< Back You Can’t Get There from Here David Cowles Jan 11, 2024 “What do 200 trillion sparks have to do with one idea?” In 2024, a brand new supercomputer will be ‘turned on’. Big deal! Except that this computer, called DeepSouth , has been built to mimic the human nervous system. For example, it is capable of more than 200,000,000,000,000 synaptic operations per second, which is on par with the estimated rate of operations in the human brain. Cool beans! But none of this helps us answer the fundamental question: how do 200 trillion synaptic operations turn into an idea for the next issue of Aletheia Today Magazine ? Our interaction with the world consists of holistic quanta of experience. We have no sense of 200 trillion electrical phenomena when we shout, “Eureka!” What do 200 trillion ‘sparks’ have to do with one idea? You just can’t get here from there! Whether you call them ‘buds’ (James) or ‘events’ (Fuller) or ‘actual entities’ (Whitehead), each quantum of experience seems whole . How do you break down the Wow! response to a beautiful sunset? Yet, contemporary science wants us to believe that that such a quantum of experience is simply an ‘emergent property’ of trillions of synaptic firings. But how? Objection : Perhaps consciousness is an accidental and unnecessary byproduct of neurobiology; perhaps it has no function. But then, how would it have evolved if it didn’t confer some sort of adaptive advantage? One current model talks of ‘consciousness’ as a ‘global workspace’ that allows us to dream up novel juxtapositions and test them out. It has a function! Question : How would the Wow! experience change if just one of the 200 trillion operations per second did not occur? If 10 did not occur? If 10 billion did not occur? When is ‘wow’ no longer Wow! and what takes its place? So, the quantum of experience we call Wow! cannot just be the product of 200 trillion independent events but does this mean that there is no connection between Wow! and our neural processes? Have we put the ghost back in the machine (Ryle)? Of course not. Wow! is all about the activity of our neural net…but not in the way that materialists (above) suppose. Rather, the Wow! response itself organizes the activity of our neurons so that they can support that Wow! There is no experience of Wow! without a physiological analog, but there is no coordinated (patterned) neuronal functioning without a Wow! (or some alternative experiential equivalent, e.g. Yuck! ). Materialists want us to accept an A → B model of reality; idealists prefer A ← B. But in fact, neither is correct. A better model would be A ↔ B. The relationship between 200 trillion synaptic firings and the experience of Wow! evolves dialectically; but that is not to say that the two are identical…or even congruent. Our neurons are always active but without ‘experience’ their firings are uncoordinated; they are just idling, they are noise. Wow! is the response of my whole organism to its whole ‘world’. It sends a shock wave across my neural net. It stimulates the orientation and coordination of synaptic firings so that I can have a conscious experience of Wow! Analogy : An ordinary piece of metal is exposed to a magnetic field. Immediately, its jumbled molecules align and the metal fragment itself now becomes a magnet. So Wow! aligns neurons. Those of us who speak modern Indo-European languages have learned to shoe horn all experience into the syntax of active/passive voiced verbs. Billy hit Johnnie; Johnnie was hit by Billy. What could be simpler? Except that, as every parent knows, real life events are rarely so clear cut. Events involve relations between two or more parties. But it is as true to say that the event designates its parties as it is to say that the parties determine the event. To describe events as they happen in the real world, we need another verb form, a ‘voice’ between active and passive, a ‘middle voice’. The Middle Voice verb form is used to describe an interactive relationship between two or more parties. The Middle Voice is the voice of reciprocity, mutuality. In rare, ‘degenerate’ cases, an event may take on an active/passive character, but our language forces us to treat every event as degenerate…with disastrous consequences. It prompts us to ask: Was ‘original sin’ really an incident of apple eating or was it the building of the Tower of Babel several generations later? The engineering triumph of Babel came at a price: language lost its ability to communicate, i.e., to model interactive events. Would it surprise you to learn that Indo-European languages (and many others) were ‘born’ with a mature Middle Voice. In fact, it is possible that Middle Voice was the primary proto-syntactical verb form. But in our eagerness to conquer the planet, and enslave each other, we allowed the Middle Voice to atrophy. We confront a similar dilemma whenever we encounter a Gestalt . Given the opportunity to view the same configuration of elements in two different ways, each revealing a different pattern, most of us will experience only one such alignment at a time. The two competing ‘faces’ of a Gestalt correspond to active/passive polarity. What’s figure? What’s ground? The Middle Voice is comparable to seeing both sides of the Gestalt at the same time. It's not easy, but it’s reality, and IRL, figure and ground are always interchangeable; they are co-subjects. So we have a lot of thinking to do! How is it that holistic experiences and quantum events co-modify? And how do they do it? How do we learn to keep both sides of a Gestalt in mind at the same time? How do we move past the ‘syntax of slavery’ (active/passive voice) to communicate our vision of a communitarian world, steeped in justice, where a wolf can lie down with the lamb? Rousseau’s Peaceable Kingdom ! One thing’s for sure: You can’t get there from here! Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Four Noble Truths David Cowles Jan 14, 2022 A dear friend of mine recently responded to an email I had sent. I loved this response and wanted to share the relevant parts with you: A dear friend of mine recently responded to an email I had sent. I loved this response and wanted to share the relevant parts with you: “I certainly recognize that we all have our own individual frame of reference. Like you, the lens through which I have spent most of my life looking through is the Judeo-Christian one as well. I do feel myself fundamentally in that lineage, my prayers and recitations come from that space however rather than limiting myself there, I have recognized through many studies and self-reflection that Buddhist philosophy offers me an ability to self-correct for me. If my intentions are misaligned with goodness and light, I do create Karma. If my thoughts betray or harm me, I am causing my own suffering. Looking from life with the honoring of the Ten Commandments, The Beatitudes, the Psalms, the Lord’s Prayer and commitment and honor to Mary has provided me so much moral backbone and understanding, however, understanding the Four Noble Truths: The Truth of Suffering, the True Causes of Suffering, both the end and paths to the end of suffering has given me some solutions to my own suffering. “Just this morning I was gleaning over different parts of my own life. There will always be things and events that come to us from external sources: accidents, injury, illness, the leaving of people in our lives by whatever means. I have found that in many of the situations in my life where I seem to have suffered a disconnect with my spirit/soul have been from my own mind in overthinking, over-analyzing, putting myself in a place of want for things or people that were not for my highest good. As I have had the power to create those situations, so I have the power with the help of my faith and desire to change to alleviate my own suffering.” 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 Henry Moore’s Madonna David Cowles Mar 11, 2026 “Henry Moore, one of the 20th century’s greatest sculptors, has delivered a statement of Christian theology every bit as unambiguous as the Nicene Creed.” 