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< Back Is 65 the New 45? David Cowles That’s conventional wisdom…and in this rare case, conventional wisdom is not wrong…but neither is it perfectly right. At 65, we do feel about the same as we did at 45…maybe a step slower on the basketball court, but otherwise pretty much the same. So, does that mean that 75 is now the new 55? No way! I’m not sure 75 is even the new 65. 75 might just be the new 75! So, what’s going on here? Gertrude Stein wrote, “We are always to ourselves young men and young women.” Ms. Stein points out that subjective time is very different from objective time. Objectively, we age one year, every year. Subjectively, we don’t! Suppose I’m 65, objectively. According to conventional wisdom my subjective age is 45. But why 45? Why not 35 or 25 or even 15 or 5 for that matter? Ms. Stein anticipated this question…and answered it. At 65 I can be 55 or 45 or 35 or 25…because all of them are really ‘25’ (young men and young women). But 65 can’t be the new 15 or the new 5. Why? Because 15-year-olds are not 15, nor are 5-year-olds 5. Both are ‘25’ too: “We are always to ourselves young men and young women.” How would you graph your age? As a straight line running at a 45 degree angle from birth (0,0) to death? That’s time all right, but it is objective time: y = x. However, subjectively, time is mostly a flat line segment, parallel to the x-axis, running from x = 25 to x = 65. From birth to 25 and from 65 on, subjective age follows a curvilinear track, convex before 25, concave after 65. Is it possible to do an equation for that? In the Beatles movie, Yellow Submarine , John, Paul, George, and Ringo find themselves in ‘the sea of time’. Objectively, they regress to infancy and then advance to old age, all in the space of just a few minutes. But through it all they remain “young men”, i.e., circa 25. They live in ‘Stein-time’. To explore further the wisdom of the Yellow Submarine , stay tuned for Issue #1 of AT Magazine, scheduled for publication on 6/1/22, and check out the feature article, Science and the Yellow Submarine . Bookmark aletheiatoday.com . Society never tires of telling us to ‘act our age’. But which age? We are our own age only three times in our lives: once at birth (or before), once when the two temporal trajectories (subjective & objective) intersect, and finally at the moment of our death. Otherwise, our subjective age is always different from our objective age. How can I act my age if I don’t know how old I am? I’ve always admired children who could accept being children and old folks who could accept being old. Trouble is, I’ve met very few of either! I can’t remember a time when I thought of myself as a ‘child’. My childhood was an unbroken struggle to escape - escape from parents, escape from school, escape from childhood itself! I can’t remember a time when I did not want to be 25, and did not think of myself as 25, until now. I am 75, like it or not, and I’m starting to think of myself as 75, or close to it. My trajectories are converging…for the last time. Previous Next

< Back Life on Mars David Cowles “Based on what we think we know about biogenesis, there should be life on Mars. If it turns out that there isn’t, somebody’s “got some ‘xplainin’ to do, Lucy.'" We estimate that Planet Earth formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago. A mere 500 million years later, its first and only ever living molecule (DNA/RNA) concresced. Today, organisms descended from that one molecule cover nearly every inch of the planet and manage to survive, nay thrive, in unimaginably hostile environments. A single human body consists of 30 trillion of these resilient little critters. Planet Earth is infested, infested with life ! Like a ball of popcorn, soaked in honey and left lying out in the hot sun, we can no longer see the ball through the swarm of ‘beneficiaries’ covering it. “Its first and only ever ?” There is no evidence that life evolved more than once on Earth. Had it, its various forms would probably not have been compatible. Perhaps none of those forms would have survived. Best case, a single architectural design would have quickly won out (as it did?). Given the state of things on Planet Earth 4 billion years ago, it is natural to wonder how likely it was that a living cell would have emerged? But probability doesn’t enter-in to this discussion! It happened once, period. There’s no guarantee it will ever happen again; make the most of it! We’re left trying to construct a probability matrix based on a sample of one; can’t do it! Imagine you have never seen a deck of playing cards before. Your terrestrial life coach invites you to ‘pick a card, any card’, and you do. Ace of Clubs. Now, what’s the probability that the next card drawn will also be an Ace of Clubs? We know that the answer is 0. But we know that only because we know how the deck is constructed. Absent that information, the question itself is meaningless. Of course, once we start finding life forms ‘off-Earth’, it will be a whole different ball game, but that time is not now. Which means biogenesis on Earth (x) could be just shy of ‘infinitely likely’, or of ‘infinitely unlikely’, to have occurred. So all we can say about P(x) is that P(x) > 0 but < 1. Given that life has evolved only once on Earth in 4 billion years and, as far as we know, nowhere else in our solar system, it is impossible to assert that biogenesis (x) has any real probability at all: i.e. that P(x) є {R}. Sidebar #1 : If {R} > P(x) > 0, we can say that P(x) is hyperreal . While we cannot say that x is possible, we cannot say that x is impossible either. Is this the statistical model of agnosticism? Sidebar #2 : If {R} > P(x) > 0, is (x) the mathematical definition of a miracle? Given what we know (a lot) about conditions on Earth over the subsequent 4 billion years, how likely is it that such a life form would have survived ? Common sense says that if life only evolved once on Earth, it could easily have been wiped out early on, perhaps never to evolve again. Common sense also suggests that states-of-affairs will likely arise in the future that are incompatible with life as we know it today. So life then is suspended between ‘what is barely conceivable’ and ‘what is virtually certain’. It occupies the space between ‘not yet’ and ‘not still’. If so, then the bio-verse itself is a ‘logical dispensation’. It is a single fecund oasis perched above a giant sinkhole. It shouldn’t be…but it is! We can say that life on Earth did evolve, and we must anticipate its eventual extinction, so the only variable here is the time span. Time span is quantifiable but like all quantities, it is comparative. Is a liter a lot or a little? Neither? Both? Once you understand the terms, the question itself makes no sense. What then is the comparison between time and no time? What is the significance of ‘one’ in a universe already known to span at least 60 orders of magnitude? About all we can say, objectively speaking, about any ‘time span’ is that it is neither instantaneous nor eternal. A grandson once referred to a now deceased friend of ours (appropriately called Big John) as ‘giant’. Was John a speck of dust (“All we are is dust in the wind” - Kansas) or the Colossus of Rhodes? Both! Conditions on Earth vary. They vary by temperature and tempest, by the density and chemical composition of the atmosphere, and by the availability of water. Yet from the top of Mount Everest to the mouth of a thermal vent on the ocean floor, there is life. From arid desert to