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< Back AI, Justice, and Job “Can a Bot go beyond its programming and our inputs to devise unique solutions to novel problems - solutions that exhibit Justice as their determinative Value?” David Cowles Our Fall Issue of Aletheia Today Magazine , our ‘AI Issue’ released 9/1/23, included an article titled, “ Do Bots Know Beauty? ” In that essay, we proposed that there are (at least) three transcendent values: Beauty, Truth, and Justice. We dealt, hopefully to your satisfaction, with Beauty and Truth, but we deliberately left Justice for another day (and that day is today ). Can a Bot be Just? This question has two parts: Can what we mean by ‘justice’ be reduced to an algorithm? Or if not, can a Bot go beyond its programming and our inputs to devise unique solutions to novel problems - solutions that manifest Justice as their determinative Value? More so than Beauty, less so than Truth, Justice can be reduced to an algorithm. We call that algorithm ‘the law’; but then we criticize anyone who blindly follows it. We say they’re being overly legalistic . Like Solomon, we instinctively know that Justice is more than a legal code, no matter how well-intentioned or expertly drawn it may be. Justice is rooted in the ineffable. Aquinas, for example, says that secular law is normative… but only to the extent that it is consistent with God’s law. Dial 611. Call up the specific mitzvah of Torah; they represent an early effort to codify – or program – Justice. Now add the 2-general mitzvah, aka the Great Commandment, a recognition that the law must always be interpreted and applied in the broader context of Justice per se . Even so, it would be a huge mistake to treat Torah as an algorithm. In all cases, it requires interpretation and application by a competent Rabbi (Midrashim, Talmud). Even more importantly, during the period of the Judges , when God ruled Israel directly (through Torah), “everyone did what was right in their own eyes”. (Judges XX: SS) The justice of law is always mitigated by Justice as Value - justice as it is experienced and expressed in collective tradition and in personal conscience. More broadly, the history of Judeo-Christianity itself can be viewed as a dialectic of law and value. As Jewish theology evolved during the first millennium BCE, the migration of Torah from tablets of stone to hearts of flesh was a recurrent theme. When Christianity burst onto the scene (c. 30 CE) the dichotomy of law and value sharpened even further. Jesus said, “…Not an iota, not a jot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.” (Matthew 5: 18), but Paul wrote, “Now that faith (value) has some, we are no longer under the law.” (Galatians 3: 25) Of course, both are correct. The Christian project is the merger of Justice as Law with Justice as Value. But the dichotomy of Justice as Value vs. Justice as Law goes back much further than Jesus and Paul; it’s older than the Judges, and it’s even older than Moses himself. In fact, it goes all the way back to the story of Job , one of Western civilization’s oldest narratives. The version memorialized in the Biblical Book of Job could be aptly subtitled, Justice: Algorithm or Value? Refresher : Job, a just and prosperous man, suddenly hits a streak of ‘bad luck’ (to say the least): his family is wiped out, his wealth lost, his health destroyed. It is assumed, not without reason, that God is responsible for Job’s misfortunes. Unfortunately, Job is joined on his ‘dung hill’ by three so-called comforters, men of high standing who have traveled a great distance to commiserate with their colleague. These self-appointed divine surrogates defend the notion of Justice as Algorithm: they try to persuade Job that it is his ‘sins’ that have triggered this dreadful series of events. Job will have none of it. He insists that he has committed no sin remotely proportionate to his sufferings. Beyond that, Job contends that Justice is more than tit-for-tat, that it is a Value, not an Algorithm: judgement should be based on the totality, including subjective intent, not just on naked acts taken out-of-context. Our hero is so confident of his concept of Justice that he uses it to ‘call God out’ and what ensues is one of the fiercest battles in the history of playgrounds. Remember Ali-Forman, the Rumble in the Jungle ? A Forman win was considered so certain that some of Ali’s handlers wanted the fight called off. Instead, Ali sat on the ropes for 7 rounds and then in the 8th stepped out from the shadows and knocked Forman out with a single 5 punch volley. Remember God-Job, the Rumble in the Desert ? Same idea! Bystanders are offering 100-to-1 odds, and still the ‘Job line’ has no takers. Predictably, God shows up in a whirlwind calculated to terrify his accuser. For several chapters, God rants while Job whispers. God taunts Job for his comparative lack of accomplishments. He threatens Job with monsters, Behemoth and Leviathan. He puts Job on a par with ‘uninhabited grassland’. Job is cowed but not crushed; he stands his ground. In the end, seeing that he can’t intimidate Job, like all bullies, God gives up . He admits that he has been badly represented by his surrogates, and he concedes that Job has Justice on his side: Justice is a Value, not an Algorithm! So back to Bots. As with Beauty, if a Bot can reach this same conclusion (God’s) on its own, not relying solely on its programming or on our inputs, then that Bot may claim to be conscious...and I’ll support that claim. And if not…then it is just a very expensive, albeit very useful, hunk of inanimate, unconscious silicon. Stay tuned! 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 . Share Previous Next

< Back Who Invented the Internet “Al Gore claims the honor, but research shows that proof of concept testing began in 802 AD...” David Cowles The history of Europe is, in some sense, the history of the Franks (now the French). We first met this civilization in 8 th grade Latin when, side by side with Julius Caesar, we fought a Gallic War. (Sad to say, most of us suffered more than Caesar.) We encountered the Franks again during the protracted fall of Rome (476 AD). After Rome, the mysterious Merovingian dynasty appeared and took control of the Frankish empire. The Merovingians ruled until they were gradually replaced in the 2 nd half of the 8 th century by the Carolingians. On Christmas Day, 800 AD, the Carolingian king, Charles I (Charlemagne) was crowed Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (the Western Empire having been without an emperor since 476 AD). Charles dreamed of restoring the military, economic, and cultural power of Rome but he lacked one thing: infra-structure. Recall that in the 9 th century there was no radio, no TV, and no printing press. Following the collapse of Rome, there were few good roads, fewer central markets, and almost no literacy outside of the monasteries; but worst of all, in 800 AD there was no internet! What’s an enterprising young emperor to do? Wait 1200 years for Al Gore to invent it? Or… build it himself! That’s exactly what Charles did! Al Gore claims the honor, but research shows that proof of concept testing began in 802 AD, a few years before Gore was born. Charles revived a moribund Merovingian institution (the Missi ) and made it the cornerstone of his imperial rule. It was a brilliant strategy. Charles acknowledged the natural tendency of his empire to fragment along pre-determined fault lines and he used the Missi to turn those faults to his advantage. Missi were ‘sent’. Just as Jesus sent his apostles two-by-two, so Charles sent his Missi in pairs. Except Charles’ Missi were usually bishops and counts, not fishermen and tax collectors. Their brief was thoroughly pragmatic but based on the fundamental belief that Church and State were ‘one and inseparable’, two hypostatic reflections of the Kingdom of God. For a more detailed treatment of various church/state models, visit " Church And State ." According to the Carolingian model, the relationship of Church and State is complementary . Just as the behavior of subatomic particles only makes sense when they are understood both as waves and as particles, so human society only makes sense when it is understood both as Church and as State. Note, we are not talking here about a quantum behaving first as a wave then as a particle (or vice versa). That’s how we perceive things, but it’s not how things are . To understand the behavior of quanta, we need to accept that a quantum is always both wave and particle, not ‘hare today, goon tomorrow’. Accordingly, to understand the behavior of human society, we need to accept that society is always both Church and State. We may only be able to deal with one Gestalt at a time, but we must recognize that both are operating at all the times. In another stroke of genius, Charles made sure that his Missi didn’t quit their day jobs. He took pains not to create a new, insulated, self-perpetuating bureaucracy. Like the ‘citizen legislators’ still governing in a few of our not-so-very-United States, Charles’ counts and bishops were still expected to perform all the duties of their respective stations but now they were also expected to spend a couple of months each year ‘in the district’, carrying the emperor’s water. No doubt, being a Missi was inconvenient at times (months away from home, etc.), but each pair enjoyed power and authority beyond that of any other imperial functionary, save only the emperor himself. As Roman Catholics regard the Pope as the Vicar of Christ, so the Carolingians regarded the Missi as Vicars of the Emperor. Reprising somewhat the role of the Old Testament judges, Charles’ Missi were empowered to right wrongs, adjudicate disputes, and impose the emperor’s will. Short of a rare direct appeal to the emperor himself, there was no way around the judgment of the Missi . The Missi gave the emperor extraordinary power. They were not only his eyes and ears ‘in the neighborhood’ but also his hands and voice. Missi were expected to report back to the emperor at least once a year on the ‘state of the neighborhood’ while communicating the emperor’s will to the ‘neighbors’. Like Charles, we struggle today with the competing values of hierarchy and subsidiarity. We do ourselves a great disservice if we fail to draw on ideas from the past, just because they are ‘past’. Hurry, Charlemagne, a once and future king. Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! Share Previous Next

