< Back Jericho David Cowles “Some of us were waving copies of Mao’s Little Red Book; we all should have been clutching copies of the Old Testament.” Have you ever read the Book of Joshua? It’s the first book of the Old Testament, following the 5 books of Moses ( Torah ). It begins where Deuteronomy leaves off. Moses has died, God has appointed Joshua as Moses’ successor, and now the Hebrew army sits on the border of the Promised Land. Next stop, Jericho! Jericho is a massively fortified walled city, seemingly impregnable to attack. The city’s rulers are little troubled when Joshua’s rag tag army shows up at their gates. But rulers beware! Joshua has no intention of launching a frontal assault. Instead, he cleverly exploits the inequity of Jericho’s social structure to orchestrate a revolution from within. In the history of urban planning, center-city locations have been prized (easier access to the engines of government and commerce); it’s true today (Mayfair), it was true of the Medieval ville (the proto-cities of the Middle Ages), and it was true of ancient cities like Jericho. The poorest residents “lived in the wall” at the edge of the city; they would be the first to die if the city were attacked. But who cares? They’re poor after all, they’re expendable…right? Not according to Joshua! He was committed to the ideology of social equality hammered out in the Sinai wilderness. He also understood that what made Jericho’s ‘wall flowers’ vulnerable in the event of an attack made them powerful in the event of a revolution, an eventuality unanticipated by the Jericho’s resident urban planners. Joshua also understood that being poor and marginalized (quite literally as it happens), these outliers might be less loyal to the existing order and more willing to consider something new. And boy, did Joshua represent something new! How about the egalitarian redistribution of all of Jericho’s ‘means of production’, i.e., its wealth generating assets? Joshua promised more than any politician ever has, before or since. The promises of Marx and Lenin pale by comparison. Yet, Joshua delivered! He fulfilled his promise. And what was that promise? Simply to export the nascent Israeli constitution to Jericho and other cities of Canaan. Sidebar : In the 1960s, the United States was involved in a bloody war with North Vietnam. In its early years, the war was broadly unpopular on college campuses but just as broadly supported in the working-class neighborhoods that furnished soldiers for the US military. The course of the war shifted when, in the later years of the decade, college campuses emptied and student radicals spilled into the neighborhoods, spreading the anti-war gospel. We were so proud of ourselves. We didn’t realize that we had simply rediscovered a tactic that Joshua had used more than 3,000 years earlier. Some of us were waving copies of Mao’s Little Red Book ; we all should have been clutching copies of the Old Testament. We were following Mao and Marx when we should have been following Moses. When Joshua was preparing to cross into Canaan, his first act was to send two spies into Jericho to reconnoiter and to build rapport with its disadvantaged residents. In support of these fifth columnists, Joshua, at God’s direction, staged a massive demonstration, not of Israel’s military might but of its socio-economic constitution. “The Lord said (to Joshua)…have all the soldiers circle the city, marching once around it. Do this for six days with seven priests carrying ram’s horns ahead of the Ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times and have the priests blow the horns…The wall of the city will collapse...” (Jos. 6: 1 – 5) And so, for seven days, Joshua’s entourage engaged in a series of militarily ineffectual maneuvers outside the city’s ramparts. Did Joshua invent the concept of liturgical dance? The city’s rulers were mesmerized. They had no hint of what was coming! Jericho’s rulers did what we all do; they attempted to shoehorn novel experience into familiar categories. They did not understand that Joshua was bringing new wine, and we all know what happens when you try to put this spring’s Beaujolais Nouveau into last year’s skins --- the skins explode! (The ‘skin’ of an ancient city is its wall…and the walls of Jericho were about to explode.) It’s Day 7 of Joshua’s so-called ‘siege’. Everyone’s attention is riveted on the strange liturgical performance happening just outside the city’s gates. A brilliant media mogul, Joshua has built suspense. He has tantalized his audience, and now at last it’s time for the big reveal. According to Nielsen, on Day 1 Joshua’s antics earned him a market share equal to 40% of Jericho’s households. By Day 6 it was up to 70%, but Day 7 is what everyone was waiting for…and it did not disappoint. ‘The Joshua Show’ enjoyed an audience share of 93%. Eat your heart out, Super Bowl! Joshua was not just an ancient version of Fellini; he was also an avatar of Ronald Reagan. He was a ‘great communicator’. While the rulers of Jericho saw ineffectual military maneuvers, the city’s dispossessed, coached by Joshua’s spies, understood that Joshua was acting out a coded message for their benefit. Through liturgical dance, the Hebrew army acted out the constitution of the emergent Jewish state…"and the walls came tumbling down." The first six trips around the city wall symbolized the first six days of creation, the six days between Sabbaths, the six years between Sabbaticals, the six Sabbaticals between Jubilees. The seventh day’s ‘performance’ incorporated the other six and added one more. It symbolized the seven days of creation, the seven-day Sabbath cycle, the seven-year Sabbatical cycle, the seven-Sabbatical Jubilee cycle (7 x 7 + 1 = 1). The Constitution ( Leviticus ) of the Jewish state included a complete redistribution of productive wealth every 50th year, i.e., during the Jubilee. Just as Jesus of Nazareth (whose name means ‘Joshua’ too, ‘Joshua two’) proclaimed a Jubilee throughout the land on the first day of his public ministry (Luke 4:21), so Joshua proclaimed a Jubilee for the residents of Jericho upon his arrival in the Promised Land. What happened? A divine miracle, a feat of magic, or a David Copperfield illusion? None of the above. Nothing so ‘extra-terrestrial’. Do not expect God to resort to a flood when a rain drop will produce the desired result. Do not invoke the miraculous when the historical will do just as well. Sidebar : We are proposing here a new Razor to sit beside Occam’s on the vanity: Events follow a path of least resistance; they will alter the ‘actual worlds’ they inherit as little as possible, consistent with each event achieving its unique objective. Being is conservative as well as revolutionary. Please don’t underestimate God. He’s got mad skills; but send an army into a battle they might not win? No way! God is no Pickett. Dissolve the walls of Jericho with the wave of a wand or a sprinkle of pixie dust? Not his style! Those are the kinds of desperate measures that a third-millennium deity (BCE) might employ…but not our third-millennium God (CE)! Our God knows his Marx. He knows that a Kingdom created and sustained by a slew of miracles will not endure. Real change has to be rooted in the hearts and minds of the people. The rulers are mesmerized, but the marginalized members of society, ‘the people of the wall’, are energized. Why? Because they understand the meaning of Joshua’s choreography. They know the code. Joshua has presented what is possibly the ‘first political platform’ in Western history, and it is drawn entirely from the Old Testament Book of Leviticus . If Moses led the West’s first ‘nationalist’ rebellion against Pharaoh, Joshua orchestrated its first ‘socialist’ revolution against the economy of Jericho. Image: BATTLE OF JERICHO. The walls of Jericho falling. Fresco at the Vatican by Raphael or his school, 1508-1524. 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 . Previous Next

