. We believe technology is liberatory. Liberatory of human potential. Liberatory of the human soul, the human spirit. Expanding what it can mean to be free, to be fulfilled, to be alive. We believe technology opens the space of what it can mean to be human.” There’s nothing wrong with this vision per se , but is it alone ‘the meaning of life’? I don’t think so. Maybe we need to keep our traditional religions around a while longer after all. As in Torah , no list of blessings is complete until it has been paired with a like list of curses: “We have enemies…Our enemies are not bad people – but rather bad ideas. Our present society has been subjected to a mass demoralization campaign for six decades…under varying names like ‘existential risk, sustainability... (and) social responsibility’. This demoralization campaign is based on bad ideas of the past – zombie ideas…that have refused to die.” To name just a few of those ‘bad ideas’: stagnation, authoritarianism, socialism, bureaucracy, corruption, monopolies, the ivory tower. The Manifesto closes, fittingly, with Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘Last Man’: “ I tell you: one must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you have still chaos in yourselves. Alas! There comes the time when man will no longer give birth to any star. Alas! There comes the time of the most despicable man, who can no longer despise himself…’What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?’ — so asks the Last Man, and blinks…’We have discovered happiness’, — say the Last Men, and they blink... “Our enemy is… that.” AI raises many important questions – but neither demonization nor beatification offer constructive answers. Still, the Manifesto, minus its theological pretensions, offers a powerful argument for AI Optimism . The new tech will undoubtedly generate gobs of new wealth, and, by itself, that’s a good thing. Any critique of AI that does not immediately acknowledge the enormous potential for good created by this new wealth is off to a very bad start. Job One is to ‘stand back, get out of the way, let it happen’. Job Two is much more challenging. It concerns the distribution of this new wealth. Should we allow this wealth to flow and accumulate as it will, or should we regulate its distribution (the process and/or the end result) in some way? If so, how and to what extent? How should we balance the social value of a more democratic distribution scheme against the dampening effect such a scheme might have on overall production? Ok, thanks for stopping by, see ya soon…oh, wait, were you expecting us to answer these questions? Sorry about that! 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 Spring 2024. Previous Next

< Back Varieties of Social Organization David Cowles Oct 31, 2024 “Am I the stuff my social networks are made of…or am I merely the intersection of the various networks in which I participate?” When we are born, our first consistent discrimination is probably ‘me/not-me’. My survival depends on understanding myself in relation to my environment. Gradually, I realize that that environment is not monochromatic. My mother relates to me differently from my stuffed animals…or the cat. Most importantly, I come to distinguish a loosely structured group of ‘big people’ who interact with me on a more or less regular basis. I will learn to think of those people as family . Et Voila , I have already begun drawing my social map of the world; I will continue to fill it in over the course of a lifetime. Later, I’ll learn that I am also part of a clan, a neighborhood, a school, a parish, a nation, a species, and ultimately, a biosphere. Later still, I’m told that my precious, autonomous body is itself made up of only slightly less autonomous bodies called cells . And these cells themselves house other semi-autonomous life forms (nuclei & mitochondria). It’s bewildering. There are currently 8 billion pseudo-me living on Planet Earth but 30 trillion mini-me (cells) make up my body. Chances are, I’ll shuffle off this mortal coil still utterly unable to fully comprehend these basic realities. My species, homo sapiens , covers most of a planet with a circumference of about 26,000 miles, soon to be connected by ‘filaments’ to other regions of space. So the phenomenon colloquially known as ‘me’ is really a nesting of bio-social spheroids extending over more than 20 orders of magnitude (from the size of a mitochondrion to the circumference of Planet Earth). Across this scale, there are numerous styles of social organization. The components of a cell are symbionts while the cells themselves form tissues, organs, and ultimately the single macro-organism you affectionately know as ‘me’. I in turn belong to a hierarchy of variously ordered societies. My family, for example, is organized differently from my gang, my community, my country, my church. I once suggested to my father that we model our family on a parliamentary democracy but, strangely enough, he did not see wisdom in my idea. Animal cells are products of the merger of previously independent, prokaryotic (nuclear free) cells to form a single entity. These eukaryotic cells repeatedly reproduce until they provide the full complement and diversity needed to form the adult body of a macro-organism. The Plant Kingdom exhibits different models of organization. For example, while animal behavior is often controlled by a central nervous system, plant intelligence tends to be distributed throughout the organism. Think Blockchain! Bacteria, on the other hand, remain prokaryotic. They function and reproduce independently but they freely exchange DNA and often cooperate with members of the same or different species to pursue mutual objectives. Some organisms organize into colonies - groups of genetically identical or closely related organisms, called zooids, that live together in a tight knit society, called Zooidland in an upcoming Lego Movie. Zooids are individual animals but they are also part of the larger colonial organism. Each zooid is capable of some degree of independent function. If necessary, it can survive outside the colony, but it can also work cooperatively as part of a larger whole. Coral is a good example of a colonial organization. In many colonial species, different zooids specialize in specific functions like feeding, reproduction, or defense. This specialization allows for more efficient overall functioning of the colony. But then these same zooids work together, e.g. to create a colony-wide circulatory system. So, colonies resemble animal bodies, on one hand, and animal societies on the other. As individual humans, we participate at several levels of organization. On the one hand, our bodies are societies of cooperating cells; on another, we are ‘cells’ cooperating in the form and function of transpersonal organizations (above). But we are also members of a species ( homo sapiens ) and of a biosphere ( Gaia ). Question : Am I the stuff my social networks are made of…or am I merely the intersection of the various networks in which I participate? Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Politics Measures Our Pain David Cowles Apr 16, 2024 "So, God is not the concept by which we measure our misery; ideology is!" John Lennon famously intoned, “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” ( Working Class Hero ) In a New York Times column published 4/6/2024, Ross Douthart suggests that it is politics, not God, that captures the depths of each individual’s existential despair: “The left-wing temperament is, by nature, unhappier than the moderate and conservative alternatives. The refusal of contentment is essential to radical politics; the desire to take the givens of the world and make something better out of them…” “Nor should it be a surprise that amid the recent trend toward increasing youth unhappiness… whatever is making young people unhappier (be it smartphones, climate change, secularism or populism), the effect is magnified the further left you go.” I agree with Douthart entirely…and not at all. Yes, one’s political ideology is an accurate indicator of one’s level of despair. But this is true at both ends of the political spectrum, not just on the left. Toward the middle of the spectrum, folks go about their daily lives, more or less satisfied . The overall sense of well being declines sharply as you move in either direction, beyond the ‘wide and welcoming middle’. Taken to the extreme, groups at both ends of the spectrum can end up bombing buildings. In his column, Douthart quotes fellow author, Ta-Nehisi Coates: “I don’t believe the arc of the universe bends towards justice…I don’t even believe in an arc. I believe in chaos … Those of us who reject divinity, who understand that there is no order, there is no arc, that we are night travelers on a great tundra, that stars can’t guide us, will understand that the only work that will matter, will be the work done by us.” If it’s going to be, it’s up to me! “Moderation in the pursuit of Justice is no virtue!” (Barry Goldwater - 1964) “Burn, Baby, Burn” (Marvin X – Watts 1965). “Think not that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword.” (Jesus of Nazareth – c. 30 CE) Ideology makes strange bedfellows! But my chief disagreement with Douthart concerns the causal order of things. Douthart suggests that left-wingers are unhappy because they compare the world that is to the utopia it could be; obviously, the current state of affairs falls woefully short. I, however, believe that ‘native unhappiness’ is the soil from which all political ideology springs. We’ve convinced ourselves that our political ideas are a function of serious study, careful reasoning, and the application of universally accepted values. Per Douthart, to the extent that events conform to our model, we can allow ourselves to be happy. Conversely, to the extent that they deviate from the ideal, unhappiness is inevitable. I suggest, on the contrary, that it is our ‘native unhappiness’ that determines our political leanings. Of course, neither Douthart nor I are wrong! The process is non-linear and recursive. Stan is by all accounts a miserable SOB, so no one is surprised to see him coming out of an ultra-conservative political rally. Molly, on the other hand, apparently thinks it’s 1969 again. Bedecked with tie-dye and beads (not Rosary), she is sitting-in at the downtown headquarters of a multi-national bank; no one is quite sure why . Molly and Stan are activists. Their involvement deepens their understanding of the system and sharpens their critique. Misery reinforces itself. Will one or both of them eventually resort to violence? Question : Molly and Stan were both ‘unhappy’ college students. Why did one turn her native misery into a left-wing ideology while the other turned right? Kultcha! Who would you like to hang out with? Molly would enjoy a glass of red wine with Jean-Paul Sartre while Stan would prefer a draught beer with General Pershing. Left-wing, right-wing. This is not to diminish the practical importance of politics or the intellectual importance of ideology. Society could not survive without them. But we also need to see them in context. Someone’s political preferences do not develop in isolation. They are one part of a ‘whole person’; and while a certain amount of dissonance is to be expected, outlier feelings tend to revert to mean over time. American political analysts are wringing their hands. People aren’t voting ‘the way they’re supposed to’ – a very odd expression for a so-called democracy, don’t you think? Nevertheless, our cognoscente claim they can measure a person’s best interests, politically, based on a number of socio-economic variables, such as gender, sexual preference, race or ethnicity, educational level, and household income. Problem : no one’s voting as they should! In many cases, they are acting out of political ideologies diametrically opposed to what we have paternalistically determined to be in their best interests. And it makes us mad! Fighting mad in fact, when we’ve done all the work to determine what’s best for someone and still, they turn up their noses at us. Why? It’s culture, stupid! As under the old English class system, no one cares what you say, they just care how you say it! Hilary Clinton is the poster child for cultural determinism. Her jaw dropping loss to Trump in 2016 sent shock waves around the world. How is it possible that a ‘beautiful person’ who spent her campaign hobnobbing with A-List celebrities lost to an orange haired bully who was recorded engaging in gross, sexual ‘locker room’ talk inside some trailer? Oops, I just answered my own question, didn’t I? Sidebar : Hilary Clinton may be the poster child for cultural determinism, but she is not the only one. Other candidates have failed the culture test and lost ‘sure thing’ elections. Remember Mike Dukakis? John Kerry? So, God is not the concept by which we measure our misery; ideology is! Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back We All Live in a Yellow Submarine David Cowles “The occasional dragon notwithstanding, we hardly ever see monsters in Liverpool anymore.” (The Beatles’ iconic movie is our version of Homer’s Odyssey; it’s Mythology for the post-Enlightenment era.) We travel, but like Alice in Looking-glass World, we always seem to end up right back where we started. To go ‘some actual where’, you either need to hop the Hogwarts Express from Kings Cross Station, Platform 9¾, or book passage on a certain Yellow Submarine , embarking from Liverpool Pier. We’ll pass on Hogwarts this trip; we’ve chosen the Pier, a long corridor with a series of doors running along both sides like gates in a modern airport. Open a door, take a peek, catch a glimpse - you’re definitely not in Kansas…in fact, you can’t even get to Kansas from here. Liverpool Travel offers daily departures to exotic destinations around the globe – well not exactly around the globe, more off the globe. “Delve into the depths of your subconscious mind”…or “learn the secrets of the Multiverse”. Compared to this, the Odyssey is like a 35mm slide show from the 1960s. Prodded by the pleas of a refugee, Young Fred, the Beatles book passage on a submarine heading to the mysterious Pepperland . But wait! Newly appointed, Admiral Fred ( aka ‘Young Fred’), knows a short-cut. As in the classic scene from Goodfellas , Fred takes ‘the boys’ backstage. They – now you – get to see how the sausage ( aka the cosmos) is made. How would you build a Universe? Say you were offered the job of Director for a 21st century remake of the Truman Show ; how would you build your set? Perhaps you’d start with Time: “What time is it? …It’s time for Time! …Look, the hands are slowing down…Maybe time’s gone on strike.” You are looking at Time itself, pure temporality, before the adulteration of flow (rate and direction). In Liverpool, time flows in only one direction and at only one ‘rate of speed’, but in Pepperland … The Sea of Time is the ‘womb’ for all possible versions of time; it is ‘the mother of all Time,’ literally and figuratively. Einstein might have said, “It’s time for Time !” “I don’t want to alarm you, but the years are going backwards. If we slip back through time at this rate, we’ll all disappear up out of our own existence,” warns the Admiral. To ‘disappear up out of our own existence’ is not ‘just dying’. We think of death as a divorce, not an annulment. Yellow Submarine ’obluterates’ that comforting delusion. If time is reversible, even just theoretically, and it is, then existence can be erased… retroactively! You call it ‘corn’, we call it ‘the Second Law of Thermodynamics’ (entropy). In what sense then can I claim to be…or ever to have been? Apparently, everything is built solidly on a foundation of…nothing. Am I in a community theater production of The Tempest ? Whenever you’re out of your comfort zone, you need to entertain new options. What if time itself is nothing but the clocks we use to measure it? Our intrepid crew discovers it can in fact reverse the direction of time…just by manually adjusting the clock hands. Next Stop : The Sea of Science (Space + Tech)! This sea is characterized by its rectilinear grid and by the Platonic solids that populate it. It’s ‘Plato meets Descartes’ - The Timaeus . Against this background, various waveforms undulate. Similar to black holes and holograms, this sea can’t seem to make up its mind whether it’s a 2-dimensional surface or a 3-dimensional space. Figures emerge out of a flat background to enclose a 3D volume, only to undergo further deformation back to 2D surfaces. Long after Yellow Submarine was in the can, it was discovered during the study of black holes that 2-dimensional surfaces and 3-dimensional spaces can encode exactly the same amount of ‘information’. Likewise, a hologram is a 3D ‘image’ generated from a 2D scrap of film. In these applications at least, a 3rd dimension is ‘optional’. It is a hallmark of mythology that it not only summarizes what is known but it predicts things yet to be uncovered. Yellow Sub meets the test. Now the voyage to Pepperland moves from the objective realms of Time and Science (Space & Technology) to more the subjective. We are entering the Sea of Monsters (objective monsters) on our way to the Headlands (subjective monsters). The occasional dragon notwithstanding, we hardly ever see monsters in Liverpool anymore; or if we do, we don’t recognize them properly. We Liverpudlians have done a pretty good job of purging ‘monsters’ from our immediate vicinity…but only from the immediate vicinity. Believe me, monstrosity is alive and well, as John himself would tragically experience! The Sea of Monsters is populated by a variety of creatures that exhibit some physical traits that are similar to ours but others that are very, very different. Most striking is the way that Beatle Biology allows for unusual combinations and configurations of organs. In Liverpool, we are still just experimenting with Bionics. In the Sea of Monsters, most creatures combine organic and mechanical structures. In On Growth and Form, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (d. 1948) outlined the many functional and structural similarities linking biological and non-biological mechanisms. R. Buckminster Fuller (d. 1983) did something similar in his two-volume work, Synergistics . Ultimately, technology and biology are not incompatible: if a certain form works well in one particular medium, it might very well work in the other. Isn’t that the fundamental assumption behind AI and all Computer Science? One of the creatures in this Monstrous Sea is the ‘dreaded vacuum.’ Like a black hole, this creature sucks into itself everything in its environment. “We’ll be sucked into oblivion…or even further,” says Young Fred; and sure enough, they are! The vacuum cleaner monster not only sucks up all objects in its path, including our sub and its crew; it also sucks up the fabric of spacetime itself. Ultimately, it even sucks itself, tail first, into oblivion: The Beatles’ universe is a vanishing ouroboros . The vacuum leaves us with precisely nothing, nothing that is, except Jeremy Hillary Boob, PhD (JHB). But that’s ok because the Boob is ‘nothing,’ quite literally: 1 + (~1) = Boob Dr. Boob lives in the infinitesimal space Derrida calls ‘differance’. If Universe is a black hole, the Boob is Hawking radiation, pure information. In fact, Jeremy consists of all the information that existed in the universe prior to its implosion. Hawking codified what Ringo had demonstrated earlier: Information is conserved but confused in the Boob. Take this snippet of dialog, for example: “Do you speak English?” - “Old English, Middle English, a dialect pure.” “But do you speak English?” - “You know I’m not sure.” What else remains? The submarine itself. Even though the sub was sucked up by the vacuum monster, it avoids ‘oblivion’ because, turns out, the sub is the Eternal Present. It cannot be destroyed; it instantly regenerates itself. (We’ve been looking for this at least since the days of Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth.) Presence is sui generis . Next stop: the Foothills of the Headlands. Headlands is the domain of pure thought, taking the form of transparent heads, unencumbered by useless bodies. In the Headlands, thoughts lack orientation, consistency, coherence, purpose, and effect. (Hmm, sounds like we’re ‘inside the Beltway’!) In the Headlands, we see the consequences of an ‘all-in-the-mind’ ontology (e.g., Philosophical Idealism) and believe me, it’s not pretty. Bottom line: “mind matters but mind matter” - a bumper sticker? A souvenir from our trip? After the Headlands…the Sea of Holes! We’ve passed through brains & bodies, forms & ideas; what’s left? Nothing? Exactly, nothing , but that’s a good thing! Now we are passing into the realm of ‘negative space’. The usual relation of figure and ground is reversed. The sea itself is the ground, and the holes in that sea now constitute the figure. Nothing exists, something doesn’t! Nothingness ( Le Neant ) is what’s concrete…so concrete that Ringo is able to put a ‘hole’ in his pocket. The Sea of Holes is the inflection point in our journey. The ‘figure-ground’ relationship has reversed; for the rest of the voyage, it’s ‘ground-figure.’ The topology of the Sea of Holes is radically non-orientable. There is no consistent directionality, no spatial ordering. It’s ‘Escher’ on steroids. In fact, the Sea of Holes is a paradigmatic example of non-orientability. Any system ( Pepperland ) that contains a ‘locally non-orientable’ component (like the Sea of Holes) must be ‘globally non-orientable’ as well. It turns out that our orientable universe is just a unique configuration in the infinite sea of non-orientability. In a non-orientable universe, there are no privileged vantage points or directions. In fact, there are no beginnings, middles or ends at all. However, every ‘point’ has two distinct and opposite orientations (like ‘up and down arrows’ on a Mobius strip). The Netflix series, Stanger Things , refers to the ‘Upside Down World.’ Now, we're ready to cross into Pepperland at last…if only we could find it. But first, we must pass through one more sea, the Sea of Green. There’s a catch: out of a seemingly infinite array of holes, only one hole connects the Sea of Holes to the Sea of Green and Pepperland . This is a problem for our Argonauts! As we know from the study of Black Holes, all holes look the same, they have ‘no hair’; so we can’t examine the holes for clues. There is only one possible way out: stochastic trial and error…which has an infinitesimal likelihood of success. Fortunately, our Argonauts do find the one and only hole that functions as a passageway to the Sea of Green, an almost featureless, ultra-thin membrane separating the other branes from Pepperland . So full speed ahead! Once the Beatles arrive in Pepperland , they discover that they bear an “uncanny” resemblance to four of its permanent residents, “the originals”, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Of course, we later learn that the Beatles are the Sergeant Pepper band! Initially, “the originals” are separated from the rest of Pepperland by a big glass dome. It is as if the cosmos were censoring itself. If the Beatles are Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, then both ‘copies’ cannot coexist in one universe; one copy must be confined on a separate mini-brane. The ‘big glass bowl’ maintains the ‘cosmic order.’ But that order is about to be shattered! Remember, Ringo has a ‘hole’ in his pocket (from the Sea of Holes). Ringo applies the hole to the side of the “big glass bowl” and through the agency of what-is-not , the ontological barrier dissolves and the two realities meet on the same extensive plane. Ringo’s hole (nothing) connects the temporal Beatles with their eternal alter-egos. Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is the Beatles under the aspect of eternity while the Beatles are Sergeant Pepper’s Band under the aspect of history. When Ringo’s hole connects the two realms, we learn that the division of the Universe into ‘temporal’ and ‘eternal’ rests on a false distinction. Temporality and eternity are complementary aspects of a single phenomenon. Think waves and particles. So, it turns out that Liverpool and Pepperland are really the same place! We never left the Pier after all. I’ll expect a refund from Liverpool Travel . Liverpool is the spatiotemporal aspect of Pepperland as Pepperland is the eternal aspect of Liverpool. Nothing that happens in Liverpool stays in Liverpool. Whatever happens in Liverpool happens in Pepperland …and vice-versa. In the language of the Gospels, “On earth as it is in heaven.” In the language of Quantum Mechanics (Bell’s theorem, 1964), Liverpool and Pepperland are ‘entangled.’ And what about the sub itself? That’s also Pepperland . It’s Presence. In the language of Christian eschatology, Pepperland is ‘the kingdom not yet’ while the Sub is ‘the kingdom already’. In the language of Christian ecclesiology, the Sub is the Church. Finally, in the language of Christian theology, Yellow Submarine is solidly ‘Trinitarian’: Temporality (Liverpool), Eternity ( Pepperland ), and Presence (the Sub) are the three facets ( personae ) of Being. In the end…it’s all Pepperland ! At Aletheia Today , it is our conviction that Science, Philosophy and Theology, long mutually estranged, are starting to re-converge. If so, Yellow Submarine might be seen as a shot across the Enlightenment’s bow, finally celebrating the official end of the real Dark Ages (1500 – 1900 CE, Machiavelli through Marx) and new synthesis that will characterize the ‘dawning Age of Aquarius’. 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 Groundhog Issue 2025 Share Previous Next

< Back Abraham Lincoln and the Book of Judges David Cowles Jun 30, 2022 “If time travel is perfected in my lifetime, I know exactly where…and when…I’ll visit first!” “…That government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” – Abraham Lincoln ( Gettysburg Address ) Shall not perish ? Where can I find this imperishable utopia of which Mr. Lincoln speaks so reverentially? I’m googling it…waiting…ah, got it, Israel. Ok, but Israel between 1250 and 1000 B.C. Well, if time travel is perfected in my lifetime, at least I know exactly where I want to go… and when ! “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in their own eyes,” (Judges 21: 25) During this period, Israel had no formal political authority. It was ruled by so-called ‘Judges.' Caveat lector ! Do not confuse these Judges with the sober men and women, often unelected, often with life tenure, who preside over our courtrooms, gods of guilt. Old Testament (OT) judges were nothing like that ! In the absence of traditional institutions of government, charismatic leaders emerged from among the people to secure and advance the collective welfare of the people. These leaders relied for their authority, not on power, but on (1) their devotion to the law of God (Torah) and (2) the popular, if informal, consent of the governed. In our era, a variety of actors compete to fill the role of an OT judge: populist politicians, military heroes, movement leaders, mob bosses, even celebrities. But the influence of these modern day pseudo-judges , unlike ancient Israel’s judges, is tightly circumscribed by our formal institutions of government. During the period of Judges, there were no formal institutions of government in Israel. People did what was right in their own eyes and the Judges were their instruments. OT judges did not make law! It was assumed that all laws had already been made…with direct input from God. These are the 613 statutes, the Torah, now recorded in the first 5 books of the Bible. Judges ruled Israel from the death of Joshua (following Moses) to the coronation of Saul (prior to David). They settled disputes and they defended Israel ‘against all enemies, foreign or domestic.' Along with the priests, they saw to it that God’s statutes were observed, but they were less about enforcement than they were about consensus. For 250 years, Israel prospered under informally chosen, but popular, Judges. But the Israelites looked around and saw the pomp and power of neighboring nations, all of whom we governed by kings. So, Israel wanted a king…and eventually they got one: Saul. And the rest as they say is ‘history,' quite literally! **** Image: Gideon Gathering His Army, Scene from the Book of Judges. Etienne Parrocel (French, Avignon 1696–1776 Rouen), Formerly attributed to Anonymous, Italian, first half of the 18th century. As part of the Met's Open Access policy , you can freely copy, modify and distribute this image, even for commercial purposes. Public domain data for this object can also be accessed using the Met's Open Access API . 