1250 words, 5 minute read It has to be the most depicted subject in all of Western art: Mary, the Mother of God , holding her infant son, Baby Jesus. Think about it. Could there be a more emotive moment across the entire scope of human experience? There are two things we can say with certainty about the extensive ‘Madonna & Child’ corpus: (1) the works exhibit striking structural similarity; and (2) every work is different. Each piece explores the common theme with its own unique emotional register. No two Madonnas and no two Infants react the same – to the moment, to each other, or to their dimly felt destinies. The Mother of Christ is alternately pictured as adoring, nurturing, wondering, hoping, worrying, lamenting, grieving or suffering. Jesus is pictured as a new born, a wee babe, a toddler, or a youngster. Jesus’ features range from soft and infantile to angular, mature, and sometimes even sclerotic. Am I looking at a 6 month old or a 60 year old? Depends on the artist. Next time you’re in London, don’t fail to swing by St. Paul’s to take in Henry Moore’s famous sculpture, Mother and Child . What? You’re in London now ? You live in London? Well…I think the church is still open. Your first trip to St. Paul’s? Prepare to be overwhelmed. But as you catch a glimpse of Moore’s masterpiece, ask yourself, “Am I looking at a verse from a 1st century Christian Gospel, or a fragment of Anaximander’s 6th century BCE philosophy…or both?” Either way, Henry Moore, one of the 20th century’s greatest sculptors and a self-professed non-believer , has delivered a statement of Christian theology every bit as unambiguous as the Nicene Creed . In Moore’s work, mother and child emerge together from an undifferentiated block of marble. It is the emergence of the child that reveals the mother and it is the emergence of the mother that reveals the child. Neither emerges from the block solo, untethered, or without the other. Mary’s militant Magnificat (Luke 1: 46 - 55) assumes an essential role in Moore’s concept of the Nativity. His Mother and Child is not your everyday ‘Madonna of the Shepherds and the Sheep’. Moore’s marble presents something as momentous as the virgin birth of the Son of God as you’d expect – as a violent process in which pure potentiality unwinds, albeit stubbornly, to reveal its fundamental truth: Incarnation! Implicit in Moore’s vision of Nativity is the interdependence of transcendence and immanence, divinity and humanity. Mother and Child perfectly captures the intersection of two perpendicular realms. Who but God would dare to create a truly independent universe, guided by its own ‘free will’ - a universe with a ‘mind of its own’? The parents among us know how difficult it can be to give our children the autonomy they need to grow. Not so God: Fiat lux! There it is, one and done! World created, emancipated, and we didn’t even have to go to court. Nor did God have any 2 nd thoughts: “He saw that it was good.” The Book of Job makes it clear that God regretted nothing in his Creation, not even Behemoth and Leviathan, two legendary Old Testament ‘monsters’. Nor did it take long for God to reap the harvest of his naivete . Lucifer rebelled against him right out of the chute and ‘6 days later’ Adam (i.e. mankind) did the same. God made the world, but the world makes its own bed, and for the most part at least, God lets the world lie in that bed, undisturbed. In physics, we speak of Efficient Causation : one billiard ball strikes another causing the second ball to move in a particular direction with a particular momentum. In metaphysics, we speak of Final Causation : Amy studied so that she would pass her exams. In theology, we speak of another type of causation: Causa Sui (self-causation). But Moore presents a different ontology: Mother and Child speaks of Mutual Causation , aka bootstrapping. And thank God for Moore! Our modern, Indo-European (IE) languages lack the syntax ( Middle Voice )needed to conduct such a conversation. Henry Moore takes us backstage, beyond the reach of Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, into the rarefied company of Anaximander, the 6th century BCE grandfather of Western philosophy, and Martin Buber, a prominent 20th century existentialist. “(Coming to be) they give each other reck” – Anaximander Fragment. “At the foundation is relationship” – Martin Buber, I and Thou . A proper diagram in the context of Christian syntax would consist of just a single arrow with two heads, pointing in opposite directions, suggesting that it is the relationship itself that has ontological priority over the related entities: A ↔ B. The lover and the loved are one. The lover sees himself in his neighbor. Lover and neighbor form an indissoluble dyad. There is no lover without a neighbor; there is no ‘neighbor’ without a lover. Perhaps the reason that Christianity has fallen out of favor as a cosmology is that its inherently middle voice ontology cannot be readily expressed in contemporary IE grammar. We have traded our ancient, natural language for a more functional but less expressive dialect; we have swapped Ovid for IKEA. Our language has lost its ability to talk about ultimate things in a way that resonates with our deepest experience. So, we turn to painting, sculpture, and musical composition to express our spiritual intuitions. Let’s explore theology more deeply. Henry Moore’s Mother and Child represents Mary in her “Mother of God” avatar. We have heard this epithet so often that we may fail to grasp the incredible import of these three simple words. Mother of God! Mater Dei in Latin. If God is “maker of…all things visible and invisible” (as the Nicene Creed tells us), then how could God have a mother? Clearly Mary, the mother of Jesus, is a product of God’s created world (and a rather recent product at that); how could she therefore be God’s mother? In the language of first and third person pronouns, subjective and objective cases, active and passive voices, efficient and final causes, she could not! But that is not the syntax of Christianity and, in my opinion at least, it is not how the world works. In the Christian world view, God encompasses spacetime. Eternal, God is both the origin of all that will ever be (“Alpha”) and the summation of all that will ever have been (“Omega”). But even more astoundingly, God is also an element, a quantum, in the world itself. God, who made the world, is also ‘made’ by the world via Mary. By the power of the Holy Spirit, God enters the space-time continuum, the historical universe. He enters between the Alpha and the Omega…but he already includes both the Alpha and the Omega in his nature. Incarnation turns Being inside out! In Christian topology, it is just as true to say that the part (Christ) contains the whole as it is to say that the whole contains the part (Jesus). Metaphorically, Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a mustard seed (the smallest of all seeds known at that time); historically, Jesus enters the world as a baby, the child of displaced parents. At the time of his birth, and perhaps throughout his early years, Jesus was literally homeless, a refugee, possibly ‘undocumented’. He is a most unlikely candidate for secular kingship, much less cosmic sovereignty. But just as the mustard seed grows into a tree that shelters all birds, so the baby Jesus “grows” into the parousia which is the ultimate unification of all things. Mary’s ‘Mother of God’ epithet beautifully exemplifies the cosmic process of mutual causation. It is nothing less than this that Henry Moore captures in Mother and Child . And that’s Christianity! *** Henry Moore’s Mother and Child theme distills the bond between parent and infant into powerful, simplified forms that feel both tender and monumental. By reducing the figures to sweeping curves and solid masses, Moore turns an intimate relationship into a timeless symbol of protection and emotional connection. 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.