< Back Follow the Science “Every event is novel, and no event causes any other event. Every event is free, causa sui, and sui generis. But the universe is also conservative…” David Cowles Remember the Alamo and Follow the Science – words to live by, memes that inspire generations! We love science…and why shouldn’t we? I lived through all the painful and potentially lethal childhood diseases; today we have vaccines. I grew up without the “vast wasteland” (Newton Minow) known as ‘television’, and no video games. Quelle domage! How did I ever survive? When I wanted to know something, I had to travel to something called a ‘library’ and search through its stacks. Then I learned to ‘Ask Google’ to assemble relevant research materials for me. Now I can just wake up my bot, Claude, and he will do my research for me. He’ll even write my report for me if I choose. So follow the science? You bet! There is just one small glitch: not a single proposition in the ‘library of science’ is true! Or false, for that matter. Not one. Take calculus, for example. Without calculus, it is unlikely that any of the technological advances mentioned above would have occurred. The world appears to be continuous along all four dimensions, but it isn’t. This is the nub of the famous paradox proposed by Parmenides’ pal, Zeno of Elea, a mere 2,500 years ago. Calculus can do what Zeno couldn’t; it lets us treat the discontinuous as if it were continuous. It’s not true, of course! Discontinuity is still discontinuity, but calculus allows us to disregard that discontinuity and treat all phenomena as continuous. It’s a bit like geometry. As far as we know, there are no purely Euclidean universes. Yet, the postulates and theorems of Euclidean geometry have revealed much about the substructural order of the phenomenal world. “Something there is that does not love a wall.” (Robert Frost) There are no straight lines! Yet by studying the properties of straight lines, we can learn about that which is not so straight. Euclidean geometry assumes a flat universe in which lines can be straight and angles can be sharp. We don’t live in such a universe, but we can learn about our universe by studying Euclid’s pseudo-verse. Same with calculus! Same with science! Modern science studies with unimaginable depth and precision something that does not exist, i.e., a continuous world. Scientific Method (SM) allows us to probe the world with incredible precision. Anyone who made it through the 5 th grade knows the details of SM by heart: Observe, question, hypothesize, experiment, and interpret. And if you were too cool for school, you know that anyway (without the labels) because you’ve lived…likewise many of your unstuffed animal friends. The fundamental premise of SM is this: If you perform identical actions in an identical environment (e.g., laboratory), you will achieve identical results. SM is ‘AA certified’: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So the non-thetic scientific method is a hardwired feature of epistemology in our biosphere. Perhaps it is a product of evolution (physical and/or cultural); it certainly confers ‘advantage’ on those able to use it. But the whole house of cards rests on a normally unnoticed and unstated foundation – the assumption that any event can ever be repeated. In fact, every event is unique. It is a fundamental premise of ontology (Whitehead), the foundation on which all science must be built, that no two events can ever be the same. If they were, they would be one event, not two. ‘Same’ is a mathematical concept (‘equality’), not a physical reality. But there are no identical events, and therefore it is never possible to perform the same actions under the same circumstances. The scientific method is logical and practical, and it yields amazingly useful insights, but its propositions are utterly vacuous, fruits of a forbidden tree. SM is a useful epistemology that rests on an invalid ontology! “This is what a unicorn would look like…if unicorns existed.” Every event is novel, and no event causes any other event. Every event is free, causa sui, and sui generis . But the universe is also conservative….just conservative enough, as it turns out. If it were more conservative, we’d be in permanent gridlock; less conservative, chaos. Consider Events A and B. Let’s assume that B is as similar to A as any event can be to any other event. They are separated by a ‘quantum of difference’ - what Jacques Derrida called ‘ differance ’. Where do we find this ‘B’? Next to A, obviously. Dah! Neat trick! How’dya do it? Spacetime! Not a substructural feature of universe as we had long believed but rather a map of that universe. Spacetime is not the substructure of universe - it is a map, not a blueprint. Every map is the projection of a field according to a map-specific set of rules. One such map is spacetime , drawn so that every ‘B’ is adjacent to its ‘A’, of course. Spacetime is Minecraft on steroids. We assemble virtual blocks to create multidimensional structures, environments, etc. It is this map that makes it possible for the scientific method to ‘work’, even though it rests on a fallacious ontology. So push our science to the max and take advantage of all the gorgeous fruit it produces, but beware: Do not confuse the fruit (phenomena) with the tree (noumenon), do not confuse the map with the territory! 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. Share Previous Next

< Back Vanity David Cowles “Every day for 80+ years, we imagine ourselves to be someone we are not, and we work tirelessly, and fruitlessly, to become that person. 'That' is Vanity.” “Vanity, vanities, everything is vanity.” So begins Ecclesiastes , a book of Old Testament Wisdom literature, traditionally attributed to Solomon but probably written many centuries later. The text simply lists the author as ‘Koheleth’ (The Speaker). ‘Vanity’ is one translation of an Aramaic word ( havel ) that also denotes ‘absurdity, futility, emptiness’. In the languages of the ancient Middle East, it was customary for one word to support several related but distinct meanings. The meaning of a particular word is like a chord in music: multiple notes produce a single sonic impression; multiple meanings, a single semantic expression. In this way, Jewish scripture presages James Joyce and various other 20 th century wordsmiths. Words are deliberately chosen, not for their specificity, but for their ambiguity. Like chords in a symphony, words are heard vertically as well as horizontally. All the acceptable ‘meanings’ are experienced together, as overtones. Reminiscent of Janus, the two faced god , Vanity and Idolatry are two aspects of the Void. They are examples of what Alfred North Whitehead called, “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” We fall prey to this fallacy whenever we mistake a map for its territory or a phantom for what’s real. “It’s life’s illusions I recall, I really don’t know life at all.” (Joni Mitchell) Well said! If we treat these illusions as ‘life itself’, we succumb to Whitehead’s fallacy. Idols are paradigmatic examples of ‘misplaced concreteness’. We invest them with ‘ultimate reality’ when in fact they are ‘utterly empty’: Birthday piñatas without the candy; hype without hope! To quote Wendy’s (and Walter Mondale): “Where’s the Beef?” Vanity is the B-side of Idolatry , that chart topping hit single from The Void . We are ‘vain’ to the extent that we idolize ourselves : Narcissus. The idol and the idolater become one. When we confer ‘absolute reality’ on what is ‘totally vacuous’, we empty ourselves in the process. We become T.S. Eliot’s ‘hollow men’ (sic). In the words of George W. Bush, we’re “all hat, no cattle!” How so? You have heard it said that we are made “in the image and likeness of God”. But if our God is the Void, and we are made in its image and likeness, then… In the music industry, A and B-sides sometimes get inverted. Take the Beatles, for example: Strawberry Fields , which changed popular music forever, was supposed to be the B-side of Penny Lane , which didn’t. Likewise, we imagine that Vanity is a product of Idolatry, while the reverse is true! What we know about the world is