< Back Check the Date David Cowles Apr 14, 2022 You can’t resist the urge. You peek back at the front cover. Is this really a book about Eastern Europe c. 1000 A.D.? I am currently reading a book called AD 1000 by Richard Erdoes. It is a survey of Europe at the end of the first millennium A.D. In a general section on ‘the Slavs’, we read that “they were fierce and cruel in war…on the attack they were clumsy but in defense stubborn and unyielding.” And specifically, re the Russians: “What these Rus had in their minds from the beginning was to control the overland route to Constantinople, golden Miklagard, where all the riches of the world could be gotten…it was a watery road down the great rivers to the Black Sea…” You can’t resist the urge. You peek back at the front cover. Is this really a book about Eastern Europe c. 1000 A.D.? Thank you for reading! Thoughts While Shaving is published each Tuesday and Thursday. To subscribe to our newsletter, complete the form below (bottom right) and never miss a Thought! 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 That Time You Saw Dead People--What's so scary about that? Annie D. Stutley What scared me was that something I never thought was possible just might be. The first time I saw a ghost I was 20 years old. It was Epiphany weekend, and we were opening presents at my grandparents’ house in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, when from the love seat in the living room, I looked up to see a woman, dressed in pink with a high auburn bun, standing in the adjacent dining room. She then moved to a set of windows and vanished. My breath hitched. It’s important to note that even "Scooby-Doo" scares me, that I’m 44 years old and afraid of the dark, and that while binge-watching “Stranger Things,” I made my children sleep in my bed and not the other way around. I am a classic scaredy-cat, afraid of my own shadow, and yet, the pink lady revealed herself to me. Why, God? Why? I don’t know who finally noticed that I’d stopped talking, moving, or even blinking. But I eventually squeaked out an anxious, “I think I saw a ghost.” At this, Grandma perked up. “Was she wearing pink?” That’s when the hairs on the back of my neck rose. “Uh-huh...” “Was her hair piled atop her head?” “Uh-huh...” I could hear my heart pounding. “And she was walking to the windows?” “Uh-huh…” Why was no one panicking with me? I’d have gotten a bigger reaction out of seeing a cockroach cross the dining room. “Oh, well, that was my mother then. I often see her. Where the dining room windows are used to be a sun porch. She loved that porch.” Grandma took a sip of her cocktail before adding, “She was likely going to take in the moon and relax.” She said this like it was completely normal to have her dead mother roaming around the house, like everyone’s dead relatives are just hanging out at home, like I know you'll never be able to close your eyes again, Annie, but don’t worry. She’s just taking in the moon! Thanks, Grandma. That night I didn’t sleep. My grandparents’ house was built before the Civil War, and our family had lived in it since 1890. Rumor was Grandma's mother, the infamous pink lady, held séances in the library of the house and that one time the table around which they contacted the dead levitated. So, how many other spirits were hanging out, taking in the moon? I got my answer a few days later. In a corner of the dining room was an upright piano. Should my grandparents and their friends have a rousing cocktail hour, it usually involved the piano, where classics were crooned out with the aid of Jim Beam. Before she passed away, my Great Aunt Edith was usually the one tickling the ivories. Then Grandma took over. But they had similar playing skills and almost identical sopranos, making it easy to mix up the two. So, when I was walking downstairs a couple of afternoons later, having put the ghost of my great-grandmother behind me enough to be upstairs alone in the daylight, I heard Grandma on the piano singing. I found it a bit early for a rousing cocktail hour, even for my family. But when I got to the bottom of the stairs, through the side transom windows that divided the living and dining rooms, it wasn’t Grandma whom I saw at the piano. It was Aunt Edith--Aunt Edith who had been dead since I was 13 and at whose funeral I got sick from pea salad. Once again, I couldn’t move. Then I blinked several times. This wasn’t real. This couldn’t be happening. But Aunt Edith played on peacefully, and then she was suddenly gone. She dissolved completely, like smoke softening in the air. I ran to the kitchen and breathlessly cried, “I saw Aunt Edith! I saw Aunt Edith!” Grandma, again unfazed, asked for the deets and when I was through, all she said was, “You have the gift, Annie.” “What gift?” I prayed I was unworthy. “You can see beyond.” “I don’t want this gift,” I adamantly said. “You don’t have a choice,” she smiled. So, that was it then. I saw dead people. The following year, my grandmother passed away. Not long after that, like a complete idiot, I agreed to see “The Sixth Sense” in the theater. Sweet baby Jesus, tell me that I’m not some ghost therapist like that poor kid , I thought. It isn’t an exaggeration to describe the time that followed as my having applied the buddy system at all hours at my grandparents’ house. If I was gonna see dead people, I’d at least have an arm to clutch if the ghosts tried to take me with them back to whatever sun porch in the sky where they convened. But I never saw any ghosts again. As time moved on, I convinced myself that the phenomenon was in my head and that, as I’d always thought before, ghosts aren’t real. Then something truly beyond logic happened long after I saw dead people, something that convinced me none of it had been born from the imagination of a paranoid scaredy-cat. I had just given birth to a chubby, little, round-faced boy who had my eyes. I was all at once weepy and energized, like I could have a good cry and then climb the highest mountain ten times over. But then it started—the bleeding. And soon, I wasn’t weepy or energized. I was warm. I was cozy. I was somewhere else, a serene place where the physical world was bustling all around me, but I was contentedly still. The experience was sort of like when you’re at the beach and children are splashing nearby, someone’s speaker plays music, seagulls squawk about, and yet, you’re able to find that quiet place in the roar of the waves to slip away. I turned my head and saw my husband holding my baby boy, whose finger was wrapped around his. “Don’t close your eyes, Annie. Stay with me,” he pleaded. His eyes looked desperate. I moved my head just an inch and lost track of him. I closed my eyes for what felt like the most luxurious hour. I felt the sun on my skin. I felt the softest blanket laid upon me. My head nestled into the cushiest pillow. Even my toes were swathed in warmth. Far away I heard doctors shouting orders, the rattle of instruments on metal tables, and my husband's pleas to look at him. But I didn’t join their panic. I was the most peaceful I had ever been. Hours later, when I finally held my baby, it was explained to me that I’d lost three quarters of my blood, and I’d be receiving transfusions overnight. My teeth chattered. I was shaking. I noticed heated blankets piled on top of me. Apparently, as I began to bleed, my body temperature dropped significantly, and I was ice-cold. “But I wasn’t cold,” I argued. “It was lovely.” It was only then that I became scared, only then that the hairs on the back of my neck finally stood. I know what I had experienced. It had to be real, and yet, there was no explanation. Some could explain that my ghost encounters were a reflection of myself in the glass of the transoms, or that the sound of Aunt Edith was an echo from somewhere in the house or outside. They might explain that my experience in the labor room was a slip of consciousness. And they may be right. But one thing became clear to me in the weeks following childbirth: the ghosts themselves never scared me, and that warm place wasn’t scary. What scared me was that something I never thought was possible just might be. And I knew then that explanations are just a band-aid solution we use on our psyche