“We confuse a person’s right to express a hairbrained idea with the notion that that idea should be taken seriously.” < Back Is There ‘True Religion’? David Cowles Apr 1, 2025 “We confuse a person’s right to express a hairbrained idea with the notion that that idea should be taken seriously.” Ecumenicism, say that 10 times, has been the reigning value in Western theology since WWII. We are so proud of our newly discovered religious tolerance that we want to assure everyone that their ideas are heard and recognized as valid, at least for them . We are living in an unprecedented era of moral relativism and hyper-subjectivism, often expressed as, “If you believe it, it’s true for you.” We misunderstand free speech – we confuse a person’s right to express a hairbrained idea with the notion that that idea should be taken seriously. But this is not all bad. We should allow ourselves to consider ideas that lie outside our comfort zone. Before we reject a person’s train of thought, we should be sure we understand it fully, not just in the context of its language, but in the context of the speaker’s background and life experience. In short, we need to deconstruct! “Are we sure we know what Sarah means by that ?” Truth is neither relative nor subjective…but meaning is. Now, if you’re getting the idea that I’m some sort of ‘woke relativist’, disabuse yourself…or prepare to be very, very disappointed. I believe in objective truth! But I also believe that there are multiple pathways to that truth. On the other hand, not all apparent ‘pathways’ are equally productive. Some meander endlessly; others are circular; many end in cruel cul-de-sacs, the narcissism of self-reflection. Every idea is not equally valid, and all roads do not lead to Rome. Bitter medicine for intellectually pampered millennials! In matters of religion, this 20th century Relativism expresses itself as Syncretism , the belief that all religions teach the same Truth, just expressing it in different languages and in different cultural contexts. But in my narrow minded view, a religion that practices child sacrifice is always inferior to a religion that abolishes it. That is not to say that we should ignore the heterodox beliefs of others. Far from it! The creeds and rituals of our various religions do overlap and when they do, their varied perspectives can enrich our understanding of the whole. Where religions truly share common ground, we should celebrate; but when they don’t, we should not shy away from identifying error and proclaiming truth . Syncretism is based on the notion that human beings were spiritually bereft prior to the emergence of religious beliefs and practices. From that Base Zero , every development in the history of religion is seen as an improvement, at least vis-à-vis the state of nature. Animism is an advance on naïve materialism, paganism on animism, and the so-called Religions of the Book represent an advance on paganism. The rich and varied spiritual traditions of the East need to be included in this matrix as well…and so on. Bottom line: Anything is better than nothing. This view is challenged by a number of pre-Reformation Christian theologians, including that Doctor of the Faith, Thomas Aquinas. However, it is nowhere better expressed than in the writings of Fra Savanarolla (d. 1498), the misunderstood and much maligned Florentine preacher who performed his intellectual acrobatics on the razor’s edge of the looming Renaissance: All (true) religion must proceed either from natural reason, from supernatural light (grace), or from the union of the two. “All religions founded by men…are based on…the true principles of human reason. “Christianity…since it is in no wise opposed to that which is natural, can have come from none but God. Thus it can be condemned by no other religion…for truth must be ever in harmony with truth and whatever arises from natural or supernatural light must proceed from God…” According to Savanarolla, True Religion, in his case Christianity, cannot contradict Natural Law as revealed through observation and experimentation; it can only enhance it. True Religion, by definition, is Natural Law plus . Judaism is built around a similar concept. God’s law is given twice, once in the created world and then again in the five Books of Moses, elaborated via the other books of the Old Testament (History, Prophesy, and Wisdom). Mystical Judaism labels Nature ‘Oral Torah’ and the Pentateuch ‘Written Torah’. Christianity adds a third source of Truth, ‘Spoken Torah’, i.e. Jesus the Christ, the Word ( logos ), his life and teachings as recorded by the evangelists and elaborated by the Church. Savonarola inverted the traditional pyramid. For this Dominican friar, Heresy is the lowest level of human intellectual endeavor; it exists solely and entirely as a refutation of what’s true. Heresy is the absence of Truth just as Evil is the absence of Good. As such, it conflicts not only with the truth of Judeo-Christianity (Revelation) but also with the truth of Science (Natural Law). According to Christian sociology, the heretic is one who has unrestricted access to the Truth of Nature and the Truth of Revelation and yet willfully rejects both in favor of doctrines that contradict God’s ‘words’ and conflict with Nature’s ‘laws’. One cannot be a heretic out of ignorance. The title Heretic is reserved for those who choose to go through life with ‘eyes wide shut’. In this model of Truth, Science is not at the base of the pyramid; it is just one rung from the apex. Therefore, every sincere religion is located higher on the pyramid than heresy. Only Religion, to the extent that it is true, ranks above Nature and even so conflicts with nothing revealed about the world by Science. Religion is the star (or angel) on an already well decorated tree. Truth is neither relative nor subjective. Sorry, Pilate! Truth just is. It’s how things are. It’s what it’s like to be Being, it’s what it is to be God. Along with Beauty and Justice, Truth comes as close as we can come to characterizing God. All religions, to the extent that they are not self-consciously heretical, contribute toward our understanding of that Truth. Our materialist buddies are right. We have to follow the Science. We have to respect the natural world, for its intrinsic worth and because it is a coded missive, an urgent owl , sent by God for us to read. Judeo-Christianity cannot, by definition, conflict with Natural Law ( aka Science). Because it incorporates all three sources of Wisdom (Natural Law, Written Torah, Logos ) it includes the Truth as it manifests in all our religious traditions. It is the metric by which all metaphysical speculation may be appreciated…and none of it judged, save naked heresy, the contradiction of Truth. To plumb the depths of all three Torahs is the work of 1,000 lifetimes. Fortunately, St. Paul left us a Cliffs Notes version. Embedded in his Letter to the Colossians Hot Link (the congregation at Colossae, east of Ephesus in Asia Minor) we find this very short, very old Christological Hymn (1: 15-20), possibly the earliest liturgical Christology extant today. Yet it constitutes a complete cosmology. Prepare to be astounded: "He (Christ) is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation , for in him all things were created… through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together … He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead . For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him…" Can you feel these early faith finders wrestling with the limitations of our techno-skewed Indo-European languages? Yet they have managed to deliver a magnificently non-linear model of reality. In my view, all religious beliefs may be considered ‘constructive’ to the extent that they (1) address these same existential questions at similar depth and (2) state nothing inconsistent with this model. Let’s try to shed some light on this text, knowing that we can never match (or improve on) the original: God is insensible, but the sensible image of God (e.g. Christ) is immanent in the created world. Creation (e.g. Genesis and/or Big Bang) is the moment of minimal entropy (maximal order). Of course, Christ is that maximal order, the ordering principle ( logos ), as well as order itself. Christ is universal and eternal, the origin and the destiny of whatever is (or was or will be). Therefore, Christ conditions everything that comes to be, and because all things (events) share the same common origin (Christ) and destiny (Christ), all things hold together; and because Christ is also the locus of all events (above), all things hold together in him . Death is the moment of maximal entropy, minimal order; you can’t be any deader than dead! Whatever emerges out of maximal entropy must (by definition) manifest an incremental increase in order ; whatever stands out against a state of maximal entropy (death) manifests Christ. Christ is not just the sensible image of an insensible God; Christ is God. ("In him all the fulness was pleased to dwell.") Entropy in the spatiotemporal