arctic glacier, there is life. ‘Give us any gas, we’ll breathe it’ – Laverne & Shirley. O₂? It’s a breeze. CO₂? A-OK. Terrestrial life has even evolved organisms that breathe methane! Once evolved, life is amazingly durable and adaptable. The tenacity of its survival contrasts with the fragility of its birth. Can’t live without it, can’t live with it, can’t kill it! The biosphere is omni-recursive . It gradually terraforms its physical environment to make it more bio-friendly: e.g. stone becomes soil. It experiments with innumerable distinct survival strategies, called species . Finally, it creates Artificial Realities (Culture, Society) that confer additional resilience via epigenetic adaptation. The existence of ‘life’ is extremely improbable but once here…it’s here to stay! Hypothesis : The conditions necessary for the emergence of a living molecule are much more stringent than the conditions necessary for its survival. Once life happens, it’s almost impossible to snuff it out. Of course, individually, we’re all only one stray bullet away from the boneyard and even as a species, we face eventual extinction. But as far as life per se is concerned, we’re not sure what it would take to kill it off. Consider Pando , the largest organism (by mass) on Earth. (It’s a tree!) It is at least 15,000 years old but none of its constituent organs (trunks) lives more than a few hundred years. That said, the conditions on Earth 4 billion years ago were anything but bio-conducive: Heavy asteroid bombardments, high levels of radiation, zero oxygen, superabundant methane. It’s hard to imagine that conditions on Mars, even today, are any less propitious for the emergence of life than that. Martian Bio-skeptics (that’s humans skeptical of life on Mars, not Martians skeptical of life on Earth) blame the planet’s sterility on its lack of heat, air, and water. But this argument is tired. We just flew 72 helicopter missions over the Martian surface. If the planet’s atmosphere is thick enough to support flight, it’s certainly sufficient to support some form of life. Even today, conditions on Mars are probably sufficient to support biogenesis, but if not, they certainly were at some time in the past. From what we know about life, it should have emerged and evolved on Mars at more or less the same time it did on Earth. We’re looking for life on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and I hope we find it – in my lifetime, please; but isn’t it much more likely that life would have emerged on our twin planet? Based on what we think we know about biogenesis, there should be life on Mars. If it turns out that there isn’t, somebody’s “got some ‘xplainin’ to do, Lucy.'" 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 . Return to Yuletide 2024 Previous Next

< Back Bacteria Are People Too “I’ll bet a bacterium could hold its own in any Parisian café. They don’t need to study existentialism at the Sorbonne; they live it every day.” David Cowles “If I only had a brain,” intones Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz. Of course, it turns out that Scarecrow already had a brain…or didn’t need one. Same for bacteria! These unicellular organisms first appeared on Earth about 4 billion years ago. Today, they cover the planet and fill nearly every ecological niche. All life on Earth is either bacterial or evolved from bacteria. These unicellular organisms survive, or can quickly evolve to survive, in almost any environment, no matter how hostile. Like us, they can even alter their environment to make it more habitable. Originally anaerobic on an oxygen-poor planet, prokaryotic (no nucleus) bacteria merged to form the first eukaryotic cells (with nucleus) which in turn formed plants that produced the oxygen that bacteria later learned to breathe. Wrap your noodle around that one! But before there was sufficient atmospheric oxygen, bacteria used iron to power its cellular processes. “If I don’t have blue, I use red.” (Picasso) Bacteria are as close as nature has come to creating a ‘quantum of life’, i.e., the minimal configuration of molecules required to support phenomena we recognize as ‘living’. No surprise then that we view bacteria as irremediably stupid. “Dumb as dirt!” Of course…they are dirt! But how is it then that bacteria compete with us and certain insects for dominion over Earth? Like Scarecrow, they have no organelle that performs the functions we associate with a ‘brain," but like Scarecrow, they apparently don’t need one. They have devised other ways to ‘think’. Everything wants to think. Sum ergo Cogito (I am; therefore, I think). But thinking does not require neurons; it can happen using a multitude of physical pathways. If things want to think, they’ll find a way to do so. Bacteria don’t need brains to think, just as they don’t need sex to reproduce. They freely swap genes with one another; no ‘dinner and a movie’ required. People say that Anarchism is an impractical political ideology. For all its theoretical appeal, it simply won’t work. Really? Bacterial society is paradigmatically anarchic, and it’s worked for 4 billion years. There’s no whiff of authority. Like unsupervised kids on a 1950s playground, bacteria work stuff out…by themselves. For 200 years, from 1250 to 1050 BCE, “Israel had no king; everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” (Judges 21: 25) When circumstances required a coordinated response, charismatic leaders called ‘judges’ emerged ad hoc , and with the consent of the elders and the people, they provided the temporary leadership needed to address the immediate challenge… and then they returned home to tend their flocks . But Israel succumbed to the siren song of authoritarianism. They wanted to be ‘like other nations’. They wanted a king…and they got one: How did that work out for them? So, how do bacteria think? We still have a lot to learn, but s cientists have just discovered that bacteria can create memories by regulating the amount of iron in their systems. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin found that bacteria use iron levels to store information about different behaviors that can then be activated in response to certain stimuli. “Bacteria don’t have brains, but they can gather information from their environment, and…they can store that information and quickly access it later for their benefit,” said Souvik Bhattacharyya. Most intriguingly, bacteria pass along that information to their progeny, down at least to the fourth generation. Humans pass along information in two ways: long-term via genes and short-term via culture. Bacteria have it the other way around. They modify their genes on an almost daily basis, but their ‘culture’ preserves memories for at least four generations. And we struggle to pass info down just one generation…to our children. Bottom line, on any ‘species neutral’ AP History exam, my money’s on the bacterium. Single, free-floating bacteria have naturally varying levels of iron. Bacterial cells with lower levels of iron tend to swarm, while the bacteria that form biofilms have higher iron levels. You may be forgiven for thinking that cells with low iron gravitate toward ‘swarming’ while their high iron cousins prefer ‘filming’; after all, you think that smarter people become doctors while less smart people work at McDonald’s. But you’re wrong…on all counts! Any bacterium can swarm or film; it just needs to ‘decide’ what it wants to do and adjust its iron content accordingly. When iron levels are low, bacteria form fast-moving swarms to search for new sources of iron. When iron levels are higher, bacteria are more likely to feel satisfied, so they stay put and form films. “I know who I am, and I know that I can be whoever I want to be.” I’ll bet a bacterium could hold its own in any Parisian café. They don’t need to study Existentialism at the Sorbonne; they live it every day. So hats off to our bacterial cousins… and don’t forget, they are people too. 