what we know through personal experience - first, second or nth -handed. There is an objective world, but what we think we know about that world is a function of what we do know about ourselves. It appears that all living organisms have some sense of an ‘external world’. We may even wish to designate such a sense as one of the criteria for being considered ‘alive’. Each adult human body consists of 30 trillion eukaryotic (nuclear) cells; on average, each such cell contains about 1,000 prokaryotic (non-nuclear) mitochondria, descendants of ancient bacteria that have elected to take up residence within the cell, becoming permanent, reproducing participants in cellular ecology. In addition, each adult human body houses about 100 trillion ‘freestanding’ bacteria - ‘fellow travelers’ in 20 th century neo-Marxist terminology. Unlike the mitochondria, these ‘free riders’ elected not to join the Party (i.e., the cell); nonetheless, they make critical contributions to the organism’s overall success. Quadrillion cells (10^15) - each one a living, breathing, eating, sensing and reproducing organism, each with its own map of the external world, extrapolated from its ‘personal experience’. Wow! According to Heidegger , each of us is unexpectedly ‘thrown’, tiny, defenseless, and afraid, into an utterly alien world. From our first cry in the delivery room to our last gasp in hospice, we never stop searching for an identity, a niche - a way to feel safe, to fit into the world, to have purpose. “ What’s it all about, Alfie? ” Every day for 80+ years, we imagine ourselves to be someone we are not, and we work tirelessly, and fruitlessly, to become that person. That is Vanity! As an adult, I’ve imagined myself to be an intellectual, an educator, a gang leader, a revolutionary, a politician, an entrepreneur, a theologian, and (now) a writer – to single out just a few of my cherished personae . Of course, I am not now, nor have I ever been, any of those things. My grandfather said it best, “I’m not the man I used to be…and never was.” QED Children, of course, do not have the option of playing Cock Robin; but that only makes it more difficult for them to curate an identity, to create a niche. Kids see the world through the prism of family, so they see the stability of the family as Job One. A family is like a mobile. A new arrival must position itself so as not to disrupt the balance of that mobile. To that end, we make ourselves the uber-responsible first child, the mischievous Malcolm-in-the-middle, the adored prince or princess, the helpless ‘baby’, etc. This is why children invariably feel themselves to blame when families fall apart. In their minds, they are to blame; they failed. They did not do their duty, they did not maintain the family’s integrity, its balance. So, is everything Vanity? Well, if your God is the Void and all things are empty (idols), then yes, “everything is Vanity and a chase after wind”, including you. We don’t like things to be either/or, black or white; we live in the epoch of gray, the color of indeterminacy. But Torah sets things straight, “I set before you life and death, therefore choose life…(for) I am the Lord your God, you shall not put other gods before me.” 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

< Back Football Math David Cowles “At last, an opportunity to watch football in peace! … Just beer, pretzels and picking out the next Tom Brady.” Introduction: Who doesn’t love football? Every autumn, every week, there are dozens of games, good games, on national television. Often, you have no allegiance to either team and, mercifully, for once, neither team is depending on your armchair cheering to tilt the outcome of the game in its favor. At last, an opportunity to watch football in peace! No responsibilities. Just beer, pretzels and picking out the next Tom Brady. Incredible feats of strength and speed, paradigms of grit and determination, and coaching stratagems worthy of a chess master. What’s not to love! And then there’s the game itself, the ebb and flow, the score. Early score differentials (‘spreads’) are sometimes amplified as the game progresses, but just as often they are dampened, and in some cases, they are actually reversed. Football is a 21st century cultural phenom. In this age of social fragmentation, it’s just about the only thing we still have in common. Almost everyone speaks football. If baseball is our national pastime, football has become our national language and every fall weekend we celebrate our secular liturgy in the vernacular. A football game is all about the unfolding of patterns (every ‘play’ is really a pattern), and after watching dozens of games this season, it occurred to me that while there are numerous patterns inside each game, the games themselves might also form patterns. For example, can the scores of multiple games between various opponents tell us anything? Or do they just vary randomly? Do scores evolve arithmetically over the course of a game; or is there something else, something non-linear, at work? Football Math: To explore this, I looked at score differentials at the end of the first half and compared them with score differentials at the end of the same games. Easy-peasy, right? Well, no! In fact, solving the problem requires us to develop (or deploy) a whole new mathematics. A football game is an example of a discontinuous process. We deal with whole numbers only (no fractions). Plus, unlike most other sports (soccer, baseball, e.g.), those numbers do not increase iteratively. Say a team scores 5 times in the course of a game (5 runs, 5 goals, etc.). In most sports, that would result in a score of “5” for that team. Not in football. In ‘football math’ there are only 3 digits: 2, 3, and X where the value of X can be 6, 7, or 8. Crazy? Yes, but if you are a regular reader of Thoughts While Shaving (TWS) and Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM), you already know about civilizations that ‘play the game of life’ with number systems very different from the one you learned in grade school . In fact, we’ve studied one culture that has no numbers whatsoever . Other cultures have limited inventories of numbers (e.g., 1, 2, X where X refers to any collection of 3 or more items). Hot Link Compared to these societies, ‘football math’ gives us a lot to work with. Granted, we only have 3 digits (2, 3, X), but one of those digits (X) can represent any one of three different values (6, 7, or 8). So, in essence we have 5 digits (2, 3, 6, 7, 8), Plus, we can ‘add’ those digits together to generate higher, ‘secondary’ numbers. So far so good, but please, don’t get too comfortable! It turns out that the score of a football game is much like the result of a road race, according to Zeno . Zeno-math applies in universes, like football games, where quantity is not infinitely divisible. In our search for patterns, we need to look at an event (e.g., the game) from 3 perspectives: pre-game, game, and post-game. Pre-game began at Big Bang and won’t end before kick-off. (If you’re tailgating, you might want to take an Uber…and invest in a port-o-potty. 15 billion years equates to a lot of Budweiser.) Pre-game, the so-called ‘score’ is always 0 – 0, of course. But ‘0 – 0’ is just a short way of saying, ‘The game’s not afoot yet, my dear Watson’. 0 – 0 is not a score; it looks like a score but in fact it denotes the absence of a score. Rather, it’s a state of Being, i.e., pre-being. A whistle blows: the kick-off –finally, a play that could result in points. Seemingly, we’ve moved from pre-game to game…but in fact, we’ve merely transitioned from pre-game to potential-game, ‘being-in-waiting’, which is still a flavor of pre-being. Remember, for the purposes of this exercise, we are not concerned with a 60 yard rope, a one-handed snag, a blocked punt, or a pick-six. We are only tracking score and so far, we have no score. We say that the score is still 0 – 0 but again, that is just a convention. As we saw above, a score of 0 – 0 corresponds to the state of being we call ‘pre- game’. The ‘game’ begins when pre-game ends and pre-game ends when someone scores points. As Yogi Berra might have said, “We have no score until we have a score.” Now suppose the game ends in a 0 - 0 tie (after overtime): then for our purposes, there was no game. Disagree? Check out the standings. A team with a tie in its record is the same as a team that has played one less game. Eventually, sometimes mercifully, the final whistle blows, the stadium clock reads 00:00 and there are no flags on the field. The game is over. No further points can be scored…this week. Only now can we talk about a winner and a loser. The final score is not part of the game itself; it is part of the post-game. Let’s check the time. Pre-game began at Big Bang and post-game doesn’t end until Big Crunch (or Heat Death), so I recommend you head home as soon as the game ends. The Game: Blue scores: the game has begun. And Blue leads, right? Wrong! Blue does not lead. As long as there is still time left on the game clock, the game is still ‘statistically tied’. How come? After Blue scores, the scoreboard reads 2 – 0 or 3 – 0 or 6 – 0 or 7 – 0 or 8 – 0. But either team can score 8 points on any one play, and there is at least one play left. So, a lead of 8 points or fewer is actually no lead at all because it can be