world steadily increases due to conflict. Outside of spacetime (i.e. in Christ), reconciliation (through Christ) transmutes (for Christ) order-eroding conflicts into order-enriching contrasts, i.e. harmony. Today, academia is engaged in a search of TOE – a Theory of Everything. Needless to say, this search is not taking place in the context of Christian theology. However, it would be good to keep in mind that any modern day cosmology claiming to be a successful TOE must at a minimum meet the criteria cited by Paul 2000 years ago in Colossians . It must account for the diversity of entities (events) amid the solidarity of the Universe and the solidarity of a Universe that consists solely of diverse entities (events). It must explain how and why entities (events) emerge in the first place. It must model entities as unique, holistic events and Universe as a nexus of co-modifying entities. It must explain how things that decay may yet endure. It must allow entities (events) that seem to become and perish in spacetime to be eternal. It must explain how conflict can be resolved into contrast and contrast into harmony. It must account for the Reign of God, Peace. Why not? A TOE after all is just another religion by another name, a sister (cosmology) from a different mister (science). Why should it not be held to the same Truth standard? All valid religious precepts, including the propositions of Science, reinforce one another. Residual conflict, at this level, is a symptom of error. Image: Raphael. The School of Athens. 1509–1511. Fresco, 500 cm × 770 cm (200 in × 300 in). Apostolic Palace, Vatican Museums, Vatican City. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! 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< Back Imagine! David Cowles “John’s Utopia is a 20th century version of Friedrich Nietzsche’s flat universe.” In 1971 John Lennon, and his co-writer and life partner, Yoko Ono, exhorted us to ‘imagine there’s no heaven’; they assured us that ‘it’s easy if you try’. Ok, I’m imagining, or at least I’m trying to, but…it’s not all that easy. John’s Utopia is a 20 th century version of Friedrich Nietzsche’s flat universe . Listen to what Nietzsche had to say in 1888: “One belongs to the whole, one is in the whole – there exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being, for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole…But nothing exists apart from the whole!” — Twilight of the Idols . Note that Nietzsche’s World explicitly lacks values : “There exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being.” In John’s words, there’s “nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too.” One thing you could say both of Nietzsche and of Lennon: They paved paradise and put up a parking lot . Their flat universe represents the hierarchical cosmos of Judeo-Christian tradition, squashed. Of all Western philosophers, Nietzsche’s vision is the most penetrating. He knew only too well that his flat universe would make any Halloween House of Horrors seem like a kiddie ride at Disney World, but that didn’t stop him. Whatever else you might say about Nietzsche, he had the courage of his convictions; he always philosophized in good faith. When Nietzsche pronounced his death sentence on Value (he had already done so on God), he did it with a heavy heart and a twinge of regret. He knew he was destroying a magnificent edifice…and he got no pleasure from it. When John Lennon did the same, he celebrated! Let’s unpack John’s lyrics: Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. Ok, nobody likes to think about killing or dying . Either way, it’s the ultimate sacrifice. But it may be that there are things you would kill or die for (at least you’d like to think you would), things you value more than you value your own life. By denying that possibility, John turns the world in on itself; it becomes Nietzsche’s ‘whole’. And religion? The function of religion is to identify things that someone might be willing to kill or die for, i.e., to identify values…and then to curate those values. We can’t have any of that, can we? So , no religion too . John’s message in Imagine is the same as Nietzsche’s. Live now, die later. We are our own highest value. This sounds benign enough, but it isn’t: If we have no values beyond ourselves, there is no reason for any of us not to head straight for those tempting Deadly Sins: Pride, Greed, Lust, Envy, Gluttony, Wrath and Sloth. There’s even a combo pack, one of each vice; it’s what all the kids are asking for this year for The Holiday that Used to be Called Xmas , and it’s even on sale this month at Costco. Pick up a pack for me while you’re there. We’re often told that death is one of only two certainties in life. We will all die someday and if we are our own highest value, then our highest value (ourselves) will also cease to exist. But how can a value cease to exist? How can a value cease to be a value? By definition, values are universal, eternal and immutable. They apply, period, even in a Multiverse. Suppose we value Honesty. Ok, not everyone is honest; someone can be honest today and dishonest tomorrow. But even if everyone was dishonest all the time, it would not diminish the Value of Honesty. John & Yoko are taking us down into the Valley of the Shadow of Death (i.e., Nihilism) and at the same time they are depriving us of the Good Shepherd who was supposed to meet us there. How cocky we once were, “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are by my side.” In other words, the Good Shepherd and I can handle anything life throws at us. Afraid of the valley? Heck no, I rule that valley! As long as I have my wingman with me, I’m good. The problem is that if there is nothing to kill or die for, then there can’t be anything to live for either. In Lennon’s universe, killing and/or dying can’t be the ultimate expression of value because per se they have no value. We are all going to die someday. In that sense, we are all the same; and we all come to the same end. We are all conceived ex minimis , and our future is a common, unmarked grave. And all that comes in between? According to Shakespeare, it will be “melted into air, into thin air… the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself…shall dissolve.” ( The Tempest , Act IV, Scene 1) We live “now (and) at the hour of our death.” We should all be prepared to give that a great Amen at any time. So ‘to be or not to be’ is not on the table. Our common fate is ‘to be and not to be’, and, as Hamlet realized, there’s nothing we can do to escape it. I am because I am writing this article and I am not because I will soon perish. Only values can give our fleeting lives meaning. The sense of purpose, anathema to Nietzsche, was celebrated by Victor Frankl, psychiatrist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor. He replaced personal happiness as the goal of life with ‘purpose’, dedication to something outside oneself, i.e., dedication to Values. Not John Lennon’s favorite philosopher, I’m guessing. D avid 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. Previous Next

< Back Liberation Theology David Cowles Oct 29, 2024 “Freedom is a precondition for all Theology (the study of God) and so, all Theology must be Liberation Theology.” Today, AT celebrates the life of Father Gustavo Gutiérrez, called the Father of Liberation Theology, who passed away on October 22. German Cardinal Gerhard Müller called him "one of the great theologians of our time." His 1971 book, A Theology of Liberation , remains a core text for Roman Catholics seeking to fuse Christian spirituality with Bible mandated social justice. The idea of a Liberation Theology proved to be remarkably controversial…so controversial in fact that wars were fought over it. Ground Zero was in Central America: Nicaragua, Contras vs. Sandinistas , with significant interference from El Norte . The outcome? Well, you be the judge. All theology is Liberation Theology; it has to be! Like young men and women world over, Abraham emancipated himself, left his parents’ home in Ur, and headed for the Promised Land. Moses freed the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. Joshua liberated the marginalized of Jericho ; Gideon rescued Israel from the Midianites…and, temporarily at least, from the self-imposed disaster of a monarchy. Later, David liberated Israel from the Philistines, Cyrus repatriated the Judean hostages from Babylon, and first century (CE) Jews keenly awaited their liberation from Roman rule. Jesus of Nazareth was an expression of Israel’s liberation tradition, but he had a somewhat different sort of liberation in mind; as a result, many declined to recognize him as the Messiah for whom they had been waiting. But make no mistake about it – Jesus was a revolutionary , passionately committed to liberation… but a liberation that went beyond simple ‘regime change’. Jesus understood that liberation was humanity’s existential project, both individually and collectively. Political subjugation, even slavery, robs us of only a portion of our