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 Artificial Intelligence “Aletheia Today Magazine will devote its entire Fall Issue (9/1/23) to Artificial Intelligence…and we’d love to include YOU in the conversation.” David Cowles My grandparents were convinced that they were living in the end times. They ‘felt sorry’ for us youngsters who would not have a chance to live our lives in their pre-Armageddon paradise. In those days, I was only certain of one thing: I would NOT harbor such silly ideas when it was my turn to be the scion of my clan. Oh, how often have I looked back scornfully at such younger versions of myself, amused that I could ever have believed the things I once believed! It’s happening again! My grandparents were right after all. “This is the end, beautiful friend, the end.” ( The Doors ). Of course, my end is not the same as their end …but then again, aren’t all ends the same? Do ends have hair? And if they do, are they really ends ? My grandparents worried about nuclear war, moral decay, and the breakdown of political civility. 60 years later, I worry about those things too, but I worry about something my grandparents couldn’t have anticipated: I worry about Artificial Intelligence (AI). Evolution is adaptation. All organisms adapt themselves to their environments and, to some degree, adapt their environments to themselves. Organisms adapt through genetic selection (biology) and behavior modification (culture); they adapt their environments through praxis . While there is no ‘arrow of evolution’ per se , there are some general trends worth pointing out. Caveat lector : these ‘general trends’ are just that. Don’t send me a bevy of evidence contradicting my ‘over-generalizations;’ I know all about it. Moving on… Life forms have become more complex over time. Adaptive characteristics such as size, strength and speed have tended to optimize (optimize, not maximize). Neural networks have become more complex, and brains have become bigger. Homo Sapiens is the product of billions of years of robust genetic selection, resulting in a species remarkably capable of modifying its environment ( praxis ) as well as its own behavior (culture); recently, we have developed the ability to influence the course of biological adaptation as well (genetic engineering). But everything in nature comes at a price. There is evidence that the human organism may actually be undergoing some forms of devolution . We seem to be losing some of the gains we made over the last million years. For example, our arms are getting shorter. More alarmingly, our brains may be shrinking (not literally, of course)! No, they ARE shrinking, quite literally. Other species seem to be trending towards a smaller brain size as well. Theory holds that this is the price we pay for ‘civilization,’ i.e., the taming of ‘wild’ animals and a concomitant reduction in both survival and reproductive risk. Alarming, yes; surprising, no! When specific combinations of genes cease to confer selective advantage, they will slowly become less prevalent in the population. Suboptimal genetic combinations, once suppressed by natural selection, can now enter the gene pool ‘unedited.’ We have become more tolerant of differences; the opportunity to procreate is shared more democratically now, and for the most part, this is a good thing! But the recent explosion in robust Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a game changer. Longer arms no longer confer much reproductive advantage; neither do bigger brains! Arm strength, we can do without, brain power, not so much. There is a general correlation between brain size and intelligence, and the selective pressures favoring intelligence have been strong. Intelligent organisms more successfully modify their environments, conferring survival advantage. Intelligence also appears to have been an attractive quality in a potential mate, conferring reproductive advantage. Less so today than ever before! SAT scores are a poor predictor of fecundity, and anyone who has been to high school knows that natural beauty and physical prowess are stronger selection factors than intelligence. AI is the great leveler. As a species we now have the ability to subcontract almost all cognitive functions to a ‘machine.’ Best of all/worst of all, everyone will soon enjoy equal access to that resource. Therefore, the behavioral distinction between the top 25% and the bottom 25% will narrow significantly. This could be a good thing, or… Big brains, who needs ‘em? We have ChatGPT! As a species, AI allows us to do more with less. Again, a very good thing per se . But nature is like a reluctant middle schooler; it will ‘do’ as little as possible, consistent with achieving a minimally ‘acceptable’ result. If the ability to think no longer confers survival or reproductive advantage, we can allow it to become ‘recessive.’ The dystopian film 2001 A Space Odyssey seems more relevant today than ever before. Like Leif Erikson in Newfoundland and Christopher Columbus in the Caribbean, we know we are on the cusp of something big, but what? Who knows! We are like the 1823 versions of ourselves, trying to make sense of a whole new technological paradigm. In the last 200 years, we have celebrated Darwin, Einstein and quantum mechanics. Huge! But IR (Industrial Revolution) and AI are different; they directly impact almost every aspect of the lives of almost every human being. AI is our IR, and no doubt, we will make all the same mistakes. Luddites will smash mainframe computers; New Agers will claim they’ve found God; politicians will proclaim Utopia; and curmudgeons, like me, will wring our hands over the impending demise of human civilization per se . “It’s yesterday once more.” (Carpenters) Only one thing is certain: when our descendants look back on 2023 from their 2223 vantage, they will see that none of us were right! Marking this moment, Aletheia Today Magazine will devote its entire Fall Issue (9/1/23) to Artificial Intelligence…and we’d love to include YOU in the conversation. What are the philosophical, theological, cultural, and spiritual implications of AI? Click here for our Writers’ Specs; then send us your thoughts. 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 Learn to Swym David Cowles “Language Endures. We Don’t” – now that is a bumper sticker! If we’re lucky, we learn to swym at an early age. What’s that? No, you don’t have to live near water. I’m not talking about aquatics. I’m talking about swymming (Saying What You Mean)! Working this morning on a future post for Thoughts While Shaving (TWS), I noticed I had typed the words (it doesn’t matter the context), ‘can be added to the pattern.’ OMG, I was horrified! How far that was from what I’d meant to communicate! Philosophers (Freud, Derrida, even Pontius Pilate) hold that people say what they say, say what they mean, mean what they say, mean what they mean, - not quite a bumper sticker…maybe a billboard? Accordingly, people who insist on a distinction between speech and meaning are said to be living in bad faith . What you say is what you mean. Unless you’re deliberately lying, there’s no other way it could be. Accept it! If I say something other than what I think I mean to say, we call that a Freudian Slip. What you said is what you meant, even if you don’t think you intended to say it. Are the philosophers right? Do I always say exactly what I mean and mean exactly what I say, even if I don’t realize it at the time? I think I meant to say , “add to the pattern,” rather than “can be added to the pattern”. But did I? Wait, hold up, you’re asking me to read through this entire essay knowing that it is devoted to the difference between “add to the pattern” and “can be added to the pattern”. That’s 15 minutes of my life I’ll never get back. I understand, but yes, that’s exactly what I’m asking you to do. Stick with it! I think it will be worth your while. So, what is the difference between can be added to the pattern and add to the pattern ? Only everything! By writing “can be added to the pattern” instead of “add to the pattern,” I did three momentous things: I created an entirely new entity out of thin air, The Pattern Maker , an imaginary entity as it turns out. (I imagine him with Chaucer’s gang on the famous pilgrimage to Canterbury! I wonder how the Pattern Marker’s Tale would have read…but I digress.) I transformed an organic Pattern (subject) into an inert product (object) of the Pattern Maker’s praxis . I sacrificed something organic and potentially alive, consigning it forever to Hades, the Realm of the Inert ( Shades ), Dante’s Land without Hope. Using language, I can literally play God. The 20th Century American poet, Ezra Pound, wrote at the very end of his Cantos , “I have tried to write Paradise.” I wasn’t necessarily shooting for ‘Paradise in a TWS post,’ but I had not intended to re-write the Inferno either. Short of divinity itself, language is perhaps the most powerful tool in our environment. I had wanted to say that the Pattern is real, preeminently so; that it is a process, that is in process, that spatial pattern is a temporal process; that it’s growing and may even be alive. But I didn’t get there, did I? How come? Even Pontius Pilate said, “What I have written, I have written!” Can’t I be at least as truthful as Pilate? He didn’t set a very high bar after all, but it’s a bar I can’t reach! On the cosmic stage, I must take a seat behind Pilate – not what my parents hoped for when they brought me home from the hospital, I’m sure. “I can’t,” yup, you read right: “can’t.” Can’t what? Can’t ‘Swim’ – Can’t ‘Say What I Mean.’ At least I can’t do so regularly and reliably. Why not? Because when I write (or speak) I am not only expressing what is on my mind in that instant, but whether I like it or not, I am also expressing everything that’s ever been on anyone’s mind since the dawn of consciousness. I certainly carry a heavy burden, don’t I? But why? And how so? Because I use language when I speak and language (any language) is the permanent record of humanity’s intellectual history - not just English, not just Indo-European, but all human history. Disgraced politicians can be air-brushed out of photos, offensive language can be excised from a book…and we wonder why God laughs, “It’s not what you say, Stupid, it’s the language you use to say it.” And as often is the case, God is right. Tongue-tied in front of a live audience? Don’t be! All you’re doing (with your words) is rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic (language). The faster you finish up, the sooner we can get some umbrella drinks over here. I’m reminded of Agatha Christie, an expert on poisons: the poison is not in the tea, silly, it’s in the cup; it’s not on the tip of the arrow, it’s on the bow string. With language, to the extent that it’s like a poison, the poison is not in the message but in the medium, not in the words but in the language that contains those words. The medium is indeed the message. When I use language, I tap into the collective mind of the human race, and that mind is very, very conservative (ontologically conservative, not necessarily politically conservative). By using language, I am effectively punctuating the end of every natural sentence with these words: “As it was, as it is, as it shall ever be.” Language is like the ‘selfish gene’ in evolutionary biology. It perpetuates itself and colonizes its environment with the voracious appetite of a European explorer. It is a self-replicating code turned loose into the subways and sewers of New York City. I didn’t create it, and I’m not aware that I have symptoms, but boy am I ever contagious! Keep your distance, please. (I’ll wear a mask if you’ll wear ear plugs!) In biology, phenotypical forms (like you and me) are just along for the ride. The genotype is where the action is! Phenotypes do play a role, however. We function as catalysts. We energize and shape chemical reactions, but we are never conserved in the final product. “Language Endures; We Don’t” – now that is a bumper sticker! Let’s recap what we’ve learned so far about the world I risked inadvertently creating: Entities come and go, driven in and out of existence by whim, by chance or by accident. The real is imaginary (the Pattern), and the imaginary is real (the Pattern-Maker). We suck the breath out of whatever’s alive and futilely breath it into what is not. This is a true ‘Upside Down’ world, far surpassing Oz, Wonderland, Looking-glass World, even Stranger Things (Netflix). Language alone has turned the world we thought we know into something like the Oscar winning pre-teen movie, Moloch meets Frankenstein’s Monster (I can’t see that movie often enough!) What would it be like to live in such a world? Not pretty: Instead of worshiping the living and true God (YHWH), we might fashion and worship lifeless idols. We would find ourselves susceptible to all sorts of self-destructive impulses such as pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. We might find hedonism, injustice, violence and even war running rampant. Thank God we’re not there! When I inadvertently typed, ‘can be added to the pattern’ instead of ‘add to the pattern,’ I almost conjured up this upside-down world. (Fortunately, I think I caught myself in time…at least I hope I did.) Can you imagine the trouble we’d be in if ever we lived in a world like that? David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Previous Next

< Back Fractal David Cowles Sep 7, 2021 Mythology exists in the space between cosmology and psychology. It is consistent with the modern notion of Being as a fractal: it reveals the same patterns on every scale. Ancient Norse cosmology begins with Yggdrasil, the ‘Tree of Life’. It is the center of the cosmos and all else exists around it. It includes the Nine Worlds, each one inhabited by a unique ‘ontic entity’, for example, gods, elves, wolves, humans, etc. Mythology exists in the space between cosmology and psychology. It is consistent with the modern notion of Being as a fractal: it reveals the same patterns on every scale. Ancient Norse cosmology begins with Yggdrasil, the ‘Tree of Life’. It is the center of the cosmos and all else exists around it. It includes the Nine Worlds, each one inhabited by a unique ‘ontic entity’, for example, gods, elves, wolves, humans, etc. Two of those worlds are Niflheim, a region of intense cold, and Muspelheim, a region of intense heat. They are separated by Ginnungagap, the primal void and the locus of creation itself. It is from Ginnungagap that we get ‘objects’, ‘things’, etc. In that sense it is analogous with the Jewish notion of Sophia and the Greco-Christian notion of Logos. I’ve recently discovered that my own life includes a personal Ginnungagap. I find myself now on the southern rim of the ‘Gap’. Looking across the abyss, I see myself clearly on the northern rim. What I don’t see so clearly are the contents of the abyss itself. This suggests to me a 3 stage model of human life: (1) Preparation (0 – 25?), (2) Procreation (aka Production) (25 – 65?), and (3) Reflection. During the first and third stages we are focused on ourselves (microcosm); during the second stage we are focused on the other (macrocosm). 