to prevent us from believing something beyond the safety of our norm. I know enough to know that there is no proof I’ve seen dead people. And there is no proof that I’ve been beyond this realm, peeking into the next. I only have my story, and the fact that, to me, it was all quite real. It’s like Dumbledore says to Harry Potter, "Of course it is happening inside your head, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” Outside, the air is brisk, and the mood is haunting. Ghosts, goblins, and the spooktacular Halloween season is prime for a good scare. And whether what spooks us is born from fantasy or not, what makes the hairs on the back of our necks stand up doesn’t always need an explanation. Maybe spirits are closer than we think? Maybe the journey to the afterlife is luxurious? Maybe seeing beyond means seeing beyond what scares us and into possibilities safe from logic? What’s so scary about that? Maybe that’s the gift the pink lady was trying to give me. Originally published in New Orleans Magazine online, shared with permission by the author. Annie D. Stutley lives and writes in New Orleans, La. She edits several small publications and contributes to various print and online magazines. Her blog, " That Time You, " was ranked in the Top 100 Blogs by FeedSpot. To read more of her work, go to her website , or follow her at @anniedstutley or Annie D. Stutley-writer on Facebook. Previous Next

< Back Bible Read Backwards David Cowles What would happen if we read the Old Testament in reverse order? From back to front. What if we began with Malachi and ended with Genesis? We are accustomed to reading the Old Testament (OT) ‘in order,’ i.e., from Genesis through Malachi, from the Torah (Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, traditionally ascribed to Moses) through the Prophets. The modern Bible groups the 46 books of OT into four categories: five books of Law (Torah), 16 books of History, seven books of Wisdom, and 18 books of Prophecy. Read this way, the Old Testament tells a coherent story. First (Torah): Creation (Genesis), Liberation (Exodus), Theocracy (Leviticus). Second (History): The transition from Covenant (Exodus) to Theocracy (Leviticus) to Anarchy (Judges) to Monarchy (Samuel) to Tyranny (Kings, Chronicles, et al.), and ultimately to Captivity (Daniel, Ezekiel) in Babylon (c. 600 – 500 B.C.). Third (Prophecy): Even before the exile, social discontent was cresting in Israel and Judea. Power and wealth were concentrated in the hands of a few, and the authority of the state was frequently abused for personal gain. Prophets emerged. They condemned the immorality, the corruption, and the tyranny that had taken over Israel and Judea. They were the revolutionaries of their time. Today, we recognize the same prophetic spirit in St. Paul, Mohammed, Martin Luther, Karl Marx, Martin Luther King…and even Barry Goldwater (“Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue”). Fourth (Wisdom): The prophets’ specific condemnation of the historical situation in which they found themselves is paralleled by the Wisdom Writers’ general condemnation of secular ideology. Both offer a critique of the status quo; both offer a vision of a better future. The period between the repatriation of the Judeans and the birth of Jesus was rich in ‘Wisdom Literature.’ Wisdom material stretches back to Job, David, and Solomon and forward to the time of Jesus, perhaps even including some books of the New Testament (e.g., John, Ephesians, Hebrews, Revelation). Repatriation following the Babylonian Exile gave the Hebrews a chance to start over – a revolutionary’s dream. Just as the first Israelites had formed a social structure ex nihilo in the Wilderness of Sanai, so their descendants would now have an opportunity to do the same. But how? Pick up where they’d left off c. 600 B.C? No way! Return to the values, practices, and social structures characteristic of Israel’s glory days? Way! Since 1776, we have learned a great deal about revolutionary theory and praxis. This period (250 years) will be characterized by future historians not only as the Age of Science, Reason and Technology, but also as the Age of Revolution. We have learned, for example, that all revolutions require three things: (A) A searing indictment of things as they are (status quo). (B) A clear vision of a better world to come (utopia). (C) A practical program to get from point A to point B. Sidebar : Indictment and vision are not just prerequisites for revolution; they are prerequisites for everything, i.e., for all ‘actual entities,’ all events. After all, revolution is an event! All novelty is a reaction against what is, coupled with a vision of what might be. An event builds toward that vision by incorporating other actual entities along the way according to its ‘road map.’ That road map is Torah. In the words of Bobby Kennedy, prophets “see things as they are and ask why ?” (Their answer: idolatry, immorality, injustice, and exploitation.) Wisdom writers “dream of things that never were and ask why not ?” (Same answer: idolatry, immorality, injustice, and exploitation.) The Prophets and the Wisdom writers tell the same story but from different perspectives…and we need them both: the Prophets focus on the specific historical and political situation; the Wisdom writers focus on the futility of a life without God as its guiding principle. The struggle for freedom is ongoing, and it is always waged on two fronts: freedom from the prisons others build for us (prophesy) and freedom from the prisons we build for ourselves (wisdom). But what of revolutionary praxis? How do we get from A to B? This is where most revolutionary programs fail. They get the critique and the vision parts right, but they fall short when it comes to praxis. (Dictatorship of the proletariat? You’ve got to be kidding!) For us, praxis turns out to be the easy part! Long before there were critics and visionaries (prophets and wise guys), there was already a detailed political program to redeem an alienated world – it’s called Torah: 613 rules of conduct designed to promote the general welfare - health, prosperity, justice, and peace. 613 rules? What am I, eight? You call that easy? Are you kidding? 613 rules, yes; eight-years-old old, I wish; easy, you bet; kidding, not one bit! Because there’s a secret, shh! Lean in, and I’ll whisper it to you: “Torah comes with its own Cliffs Notes built in.” (If only Tolstoy, Dickens, and Thackery had been as thoughtful.) The Torah consists of 613 laws (above), 611 of them are specific laws applicable to specific things or in specific situations; 2 of them are general laws, applicable to all things and all situations. Therefore, these two general laws, collectively known as the Great Commandment (Mt. 22: 37-40), summarize the other 611 (tactics) and situate them in the context of a broader strategy: ⮚ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Deut. 6: 5) ⮚ “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Lev. 19: 18b) The genius of the New Testament contribution to this discussion lies in Jesus’ insertion of six keywords between ‘Deuteronomy’ and ‘Leviticus’ (above): “And a second is like it.” There are not two general laws; there is only one, and its two ‘halves’ are mirror images of one another. “On these two commandments, hang all the law and the prophets.” (Mt. 22:40) E pluribus unum ! We have distilled the 613 commandments of the Torah down to just one: the Great Commandment. Bottom line: There is no love of God without love of neighbor, and there is no love of neighbor without love of God. To paraphrase poet John Keats, “That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know!” The Wisdom writers and the Prophets both call on Israel to return to the ‘glory days’ of Moses, Joshua, the Judges, and King David, but they base their appeals on two very different arguments. The Wisdom writers point out the absurdity inherent in living a totally secular life. Not until the 20th century do we encounter as lucid a presentation of L’absurde as we do in Ecclesiastes (3rd century B.C.). For example: “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity…I have seen all things that are done under the sun, and behold all is vanity and a chase after wind.” (1:2 – 2:26) It is important to note that the Hebrew word hebel , translated as ‘vanity,’ also means emptiness, futility, and absurdity. Welcome to the 20th century! We don’t need the Written Torah to tell us what’s right or wrong. It is written clearly in the patterns of nature (Oral Torah) and in our hearts. Today, we would say that the Wisdom writers based their argument on Natural Law. The Roman Catholic Church (and many other Christian denominations) embraces the Wisdom thesis: we can learn the will of God by studying nature and by listening to the ‘still small voice’ within us. The Law is written in the Pentateuch… and in the cosmos... and in our hearts. Have you seen the TV series, Young Sheldon ? Sheldon, a pre-teen boy, is growing up in an evangelical Christian family in rural Texas in the 1970s. The only problem: Sheldon does not believe in God; he believes in science. What could possibly go wrong? The Wisdom writers confronted an early version of this mindset 2,500 years before the first televisions began appearing in American living rooms. The key to Young Sheldon is the idea that religion and science are mutually exclusive. They are not! In fact, as the Wisdom writers make clear, they are two sides of one coin. The Prophets, on the other hand, based their appeal, not on nature but on revelation. God may have written his law into the fabric of the cosmos and study of the cosmos may give us some insights into the law, but there’s no need for telescopes or Bunsen burners. God revealed his law to Moses and the people in the Torah. Isaiah, Jeremiah, et al. call on the Israelites to return to the ways of their ancestors, to rediscover, acknowledge, and observe God’s law as it is revealed in Torah. Natural Law and Revelation go hand in hand. God’s Law is written macroscopically in the cosmos, microscopically in Torah, and nanoscopically in every human heart. But suppose today is a backwards day… What would happen if we read the Old Testament in reverse order? From back to front. What if we began with Malachi and ended with Genesis? The Prophets painstakingly dissect the evils of contemporary society. The Wisdom writers point out the absurdity of living one’s life according to the prevailing, secular ideology. Both the Prophets and the Wisdom writers intersperse visions of a post-revolutionary utopia, best summarized by Isaiah 11: 6 - 9: “The wolf will live with the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the kid...the nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain…” So, between the Prophets and the Wisdom writers, we have two of the elements we need for a successful revolution. We have a searing critique of things as they are and a clear and compelling vision of things as they could be. As we have learned repeatedly over the past four centuries, a purely negative critique is unlikely to succeed unless it is accompanied by an appealing vision of an alternative future. Successful revolutions are rarely based on despair; they are almost always based on hope. (That’s why we call them ‘Revolutions of Rising Expectations.’) During the periods of Prophesy and Wisdom, Israel was an absolute monarchy, but its rulers, its kings, were not cut from the same cloth as King David. To overgeneralize, they were incompetent, ineffective, greedy, and corrupt. Reading OT backwards, we move from dictatorship and tyranny to a constitutional monarchy (Solomon, David and Saul), from monarchy to what might best be called ‘benevolent anarchism’ (Judges), and finally from anarchism to Theocracy (Joshua and the Torah). The goal of every revolutionary program is the same (though often expressed in very different terms): “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” What else is there? What else could there be? Here is where praxis comes into play for individuals, as well as for nations: learn the will of God and conform to it! The contemporary revolutionary may elect to follow the 611 specific commandments of Torah or just the two general commandments (i.e., the Great Commandment). Both strategies lead to the same result: the Kingdom of God on Earth. And what is that Kingdom? Reading the Bible backwards, i.e., from Malachi 3:34 through Genesis 1:1, the Kingdom of God is the Garden of Eden! In this reading, Paradise is not a primordial state from which we fell; it is the eschaton for which we strive. So, the Old Testament is the ultimate palindrome. It is the same, whether you read it backwards or forwards. And what of the New Testament? Well, reading the New Testament (NT) in order, i.e., from Matthew through Revelation, is the same as reading the Old Testament from Malachi through Genesis. NT begins with a searing critique of Israel under Roman rule (the synoptic Gospels), and it offers its own foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven (Revelation). And its revolutionary praxis? “Love one another as I have loved you.” (John 13: 34) 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. Previous Next

< Back Political Alienation “Marx’s hypothesis that a person’s voting habits would be determined by their relationship to the means of production was blown out of the water…” David Cowles “This is a book about…people who have come to believe that voting is meaningless and useless because politicians or those who influence politicians are corrupt, selfish, and beyond popular control.” – Murray Levin, The Alienated Voter . No, Professor Levin’s book is not about the current political landscape. It’s an analysis of an election that took place 65 years ago! Boston is famous for many things, baked beans, cod, and crème pie, for example. Not to mention Larry Bird and the GOAT (Tom Brady). But these icons fade when compared to a certain Massacre (1770), Tea Party (1773), Midnight Ride and Shot heard round the World (1775). Boston’s Mayoral election of 1959 is not quite so famous – more of a ‘canary in a coal mine’ than a shot. Nevertheless, the strange events of 1959 in the self-proclaimed ‘Hub of the Universe’ heralded the start of a multi-generational political epoch, not just in Boston but throughout the United States. This is what Professor Levin chronicled in his 1960 book. Let’s set the scene. Boston’s incumbent mayor (John B. Hynes) is not running for reelection. The runner-up in the previous mayoral race, State Senator John E. Powers, has been designated the ‘mayor presumptive’ by the Boston media. Nevertheless, 5 ‘major’ candidates have entered the non-partisan primary. Probably the least well known is the Registrar of Deeds, John Collins. As expected, Powers won the primary easily with 34% of all votes cast. Surprisingly, Collins finished second, but with only 22% of the total. The Boston media promptly declared the election over and promoted Powers from ‘mayor presumptive’ to ‘mayor-elect’…but someone forgot to tell Collins. Still, the outcome of the final election was never in doubt…until about 8:45 PM on the evening of November 3. In those days, the demographic map of Boston was simple: with a couple of exceptions, lower numbered wards = lower income residents, and vice versa. As expected, Boston’s low numbered wards give Powers an early lead – but not the lead he was hoping for. Then returns began coming in from the middle numbered neighborhoods. Something was wrong! Collins was winning where he shouldn’t be. And then…a tidal wave of ballots from the city’s higher numbered wards astonished us all. The media pundits had been right after all. The election was not close, not even close to close. Only one problem: the ‘wrong’ candidate had won! In the end, Collins won 56% to 44%. What’s that you say? “So an underdog won a race: big deal?” Well, it was a big deal. Powers carried only 4 of Boston’s 22 Wards (he’d been expected to win all 22); Collins carried the other 18 wards, 8 of them with 60% or more of the votes cast. Both candidates received more votes in the final election than they had in the preliminary. Powers doubled his primary vote total, but Collins quadrupled his (from 28,000 to 114,000). Less significant but even more shocking, 10% of those who voted for Collins in the final voted for Powers in the preliminary. The verdict of Boston’s voters was delivered loudly…and clearly: “We’re mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore; we won’t let the ‘power elite’ take us for granted. Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” A handful of pundits predicted Brexit’s victory and Trump’s win in 2016, but nobody predicted Collins victory in 1959, not even this precocious 12-year-old. Nobody! Sidebar : My father was away on business. He called me from the road. “Who won?” Collins…in a landslide. “No, seriously, tell me the truth.” Collins. “Boy, you are in big trouble when I get home.” It was true, but the truth was unthinkable. On the weekend after the election, Professor Levin and his team interviewed 500 Boston voters, drawn from all across the city. Before 1959, demographics had always played the key role in Boston politics. Have you read The Last Hurrah ? Do names like Honey Fitz, James Michael Curley, Leverett Saltonstall, and Henry Cabot Lodge ring a bell? After the Collins era (8 years), Boston politics reverted to type – but with a much harder edge. You may recall that in the early ‘70s Boston lead Northern states resistance to Forced Busing, but you will be shocked to learn that this navy-blue Citadel of Liberalism , the home of the Kennedys, was carried by Alabama Governor George Wallace in the 1976 Democratic Presidential Primary. But not in 1959! Levin’s study showed that religion, income, and ethnicity played no significant role in the election’s results. Collins won the votes of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, high and low-income residents, Irish, Italian, Yankee and African American voters. Somehow, a consensus emerged without anyone (not even Collins) calling for it. It happened under the radar, at bus stops and in barrooms, and it cut across the city’s fiercely independent neighborhoods. Today, Boston is Yuppie Paradise and neighborhood identity has by and large vanished; but in 1959 things were very different. At that time, East Boston High (Italians) played South Boston High (Irish) in an annual Thanksgiving Day football game that always ended in a West Side Story style rumble. People walking through unfamiliar neighborhoods were routinely assaulted, only to be told that it was their own fault for ‘playing away from home’. These were just the facts of life in Boston. Do I exaggerate? Perhaps. Nonetheless, the idea that voters from low-income Charlestown and high income West Roxbury would support the same candidate for mayor was unthinkable…until it happened. (It didn’t happen again until Ray Flynn was elected mayor in 1984…and it was a big surprise then too.) Marx’s hypothesis that a person’s voting habits would be determined by their relationship to the means of production was blown out of the water in 1959. It turned out that Boston voters had something in common that was strong enough to overcome their once and future conflicts, rooted in religion, income and ethnicity. According to Murray Levin, that mysterious X factor was ‘political alienation’. May I ask you a question? The last time you voted in an election, did you think your preferred candidate would do a better job in office than their opponent? Not necessarily a ‘good’ job but at least a ‘better than the alternative’ job. Of course, you did…unless the last time you voted was in 1959. Professor Levin’s most astonishing finding was that the majority of voters in Boston’s Mayoral election that year did not think their candidate would be a better mayor than his opponent. This tendency was especially prominent among Collins voters. The conclusion is inescapable: people voted for Collins, not because they thought he would do a better job than Powers, but for some ‘unrelated’ other reason. And so, ‘message voting’ was born…in Boston, the Cradle of Liberty! Folks voted for Collins, not because they believed he’d be a better mayor, but because they refused to be taken for granted. “ This is our chance to poke the media-commercial complex in the eye.” And so they did! Image: Candidates John F. Collins and John E. Powers. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Harvest Issue 2023 Previous Next

< Back AI and the Borg Collective David Cowles Sep 19, 2025 “AI treats Sally as the intersection of a bunch of sociological variables…(but) Startrek’s Borg Collective takes ‘post-modern Sally’ to a whole other level” A number of jurisdictions are using AI to identify people who may potentially be involved in criminal activity. Unlike the sleuths we follow faithfully on TV, Detective AI does not zero in on a potential suspect’s actions in order to detect hints of socially deviant behavior. Instead, it focuses almost exclusively on an individual’s sociological markers. An unemployed individual, Frank, who suddenly pays cash for a Beverly Hills estate, is behaving in a way that may, or may not , indicate criminal behavior, even if the crime, Mr. Capone, is nothing more than tax evasion. Of course, there’s no proof that any crime has been committed. Frank may have received a large inheritance from a long lost uncle. But on the surface, Frank’s behavior is suspicious, and so we are generally comfortable with Detective O’Malley (or AI) ‘looking into it’. Sally, on the other hand, is homeless. She has never in her life so much as shoplifted a pack of gum, but her demographics fit a profile that has been highly correlated in various studies with criminality. Did I mention she was ‘unhoused’ and without any ‘visible means of support’? She falls into a particular age group, has a particular level of education (or lack thereof), a certain work history, credit score, etc. And, of course, she happens to belong to a certain ethnic group (insert your favorite target here). While Det. O’Malley would have no reason even to interview Sally, AI has flagged her for ‘aggressive’ law enforcement follow-up. Justified? Or not? It is true that Sally’s demographic characteristics, when combined, have a higher than average correlation with criminal behavior. While that certainly doesn’t mean that Sally is a criminal, does it justify ‘keeping an eye on her’? Long before true AI, the IRS used such a model to pick out taxpayers (or non-payers) for audit. Supposedly, a certain number of taxpayers are randomly selected for audit each year and an additional number are targeted based on income level, lifestyle, occupation, audit history, etc. Is such a selection process justified? A truly randomized selection process would be fairer, but it would hardly ever catch serious tax cheats, and it would raise very little revenue for the taxing authorities. On the other hand, auditing only ‘high-fliers’ would encourage ‘low visibility’ individuals to consider themselves immune. So, the traditional audit selection criteria have a lot going for them: They catch a lot of cheats and raise a lot of revenue in the process. They discourage those who might be tempted to play in ‘the grey zone’. They even encourage folks to over-report income and under-deduct expenses so as not to attract the auditors’ attention. Finally, they make sure everyone knows that no one is exempt from oversight. It’s hard to imagine a more efficient algorithm…but does that make it fair? Back to Sally. AI treats Sally as the intersection of a bunch of sociological variables. The apparent assumption, stated primitively, is that if you add up all of the influences in Sally’s life, you should be able to predict her behavior with a tolerable degree of accuracy. Of course, much hinges on your definition of ‘tolerable’; what can you tolerate ? Do you require a level of conviction that puts the matter beyond any reasonable doubt (criminal standard)? Or will you settle for anything above a 50% probability (civil standard)? Or will any correlation over ‘merely random coincidence’ satisfy you? But regardless of your level of tolerance, there is a bigger problem: Sally’s sociological markers don’t