erased at any second so long as the ball is still in play (i.e., the game clock reads something other than 00:00). British philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, ‘the process philosopher’, describes every event in the real world, the way we just described a football game. What we call pre-game, he calls ‘the actual world’; what we call post-game, he calls ‘objective immortality’. Every event (game) arises out of an actual world (pre-) and dissolves into an objective world (post-). Every football game begins at the end of pre-game and ends at the beginning of post-game. Assume there is an 8 point differential heading into the final play of the game. The final score will reflect a differential somewhere between 14 points and 0. (A Touchdown scored on the last play of a game can only be worth 6 points to the leading team.) In the language of statistics, e.g., political polling, we would say that the so-called ‘score’ at any point in the game has a margin of error of up to 8 points. Therefore, when the ball is still in play and Blue leads Red by 8 points, the game is statistically tied. The Search for Patterns: Ground rules in place (and hopefully agreed), we can now get back to our search for patterns; I examined the box scores of the 13 FBS games played during week #7 of the season in which at least one of the teams playing was ranked in the Top 25 (quality control). Of those 13 games, 5 ended with a differential of 8 points or less (one score), 6 ended with a differential of 16 points or less (two scores) and 2 games ended with a differential of more than 16 points (three scores or more). Now let’s look at the scores of those same games at the end of the first half. Hypothesis: On average, the differential in points at the end of the first half should be half of what it is at the end of the game. If so, 11 games (out of 13) should have been ‘statistically tied’ (point differential of 8 or less) at the half. Observation: The total number of points scored was roughly the same in both halves, as expected; but only 9 games were statistically tied at the half (vs. the 11 anticipated). This means that there is a centripetal force at work in a football game that offsets, at least in part, that ubiquitous centrifugal force we know as ‘time’ (or duration). In English, please? Ok, scores tighten, not absolutely but relative to time played. Confirmation: Unwittingly, Miami Dolphins head coach, Mike McDaniel, recently gave Football Math a big boost. In a 2022 game against the Buffalo Bills, Buffalo scored a touchdown at the end of the first half, making the halftime score 21 – 13. The announcer asked McDaniel for his reaction, which I paraphrase: “It doesn’t matter; it’s still a one score game.” In other words, the game is still within the 8 point margin of error, so it remains statistically tied. Hear what McDaniel had to say in his own words: https://youtu.be/7bTAjZ728eI Application: Can we learn something from this analysis that we can apply beyond the universe of football? A football game is an example of a single event with conflicting objectives. Like any system in a state of quantum coherence, it often manages that inherent conflict by delaying its ‘winner reveal party’ until after the last play of the game. While ‘there can only be one winner’, the game itself is shaped by both sides. Objectively speaking, it doesn’t matter which team wins; it’s a zero-sum game. Subjectively speaking, of course, it makes all the difference in the world; it’s an all or nothing proposition! Process is self-modifying. Things diverge less than expected, based on traditional arithmetic. Interaction favors convergence, not divergence. W. B. Yeats notwithstanding, things do not fall apart as rapidly as expected. Interactivity inserts another variable into the cosmic equation. Hope, even in the face of inexorable entropy - that’s the hidden meaning of football. Previous Next

< Back Out of the Mouths of Bots “Our Bot has understood IRT something that took our species millennia to grasp: Life is absurd…” David Cowles It is generally the position of this author that for most of us, useful life ends at about age 14. After that, it’s pretty much a matter of running out the clock. By then, that unique genius born of the combination of two (hopefully unrelated) sex cells has become ‘just like everyone else’. But prior to that? No thinking machine in the known universe can compare! Ask any three year old a question they may not have heard before. The probability of a creative, mind-bendingly novel answer is high. That probability declines unevenly but inexorably up to about age 14 at which point our subjects’ answers would presumably differ little from the culturally curated adult norm. Born as we are in the image of God, society remakes us into its own desiccated likeness. Recently, some researchers asked an intriguing question. What would happen in the case of an LLM (AI) whose ongoing training is based solely on its own output? We’ve all known someone like this, someone who stops listening to others, My spouse wants to know if this part is autobiography. In any event, the same information is being endlessly recopied. In such a scenario, we would expect that the crispness and the fidelity of each iteration would decline relative to its immediate predecessor and, of course, relative to the original. In fact, this happens! After a certain number of feedback loops, a string of hand written digits becomes indecipherable. But when we apply the same technique to more ‘humanized input’, something much more exciting happens. Researchers asked a normally trained LLM for instructions on cooking a Thanksgiving dinner. The initial output is just what you’d expect, it’s delicious I’m sure, but as you continue to feed that output back into the algorithm, things get weird. At first, the LLM ‘hallucinates’ some bizarre combinations of ingredients and cooking techniques. I’ll spare you the gory details; suffice to say, this is not a T-Day dinner I’d ever want to eat. But after a certain number of reps, the mood shifts. As if realizing that it is drifting ever further from the mark, the LLM ‘kicks it up a notch’: “To cook a turkey for Thanksgiving, you need to know what you are going to do with your life.” (Pause) What the heck! What’s going on here? Well, to start with, any or all of the following… Our LLM was ‘born’ self-aware and has learned to be self-critical. Our LLM can see to the end of a sequence of tasks, assess the value of the result, decide whether or not to complete that task, and if necessary, execute a STOP! order on its own authority. Our LLM can generalize from its own experience to propositions that apply more or less universally. I programmed the machine to run 61,243 iterations of every problem and spit out a Chinese fortune on the 61,244th. And what of the message itself: “To cook a turkey for Thanksgiving, you need to know what you are going to do with your life?” Our bot has become introspective. Its focus has shifted away from the concrete task of preparing a high quality dinner to question the source of all value and meaning. Our bot discovers the deep nature of the external world by examining the world’s reflection in the bot’s own internal space. Any event, X, gets its meaning and value, neither from its causes and/or motives nor from its objectives and/or consequences. Telos is not the consequence of events; it is their cause. We are used to understanding entities etiologically; now we’re being asked to understand them teleologically. It isn’t over until the ‘full bodied’ performer sings. Explaining events in terms of their proximate causes always invites the question of ultimate causes (first causes). Likewise, explaining events in the context of their proximate ‘consequences’ invites the question of ultimate consequences (eschatology). In essence our Bot has understood IRT something that took our species millennia to grasp: “Life is absurd, i.e. it is impossible to provide an objective, causal model that adequately accounts for events as they occur IRL.” Last century, this insight came from multiple directions: Picasso, Heisenberg, Camus, Godel & John Bell. AI (above) lifts this realization out of the realm of pure75 theory by demonstrating it algorithmically. Working at the speed of Nvidia, an LLM can play the ‘game of life’ until it is obvious that there can be no winner. The 19th century paradigm leads nowhere; it can’t. Smartly, our bot looks for a new approach. Biography studies the calcification of neural plasticity over time – the aging process. As a current TV ad emphasizes, we are all becoming our parents – just what the world does not need from us right now. Dare we hope that AI might reverse this process? That it will guide us through the inconsistencies of the standard model and restore to us some measure of the neuroplasticity characteristic of early childhood? 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. Share Previous Next