humanity. No matter how tight the reins, there is always space, albeit infinitesimal, for us to reclaim ourselves – space in which we can create beauty, discover truth, work for justice, space in which we can serve others and honor God, space in which even ‘the caged bird sings’. Slavery is rigidity! It is highly structured and inflexible; it is intolerant of change or challenge. But fortunately, the universe we live in is intolerant of rigidity. As Heraclitus told us 2500 years ago, “Everything flows.” Freedom is the irrepressible trickle of water that undermines the foundation of every ‘Bastille’… and ultimately brings it down: “There goes another rubber tree plant.” (Frank Sinatra) Freedom is the realm of the ‘hyperreal’, separating ossified structure from organic process, the dead from the living. Indeed, the dead are redeemed in the lives of the living! We can stare down the most fearsome engine of oppression, knowing in our hearts that ‘this too shall pass’. We can even taunt our captors: “ Your name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; look upon your works, ye mighty, and despair!” (Nothing remains…according to Shelley at least.) Of course, one form of slavery often follows closely on the heels of another: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!” (The Who) But that is our fault! Every collapse creates an opening for the Kingdom of Heaven to break through. Sadly, we don’t always make the most of such opportunities. But I digress. Why must all theology be ‘liberation theology’? When we say, “ God is Good ”, we are not characterizing God. We cannot characterize God. God is ineffable, exceeding all categories of human reason and language. Good and God are synonymous. Although the two words have distinct roots, those roots ultimately trace back to a common (Germanic) origin. We use Good whenever we wish to refer to ‘the Ineffable’ in relation to our world; we use God when we refer to ‘the ineffable’ in relation to itself (e.g. Trinity). When we say ‘Good’, we’re pointing at Value, not any one specific value (e.g. Beauty, Truth, Justice) but Value per se . But between Value per se and the set of all specific applications of values, there lies a dimensionless but infinite hyperreal world we call Freedom . Values are only operative in a world to the extent that entities are free to pursue them. Thankfully, we live in such a world! The existence (or not) of God is irrelevant unless entities are free to know, love and serve him, or not). Knowing, loving, and serving are activities of free agents . Therefore, Freedom is a precondition for all Theology (the study of God) and so, all Theology must be Liberation Theology. 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 Barry Goldwater David Cowles Jun 11, 2024 “When people show you who they are, believe them.” – Maya Angelou If you’re not as old as me – how could you be? – you might not remember Barry Goldwater, Senator from Arizona (1953 – 1987) and Republican nominee for President (1964). You may be forgiven. While we are used to presidential elections being decided by margins of less than 3%, Goldwater managed to lose by 23%. After a bruising but successful primary campaign, Senator Goldwater walked into San Franciso’s ‘Cow Palace’, buoyant with optimism, preparing to proclaim a new era in American history. Goldwater brought the convention to its feet with a message that will live forever in the annals of political rhetoric: Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice… Moderation is the pursuit of Justice is no virtue! The nation’s founding documents celebrate as divinely conferred the rights to ‘Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness’. Nowhere in these documents will you find reference to any qualifiers, such as: … But don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (Don’t mess with success…or Texas), And never, ever tip over a money changer’s applecart. Yet, since the Gilded Age, the Populist critique of US culture has focused on the ‘extra-constitutional’ role of the State in the preservation of the socio-economic ‘status quo’ ( aka ‘inequality’). It’s ok to nibble around the edges with various schemes of social reform, designed to shore up support for the system ; but it’s ok only to the extent that such lofty ideals don’t compromise society’s actual guiding principles, as personified by money changing geese. Somehow, Goldwater missed the memo! Taking a page straight out of Jesus’ revolutionary handbook ( aka the Gospels), he strode into San Francisco’s Cow Palace and proclaimed a Jubilee (i.e. a redistribution of economic power)…this time in America. I said earlier that Goldwater’s electrifying speech brought the Republican Convention to its feet. I neglected to mention that about 1/3rd of these feet were headed for the exits. As soon as the Senator delivered his iconic lines, Nelson Rockefeller, then Governor of New York and subsequently US VP, led a delegate walk-out. From that point on, Goldwater’s candidacy was effectively doomed. We didn’t realize it at the time, but he would never fully recover from Rockefeller’s bovine theatrics . But what’s interesting here is not so much the vagaries of U.S. presidential politics, but the unstated, yet clearly implied, ideology of the peripatetic dissenters: Liberty should be defended… And Justice should be pursued, Both in moderation. “When people show you who they are, believe them” – Maya Angelou. By their actions, Rocky’s Roadsters (and the many others who doomed the Goldwater campaign) betrayed what was most literally a pact with the devil. How so? Liberty and Justice, along with Beauty and Truth, are Divine Values. They constitute God’s essence. They’re what it’s like to be God. While these values are often compromised in our everyday lives, such compromises can never be ‘justified’. Call them what they are: ‘accommodations at the expense of Liberty and Justice’. 1964 saw the public proclamation of a new, apparently successful, social ethic. Liberty and Justice were ‘reclassified’ as preferred states of affairs rather than absolute imperatives. They are now just two factors, among many others, to be considered in the formation of public policy. ‘Liberty & Justice’ (Goldwater ’64) must never be allowed to replace ‘Peace & Prosperity’ (Eisenhower ‘52). Is this ringing any bells? Does it call to mind any other times in the life of this nation when absolute Liberty was considered too extreme and true Justice could only be pursued incrementally ? Abolitionism in the 1850’s? Civil Rights in the 1960’s? Today, we are so obsessed with the vilification of all things ante-bellum that we miss some key points. Pro-slavery politicians weren’t against either Liberty or Justice per se – far from it! They simply believed that these Values needed to be ‘understood in context’ and ‘realized gradually’. True, we cannot reasonably expect total Liberty or perfect Justice prior to the Eschaton. However, that does not relieve us of our responsibility to advocate and defend these values without compromise. There is no Scriptural or Constitutional sanction for any waiver . Torah does not say, “You shall not kill unless it is convenient.” So what’s the upshot of our little morality play: Goldwater’s campaign crashed and burned, as noted, and the country descended into a second civil war. But Phoenix (Arizona, get it?) rose from the ashes. In 1980 Ronald Reagan, who had played an important role in Goldwater’s 1964 campaign, was elected president – in a landslide! In fact, 1980 nearly flipped ‘64 on its head. And whatever you may think of President Reagan, you will agree that the country has not been the same since. 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 Determinism…or Entanglement? David Cowles “Take Vegas! The casino’s ‘edge’ is as little as 1% on some bets. At those odds, I should be able to play forever…but probability is not actuality.” “If we could know the position and the momentum of every ‘particle’ at any one time, we would know the position and momentum of every particle at every time.” This is the classical definition of determinism - and it certainly seems to make sense. Consider 'A, then B’ for example. If we believe that A ‘causes’ B, then knowing A means knowing B as well. But let’s take a deeper dive: There’s a problem with our premise, isn’t there? Turns out, we can’t know both the position and the momentum of any particle at any time (Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle)… that’s certainly a bit of a bother for determinists. Worse yet, this is not an issue with our ability to know A; it’s an issue with A itself! It’s not we who are ‘uncertain’ about A; it’s A that is uncertain. It literally can’t make up its mind what it wants to be for Halloween . A is an existential hero. It lives in a permanent state of angst as it searches for an identity that doesn’t exist! Determinism’s apologists (yup, it has ‘apologists’, Stephen Hawking among them) admit Heisenberg but marginalize him: it’s not X that is determined, it’s P(X) – the probability of