include Sally . There is no allowance for Sally’s agency. We have ‘post-modernized’ Sally, reducing her to the sum of her influences. It is not Sally who acts, it is her poverty, ethnicity, etc. that act through her. And yet, it is Sally who will ‘do the time’ if convicted. Fair? At the other end of the spectrum, the model of community displayed by Startrek’s Borg Collective takes ‘post-modern Sally’ to a whole other level. While AI threatens to turn Sally into the sum of her sociological influences, the Borg model reduces Sally to a simple quantum in a complex meta-mind. Effectively, the Borg hijack Sally’s brain, her ‘compute power’, and deploy it in service of an agenda that has nothing to do with Sally and has no concern for her welfare other than, perhaps, keeping her alive long enough to maximize her return on the Borg’s investment. Sally’s fate is that of post 20 th century humans generally. She is caught between two lines of fire. On the one hand, her unique personality has been outsourced to a series of external influences: Freudian parenting, Jungian archetypes, Marxist class. On other hand, her personhood has been co-opted by a disinterested meta-mind for its own, possibly nefarious, purposes. Sally’s agency has effectively disappeared. She is doubly relieved of responsibility. First, her behavior has been accounted for solely as the intersection of influences: nothing uniquely ‘Sally’ required. She is de trop , redundant, white noise. She is a ghost in her own machine. (Ryle) On the other hand, her behavior is dictated by her compulsory service to the collective Borg identity. Sally is the prototypical Nazi commandant; she is ‘just following orders’. To what can I compare 21 st century Sally? Shall I compare her to a summer’s day? I don’t think so. How about a cell in an animal body? On the one hand, she is a product of her nuclear DNA, her mitochondria, and the proteins they produce; on the other hand, she is a cog in an organelle whose sole responsibility is the well-being of its meta-organism. Close, but still not quite. A cell in an animal body probably retains a smidge more agency than our hapless Sally. We may be witnessing Stage IV in the evolution of life on Earth: (1) RNA/DNA and the prokaryotic cell, (2) the eukaryotic (nucleated) cell, (3) the multicellular organism, (4) the collective. There is a contrarian view. There is a model in which there is only Sally. It is Sally who synthesizes her environmental influences into a single organism, and it is that organism, in voluntary association with others, that shapes the behavior of her society. Interestingly, this view achieved its most coherent expression c. 100 years ago as the apex of British Empiricism (Alfred North Whitehead) and the heart of Continental Existentialism (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre). Both schools celebrate the absolute sovereignty of the individual over her identity and destiny. According to Whitehead’s Process Philosophy , the individual designates her Actual World, sorts that World, judges it according to Transcendental Values, and adjusts it according to Subjective Aim, i.e. the individual’s vision of ‘herself in the World for others’. In its purest form (Sartre), the existential self is solely responsible for his own choices, his own actions. There are no influences, unless we lay claim to them, and there are no intended consequences, unless we identify with them. The Devil makes no one do anything and no one is ever ‘just following orders’. "We are the World", we make be what comes to be, we alone are responsible. Ironically, the sovereignty of the individual is probably best recognized today in Judeo-Christian spirituality. From Hasidic Judaism (and Kabbalah) to Evangelical (‘born again’) Christianity, the focus is first on our personal relationship with God and then, in the context of that relationship, on our liberating, peacemaking role in the World. In both traditions, we are commanded to love God unreservedly and to love others as ourselves. This is a powerful antidote to the fragmentation and collectivization of the self. Who’d a thunk it? ( Hairspray ) Judeo-Christianity has become the counter culture of the 21st century, our last line of defense against the Borg Collective. So buckle up! “There’s rough seas ahead.” ( Yellow Submarine ) *** Edward Hopper’s Night Windows (1928) captures a fleeting, voyeuristic view through an illuminated apartment window, where a woman bends over in a private domestic moment. The stark contrast of warm interior light against the dark night sky heightens the sense of quiet intrusion, evoking themes of solitude, secrecy, and the subtle tension of being watched. 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 Lubavitcher Rebbe David Cowles Jul 1, 2025 “Right here, right now, it’s about doing a good deed. That connection, even if seemingly transient, is transcendent and eternal.” This week marks the 31st year since the passing of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. A recent article (6/25/2025) by Mordechai Lightstone in Chabad.org Magazine celebrates the Rebbe’s indelible contribution to Western spirituality. I will quote liberally from Mr. Lightstone but recognizing that Aletheia Today addresses a ‘theologically diverse’ audience, I will not hesitate to draw parallels with other traditions (e.g. Christian) where appropriate, without in any way wishing to compromise the distinctly Jewish character of the Rebbe’s teaching. “Born in 1902 in Nikolaev, Ukraine…the Lubavitcher Rebbe…believed that every person— regardless of background or knowledge—could be empowered as a conduit to spread goodness and kindness wherever they were. Together, those combined acts could illuminate the world, elevating it and bringing true transcendence.” He spoke to the youth: “Rather than view children as merely unfinished adults, the Rebbe recognized the vigor, openness and pursuit of truth among youth as unique advantages they could teach and inspire their world-weary elders.” “And a little child shall lead them.” (Isaiah 11:6) “Unless you become like little children you shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) “Rebellion is Revelation: the Rebbe was an orthodox rebel, a traditional radical. In the Sixties, the rest of the Jewish establishment looked on in disdain at what was happening to their youth…(but he) declared: ‘Finally, the iceberg of America is beginning to melt! Finally, its young people are demonstrating that conformity is not the sum of life’s goals! They have smashed the idols of false progress; they need now only be led back to the living waters of their heritage…’” “I came to ignite a fire on earth and how I wish it was already blazing.” (Luke 12:49) “I did not come to abolish the law…but to fulfill it.” (Matthew 5:17) He was a feminist. “When the world struggled with including women in the rubric of Jewish tradition, the Rebbe had long empowered them to be leaders and thinkers, masters of the Jewish future and bringers of light into the world.” “The Rebbe viewed every person as comprised of inherent goodness at the core and possessing a unique role in the world…The Rebbe sought to imbue joy…(He) created a 10point mitzvah campaign focusing on simple, practical and actionable deeds that could be performed anywhere…What you did until now—and what you’ll do tomorrow—is not the focus. Right here, right now, it’s about doing a good deed. That connection, even if seemingly transient, is transcendent and eternal.” There is only now but now is eternal. “In 1974, the Rebbe introduced the world to the Mitzvah Tank: trucks or RVs converted into mobile Jewish centers where Jewish pride could be writ large—bold, brash and ready to engage the public.” Ken Keasey and the Merry Pranksters! Or the Partridge Family. The Rebbe was ecumenical: “Gentiles need not become Jews to gain transcendence.” The nascent Christian church reached the same conclusion at the first Jerusalem council when Peter decreed that Gentiles did not need to become Jews before becoming Christians. “Each of us, following our unique callings, can live an upright