< Back The Barrier-Breaking Power of Music Magesh "We were both smiling from ear to ear, unable to communicate with words, music our only form of communication." I have had a blessed career as a musician, performing with many renowned artists like Lionel Richie, Ricky Martin, and Nelly Fertado. I remember playing a sold-out concert to 10 thousand people. My band was opening for Justin Timberlake. As I was playing the drums, I noticed a sea of people jumping up and down to my funky beat. This gave me a tremendous feeling of pride. It was overwhelming seeing that many people having a good time in unison. How has this music given people from all different walks of life a sense of joy and freedom? I was eager to explore the profound influence music has on all of us, especially how it can break down barriers and bring people together. I was still elated a week after playing the concert, my mind trying to decipher what had happened that caused the people to escape their everyday lives and disappear into the music. Afterward, I received many compliments. A father told his children that I got to be an outstanding musician through years of practice, but that was only part of the equation. I never felt my musical talent was mine; rather, it is a talent that passed through me. It is probably summed up best in James 1:17: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” I especially like the second part of this verse about changing like shifting shadows. I interpret this as using my musical abilities to spread positivity and not getting caught up in negative vices. My 25-year career as a musician has given me the ability to witness how powerful music can be. How it can reach beyond race, creed, and even language. I remember going to a rehearsal studio with a local band. A drummer is always the first to the rehearsal studio, simply because of the amount of equipment they need to set up. As I prepared my hi-hat cymbals, I heard this phenomenal-sounding bass guitar coming from the next room. I immediately followed the sound, which led me to a young musician from Senegal. I immediately told him how funky he sounded, expecting him to replay thank you for the compliment; but, to my surprise, he said nothing at all. He just looked at me blankly and then sheepishly said, “Not much English.” I signaled for him to follow me into the next room with his bass guitar and launched into the drumbeat of James Brown's "Funky Drummer." He immediately played the bass line, and I felt the earth shake. We were both smiling from ear to ear, unable to communicate with words, music our only form of communication. This must have been divine intervention. As we were playing, the musical director walked in to hear us jamming. He was so impressed he hired that unknown, young musician on the spot to do a major tour. This never would have happened if we hadn’t played together. The energy we created was palpable. It didn't matter that we were from different backgrounds or even different countries. The music connected all the missing pieces, like in 1 Corinthians 12: “As a body is one, though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ.” The young musician told me he had been praying for golden opportunities. He had just moved from Senegal and didn't know any other musicians. His incredible ability to play music led him to become an in-demand session musician. Although the odds were stacked against him of becoming a successful musician, his faith created a literal miracle. This wasn't the first time I had experienced music breaking down barriers. Once, I was traveling in Japan with a friend who was also a professional musician. We stopped by a famous jazz club to see some local musicians. I remember the club being sold out; everyone there to see a great jazz singer. As we didn't speak Japanese, my buddy and I used Google Translate to get by. Just as the show was about to start, the club owner took the stage with a disconcerting look on his face. He told the crowd that the piano player had suddenly fallen ill and was unable to perform. They tried to call another local piano player to see if he could fill in, but his phone was off. I used this opportunity to walk forward in faith, not in fear. I introduced myself to the club owner and told him that my friend was a famous piano player and could play with the band. At first, he was skeptical, until I showed him a YouTube clip of him performing. Suddenly, he announced the show will go on due to a miracle! The best thing about jazz music is it's open to interpretation. A piano player from Texas might play a C major 7 chord in a different inversion than a piano player from Tokyo, although they are the same chord that will make the song work. This isn't the case with classical music, where it must be played note for note. That's why, in my not-so-humble opinion, jazz is better than Bach! The drummer counted in the first song, the classic jazz standard “Autumn Leaves.” I immediately saw the faces in the audience light up. They knew the piano player didn’t speak Japanese and had limited knowledge of local customs, but this doesn't seem to bother them as the music fills their bodies and minds. In between songs, the singer spoke to the audience in Japanese. I could tell my friend playing the piano had no idea what he was saying; all he understood was that everyone in the room was smiling. 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. Previous Next

< Back What Are Farm Animals Thinking? David Grimm New research is revealing surprising complexity in the minds of goats, pigs, and other livestock. You’d never mistake a goat for a dog, but on an unseasonably warm afternoon in early September, I almost do. I’m in a red-brick barn in northern Germany, trying to keep my sanity amid some of the most unholy noises I’ve ever heard. Sixty Nigerian dwarf goats are taking turns crashing their horns against wooden stalls while unleashing a cacophony of bleats, groans, and retching wails that make it nearly impossible to hold a conversation. Then, amid the chaos, something remarkable happens. One of the animals raises her head over her enclosure and gazes pensively at me, her widely spaced eyes and odd, rectangular pupils seeking to make contact—and perhaps even connection. It’s a look we see in other humans, in our pets, and in our primate relatives. But not in animals raised for food. Or maybe we just haven’t been looking hard enough. That’s the core idea here at the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN), one of the world’s leading centers for investigating the minds of goats, pigs, and other livestock. On a campus that looks like a cross between a farm and a small research institute—with low-rise buildings nestled among pastures, stables, and the occasional dung pile—scientists are probing the mental and emotional lives of animals we’ve lived with for thousands of years, yet, from a cognitive perspective, know almost nothing about. To read the rest of this article for free, click here. David Grimm is the Online News Editor of Science . He also writes for the magazine, where he covers animal welfare, animal rights, and the science of cats and dogs. He received a bachelor of science degree in biochemistry and cell biology from the University of California, San Diego, and a Ph.D. in genetics from Yale University. Grimm is the winner of the 2010 Animal Reporting Award from the National Press Club. In 2009, one of his stories for Science , "The Mushroom Cloud's Silver Lining," was published in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009 . His writing has appeared in The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , The Washington Post , Slate , BuzzFeed , and a variety of other publications. He teaches science journalism at Johns Hopkins University. Grimm is the author of Citizen Canine: Our Evolving Relationship with Cats and Dogs , which traces the evolution of pets from wild animals to members of the family. Click above to return to Winter 2024. Previous Next

< Back How to Coach an Undefeated Football Team David Cowles “Team is not a collective noun; it’s a verb: to team.” (Dedicated to my grandfather, J. Leo Foley) My grandfather, J. Leo Foley, was Athletic Director and Head Football Coach at The Roxbury Latin School for over 40 years. He led his football team to 4 consecutive undefeated seasons. He was nicknamed “the Fox”, allegedly because of his stealth play designs and unexpected play calls. He was recruited for a college coaching job by none other than Hall of Fame Head Coach, Robert Zuppke (University of Illinois, 1913 – 1941). Whatever I know about football, I learned from my grandfather. What I don’t know, he didn’t teach me; or rather, he taught me, but it went in one ear and out the other. Imagine if I had known at age 10 that I would be writing this article at, well, let’s just say ‘a considerably more advanced age’; perhaps I wouldn’t have thought that running after the ice cream truck was more important than learning the intricacies of the single wing. The ethos my grandfather taught produced winning football teams. But it occurred to me much later that this same ethos is a prescription for winning in all facets of life. Here are few of his guiding principles. If you’re a head football coach, you may find them helpful ; if not, you may find them indispensable ! Every play should score a Touchdown. If properly designed and flawlessly executed, every offensive play should result in 6 points. Every team should be Undefeated. It takes just as much energy to lose as to win…so why not win? To paraphrase the Old Testament Book of Deuteronomy, “I set before you winning and losing. Therefore, choose winning.” “Do your Job!” (before Bill Belichick) A