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 Pando “How are you at riddles? Let’s see!” David Cowles Riddle #1 : I’m black and white and red all over; what am I? Guess : A newspaper! Well, good try, but we don’t allow archaic constructions in this game, and nobody uses the word ‘newspaper’ anymore, so your answer is disallowed. (If we allowed ‘newspaper’, we’d have to allow Old English words from Beowulf , et al. and that would be quite messy.) Answer : A blushing zebra. Try again? Riddle #2 : I’m a living organism, I weigh 40 times more than a Blue Whale, and I’m at least 5,000 years old (but who’s counting?); what am I? Guess : A dragon? The Loch Ness Monster? The Blob? All good guesses but none correct. Answer : A Quaking Aspen. Get it? “A Quaking Aspen,” hilarious…right? Not so much? Well, no wonder; it’s not a joke. It’s a Quaking Aspen for pity’s sake! Not just any Quaking Aspen as it turns out; it’s a particular Quaking Aspen that answers to the name of, you guessed it, Pando . (Do all trees have proper names…or just this one? Do they know their own names like dogs and cats?) Being Pando : What’s it like being me? Well, I’m one tree, but I have more than 40,000 stems (you’d call them ‘trunks’). I cover 100 acres. And in case you were wondering, my pronouns are he and him , but my sexual orientation, sadly, is still unknown (I reproduce asexually). I’m 40,000 trunks, each trunk a clone of all the others, each tapping into a common root system, but each with its own bark, its own crown (foliage), its own lifecycle (not 5,000 years…maybe a few hundred), and each with its own personal survival challenges (weather, fire, predators, parasites, disease, human beings, etc.). So, what’s it like being Pando ? It is not easy to enter the intellectual life of a tree. There is little doubt that trees communicate with each other, recognize nuclear family members, care for the young, the sick and the elderly in their midst, and proactively share available resources (e.g., water). Nutshell : trees engage in eleemosynary behavior. Their motto: Do Ergo Sum . More than most members of a certain unnamed animal species I know well, they love their neighbors as themselves . But it is hard to imagine what sort of ideation accompanies this activity. Obviously, it would be non-verbal. The activity of trees seems clearly intentional…but is it conscious? To whatever extent Pando is ‘aware’, is that awareness solely at the level of the organism itself or is it distributed among its member off-shoots? Are we talking Federal Reserve (central bank) here…or are we talking Blockchain? (Lie quiet Hamilton, I mean that is Alexander Hamilton.) Or is it both? But back to Matthew : “Love your neighbor as yourself .” As yourself! ‘As’ is different from ‘like’. ‘Like X?’ I recognize the dignity and equality X (i.e., the other). ‘As X?’ I recognize myself in the other. For Pando , ‘as’ and ‘like’ are synonymous. Pando is simultaneously self and other. All of which brings us back to that “certain unnamed animal species” we met earlier. According to Jesus ( Matthew ), we are to love our neighbors as (not like) ourselves. Is that an ethical ideal? Or does it reflect an ontological reality? Am I Pando ? (Or at least Pando-like ?) Am I one among the 8 billion living stems of a single organism? (This has been an insight of mystics, East and West, for millennia.) Am I my sister as well as my sister’s keeper? Do I automatically do unto myself what I do unto others? On this site, we have repeatedly argued that reality is inherently recursive. Accordingly, we live in a universe with a curved (vs. flat) ontology – not ‘just’ a curved topology. Karma is real. It’s not a reaction to an action, it is embedded in the action itself. Well, food for thought all around. But whether we are Pando-like or not, we can agree that human beings have a lot to learn, not only from Pando , but from trees generally (trees which, BTW, share 50% of our DNA ). Share Previous Next

What do our readers have to say to our editorial staff about essays written for Christians who believe in science and scientists and philosphers who believe in God? Add your comment to the conversation. Readers React Continue the conversation. Let us know what you think about an ATM essay or a "Thoughts While Shaving" blog post. *Under website name, please include the name of or link to the essay or "Thought" about which you are commenting. Your name and email address will not be visible to website viewers. Want to chat with other readers, start a discussion, or pen a renga cycle? Join the ATM Forum! What are our readers saying about Aletheia Today Magazine? Read below. Just in the Nick of Time Commenting on "Science and the Yellow Submarine Part I" So, you have reborn your magazine just in the nick of time given the state of the world… Beginning with Yellow Submarine, of course; didn’t I see it multiple times back in the day? So, I felt I was on firm ground … This notion of people seeing the same movie is a joke. I left the movie feeling - the colors ! Dave walked out thinking, “Yellow Submarine is a cosmogenic cookbook.” Can you all spot the difference? Beginning with Yellow Submarine, you made me look up ‘ontological.' Undeterred, I read on straight into, “Picasso was painting in a Cubist style before Einstein conceived General Relativity." I believe that’s correct. Later in the article, you warn us, “more Whitehead to come.” Now, that’s some summer reading. And, by summer, I mean the whole summer. Back to saving the world cuz Time is running out, you know ? Every lively magazine needs critics, cantankerous readers who write in provocative comments causing your loyal supporters to take umbrage all over the place, provoking more offenses- creating a buzz. That’s the world right now. By the way, is umbrage a great word or what? "Hey Honey, did you remember to bring your umbrage with you?" So, a buzz is what’s needed here ... --John O’Brien Keep Me on Your List! Commenting on our June 2022 Issue Great reading. Keep me on your list! --Anonymous from Geneva, IL His Way, Not Mine Commenting on "Prayer For Resting in God's Timing, Ways, and Rhythm" Amen! His will, not mine. Thank you for this beautiful prayer. --Patti Burkett What a Lucky Guy! What a lucky guy to have found this vehicle! Of course, all the pieces came into his life with perfect timing. His concert experience when he was 14-years-old triggering his whole life in music leading to inner peace. --John E. O'Brien Commenting on "Drumming to Inner Peace"