and ethical life…(He) encouraged all mankind to follow the universal moral principles entrusted to us by G-d (and) known as the Seven Noahide Laws:” Do not worship idols, do not curse God, do not murder, do not engage in sexual immorality, do not steal, do not eat the flesh of a live animal, establish courts of justice. “Each individual has a path within a path. Yet there is one universal basis for us all. Through such cooperation, the Rebbe believed the world could reach its ultimate raison d’être.” One is reminded of Robert Frost "In The Road Not Taken," Frost is forced to choose between two paths but in the certain knowledge that either will lead him home (the Kingdom of God perhaps). It is not about the destination, it’s about the journey; it’s not about the end, it’s about the means. Sorry Machiavelli! “As the Rebbe told former New York City Mayor David Dinkins: ‘We are one side. We are one people, living in one city, under one administration and under one G-d.’” The world is a onesided Mobius Strip, not a two-sided coin. (There is a lesson for 21st century America in this teaching!) He was a modernist. “…The Rebbe propelled a view of Jewish life not in contradiction to technological advances, considering the burgeoning field a valuable component to achieving greater good. Using the latest means of communication, the Rebbe encouraged that radio in the 1950s, satellite in the 1980s and Internet in the early 1990s all be used to advance knowledge and education…” “Spreading Jewish knowledge isn’t something that should be left only to the Jewish professionals or clergy. The Rebbe would exhort that if all you know is alef, then teach alef! Each of us has the power to instruct and inspire others. What is more, we’re tasked to not just teach others, but to fully empower them so that they, in turn, can teach others. Like a lamplighter kindling a flame, once the wick is fully lit, it can be used to kindle other lights to come.” Knowledge and virtue can be contagious…so be your own patient zero! In a non-Archimedean universe each of us is the center. Think Globally/Act Locally. “. . .Jews should travel to communities around the world… (but) form a holistic part of the communities they serve…” Would that all missionaries of all faiths followed the Rebbe’s guidance. “Each community—and each individual in it—is empowered to perform the final word, thought or action that can tip the scales, and bring redemption to the entire world.” At least intuitively, the Rebbe understood the finer points of chaos theory. All events are ontologically equal and any event can be historically decisive. We are all butterflies ceaselessly flapping our wings. We are all called to be priests, prophets, and kings, to spread beauty, truth and justice throughout the cosmos. It is a terrible artifact of the Archimedean world view that most of us are overwhelmed by the enormity of this challenge. We give up. “What can I do?” What can any one person do in a world so large, in a cosmos so vast? Quelle Domage! But the real, substructural world is not so large, nor is the cosmos so vast. We do not live in an Archimedean universe. The whole is not simply the sum of its parts. Counter intuitively, a single ‘part’ can be even greater than the whole. In this regard, Christians have an edge. According to the Doctrine of Incarnation, Jesus Christ, “true God and true man”, the 2nd person of the Blessed Trinity, born into the world as a ‘part’, is infinitely greater than the ‘whole’ created world into which he was born. “Through him all things were made.” (John 1: 1-5) So this week, and every week, it is appropriate that we celebrate the life and teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, as we strive to live his lessons in our fractured world. Abraham Rattner, Star of David , pencil, ink and watercolor, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1977.36.42 Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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< Back Lord of the Flies Shows Humans Are Hard-Wired to Help Each Other Vittorio Bufacchi "We can only speculate what the six boys on the island in the Pacific Ocean would have done if they had run out of food – but whatever it is, I would certainly not draw any conclusions from it in terms of the essence of human nature." Fiction is a powerful force in shaping social understanding and, in the 20th century, a number of novels shaped philosophical discourse and influenced the way people think about the world. One of the most important was William Golding’s Lord of the Flies (1954) , in which a group of young schoolboys marooned on a desert island turn savagely on each other. It is a novel that makes us despair for the human condition. But a new book by Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, Humankind , argues that humans are fundamentally good – or at least not fundamentally evil – and refuses to accept the conclusions that many before him have drawn from Golding’s book. The subtitle of Bregman’s book summarises his thesis in three words: A Hopeful History. In this book he challenges the dystopian scenario in Golding’s novel with a little-known real-life example of six boys in 1966 stranded in a deserted Island south of Tonga in the Pacific Coast for more than a year. Their experience was nothing like that of Lord of the Flies: they survived because they lived in harmony, cooperating with one another, helping each other. This story is an invigorating endorsement of everything that is good and noble about human nature. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s myth of the “noble savage” comes to mind, symbolising the innate goodness of humankind before being exposed to the corrupting influences of civilisation. Nasty, brutish and short- As a philosopher, this story leaves me cold. In terms of theorising human nature we have to take what we read in a novel such as Lord of the Flies with a pinch of salt. Similarly, we cannot and should not draw any conclusions about human nature from one case study – fascinating as it undoubtedly is. Also, the philosophical underpinnings of Bregman’s analysis are slightly suspect. What puts me on the defensive is the fact that, not for the first time, Thomas Hobbes is portrayed by Bregman as the bogeyman of political philosophy. Bregman appears to reject the well-known Hobbesian view of the state of nature . This essentially says that, without a society to restrain our most basic instincts and left to our own devices, people will turn on each other. Society, theorised Hobbes, would thus collapse into an abysmal anarchy – a “war of all against all”, where life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. The only way out of the state of nature is via a social contract and the formation of an all-powerful Leviathan , Hobbes wrote. This has led some in modern times to accuse the philosopher of justifying authoritarian dictatorship . But that is misleading: the modern Leviathan is nothing more than the legitimate authority of a modern state. That the absence of authority leads to anarchy certainly seems to be Golding’s message in Lord of the Flies – away from the strict regime of school society, the young castaways turn to killing. And so the real-life case of the six boys from Tonga is Bregman’s way of telling us that Hobbes was wrong. But I think his reading of Hobbes is erroneous. Hobbes never said that human nature is evil, instead he believed that we are blessed with “prudence” – which he defined as foresight, grounded on experience: "Prudence is but experience, which equal time equally bestows on all men, in all things they equally apply themselves unto." Yes, we are also naturally motivated by self-interest, as Bregman points out – but for Hobbes in the state of nature, self-interest is morally neutral. To act on our self-interest is not morally “bad”, because ethical judgements do not apply to the state of nature. And, crucially, good things can come out of our self-interest. Cooperative self-interest- A more accurate reading of Hobbes is the following: our main and greatest motivation is to avoid