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 The Probability of Being David Cowles Sep 26, 2024 “The Matrix (or the Multiverse) takes the place of God…while Marvel Superheroes occupy the space once reserved for the miraculous…” Growing up in the 1950s meant growing up in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance. As a student in a Catholic elementary school, we were taught to place a great deal of emphasis on the unique: things that did happen, and/or can happen, only once. For example, your own birth and death. Jesus’ incarnation and resurrection. The miracle stories that populate scripture and hagiography (the lives of the saints for those of you not blessed with a parochial school education). At the same time, we were living in an era that was learning to respect science in a whole new way. Not even Sister Mary Therese could be oblivious to the atom bomb, the suddenly ubiquitous automobile, or most importantly, television. The tension between these two epistemologies was not spelled out for us. I doubt any of our teachers understood it. We were left to figure it out for ourselves. And so we did; it’s called ‘the 60s’: Rock & Roll, LSD, and ‘Civil War’. Even today, we live in the shadow of positivism: “If I can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist; if I can’t repeat it, it didn’t happen!” By extension, if a tree falls in a forest and is only heard once, it never fell. Of course, no one other than A.J. Ayer has ever lived like this. We simply say, “ Stuff happens; deal with it!” In recent decades, intellectual activity has concentrated on discovering heuristic principles that span different worlds: the mechanical and the biological, the mental and the physical, the very, very small and the very, very large. Let’s just say, “We’re working on it.” Today, I’d like to suggest that we expand our horizons just a bit. I’d like to replace our either/or ontology (above) with a 6 category scheme based on various probabilities of being: The Infinitely Probable (Universal ) : Things that must exist. Today, it is generally thought that this is the null set (nothing is necessary). However, it has been argued that God, for example, fits in this category. Possibly, the Good. Or Beauty, Truth, Justice, etc. Anyway, P(x) = 1. The Indefinitely Probable (Repeatable): Things that have been observed to exist, or that can be inferred to exist from things that have been observed to exist, and that can be made to exist again by faithfully recreating specified initial conditions. Current thinking puts ‘the emergence of life’ in this category. The physics is deterministic; the math is ‘hyperreal’ (it involves numbers that are larger than any real number but less than infinity). P(x) → 1. The Definitely Probable (Actual): These are things (events) with a well-defined probability of existence (occurrence). The physics is causal, the math is ‘real’, i.e. it involves ‘real’ numbers. 0 < P(x) Ɛ R < 1. The Infinitesimally Probable (Unique): Things that may exist but have an infinitesimally (є) small probability of existing, e.g. the specific combination of genes and experiences that constitute the person known as ‘You’. This is the realm of ‘one offs’. The physics is chaotic, the math ‘hyperreal’ (it involves numbers that are smaller than any positive real number but greater than 0). P(x) → 0. The Virtually Impossible : Things that are infinitesimally probable but occur more than once. P(x) ≤ є²; ergo, P(x) ≈ 0. I can say with confidence, “There will never be another you,” at least not in finite spacetime. The Absolutely Impossible : Things that cannot exist. A squared circle. A particle that goes faster than the speed of light without going backwards in time. These are things that are precluded by the nature of cosmos, language, mathematics, or logic. P(x) = 0. Neither physics nor math apply. Young people growing up today are exposed only to the Indefinitely probable (science) and Definitely probable (history). They are at a disadvantage. 70 years ago, our cosmic map was more expansive; it also included the Infinitely Probable (e.g. God) and the Infinitesimally Probable (e.g. miracles). Lacking those categories today, our culture has substituted Science Fiction. The Matrix (or the Multiverse) takes the place of God, the Infinitely Probable, while Marvel Superheroes occupy the space once reserved for the miraculous, the Infinitesimally Probable. We are poorer for our progress. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back You Say you Want a Revolution! David Cowles Sep 22, 2022 “A successful revolution is not something you cook up one summer evening over burgers and beer…” At least since 1700, the science of revolution (not evolution , revolution!) has been a valid topic in western intellectual history. Socialism, anarchism, liberalism can all trace their origins, or at least their modern revivals, to the cauldron of political philosophy that was the 18th century. That revolutionary impulse morphed into a variety of 19th and 20th century ideologies. Marx and Hegel, for example, ‘discovered’ that political and economic revolution was tightly woven into the dialectical fabric of history. They shared the belief that history was an inexorable process fated to end in Utopia. The function of revolutionary praxis was just to give history a nudge. Prudhomme, Bakunin, et al. believed, on the other hand, that history required a lot more than a nudge. To bastardize a phrase from the later Nietzsche, they practiced politics with a hammer. During this same time, Christianity was largely perceived as a conservative, even reactionary, force in society. Sadly, the charge is not without merit. Like all great revolutionary movements, the radical essence of Christianity was compromised by the personal interests of (some of) its leaders. This should not surprise us. Today’s revolutionary agenda often becomes tomorrow’s conservative manifesto. The process is two-fold. First, times change: what was once (1848) revolutionary (universal suffrage, the right of workers to organize, a graduated income tax) becomes mundane. Second, ideas change: the withering away of the State (Marx) becomes the emergence of the Mega-state (Stalin). Christianity is no exception. A little band of ‘merry men…and women’ (Galilee) becomes a global hierarchy. The commandment, “Love one another”, morphs into a pastiche of personal do’s and don’ts. Clearly then, a successful revolution is not something you cook up one summer evening over burgers and beer on a friend’s back porch (although that didn’t stop me from trying…multiple times). History’s greatest revolutionaries understood that real revolution could not be an event but had to be a process, a perpetual, universal process: Moses, Jesus, Marx, Mao, even Pol Pot. The execution of the Tsar in 1918 was never expected to create a new Russia overnight. Communists, like early Christians, understood that lasting revolution depended on the creation of a ‘new man’ (sic). Hence, the concept of Permanent Revolution : the idea that revolution is not primarily an event, but rather the ongoing condition of a healthy society. Revolution