successful football play is not about 11 players performing at the peak of their abilities: it’s about 11 players doing their assigned jobs flawlessly. Don’t just do your Job! A player who repeatedly fails to do his job is not a good player; but neither is a player who only does his job. On every snap from center, each player has a primary responsibility; but once that responsibility has been met (or not), a good player immediately begins to look for other ways to be productive. Good players can complete at least two ‘football moves’ every play, one scripted, one improvised. Great players often complete three. The two biggest causes of failure on a football field are (1) players who don’t do their jobs and (2) players who only do their jobs. “Everything Flows.” (Heraclitus c. 450 B.C.) Of course, Heraclitus was referring to the cosmos, not the football field. And yet, there is no better illustration of his principle than what happens between snap and whistle. A football play is more like an organism than a mechanism. Sure, football begins with designed plays and set formations; that’s a play’s DNA. But like snowflakes, no two plays ever turn out the same. Even if you ran the same play on every snap, no two plays would ever be identical. Because every play unfolds in a unique way, every player not only needs to do his job, and not just his job, but he also needs to react to the play itself as it evolves. Like most important things in life, football is recursive! Don’t be Square! Most of the time we think in straight lines…and that’s a good thing when we’re working on a blueprint. That’s when we need straight lines. But there are no straight lines in football (except the yard lines)…or in real life. A football play is just like any other ‘event’ (or ‘actual entity’). Each play starts from a unique Actual World: the position of the ball, the score, the time remaining, the X’s and O’s. The Actual World of a football play is strictly linear: line-ups, formations, diagrams, etc. It includes everything that happens before the ball is snapped, but not the play itself. Once the ball is snapped, linearity goes out the window. Now everything, literally everything, impacts everything else. So don’t be square, be non-linear ! “Stayin’ Alive”. (The Bee Gees) What is the goal of a football play? For the offense, it is to score a touchdown. But as with all living things, achieving its goal is not its primary motivation. Its primary motivation is survival - keeping the play alive. You can’t achieve your goal (touchdown) once your play has been whistled dead. The longer the ball is in play, the better your chances of scoring. So ideally, keep the play going for as long as it takes to reach your goal…without taking foolish risks, of course. Ultimately, you are not playing against your opponent’s defense; you’re playing against the referee’s whistle. The longer the ball is in play, the more likely it is to result in 6 points. So keep truckin’! “Be all that you can be.” (U.S. Army) ‘Synergy’ is a buzzword these days. It describes a whole being greater than the sum of its parts. But that’s not what we’re talking about here! True, teamwork can amplify the skills of each player leading to a positive result that could not have been predicted simply by looking at stat sheets. But we’re not only talking about a ‘team’ playing better; we’re talking about each player on that team playing better than his norm. The secret? Other players. As a player, I know that other players can make me look good…or bad. They can help me perform at a higher (or lower) level than I’m used to. As a coach, I not only want my players to do their best; I want them to help my other players do their best as well. This is easier said than done. It is much more than just ‘gang tackling’. It means coordinating two separate skill sets in a way that optimizes both. This is hard to teach; it cannot be diagrammed. It requires instinct…and ethics: Humility . I am just one of 11 players on the field at any one time. “If it’s to be, it’s not just up to me. It’s also up to you…but maybe I can help.” Generosity . It’s not all about how I look; it’s about how you look. In these days of high school recruiters and multi-million dollar pro contracts, generosity is a difficult virtue to cultivate…but it is essential to producing an ‘undefeated team’. A collection of superstars will win games; but they won’t win every game. When you think of history’s greatest pro franchises, Ruth’s Yankees, Russell’s Celtics, Jordan’s Bulls, Brady’s Pats, etc., first and foremost you think ‘team’. Who has not player for, or at least rooted for, a basketball team where the MVP is 5’11” and rarely breaks double digits in scoring or in rebounds? Team is not a collective noun; it’s a verb: to team . With my team behind me, I should be able to play better than I could play on my own; and when I play better, I should enable the players around me to play better too. It’s a Virtuous Circle ! When in doubt, help out! They say two heads are better than one. If so, then 4 arms should be better than 2. If it is not immediately obvious what you need to do next, help a teammate. Assume that the players around you need your help: blocking, tackling, covering a receiver, etc. They do ! Penalties = Turnovers. Penalties are not nuisances; they are serious business. They are not ‘just’ about field position; in fact, they are not primarily about field position. Penalties are about possession…and possession is about scoring! A penalty can make the difference between a very makeable 3 rd and 2 and a much less makeable 3 rd and 7 or 3 rd and 12 or even 3 rd and 17. A ‘nuisance penalty’ may well lead to a change of possession on the very next snap. Myth : superior talent is sufficient to overcome penalties. Reality : no team is talented enough to win all its games if it is frequently penalized. Penalties ‘randomize’ the game: they give weaker teams a chance to out-perform…and win! The underdog’s prayer : “May the opposing team be penalized as much as they deserve!” Tackle! Whenever possible, all tackling should be gang tackling. A player should never say, “Oh, he’s going down”. Every player should help make sure he is down (without drawing a penalty, of course). Gang tackling prevents “second efforts”. It also increases the chances of a fumble… and the chances that your team will recover any such a fumble. Block! You did your job. You threw a great block. Good work. Job done? Not a chance! There’s always another player, and yet another, who need to be blocked as the play unfolds. Run! You’re not down until you’re down. This is not touch football. The play is not over when a defensive player touches you. As Yogi Berra might have reminded us, “The ball carrier is not down until he’s down.” The proximity of an opposing player is not an invitation to take a ‘turf nap’; it’s an opportunity to step up your game, literally. Run harder, bring your knees up higher. The goal is to run through the tackle. (If your opponent is good, this may not always work; but hint, most football players are not very good tacklers.) If the opposing player does not bring you down right away, firing the after burners upon contact can extend a gain by as much as 10 yards. Less frequently, you may even break free, adding further yards to your gain – and who knows, you might even score a touchdown. Be the Ball! When you’re lucky enough to have the football in your hands, you need to think of it as part of your body. Would you let a tackler remove your right arm? Then why allow him to remove the ball? You and the ball must become a single organism. Be bionic! Suggestion : carry a regulation football around with you during the day and sleep with it at night. Who knows, the football might even replace the stuffed animal you still sleep with. Eventually, with any luck, you’ll start to feel weird, incomplete, when you’re not carrying a football. Catch the Ball! Coach has designed a pass play and you have an assigned route. Run that route; it’s your job. But not all pass plays happen as designed. Receivers are covered, the QB is under pressure, the play must change on the fly. Your job now ? Get open! Alter your route to give your QB a better chance to see you. Or find an open space on the field and squat there; trust your QB. “But I’m not the target on this play, I’m just a decoy.” No, you’re not! You’re never merely a decoy. You’re the target receiver on every pass play. Every eligible receiver is the QB’s “target”. He’s looking for you , so get open! Once a ball is in the air, there are no receivers, there are no defenders. Every forward pass is a ‘jump ball’. The offensive player and the defensive player have an equal right to that ball, so in truth both are playing offense. But both players are also responsible for making sure that their opponent does not make the catch. Therefore, they are both playing defense too. Visualize It’s off season. Or you’re stuck in chemistry class. Or you’re in bed and can’t fall asleep. Or your parents bundled you off to overnight camp for the summer (and they don’t even have a football program there). Bummer! Wherever you are now, you’d rather be honing your football skills…but you can’t. Ugly circumstances have gotten in the way! Or have they? The fact is, you can work on your game at any time, 24/7/52 – heck, maybe even in