X. Schrödinger’s Wave Function, simplified as P(X), evolves deterministically. We’re funny about math. We know it’s an artificial logic that incidentally yields uncannily accurate predictions about the real world, but we treat it as the real world. We mistake the map for the territory; we fall prey to what Whitehead called the ‘Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness’. Take calculus, for example. Brilliant! Don’t leave Earth without it. But it has nothing to do with the real world. Calculus describes a world that is perfectly continuous…but we don’t live in such a world. Still, it is often useful to treat the world as if it were continuous, hence calculus. Take Vegas! The casino’s ‘edge’ is as little as 1% on some bets. At those odds, I should be able to play forever and never run out of money. But probability is not actuality . Probability doesn't prevent me from losing my life’s savings at the craps table, pulling out a gun, shooting 20 fellow punters and taking my own life. The laws of probability are indeed determined, but the stochastic consequences of those laws are not. Food processors are wonderful things; they smooth things out. But when you come to my house for Thanksgiving dinner, your mashed potatoes will be ‘real’, i.e., gloriously lumpy. “Glory be to God for dappled things…” (Gerard Manley Hopkins). We live in a chaotic world, a world in which a butterfly can flap its wings and trigger a tornado, a world in which an untimely ‘7 out’ can set off a mass killing spree. So now we’re face to face with our second challenge: A chaotic world is chaotic because it is strictly determined; anything is capable of triggering anything else. It’s causality ! But how is that any different from a world in which events happen randomly? Wings flap, dice roll, shots are fired, punters perish – these things just happen! What about the connections that seem to crop up between events? Well, what if it’s we who fabricate those connections - after the fact – triggered by accidental resemblances (Freud)? A is round, and B is round, so A and B must somehow be related. What if we make our world look rational…when it isn’t? So we find ourselves in quite a pickle. It makes no empirical difference whether events are determined, chaotic, or random. It doesn’t matter whether everything is caused by something else, or everything is caused by everything else, or nothing is caused by anything else. And you still say we don’t live in a weird world, Horatio? Clearly, the concept of ‘causality’ has no heuristic value. If we want to understand (1) why there are any events at all and/or (2) why events are what they are, we’ll need an entirely different approach. In our world, events are connected but indeterminately. Sometimes B follows A like an Irish twin; sometimes B looks a lot like the postman. We live this every day. “Nothing ever changes!” Until it does! And then, Whoa! Continuity and catastrophe – lumpy, that’s how the world is, not at all the way you’d expect it to be if it were determined, chaotic or random. The world is ‘patterned’…and that pattern is not just in our heads! Ultimately, our world displays solidarity, but not continuity. How can we model such a world? Every event is juxtaposed between what used to be and what is not yet, between what is actual and what is ideal. Without this differance (‘quantum of difference’ per Derrida), the world would be static (and hence non-existent). There would be no incentive, no motive force, for change; temperature could never be other than 0° K. In Norse mythology, the world comes to be in the misty gap ( Ginnungagap ) between ‘absolute heat’ and ‘absolute chill’. Likewise, in our mythology, events come to be in a ‘gap’ between what already is and what might yet be. The lure of an unrealized future tugs on the inertia of an unsatisfying past. Every novel event originates as a reaction against its ‘actual world’, i.e., the ordered multiplicity of prior events. Only one class of entity could simultaneously provoke judgment on what is and appetition for what is yet to be: that’s Value - objective, eternal value – the Good as it manifests in our world. And what might such ‘manifest values’ be? At a minimum, Beauty, Truth, and Justice. Every judgment reflects a valuation, and every aspiration presupposes a goal. But judgment, aspiration, realization, and communication are terms we normally associate with conscious (e.g., human) behavior. They are aspects of reality that resist characterization as determined, chaotic or random. Something seems to be buffering the chaos. Have we entered the controversial realm of ‘intelligent agency’, aka ‘free will’? Every event resembles every other event in some way and to some degree; the ‘resemblance’ can even be ‘negation’ (ground templates figure). But no two events are ever identical. In fact, the phrase ‘identical event’ is an oxymoron. It is as if events were sampling prior events as part of their process of becoming. We see the shadow of the past in the present, but not in a way that is ever perfectly predictable…or ultimately controllable. Ergo History . There is yet one more relevant model to consider: Entanglement. In the 1950s, quiz shows were popular on TV. In those days, contestants were sequestered in soundproof booths. Each would answer questions posed by the host, but neither would know what the other player answered. The same apparatus was used to test for ESP (Extra Sensory Perception). Instead of general knowledge questions, the host would draw a card from a standard deck of playing cards and ask the contestant(s) to say whether the card was red or black. If a subject were right significantly more than 50% of the time, ESP would seem to have been demonstrated. Entanglement is similar. After a Google of questions, a pattern is confirmed. If A answers X, then B also answers X… always ; or if A answers X, B never answers X. But there’s no possibility of communication between A and B. (In reality, it doesn’t have to be always or never ; any meaningful deviation away from 50/50 could indicate entanglement.) Entanglement requires no ‘intelligent agent’ to mute the chaos. An ‘entangled universe’ is neither causal nor random, yet events are coordinated, and that coordination does not require conscious intervention. When two apparently exclusive theories (e.g., intelligent agency and entanglement) account equally well for the same phenomena, it is wise to ask whether the two theories (as ‘Big Chill and Big Crunch’ per Roger Penrose) might actually be the same theory in different guises. Failing that, we should inquire whether the two explanations are complementary (e.g., particles and waves). Can you see where this is going? Well, Bon Voyage! Better you than me. Write to me, though; let me know what the world’s like…once you’ve gone over the edge. 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 above to return to Winter 2024. Previous Next

< Back New Life Through Pain Donna Bucher "New life brings with it the joy of unquenchable hope, but a careless memory forgets that, like childbirth, new life comes only through great trial and, at times, pain." The rain cascading off the roof like a waterfall reminded me of the overwhelming emotion that paralyzed me the moment I heard the news. Though the passing of time blurs the sharpness of the memory, the old ache validates its truth. When new life emerges through trial and pain, we seldom value the process as much as we treasure the outcome. New life brings with it the joy of unquenchable hope, but a careless memory forgets that, like childbirth, new life comes only through great trial and, at times, pain. Spring’s sweetest song is that of new life, as the earth awakens from its winter slumber. Yet, as earth’s womb births new life from the dark soil in my gardens, I still see the harsh remnants in the dry, dead wastes of the journey to a new beginning. The new life surrounding me as nature blossoms into its season of beauty, growth, and expansion, passed through a time of death. Leaves perished and were shed from the trees, flowers wilted, greenery shriveled; life faded from view, discarded and buried. Then, from dead seeds, bulbs, and roots, life resurrects brand new with the dawning of spring. Perhaps the most vivid illustration of new life emerging from death, pain, and suffering is told in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For, while I stand the recipient of the new life purchased for me at the Cross, I must understand it came through the torturous death of Christ. For though eternal life was sealed through Christ’s resurrection, His sacrificial death was required first for the purging of sin (Romans 8:1-39, 1 John 2:2). The greatest gift ever given, eternal life, is but one facet of God’s love to us through Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. The new life we receive at salvation continues much like winter melting into spring year after year, as we transition through the winters of our lives, watching God bring new growth from harsh circumstances. Many years ago, on a spring day bursting with new life, I stood by a hospital bed holding my brother’s hand as we said goodbye to my father. Having flown together from Philadelphia to Charleston, South Carolina after receiving the news from my mother, we said the words buried long in our hearts. Yet at forty-nine years of age, my father lay in a coma, unable to respond. Just a few days later, he was gone. Thirty-seven years later, I still have questions, I still wonder if he heard my last “I love you.” Worst of all, I wonder if he knew Jesus. Though I shared my faith with my family, only my brother came to know Christ. It would be another fifteen years before I had the privilege to lead my mother to saving faith in Jesus Christ. Since then, standing beside the graves of many loved ones, including my granddaughter, Indigo Evangeline, has not only taught me much about death and grief but about the new life that blossoms through death and pain. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new.'" (Revelation 21:4-5, ESV) Jesus Christ defeated death to give us eternal life, but God is making all things new, even now. As a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17), I live each day becoming more and more like Christ (Romans 8:29). Every trial and all suffering are redeemed through bringing forth new life, just as each year the same plants burst through the soil in my garden, anew, stronger, and more beautiful than the year before. Having weathered the harsh winter darkness, icy winds, heavy snows, and brutal spring rains, tender plants provide a vivid reminder of a strength rooted in hope, planted by Creator God. I stood as Christ’s own by the deathbed of my father thirty-seven years ago, but though I stand today at a rainy window still Christ’s own, I am not the same woman. God’s perfect work of making all things new started at my salvation many years ago, bringing forth the fruit of new life with each harsh winter season of my life. And while my outward man perishes through each season of suffering, my inward man is made new. One day, my full beauty will reflect His when we stand face to face. Image: Piero della Francesca's The Resurrection, created in the 1460s, is a fresco measuring 225 cm by 200 cm and is housed in the Museo Civico in Sansepolcro. Donna is a passionate creative, writer, poet, speaker, retired missionary, CASA volunteer, experienced counselor and hospice and palliative care support personnel. Founder of Serenity in Suffering blog, and author of the Serenity in Suffering newsletter on Substack, where she shares articles, resources and counseling designed to help readers grow personally and find spiritual intimacy with Christ; ultimately finding purpose in the trials they face. Previous Next

< Back Election Special 2024 David Cowles Nov 5, 2024 “It’s not that we’re somehow less benevolent than we used to be; it’s that one bad (or even careless) actor can wreak a lot more havoc than ever before.” I am old enough to remember when Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson were their parties’ nominees for President. Heck, I can even remember Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. Safe to say, this is not then…or even then. But the whining time is over! It’s election day. If you have not already voted, today is momentous. Not that your one vote will decide the outcome…it won’t…not even if you live ‘on the Main Line’ (PA). But this is your opportunity to take your place on the Great Mandala, to situate yourself in history, if not to change it. Perhaps this is also an opportunity to look beyond the immediate partisan divide and consider issues from a deeper perspective – e.g. from the perspective of civilization itself. Democracy is on the ballot . Everyone says so! But no two people agree on what that means. Is it just a matter of universal suffrage, unimpeded ballot access, and fraud free vote tabulation - or is there more at stake? Does a properly functioning Democracy require popular access to sources of at least semi-reliable information? Something that is in short supply today! We seem to be impaled on the twin horns of rumor and propaganda. In his 1966 book, Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumor , Tamotsu Shibutani, a detainee himself, wrote “the Japanese interned in (WWII) relocation centers…sometimes referred to their unsettled way of life as ‘dema-kurashi’, literally ‘existence through rumors,’ …but pronounced ‘democracy’.” But in our well-intentioned effort to improve reliability we risk imposing limits on free speech that transform all communication into propaganda. ‘Jacques’ Ellul and Derrida would argue that this is already the case…and has been for some time. The quality and flow of information is always a challenge in so-called ‘free societies’…never more so than today! Humanity is on the ballot . It sounds trite, but the World really has never been at greater risk. It’s not that we’re somehow less benevolent than we used to be; it’s that one bad (or even careless) actor can wreck a lot more havoc than ever before. Nuclear War, Climate Change, Bioengineering and the Zombie Apocalypse ( aka AI), to name just a few, all threaten our survival as well as our prosperity. It’s not just the economy, Stupid! On the other hand, the same technologies that threaten our survival also offer an unprecedented opportunity for meteoric and broadly distributed gains in health and wealth. 50 years ago, R. Buckminster Fuller wrote about this moment in his aptly titled Utopia or Oblivion . So did the Deuteronomist, 2500 years ago: “I set before you life and death; therefore choose life.” (30:19) Civilization is on the ballot . I do not believe that there is any ‘one best way’ to manage our social problems; and if there were, I do not believe we could know it with any degree of certainty. The links between cause and effect in our social world are much too loose for us to be able to exert any control over the future. Consequently, any social ethics rooted in imagined results (Machiavelli, Mill or Marx) is delusional. We act and the universe reacts; we propose, and others dispose. Marxists believed they found a way to game the system. They called it dialectics: Thesis provokes Antithesis which leads to Synthesis. No doubt! However, there is no evidence that this process can be brought under the control of an intentional agent (us). Instead, it is often invoked to provide cover for otherwise unimaginable atrocities. Can you say, ‘Cultural Revolution’…or ‘Pol Pot’? Nothing is so evil that dialectics (or mechanism or liberalism) cannot redeem it. To its credit, Marxism correctly diagnosed the alienated state of the material world. Sadly, it failed to discover a praxis for harnessing or controlling that alienation. All we can do is, “Do the Right Thing!” (Spike Lee) But what’s that? Well, it’s not genocide; that’s for sure. Nor is it slavery in any of its multitudinous forms. If you want peace, practice it; if you value prosperity, share it. We cannot control the long term consequences of our policies, but we are responsible for the policies themselves…and that includes their immediate impact. Now go vote…or not…as you see fit! 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 Perfect Moments, Holy Moments David Cowles Nov 2, 2023 “Every moment, every event originates and culminates in God’s values.” Jean-Paul Sartre introduced the concept of a Perfect Moment in his debut novel, Nausea . Annie, a former girlfriend of Sartre’s hero (Roquentin), seeks salvation in the creation of "perfect moments"—choreographed events where action, speech, and context all work together to produce an experiential gem. The ‘salvation’ I’m talking about here is not the version preached by Christians (Christ, Heaven, etc.). Annie’s ‘salvation’ is an existentialist version. It has nothing to do with an ‘afterlife’; it is an immediate rescue from the absurdity of the world and the angst of being in it. If I can create a Perfect Moment (which I can’t), I can reassure myself that the world is not utterly absurd (which it seems to be). Annie pursues ‘salvation’ by creating and arranging scenes. For her, life is scripted but never rehearsed. Her ‘actors’ are given directions (sometimes explicit, sometimes implied): how to act, what to communicate, and when to emote. But the film is one-take only, with no reshoots, no edits, and the dialogue is improv. Annie’s life is one of perpetual frustration, disappointment, and despair. Annie’s world is a world of ideals, images, and forms. But that’s not the real world—a world stubbornly resistant to direction (alienation) and perpetually overflowing every ‘form’ we attempt to impose on it. That resistance, that overflow, is what ‘nauseated’ Sartre. Annie seeks salvation in the world. She arranges her moments to reflect back to her iher mage of herself. If she ever could actually create such a Perfect Moment, a physical expression of her spiritual essence, then she could be sure of her own salvation. The moment occurs, and it is perfect, so it (and by extension, I) is saved…in the mind of