death – and we appeal to our self-interest to stay alive. Hobbes also tells us that the best way to stay alive, and what is ultimately in our self-interest, is via social cooperation. Hobbes is perhaps the greatest thinker of mutually beneficial social cooperation, because he doesn’t make cooperation about altruism but about self-interest. Social cooperation is the essence of the social contract, and the role of the modern state is to facilitate social cooperation. Reading about the six boys reinforced my view that Hobbes was right. Thanks to prudence they soon realised that the best way for them to survive was by working together, cooperating, helping each other out. They survived for a year, which is a miracle, but would their harmony have lasted if they had not been rescued? We don’t know. What we do know is that on the island there was an abundance of food and fresh water. But what if the environment was different? In other contexts of greater scarcity, people have been known to turn to cannibalism. In a famous legal case from 1884, a four-man crew sailing from England to Australia were shipwrecked with almost no food . When the 17-year-old cabin boy became ill, two of the men decided to kill and eat him. After being rescued, the two men were convicted of murder and sentenced to death – which was later commuted to six months’ imprisonment. We can only speculate what the six boys on the island in the Pacific Ocean would have done if they had run out of food – but whatever it is, I would certainly not draw any conclusions from it in terms of the essence of human nature. This essay was republished with minimal edits in cooperation with The Conversation . Image: A still from the 1963 film of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. British Lion Film Corporation. Vittorio Bufacchi is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at University College Cork, Ireland. His main research interests are in contemporary political philosophy, especially theories of social justice; human rights; political violence; and the idea of injustice. He has also published in the methodology of applied philosophy; rational choice theory; democratic theory; socialism; Jane Austen; and Italian politics. His book 'Everything Must Change: Philosophical Lessons From Lockdown' was published by Manchester University Press in 2021. He is also the author of 'Violence and Social Justice' (Palgrave) and 'Social Injustice' (Palgrave). Twitter: @BufacchiV Return to our Beach Read 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back My Breastplate David Cowles Apr 15, 2023 Christ within me, Christ outside me, Christ before me, Christ beside me. Christ in everything I do, Christ in everything I think, Christ in everything I touch, Christ in everyone I meet, Christ my origin, Christ my destiny, Christ in all things, All things in Christ. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Previous Next Share Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to the Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back The Effects of EGO on Your Success Magesh "The funny thing about ego is that it can make people believe they are more important than they are." As a session musician, I have played with many famous artists—artists who have sold millions of records. With that comes massive success: big houses, fancy cars, and more money than people could count. I was fascinated by how people dealt with their fame and success. I’ve seen firsthand people become incredibly successful only to lose everything. In my opinion, a lot of this has to do with the artist's ego—where they perceive their talent comes from and who they thank for it. I always said that my talent, first and foremost, was a gift from God, and that any success I received was due to the Lord's blessings. In my experience in the music business, I have seen many artists claim their talent as their own. It is no coincidence that these were often the artists with short-lived careers. One artist I worked with was gaining incredible momentum in his career. He went from working as a dishwasher to being propelled into superstardom on TV. Millions of people tuned in each week to watch him on a pop star reality show. No one could argue that this guy had talent. When I met him, I was surprised by some of the things he said. “I’m one of the greatest singers of all time,” he boasted to a record company executive. I immediately thought of the Corinthians verse when I heard him say those words: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (Corinthians 10:31) This artist was a living example of the complete opposite of this verse! He constantly claimed his talent was the result of hard work by him and him alone. In a way, his giant ego was burning bridges faster than they were being built. A few months after the TV show ended, this artist was given a great opportunity: he was offered a world tour supporting an incredibly famous American singer. A meeting was held with the band, the artist, and the record company. The artist’s brash personality and big head had already rubbed several record company executives the wrong way. During the meeting, everyone in the room was throwing around ideas on how to create a successful show for the tour. Driven by ego, the singer suggested that the band perform offstage in the wings while he was the only one on stage singing. “Why would you want to do that?” asked the head of marketing from the record company. The artist replied, “I don’t want the spotlight to be on anyone but me!” The record company stood with the band, insisting that the credit for the performance should be shared by all the musicians. The artist's idea to be the sole person on stage was quickly overruled. On tour, I noticed that so many people were involved in making it happen—managers, road crew, musicians, lighting people, sound engineers, and caterers. I always followed the old adage: “Treat people the way you would like to be treated.” I guess that’s why I got along with people from all walks of life. The artist, on the other hand, was only nice to people who could help elevate his career. I remember the second night of the tour when we were having dinner backstage. It was beautifully prepared by a local catering company. Everything was calm and peaceful until the artist had an outburst. Apparently, his Chicken Kyiv was undercooked. Instead of politely asking for a new dish, he spent the next five minutes berating the server. I felt awful because she was a 22-year-old girl just doing her job. She hadn’t prepared the food; she was just bringing it out for the musicians. I tried to calm the artist down, mentioning that it wasn’t the girl's fault. Then he said something that really upset me. He said, “She’s a nobody! I’m a star, and in 20 minutes I’ll be entertaining 20,000 people.” I was beyond disgusted with his comments. Immediately, I thought of the Corinthians verse 13:4-7: “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” The funny thing about ego is that it can make people believe they are more important than they are. The manager of the famous American artist happened to be having dinner when this outburst occurred. He was so disgusted by the singer's behavior that he immediately dropped him from the tour. This meant the artist lost thousands of dollars, as well as sales of his music. This had a spiral effect. Two months later, the record company dropped him because he wasn’t selling as well as they had hoped. He had also said some hurtful things to employees of the record company. Clearly, there is a lesson to be learned here: don’t be a slave to your ego when you have success. And don’t forget to give credit to the Lord when you are truly blessed with a talent. Magesh has written for “Lessonface,” “Aeyons,” “The Modern Rogue,” “Euronews,” “The Roland corporation,” “Penlight,” and “Elite Music.” He writes several monthly publications on music education. In the past, Magesh has written for parenting, humor, mental health, and travel websites as well. Return to Table of Contents Previous Next

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