must replace status quo as society’s ‘steady state’. This underscores the critical role of human beings, any and all conscious, intelligent, intentional beings, in the cosmic dance. Whether viewed from the perspective of creation or evolution, it is clear, our function is not to be a resting place of process. We are the incline, not a plateau. We are not the product of process; we are its catalyst . All revolutions are betrayed by their revolutionaries, and Christianity is no exception. The best, however, retain their revolutionary seeds which can be replanted and nourished in other soil or at other times. Like the phoenix, justice emerges, not dialectically, but soaring out of the ashes of history! Old Faithful. Over the long course of western history, there have been many revolutionary cookbooks, some of them quite interesting, but one such book, a sort of Larouse Gastronomique , is the mother of all revolutionary literature. It’s called The Holy Bible . Take a quick look: Exodus : Liberation – the precursor of all revolution. Leviticus, et al. (Torah): Living justly – the fabric of permanent revolution. Job : Justice justified – Even God is subject to the demands of justice. Joshua : Espionage, class warfare, subversion, 5th column activities, and the fall of Jericho. Judges : 200+ years of ‘Constitutional Anarchism’. Psalms (David): ‘Benevolent Monarchism’ and the celebration of God’s actions in history. Wisdom, et al. (Solomon): A utopian blueprint for a revolutionary society. Isaiah, et al . (Prophets): A practical guide to revolution a la Lenin’s “What is to be done?” Synoptic Gospels : Living the revolution! One man’s life as a pattern for all. Epistles & Acts of the Apostles : Building revolutionary communities, the foundation of a revolutionary society. Apocalypse : A glimpse of what’s ‘passing away’ ( Inferno ), a foretaste of what’s to coming to be ( Paradiso ). “You say you want a revolution…We’d all love to see the plan!” – The Beatles (1968). No problem! I’ll have Amazon send you a copy. 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.

"Like most people of my generation, I cringe when I hear the M word." < Back Korach Over Dinner Tzvi Freeman Jul 15, 2023 "Like most people of my generation, I cringe when I hear the M word." 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 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 Regressive Child Rearing David Cowles Jun 1, 2026 “Best intentions notwithstanding, we are raising our children to succeed in a long gone world… and to fail in this one!” According to Marcus Aurelius, Heraclitus of Ephesus (5 th century BCE) taught, “We must not act or speak like children of our parents.” In other words, we must not become who we were raised to be. (No, Marcus did not write the copy for Progressive’s Homeowners Becoming their Parents ad campaign; sorry, Flo!) Physical and social evolution is always a blend of stability and change. The future preserves something of the present – or it wouldn’t be our future - and the present preserves something of the past, or it wouldn’t be our past. “April (present) is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory (past) and desire (future), stirring dull roots with spring rain. Winter (past) kept us warm, covering earth in forgetful snow, feeding a little life with dried tubers. Summer (future) surprised us coming over the Starnbergersee with a shower of rain…” ( The Waste Land ) This combination of continuity and change is what affords our World its solidarity, its plasticity, and its novelty. It applies to most physical and social processes; but child rearing, at least as it is practiced in the modern North Atlantic Community, is a notable exception. ( Note : In this article, I’m going to draw from my relationship with my father but the analysis I offer could just as well apply to my mother or to any primary caregiver.) By the time I was old enough to form a vague notion of where I fit into the scheme of things, my #1 desire was to please, and as far as possible, emulate my caregivers (e.g. my father). To accomplish this, I had two sources of information: my father’s day-to-day behavior and his daily ‘directives and invectives’. His directives came straight from his father’s playbook. His behavior on the other hand reflected his own lived experience. His message to me was a blend of the two. Let me set the stage, and to keep things simple, let me slightly (but only slightly), modify the dates: Assume my paternal grandfather was born in 1900, my father in 1925, myself in 1950, my youngest daughter in 1975, and my grandchildren c. 2000. Not far off from actual as it turns out. My father was well intentioned, if at times a bit clueless. No doubt, he wanted me to have the ‘best possible’ childhood consistent with my becoming the ‘best possible’ adult…which in 1950 he defined primarily in terms of socioeconomic comfort. Still, hardly child abuse! My father’s parents were survivors of World War I, the Roarin’ 20s, and the Great Depression. Over the years, they developed values well suited to their own lived experience but not necessarily best suited to my father’s personality or to his time in life. The world in 1925 was very different from the world as it was in 1900 or as it would be in 1950. My grandparents raised my father to succeed in a 1875 – 1925 version of the world, not the 1925 – 1975 version. Sidebar : It is said that generals prepare to fight the previous war. Likewise, we parent our children to be successful members of the previous generation. My dad embarked on parenthood, relying on his father’s directives (1900 – 1925) tempered by his own lived experience (1925 – 1950). Bottom line : my father raised me to succeed in the world as it was c. 1925, the midpoint, not as it was in 1950 or as it would be in 1975 (my midpoint), or God forbid, in 2000. Regrettably, my children in turn were raised to succeed in the 1950’s; but happily, it is my grandchildren now who help me adjust to life c. 2025! Don’t get me wrong, tradition can be a good thing. An anchor to windward can keep you from flying off into space, Icarus-like. But as cultural change accelerates, the din of cognitive dissonance becomes more cacophonous…and more paralyzing. Most non-human life forms don’t have this problem. Their cultures evolve slowly, if at all. Continuity is more important than creativity. Information passed on, genetically, epigenetically, and culturally, is crucial for survival. Rare eruptions of adaptive novelty are an evolutionary bonus . For humans, on the other hand, novelty is critical to the survival of the individual, the social order, the culture, and the species. Disruption is our superpower. But we fear it and we suppress it. Each generation must free itself anew, but only partially, from the shackles of the past before it can begin to make its own ‘mark’ on history. Parenting in our culture means raising children to be a generation behind their times. Best intentions notwithstanding, we are raising our children to succeed in a long gone world … and to fail in this one! Oddly enough, it is grandparents ( full disclosure : I am one, many times over), loosely defined to include any interested adult two generations or more removed , that play an increasingly important role here . By 1950, my grandparents realized that the world had changed. They were not living in 1925 any more and certainly not in 1900. ‘Without admitting guilt’ they recognized past misjudgments and were free to meet their new born grandchildren on their own terms. Who is not a better grandparent than parent? Ironically, while ‘grandparent types’ may have the wisdom to parent well…they lack the energy. Parents, on the other hand, have more energy but ideologically, they are often stuck in the quicksand known as the past . What is most remarkable here, and disheartening, is that someone figured this out 2500 years ago. We think we’re so smart, and in some ways we are, yet we have collective ignored millennia old wisdom. Makes you wonder what else we’ve missed, doesn’t it? 