God. “Yeah, prove it!” Ok, the perfection of any event, any moment, is measured in relationship to God—his essence, his values. If a moment incorporates God’s values perfectly, it reproduces, on the temporal plane, the eternal order of things (“on earth as it is in heaven”). Therefore, the essence (order) of any ‘moment’ or event pre-exists the event itself…on the eternal plane, qua God. So it is necessarily saved, waiting to happen in history. The Perfect Moment is created by Annie for Annie; it reflects her. In that reflection, Annie can be assured of her own salvation. Very neat, very wrong! Annie is the ultimate narcissist. She is the God that came before YHWH, you know, when “the earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” Annie is trying to make a world that will reflect her image of herself to herself for herself. Claustrophobic? According to Judeo-Christian theology, YHWH also made a world ‘in his image,' but with two big differences: (1) YHWH’s world is free, i.e., unscripted. Its only limitations are the limitations imposed by the stage itself (Sartre’s ‘facticity’); (2) YHWH’s world reflects back to him…but it also projects out onto every other event in Universe. It is a projected image shared for the benefit of others, rather than an image reflected solely for the benefit of self. Of course, YHWH sprinkles his stage with various props, signs, arrows, etc. But what the actors choose to do with these props is entirely up to them. Like Annie, God is looking for himself in the world. Annie is building a mechanical apparatus in the hope that it will reflect her spirit. God says, “Here I am; copy me.” In the first case, Annie is the agent; in the second case, you are. According to Sartre, Freedom is the only Value. According to Pope Leo XIII, Value is Freedom. Therefore, God’s primal gift to the world is one gift with two faces. True freedom empowers (but does not compel) one to ‘do good’. In fact, according to Leo, one is only truly free - free from attachments, idols, etc.—when one is actively engaged in doing good. We are born free! But we voluntarily exchange our freedom for power and pleasure. We ‘sell our souls’ to honor our attachments and to feed our addictions. So just as Beauty, Truth, and Justice are each The Good as it expresses itself in various contexts, so Freedom…as it expresses itself in every context. Thus, Freedom is the uber-value, and Beauty, Truth and Justice are its subsets. Where is Keats when we need him most: “Value is Freedom, Freedom, Value.” Annie is motivated by the selfish desire to find her own personal salvation, or at least to confirm it, in one perfect moment. YHWH is motivated by his love for others; Annie is motivated by her love of self. Matthew Kelly’s book, Holy Moments , offers a bridge. Like Annie, Kelly is hyper-focused on the moment, and he finds salvation in that moment. But Annie’s salvation comes from an ‘artificially arranged material world’; Kelly’s comes through an ‘organically evolved spiritual world’. Now if I were you, the phrase ‘organically evolved spiritual world’ would have set off my ‘BS’ alarm: “metaphysical mumbo jumbo.” (For those of you religiously inclined, yes, the BS alarm is the voice of the Holy Spirit.) But in this instance, you can safely ignore the warning. Don’t turn off the alarm, though; just press the reset button! Every moment, every event, originates and culminates in God’s values. The event itself is the response of our created world to its creator’s values as they are projected into the material world (grace). My ‘organically evolved spiritual world’ is simply God’s nexus of values as they express themselves in the historical context of a specific moment. To the extent that you act out of those values only, you create a Holy Moment, not a Perfect Moment, a Holy Moment. 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 Deconstructing Popeye David Cowles “…then I am basically an automaton. I am carbon-based AI. I am the product of nature (inherited traits) and nurture (upbringing)…my parents’ mini-me.” As a boy growing up in the 1950’s, Popeye the Sailorman was a major cultural influence. He willingly ate his spinach, something my friends and I would do only if forced, and he was stubbornly self-assured. His slogan: “I am who I am and that’s all that I am.” How we all longed to say just that to parents, teachers, and schoolyard bullies! In an era when everyone was committed to forming you according to their ideas of what a prepubescent boy should be like, someone (flesh or celluloid) with the courage to say, “No, I am me, I know who I am and I will be who I am, not what you want me to be” was an instant hero and role model. A decade later, I began to read the existentialists, especially Sartre and Camus, and found they offered a very different idea of identity: “I am not what I am, but I am what I am not… I know who I am, and I know that I can be whoever I want to be… I am the being whose existence precedes his essence.” So, who’s right, Popeye or Sartre? And does it make any difference? Well, turns out, it makes all the difference in the world, and for my money at least, Popeye comes up short…way short. Question : how did Popeye come to be who he is? If he chose that identity, then he could just as easily have unchosen it…and he could still unchoose it, even now. But if he is who he is and that’s all that he is , then he does not have the power to change. Change implies the formation of a counter-factual intention prior to its execution. According to mythology, Popeye did not have the capacity to form, much less execute, a counter-factual proposition . He was who he was and there was nothing left over, nothing that could form the basis of being someone else. So Popeye did not choose to be who he is, and he has no power even to conceive a different identity, much less to actually change his identity. Popeye was the fondest dream of almost every 1950s parent! If I am what I am and that’s all that I am, then I am basically an automaton. I am carbon-based AI. I am the product of nature (inherited traits) and nurture (upbringing). In other words, I am my parents’ mini-me. I did not get to create myself and I do not get to change myself. I am and I always will be what someone (or something) else created. No wonder we tried to burn down the world! Pity we didn’t succeed: “Revolution for the Hell of it!” (Abbie Hoffman) Popeye, who masqueraded as our liberator, was just our parents in nautical garb. You’ve heard that story before…many, many times: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” (The Who) In the end, Popeye wanted us to be who our parents wanted us to be. No wonder our generation was obsessed with the question, “Who am I?” We were like amnesiacs just awakening after a major trauma. We rebelled! But here’s the dirty little secret about rebellion: it always presumes aspects of the hated status quo. For example, we rejected the made-to-order identities glued onto us by our parents and their ‘secret agents’ (Popeye), but we still assumed that each of us had some hidden identity – just not the identity chosen for us by our parents. We relentlessly peeled off the layers of our respective onions in hopes of finding the hidden gem inside. There was no end to the things we tried: sex, drugs and rock and roll, of course. Not to mention meditation and political action. In the end, we found exactly what we should have expected to find all along: nothing! There is no secret identity. There is only the freedom to choose our identity and forge it. But who knew? And so what ? Well, if I am what I am and that’s all that I am, then I’m not really responsible for my actions, am I? If I commit a crime, it is my nature to do so (a modern version of “the devil made me do it”). If my politics are racist, they are merely the reflection of the racist culture I grew up in. The very idea that identity could be bound to nationality or race is vintage Popeyeism (though there’s no reason to suppose that Popeye was a racist!). The stratification of society into classes is reinforced by the idea that I am destined to follow in my father’s footsteps when it comes to ‘work’ (i.e., my relationship to the means of production). Disparities in education trace to the tyranny of standardized testing (especially the all determining IQ). By the age of 13, many children in the North Atlantic community have already been assigned to “tracks” that in turn determine what they will have the opportunity to learn and what work they will be able and expected to do as adults. So, in the true spirit of deconstruction (Jacques Derrida et al.), we see that Popeye only masqueraded as a liberator. When he said, “No!” he was really saying, “Yes,” because his “No” presupposed the culture of conformism that he nominally opposed. In reality, he merely projected the ethos of 1950s culture (conformism, keeping up with the Joneses, etc.) onto his adoring fans, us – and all the more brutally and effectively because he did it in disguise. 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 Next