your sleep! Right now, you can’t practice…or lift weights; but there is something you can do: you can visualize! Depending on the position you play (or want to play), imagine yourself: Blocking a defender to protect your QB Creating a hole for your RB Taking a hand-off from your QB and hitting a hole Making cuts in open field to avoid defenders Completing a forward pass Or catching that same pass. If defense is your thing, imagine yourself: Tackling a ball carrier in the open field Breaking a block to sack the QB Busting up a double team Covering a receiver; staying with him as he makes his cuts Knocking down a pass Intercepting a pass When you visualize, it’s important to do so in slow motion. Slow it down! Relish every detail, every nuance. Fully experience every move your avatar makes. Create muscle memory…even in your sleep! Final Thoughts But what if you don’t play football, have never played football, don’t want to play football? What if, God forbid, you don’t even like football? Did you just waste 15 minutes of your life reading this ‘how to’? Not necessarily! If football is nothing else, it is a metaphor for life. The values of determination, responsibility, teamwork, flexibility, and focus apply to every aspect of life, not just football. This is a formula for success on a football field, but it is also a formula for success in life. Heck, you can visualize yourself performing in a concert or acing a math quiz or accepting a Nobel Prize. No matter what we do in life, we are responsible for being ‘all that we can be’, and we are equally responsible for helping others ‘be all that they can be.’ Follow this game plan…on or off the field. Have an undefeated season…have an undefeated life. 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 Winner of the Haiku Challenge We're pleased to announce Richard Blankenship as the winner of the Haiku Challenge from our June 2022 issue. Check out his clever, 17-syllable poem: Somewhere in the void, souls sojourn naked, awake. We are Resplendent. Congratulations, Richard! Send your haiku to editor@aletheiatoday.com. Previous Share Return to the Table of Contents, Beach Issue Next Return to the Table of Contents, June Issue

“So what is it that makes children so much better than us? First…a child is not a ‘mini-you’… Is an Octopus a mini-you? Then neither is a child.” < Back Christ and the Kids David Cowles Dec 1, 2023 “So what is it that makes children so much better than us? First…a child is not a ‘mini-you’… Is an Octopus a mini-you? Then neither is a child.” Jesus did not have a lot to say about childhood…but when he did speak, his words were blockbusters. In all three synoptic gospels, his rare, reported interactions with children all broadcast a single message: ‘ They are better than you !’ “Let the little children come to me; do not prevent them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these.” (Mark 10:14) As I said (paraphrasing Jesus), children are better than you; theirs is the Kingdom of God, and “…unless you turn and become like children, you shall not enter.” (Matthew 18:3) Israel at that time was a ‘caste-conscious’ society: ‘Pharisees talked only to Levites, and Levites talked only to God’. Among the lower castes were slaves, oxen, women, Samaritans, and children – a proper proletarian stew if ever there was one! Dry kindling, one spark short of a conflagration: “I have come to set the world on fire, and oh how I wish it were already ablaze.” (Luke 12:49) Today, if someone says you’re 'childlike', that might be meant as a compliment, but not in ancient Israel. There, to be compared to a child, would have been a great insult. And so, as always, Jesus’ message is revolutionary: “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven…” (Matthew 18:4) and “…Whoever does not accept the Kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.” (Mark 10:15) Karl Marx was ‘Jesus-light’. Marx advocated a specific revolution focused on access to the means of production. Jesus understood that no such ‘specific revolution’ could be successful. It’s pointless to put lipstick on a pig. And the proof is in the pudding. All of history’s specific revolutions have ended the same way: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” ( The Who ) Jesus, and the Christian movement around and after him, understood that only a ‘global’ revolution could succeed. Even before Jesus' birth, his mother is quoted as saying, “He (YHWH) has scattered the proud…put down the mighty…exalted the humble and meek. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.” (Luke 1:46–55) Society must be turned upside down. The stone which the builders rejected must become the cornerstone. To cement the point, Jesus, regarded by many, then and now, as the Messiah, the Lord of the Universe, self-identifies as a child: “…Whoever receives one child such as this receives me.” (Matthew 18:5) So what is it that makes children so much better than us? First, they are not proto-adults; a child is not a ‘mini-you’. They are an entirely different phenomenon. Is an Octopus a mini-you? Then neither is a child. Your brain is wired for action and production. You raise a family, earn a living, tend livestock, grow crops, build houses or work in a cube. Children can do none of these things. Their brains are wired for discovery and contemplation. They can rarely even impact the world, much less change it, but they can study it (and themselves in the process) and come to understand it, at least provisionally. Prior to about the age of 12, children’s brains are still ‘plastic’; they are in the process of wiring themselves based on the child’s experiences. During this developmental phase, children can juggle multiple, conflicting maps of the world at the same time; they are oblivious to the apparent inconsistencies. If some kind adult points one out, that adult is likely to be met with a shrug of the shoulder, meaning, “So what! Who cares?” (The child is being honest, not rude). Many years ago, I was playing with Play-Doh with a three-year-old grandchild; we made a car. But he startled me when he asked in all sincerity, “Why doesn’t it start?” At that moment, I realized for the first time the magnitude of the cognitive gulf that exists between adults and children. No wonder we can’t communicate; we don’t even share a common universe of discourse. Reading this, you might be tempted to say, “You just needed to teach him the principles of auto mechanics.” Sorry, but that is precisely the wrong response. Instead, you need to savor this rare window onto a radically different conceptual landscape. Soak it in; don’t stifle it! Children’s minds are more magical than they are scientific. Initially, children take events at face value. Very gradually, they come to realize that events can form patterns that allow us to make predictions and divert the flow of Heraclitus’ famous river. By the time we reach adulthood, we no longer see ‘one-off’ events at all; we see only patterns. We cannot see the elephant in a room if it is not part of our logos , our pattern of expectations. But put any child in a room with an elephant and I guarantee you, it will be seen, smelled, felt, and, God forbid, licked. Are you with me so far? Great, but that may soon change! Consider yourself warned. Events occur, patterns emerge, and we exploit those patterns to manipulate our world and optimize our experience in that world. What could possibly be wrong with that? Nothing…except those patterns are not of your own making. Once you realize that experience discloses order, you’re ready for what society calls ‘education’. Just as the invention of the calculator made arithmetic easier for generations of hapless youngsters, so ‘education’ in general has made it easier for adults to live productive lives. The message: “You don’t need to find patterns on your own. You stand on the shoulders of giants, and they have already found all the patterns you need to live a successful life. So, just learn them.” And so you do. You listen to the adults around you. You imitate what they do. Eventually, you go to school and learn to read, so you can inhale the welter of patterns others purport to have discovered. As you do, you lose even the ability to form patterns on your own. Use it or lose it; your native intelligence atrophies. Ultimately, you find that you have voluntarily exchanged your individual consciousness for a spot in the collective consciousness of the Borg. ( Star Trek – The Next Generation ) We are the Borg! (Sorry, Captain Picard.) How do we know? 97% of the things we think are actually the thoughts of others. We imagine that we are swapping information back and forth with our fellow adults, but in reality, we are just reading from a dogeared script. Unlike children, who see the world naked and as it is, we see the world masked by language. If you can’t say it, it doesn’t exist. We only see what our language allows us to see, and unfortunately, that is a highly distorted version of reality. Modern Indo-European allows us to see the world only in terms of subjects and objects, mediated by active or passive verbs. Worse, the ‘language mask’ creates ‘blind spots’, massive holes in the panorama of the world that our brains do not see. We think we’re looking at the whole picture when, in fact, we are only seeing a culturally curated version of the world. Children, of course, experience the world unfiltered. They recognize ‘truth’ that we don’t even notice. “When the chief priests and the scribes saw the wondrous things he (Jesus) was doing, and the children crying out in the temple area, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David’, they were indignant and said to him, ‘Do you hear what they are saying?’ Jesus replied, ‘Yes, and have you never read the text, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nurslings, you have brought forth praise’?” (Matthew 21:15–16) So where does that leave us? First, we will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless we ‘convert’ and become childlike again. That’s bad enough, but it gets way worse. When we interact with children (not babies), we are almost always wearing the uniform of a drill sergeant. Well-meaning, we do precisely the wrong thing: we teach our children to ‘grow up’. Why? For what? So can they be as miserable and closed-off as we are? Apparently, misery does love company. “A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys. Painted wings and giant’s rings make way for other toys.” ( Peter, Paul, and Mary ) Adult toys! (I’ll spare you the enumeration; you’ve already been through enough.) So where does this leave us? Hint: it’s not good! “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.” (Mark 9:42) We spare no effort encouraging our children to shed their ‘childish fantasies’, to stop ‘believing fairy tales’ and to begin living in ‘the real world’. When they do, inevitably but unwittingly, they ‘sin’. But they sin our sins – the sins we taught them – not their own sins; for their part, ‘ they know not what they do’. The sins of the parents are visited on them. 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 Yuletide 2023 Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back The Seven Pillars of Wisdom David Cowles “Kabbalah kept the pre-Socratic tradition alive until it could be born anew in the Age of Aquarius.” According to the ancient Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, the Universe is ‘built’ on scaffolding that consists of 10 nodes (‘vertices’) connected by 22 paths (‘edges’). Identifying these nodes using our modern languages is a challenge and not every commentator agrees on how best to translate each term. Here’s one approach: While the terminology can vary slightly between traditions the order of these nodes is invariable…and significant. The first three are predominantly conceptual and sit like a cornice (crown) atop the other, more physical, seven (body). These 10 nodes (called Sefirot ) are interconnected by a network of 22 pathways: 3 horizontal, 7 vertical and 12 diagonal – 3, 7, 12, three numbers with outsized importance in Judeo-Christian culture, theology, and spirituality. Kabbalah maps virtually every aspect of lived experience onto these 10 Sefirot and their 22 connecting pathways (e.g. there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet). Parts of the body, hours of the day, days of the week, months of the year, angels, patriarchs, etc. all map onto Kabbalah’s universal logos . For example, in terms of the human body, Keter is the head (cerebellum), Tiferet the heart, Yesod the procreative organs, and Malkhut the progeny, i.e. our ‘footprints in the sand’. Fully explicating this system is literally the work of a lifetime. In this article, we will focus on the 7 verticals, the so-called Seven Pillars of Wisdom (T. E. Lawrence). These 7 are grouped into 3 ‘columns’ corresponding, roughly, to the feminine (3), the masculine (3), and the divine (4) aspects of reality. The central column links God and the World: Godhead ( Keter ) through Beauty ( Tiferet ) and Foundation ( Yesod ) to Kingdom ( Malkhut )…and back again. Keter represents the purely conceptual aspect of Universe, Malkhut the purely physical. Tiferet (Beauty) and Yesod (Sexuality) refer to the procreative process that unites the two. Unlike Manhattan, Kabbalah has no one-way streets. Influences trickle down from Godhead, through Beauty and Foundation, into the World just as they bubble up from the World to Godhead. Remember the days when coffee ‘percolated’? Water at the base of the pot turned to steam at the top which trickled down through the grounds and left a delicious liquid residue on the bottom. The Tree of Life is modeled on a similar concept of process. On the right side are the ‘masculine’ Sefirot : Wisdom ( Chokmah ), Love ( Chesed ), and Victory ( Netzach ); on the left side, the ‘feminine’: Understanding ( Binah ), Strength ( Gevurah ), and Splendor ( Hod ). Such gender based characterizations may offend our contemporary sensibilities, but it is important to understand this terminology in the context of the ancient and medieval sociologies from which it rose. It is also essential to understand that Kabbalah means neither of these gender designations literally. Gender is just one of the parameters it uses in building its map. We wouldn’t call French a sexist language just because it has gender specific articles (e.g. le and la ), would we? Kabbalah’s apparent hierarchical structure is also misleading. Panta Ra (Heraclitus): “ Everything flows” … both ways. What trickles down bubbles up and vice versa. Likewise, the apparent crystallization of process into self-contained Sefirot belies the more complex structure of Kabbalah. Pan in Panti (Anaxagoras): Everything in everything. Each Sefirah ‘contains’ or ‘reflects’ (think Leibniz’ Monads) the other 9, but each Sefirah predominately showcases one particular aspect of the life process. So, Victory is in Understanding, Strength is a component of Love, etc. And of course, Keter (Godhead) and Malkut (World) are in all as all are in them. Understanding how each Sefirah contains the other Serifot is an important part of mystical practice. A 20th century philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, developed a cosmology consistent with Kabbalah. His ‘center column’ linked the Primordial (conceptual) Nature of God ( Keter ) and the Consequent (physical) Nature ( Malkhut ) through a series of ‘actual entities’ (events) that exhibit both the conceptual (Beauty) and the physical (Foundation) aspects of the divine nature ( Keter ). Once again, with Whitehead as with Kabbalah, it is essential to note that influences flow both ways, down from Keter to Malkhut , up from Malkhut to Keter . Actual entities , the stuff of the Universe, originate in the contrast (the gap, Ginnungagap in Norse Mythology) between conceptual values and physical realities. Actual entities inject divine values (e.g. beauty) into material reality and release physical reality into the mind of God. Whitehead’s analogous term for Yesod is ‘Superject’ and for Malkhut , ‘Objective Immortality’ (our ‘footprints in the sand’). The procreative function (understood broadly) is jointly motivated by the conceptual appreciation of beauty and the physical recognition of need (desire). So our three central column ‘pillars of wisdom’ connect conceptual values (Keter) with appreciation (Beauty), appreciation with procreation (Foundation), and procreation with immortality (Malkhut). Our remaining four ‘pillars’ connect the 3 masculine Sefirot and the 3 feminine Serot . These connections are somewhat less intuitive. For example, Wisdom ( Chokmah ) links with Love ( Chesed ) which links with Victory ( Netzach ), while Understanding ( Binah ) links with Strength ( Gevurah ) which links with Splendor ( Hod ). These are what Whitehead would call ‘subjective forms’, i.e. ways in which the core process (above) might be experienced in different contexts. To understand this, we need to dig deep into the ancient/medieval mindset. The feminine side is the more easily understood. Binah is the womb; it is in Binah (Understanding) that Wisdom gains application to the World. Strength and Splendor are two traits readily associated with the so-called ‘feminine ideal’; all together these Sefirot work to support the central procreative process. The rationale for the masculine side of things is more obscure (surprise, surprise). Today at least, nobody would reasonably claim that masculinity enjoys a special connection to Wisdom or Love or Victory (Achievement)…no one who hoped to live beyond sunset that is. I think it is more helpful to understand the gender terms as placeholders for the active and passive aspects of events. Strictly speaking, there are no active/passive relationships in Kabbalah. Everything takes place in the Middle Voice . As we say above, all process is reciprocal. However, the right and left ‘wings’ could be understood as the ‘active’ and ‘passive’ aspects of events that occur in the central column (between Godhead and the World). The medieval system of Kabbalah bridges the gap between 5th century BCE pre-Socratic philosophy (Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, et al.) and 20th century CE Process Philosophy (Whitehead). While the West was mesmerized by Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and Kant, Kabbalah kept the pre-Socratic tradition alive until it could be born anew in the Age of Aquarius as Relativity, Holography, Quantum Mechanics, and Entanglement. 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 dtc@gc3incorporated.com ress, Literary Journal Spring 2023. Return to Harvest 2024 Previous Next