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< Back Harriet Tubman Joins Six Women of Courage in the Exodus Story--Passover Part Two Ayala Emmett "Let us follow these biblical women and Harriet Tubman’s unflinching courage. Let us be agents in our time in the political arena to support and stand with all who struggle for freedom here in America, in the Middle East, and around the world." In 2015, we added to our Seder Harriet Tubman, who joins the six women who shaped the history of the Exodus. The women belong at the Passover table because all seven emerge as consequential political catalysts. All are remarkably brave, amitzot , all are women who at great risk take bold actions in the political/religious arena of their time and speak directly to contemporary concerns of justice. Tubman joins six agentive women in the Exodus story who are connected across ethnic and class differences. Who are the biblical women and how do they influence the history of the Exodus? Two of the six are midwives, two are mother and daughter, and two are women of high rank, the daughter of Pharaoh, and the daughter of a Midianite Priest. The women inscribe courage as a dominant element in the Exodus story that begins in oppression, slavery and attempted genocide. Pharaoh orders the two midwives Shifrah and Puah to do the unthinkable, “when you deliver the Hebrew women look at the birthstool: if it is boy kill him” (1:16). Pharaoh invades the gendered domestic sphere of childbirth and the midwives without hesitation step into the dangerous political terrain. They are defiant, “the midwives who revere* God did not do as the king of Egypt told them.” The two midwives offer us the first biblical lesson in civil disobedience. The text is (deliberately?) unclear about the identity of Shifrah and Puah. Their ethnicity has been debated in rabbinic commentary; the majority of the rabbis, including Rashi the 12th century commentator identify the midwives as Hebrew women, while other sages view them as Egyptian. Their actions, however, are unambiguous, they defy Pharaoh’s edict to kill all Hebrew newborn boys. Commentators who believe that the midwives are Egyptians praise them for standing up for an oppressed minority. The midwives defiance, regardless of their ethnicity has become a symbol for standing up for the powerless and has been understood as reverence for God. The midwives defiance makes possible the upcoming events, which focus on the actions of the mother and daughter. The narrative states unequivocally that mother and daughter, whose names at first we don’t know, are Hebrew women of the tribe of Levi, “a certain man from the house of Levi went and married a woman a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son” (2:2). Her son was not killed because the midwives refused to comply with Pharaoh’s edict, which in turn enabled the Hebrew Levite mother to have a live baby boy. Yet, after three months the mother realizes that she can no longer hide her son. She makes the most heartbreaking decision, to send away her baby in the hope that he would be rescued. The Levite mother constructs a waterproof basket and places her son among the reeds on the Nile. The baby’s sister is watching from a distance as he becomes the first biblical child asylum seeker. Entering the scene is the fifth woman who immediately knows that this child is of the oppressed minority, “This must be a Hebrew child” (2:7) says Pharaoh’s daughter who without missing a beat decides to take the child. A women’s conspiracy follows, the baby’s sister offers to find a Hebrew woman who would nurse him, the princess agrees, and the boy, still nameless is returned to her weaned, becomes her son and she names him Moses. With few words, mother, sister and adoptive mother (Egyptian) are bonded in saving Moses’ life in defiance of Pharaoh’s violent decree. Moses, as the text tells us, grows up in Pharaoh’s house, kills an oppressive Egyptian task-master, escapes to Midian and marries Zipporah, (a Midianite of high rank), the sixth woman in the Exodus text. God tells Moses to go back to Egypt to “free my people.” A very reluctant Moses goes back to Egypt with Zipporah his wife and his sons and on the way God wants to kill him. The “him” that God seeks to kill is not named. The text is far from clear whether God wants to kill Moses or one of his sons, but whoever it is, Zipporah in that critical moment of facing God, acts quickly, she circumcises her son and for unexplained reason it works “and He lets him go.” (4:25). Zipporah closes the circle of the six women as she, like the others, saves a life by crossing into the religious sphere that could be dangerous if entered inappropriately. What is appropriate for women in the religious domain has been reinterpreted for generations and in our time we witness greater inclusion in ritual practices. While Miriam has been restored and given a place at the Seder symbolized by placing her cup next to Elijah’s it is time to follow rabbinic Midrashic tradition of honoring by naming, since it is the sages who named Pharaoh’s daughter Batya. We honor at our Seder tonight all six women, the midwives Shifrah and Puah, the mother and daughter Yochebed and Miriam, the princess Batyah and Moses’ wife Ziporah. They all are seminal leaders in the history of the Exodus and this year they are joined by Harriet Tubman. Harriet Tubman is a woman “who went on to run spy missions for the Union army in the South, including a gunboat expedition that freed more than 700 South Carolina slaves. Harriet Tubman will be the first African-American and the first woman to have her image cast on the front of a currency note.” Let us follow these biblical women and Harriet Tubman’s unflinching courage. Let us be agents in our time in the political arena to support and stand with all who struggle for freedom here in America, in the Middle East, and around the world. * The Hebrew “vatirena et HaElohim” (1:17) is an idiomatic expression that is best translated as revering God. This was republished with permission from T he Jewish Pluralist . It is first in the series Four Women’s Collected Essays on the Meaning of Passover . Click here for introduction to the series. Image: " Moses Found in the River ." Synagogue fresco from 244 CE. Ayala Emmett Ph.D. is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Rochester. You can read more about her accomplishments and writing credits by following this link . Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Previous Next

< Back Ecclesiastes – One Book or Two? David Cowles Jul 9, 2024 “It seems that we are not only permitted to dance in the face of death, but that God expects us to do so.” We do not expect our philosophers to be right, but we do wish they’d at least try to be consistent. Unfortunately, that’s a wish often unfulfilled IRL…nowhere more so than in the Old Testament book of wisdom known as Ecclesiastes . A friend of mine decided it was time for him to undertake the Christian equivalent of the Haj . One summer, he committed to reading the Bible from cover to cover. When he was done, I asked him, somewhat foolishly, which book was his ‘favorite’. To my surprise, he said, “ Ecclesiastes , of course.” Ecclesiastes ? Maybe. Of course? No way! But I shouldn’t have been surprised. Like me, my friend was a child of the ‘60s and even in that anti-clerical era, Ecclesiastes had its fans ( The Byrds ). Plus, Ecclesiastes is crammed full of jaw-dropping insights into the human predicament. So, what’s not to love? These realizations might have originated in virtually any corner of the world at virtually any time in its cultural history. Some of the ideas sound like they come from the Vedas or even the Tao Te Ching . Some look like they were lifted off of a 20 th century hand-out for a survey course on Existentialism. Still, the book sometimes reads as though it was an amalgamation of two texts culled from two very different traditions. On the one hand, Ecclesiastes offers a searing indictment of the human condition - vintage existentialism, full of angst and anxiety. In the spirit of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Camus, the emphasis is on the futility and absurdity of life. The mood is dark, the language strident! But on the other hand, there is a quietist thread running perpendicular throughout the text; it’s a blend of Epicurus, Voltaire, and Norman Vincent Peale. There is little doubt that Ecclesiastes is the work of more than one hand. Verses have almost certainly been added to the original text. That said, it would be a bridge too far to suggest that Ecclesiastes is really two books edited into a single text. We will need to find another way to resolve this dilemma. So, let’s consult the text: “Emptiness, emptiness…all is empty. (‘Emptiness’ is one translation of an Aramaic word that also denotes ‘absurdity, futility, vanity’.) “All things are wearisome… There is nothing new under the sun… I have seen all the deeds that are done here under the sun; they are all emptiness and a chase after wind… “The wise man is remembered no longer than the fool…all will be forgotten. Alas, wise men and fools die the same death!... Everything is the same for everybody; the same lot for the just and for the wicked…there is one lot for all… Men have no advantage over beasts, for everything is emptiness…all came from the dust and to the dust all return… “Better the end of anything than its beginning…The day of death is better than the day of birth. Better to visit the house of mourning than the house of feasting. “Time (entropy, mortality) and chance (quantum uncertainty) govern all.” Cheery stuff! Koheleth (the Speaker), once thought to be King Solomon himself, has taken us down an ontological path from which there is no logical escape. At this point, who could imagine that the book would end with everyone singing ‘Kumbya’ and dancing around a May Pole? And yet… Ecclesiastes has the temerity to suggest just that: “I know that there is nothing good for man except to be happy and live the best life he can while he is alive. Moreover, that a man should eat and drink and enjoy himself in return for all his labors is a gift of God… “Go to it then, eat your food and enjoy it, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart; for already God has accepted what you have done… Whatever task lies to your hand, do it with all your might.” Here Ecclesiastes dips into a Biblical thread suggesting that God has pre-ordained a specific set of tasks for each of us to complete. We see it in Jeremiah and the prophets, but it is most clearly summarized in Ephesians 2:10 : “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance that we should live in them.” In this view, we do not create our lives, we step into them (or not). We are invited to do the Will of God , to participate in universal salvation. Of course, God marches on, with or without our cooperation. We can jump on the bandwagon and play our scripted role in salvation history, or we can stand off to one side. We can let life pass us by…literally. “It is good and proper for a man to eat and drink and enjoy himself… He will not dwell overmuch on the passing years because God has filled his time with joy of heart.” Et voila - a full-throated endorsement of bad faith? Joie de vivre is intended by God to distract us from our existential predicament? Faith really is the opiate of the people after all! It seems that we are not only permitted to dance in the face of death, but that God expects us to do so. “Living well is the best revenge!” ( The Great Gatsby , BCE edition) Such an interpretation is rooted in what, I believe, is a misreading of Judeo-Christian theology. Contrary to popular opinion, salvation does not require us to thread a needle: “Every breath you take and every move you make…I’ll be watching you” ( The Police ) …not! As stated in Ephesians (above), God does not dictate a plan; rather, he lays out a smorgasbord of options: “Pick a path, any path; they all lead home. Just stay out of the brambles.” To whatever extent we do not directly oppose God’s values (Beauty, Truth, Justice), we participate in eternity. God is infinitely merciful and he created the cosmos so that everything in it might be saved. It is his intent that events in the spatiotemporal, entropic world should participate in eternity…and God will out. Only that which explicitly rejects salvation will be expunged at the end of time. Everything we do, whether we realize it or not, is motivated by our appetite for God as he is manifest to us, i.e. as the Good, as Beauty, Truth, Justice, et al. To whatever extent our actions resonate with those values, they are eternal. Only the destruction of God’s ‘goods’ (above) cannot, by definition, be saved. Clear? Well, when all else fails… I turn to symbolic logic to compound my confusion: B є A for all B, provided B ≠ -A. In other words, everything (B, events) is part of A (eternity) except -A. -A, the negation of A, cannot be an element of A. And how do we know -A when we meet him? Fortunately, we can turn to the Bible, or better yet Dante ( Inferno ) & Milton ( Paradise Lost ), for a paradigm: Satan! Imagine Robert Frost ( The Road Less Traveled ) and Hugh Everett ( Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics ) had babies: We’d be they! 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. Keep the conversation going. 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 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! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.