< Back Handel’s Messiah David Cowles "There is only one full proof indication that Christmas is coming: the endless performances of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah. Yup, it’s that time of year! “Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?” ( We are the World, 1985) How do we know it's Christmastime (absent a pesky reminder from Google Calendar)? Holiday themed store windows? No, we have no more stores. We buy online now, and the cloud doesn’t know from seasons. Mall Santas? Seriously, does anyone over 16 even go to a mall anymore? Ok, last shot, Holiday decorations? No soap ! We leave ours up all year-round now. No, there is only one full proof indication that Christmas is coming: the endless performances of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah . Yup, it’s that time of year! From full orchestra productions to local church singalongs, even the occasional pop radio cut, it’s all Handel all the time. Until it isn’t! After December 25, ‘seldom is heard an encouraging word’…until the following November. George Frideric Handel wrote his most famous Oratorio in 1741, and it was first performed in Dublin in 1742 during the Easter season. Yup, although Handel ranks somewhere between Santa Claus and Frosty in the annals of Christmas lore, his Messiah was intended for Easter. The Messiah opens with words of encouragement ; it meets you where you stand, even if that’s on the brink of despair. It begins with a timeless message of hope: Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned. The libretto of the Messiah comes almost exclusively from the Old and New Testaments…but the Bible gives you a lot to work with! The selection and arrangement of texts rest squarely with the composer (Handel) and his librettist (Jennens), and it’s clear pretty much from the outset that Messiah will operate on at least three distinct but related levels: First, it is a major musical work with an important place in both the canon and the repertoire of classical music. Second, it is a quasi-liturgical celebration of Salvation History. Finally, it is a reflection on a theme that consistently runs just below the surface of Judeo-Christian culture: the relationship between God’s Kingdom and human institutions. Building on the message of hope (above), Messiah presents its ‘program’ (V.I. Lenin, What is to be done? ) The voice of him who crieth in the wilderness: prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway to our God. Ev'ry valley shall be exalted, and ev'ry mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight and the rough places plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. If you build it, he will come! We are being prepared for climax, the faith and vision of Job in Part III. Thus, saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts: Yet once a little while and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations; and the desire of all nations shall come. The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the messenger of the Covenant, whom you delight in; behold, He shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. Early on, Handel and Jennens spotlight the relationship between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of man (sic). The manifestation of the Lord on earth requires that he “shake all nations”. But good news, the Kingdom of God will satisfy all of our human desires. Secular institutions of government evolved to secure peace, justice, and prosperity for the people, but those values will only be fully realized when the Kingdom of God replaces the kingdoms of man. And the need for renewal does not stop on the steps of city hall. We all must undergo a process of purification, nobody more so than the clergy: But who may abide the day of his coming? And who will stand when he appeareth? And He shall purify the sons of Levi, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. The prologue is complete; and now…”Action!” Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call His name Emmanuel, God with us. If we didn’t already know the story by heart, this line would be a real attention grabber: A virgin conceive? A human baby be God? God be ‘with us’ in this way? O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion, get thee up into the high mountain, lift up thy voice with strength; be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah: Behold your God! Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee. Good tidings indeed! The best. But we’re just getting started. In one of many oblique references to the Book of Job , the text invites us to “behold’ our God. You can read our essay on Job here . (More to come on this parallel.) For behold, darkness shall cover the earth. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; and they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. ‘Darkness’ refers to ignorance (the worst of all possible evils, according to Job). The ‘light’ then is the light of knowledge and understanding. It shines through the shadow of death (Psalm 23). And now on to the Messiah’s first climax: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. This is the first indication of the Messiah’s political message. Handel and Jennens make it clear that the legitimacy and sovereignty of all government is rooted in Christ. Its sovereignty is a reflection of his sovereignty. Note that our composers were careful to wait until they were certain the audience (royal audience?) was sucked into the theology. Then they introduce ‘politics’ in a very non-threatening way. Christ is the foundation of all political authority, but therefore also the foundation of the British Monarchy. One can imagine the royal party quite pleased with themselves…but for how long? We’re less than 40 years from the Bastille Day and the dreaded guillotine. As we shall soon see, to ground temporal authority on Christology is to lay a trap for secular rulers; but I don’t want to give away too much too soon. There were shepherds in the field keeping watch over their flocks by night. And lo, an angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, “Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.” And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying: Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth, good will towards men (sic). Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, thy King cometh unto thee; he is the righteous Savior, and he shall speak peace to the heathen. Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing. These are the traditional signs of divine favor, an indication that God is ‘well pleased’ with his temporal rulers. He shall feed His flock like a shepherd; and He shall gather the lambs with His arm, and carry them in His bosom, and gently lead those that are with young. His yoke is easy, and his burden is light. End Part One, commence Part Two. Handel and Jennens jump ahead now from Jesus’ nativity to his encounter with John the Baptist on the banks of Jordan, 30 years later. John declares: Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world. What an auspicious beginning! Angels attended his birth, and shepherds were the first to acknowledge his kingship. Magi notwithstanding, this was to be a revolution led by the proletariat (shepherds and fishermen). Jesus welcomed support from elements of the elite (e.g., Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea), but he never lost sight of who he really was: a red-headed stepchild of a displaced carpenter, born in an ox’s stable, laid in its feeding trough, its manger. Nor would the future be any bed of roses: He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He gave his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off his hair: he hid not His face from shame and spitting. Surely, he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace. And with his stipes, we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way. Apparently, Handel and Jennens are no anarchists. In a vague reference to the Book of Judges, our duo makes it clear that they are not prepared to entrust social order to the consciences of individuals. Authority is necessary, but that authority must rest on the sovereignty of Christ. The exercise of that authority must reflect Jesus’ values and must be consonant with his will. Aye, there’s the rub. But we’re not there yet, not by a long shot: All they that see Him laugh Him to scorn; they shoot out their lips, and shake their heads, saying: “He trusted in God that he would deliver him; let him deliver him, if he delights in him.” Thy rebuke hath broken his heart: he is full of heaviness. He looked for some to have pity on him, but there was no man, neither found he any to comfort him. Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow. He was cut off out of the land of the living. For the transgressions of thy people, he was stricken. But thou didst not leave his soul in hell; nor didst thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of Glory shall come in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord strong and mighty, The Lord mighty in battle. The Lord of Hosts, he is the King of Glory. Unto which of the angels said He at any time: "Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee?" Let all the angels of God worship Him. Thou art gone up on high; thou hast led captivity captive, and received gifts for men; yea, even from thine enemies, that the Lord God might dwell among them. The final triumph of the Kingdom of God will not suddenly and spontaneously appear. We have a role to play as well, and that roll requires full-on effort on our part: The Lord gave the word; great was the company of the preachers. How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things. Their sound is gone out into all lands, and their words unto the ends of the world. The mission is clear. We are the preachers; we are charged with bringing ‘glad tidings of good things…unto the ends of the world’. Now, appropriately, Handel and Jennens double back. We have our marching orders. Now we need to refocus on the immediate task at hand: Why do the nations so furiously rage together, and why do the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth rise-up, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his anointed. Vanity is the root of all that is wrong with the world (Ecclesiastes) and vanity is synonymous with idolatry, the first thing forbidden in the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments) and the only thing forbidden (implicitly) by the Great Commandment. Idols are caricatures of the divine. To worship a lifeless idol is worship in vain. Alfred North Whitehead correctly understood that ‘idolatry’ lies at the root of most of our social problems, but he called it, “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” Misplaced concreteness…what a great euphemism! It’s like defining an adulterer as someone who is matrimonially challenged. Whitehead’s fallacy explains “why the nations so furiously rage together”; they have taken ‘power and plunder’ as their idols. The text makes it clear that planning and waging war is not only in vain, but also a conspiracy “against the Lord and against his anointed” (Christ). Let us break their bonds asunder and cast away their yokes from us. He that dwelleth in Heav'n shall laugh them to scorn; The Lord shall have them in derision. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. Notice how the oratorio has built to this moment: the first overt call to revolution! One might assume that it was merely a natural outgrowth of basic Christian theology. Consider the language: Breaking bonds asunder, casting away yokes, and dashing them with a rod of iron like so many shards of pottery. By implication, certainly, it is the kings of the earth who are responsible for these bonds and yokes, and it is we, the people, who must dash them to pieces using a rod of iron. Should someone actually hear what is being sung, and take umbrage, Handel and Jennens could feign the innocence of ignorance. “What? Are not all of these words taken from divinely inspired scripture?” Yes, but it was Handel and Jennens who decided which verses to select and in what order to place them. It is as fair to say that Handel and Jennens had as much control over the content of the Messiah as James Joyce had over the content of Ulysses; but using orthodox theology as cloud cover, they were able to perform their works right under the eye of the censor , unnoticed. In any event, this is not the sort of rhetoric that allows a ‘ruler’ to enjoy a quiet night’s sleep. And of course, the message is made all the more incendiary by its suggestion that these same kings are to be laughed at, scorned, and held in derision. Powerful stuff! And potentially dangerous. Thought experiment: it’s March 1752, and you have a small printing press in your basement. You’ve printed these very same words (above) onto flyers which you are now distributing outside London’s Covent Garden Theater, scene of the Messiah’s London debut. Would you escape imprisonment…or worse? But lifted from scripture and embedded in the middle of a musical masterwork, the political import of the Messiah’s message can escape notice. Is this an early version of subminimal messaging? Were Handel and Jennens ‘dog whistle’ revolutionaries? This brings us the Messiah’s penultimate climax, the Hallelujah Chorus, perhaps the best-known chorus in all of Western music: Hallelujah: for the Lord God, Omnipotent reigneth. The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. King of kings, and Lord of lords. If Handel had been playing in the NFL, he would have been called for a personal foul: “taunting.” It is one thing to criticize the state, another thing to tease the rulers, and yet another thing to call for dashing things to pieces. Still, it is something of an entirely different order to celebrate prospectively the obliteration of the secular order. I am reminded of Hillary Clinton’s ‘victory party’ in Philly, the night before her electoral defeat in 2016. The arrogance was breathtaking, and not lost, I’m sure, on the voters of PA. But Handel is not Hillary Clinton. He has the assurance of scripture on this side. That the Kingdom of God will come is not in question (sorry, George, Rex ); it is only a matter of when...and how. Part III, the finale, begins with one of the most famous lines in all Scripture. It comes from the Book of Job, and it was one of the earliest expressions of faith in the Old Testament: I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter-day upon the earth. And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God. Job’s faith is validated by Christ’s resurrection from the dead: For now, is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep. Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Behold, I tell you a great mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. Salvation history does not follow the linear trajectory of time. It loops. Christ is the new Adam, and we are the new Christ. Job beholds his Redeemer three times. The first time he beholds Christ in faith. He is sitting on a dung hill, his body covered with boils, his children slaughtered, his wealth plundered, his good name besmirched. Nevertheless, he knows. Job beholds Christ again at Christ’s resurrection. Between his entombment and his resurrection, Christ’s spirit is ‘harrowing hell’. Like the Vacuum Monster in the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine , Christ sucks up everything that came before him. Time begins anew, for everyone, at the Resurrection. It is Day One of the rest of all our lives. Finally, Job beholds Christ at his Second Coming, at the eschaton: The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on in corruption and this mortal must put on immortality. From here on, I think we can let Jennens libretto speak for itself. No more interruptions from the Peanut Gallery, until the end: Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who giveth us the victory, the victory through God. If God be for us, who can be against us? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth, who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is at the right hand of God, who makes intercession for us. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by His blood, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. Blessing and honour, glory and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever. And now the actual climax of the oratorio, one simple word: Amen. Let it be, so be it! Musically and theologically, it is a fitting end to this choral masterpiece! Everybody loves the Messiah! But do we love it only because we perceive its politics to be irrelevant? After all, it was composed in England more than 250 years ago. Or do we love it in spite of its content because the theology no longer resonates with us? Do we understand the message to be true, literally, or do we understand it as a poetic invocation of the virtue of hope, just in time for the Holidays. Sidebar: Handel intended the Messiah to be included in the Easter repertoire, but fairly early it found its home in Advent, the season just before Christmas. If we’re focused on the theology of the Messiah, we would want to hear it during the Easter Season. But if we understand it as a pagan paean of Hope, then Christmas, the winter solstice, would be the most appropriate time. In America, we don’t like to mix our religion and our politics. We believe in ‘the separation of church and state’. In fact, we’ve turned the modern secular state into our own idol. If we understood the Messiah as politically relevant and theologically persuasive, it is unlikely that Messiah would sell out every performance. Earlier, I suggested that Handel and Jennens might best be understood as ‘dog whistle’ revolutionaries. If so, then the entire audience must be tone-deaf…except for me! Image Courtesy of British Museum. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Share Previous Next

< Back Burn the Candle Mark A. Villano "Are there things that are too precious to expose to real life? Things we’re afraid might get soiled? Maybe the most beautiful parts of ourselves? Maybe our faith?" There was a time when I really liked a particular piece of clothing, say a shirt or sweater or tie, I would never wear it. I liked it so much I wouldn’t wear it. Crazy, isn’t it? It wasn’t because there weren’t appropriate occasions to wear these things. I guess it was because I didn’t want them to get worn out. I wanted to preserve their specialness. But what happened instead is that they were so well preserved that they outlived their usefulness. At some point, I’d go to find something I was saving and then it would be out of style. Or my tastes had changed so that I didn’t want to wear it anymore. Like I said, crazy. Maybe this ran in my family. I remember a Christmas candle when I was young that never got lit. It was a very nice, pretty candle that would get packed away and would come back every year. One year, though, the candle came out and didn’t seem very pretty anymore. There was a film of dust and dirt (I think the technical term is crud ) all over it. So, eventually, it got pitched. It was thrown away without ever doing for us what it was supposed to do. Now those are just clothes and candles. But are there other things in life, other places in life where that can happen? Are there things that are too precious to expose to real life? Things we’re afraid might get soiled? Maybe the most beautiful parts of ourselves? Maybe our faith? Are the most truthful parts of us just like that beautiful family Bible that is stored on a shelf and never opened? As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothes yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (Colossians 3:12-14) Faith has to get soiled. It has to get worn. The stories of our faith are meant to be a living word. If the stories of faith get filed away in the special drawer labeled "sacred," they become distant. They become hard to relate to. They become removed from the real world and lose their connection with real people and situations. They become less real. Less stories of faith and more like fairy tales. When they’re out in the open, there’s a chance we’ll see their significance and learn from them. When they only come out on special occasions, they’re less pressing, less important, less relevant. In the 15th year of the reign of emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Harold was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the Word of God came to John son of of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’” (Luke 3:1-4) I wonder if things had already started to feel distant to Luke’s community. He was writing toward the end of the first century, in the 80s (yes, just “80s”). People had heard the stories of Jesus for a while. Did they begin to feel more distant, less real, even then? Luke begins his gospel making the point strongly that the events he’s talking about are historical. He doesn’t begin with the words “once upon a time.” This is not a bedtime story to lull you to sleep. No, he begins setting the time and context of these events in the real world. This happened in human history. It wasn’t that long ago. It happened when Tiberius was emperor, Pilate was governor, Herod was tetrarch, Caiaphas was high priest. In the real world, God spoke. We heard his voice. And it wasn’t in powerful political forces or influential religious leaders. It was in this wild man from the desert who said, “ Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” L ittle did we know how urgent and real that message was, that it truly was our paths he was talking about, the paths we travel every day. It was in the messiness of our lives that the Lord would come. The message for those who still hear these words is that God is still speaking. God’s mysterious presence is at work in the real world. Our world. We can hear it and we can be part of that movement of the spirit right where we are, right now. At this time in history, God speaks: I am coming to you. Excerpted from Time to Get Ready, an Advent, Christmas Reader to Wake Your Soul.Buy the book here. This blog was originally published on Night of Silence and was republished with permission. Mark A. Villano has an MDiv from Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He has ministered at parishes and campus ministry centers across the country, including at the University of Texas, UCLS, Ohio State University, and Yale. He has an MFA from the School of Cinematic Arts at USC and served as Director of Creative Development at Paulist Productions. Currently, he is Director of Mission and Ministry at Marymount California University, south of Los Angeles. Previous Next

< Back Pando and Me “Pando is Pando because Pando isn’t ‘Pando’ anymore!” David Cowles The largest living organism on Planet Earth is not a Sea Mammal or a Dinosaur or Nessie; it’s a tree. A single tree. One organism. And it’s not a Redwood or a Cedar but an Aspen, a Quaking Aspen as it turns out. Where is this mega-biome located? Utah. Where are they hiding it? In plain sight. In fact you could be standing in the midst of Pando right now. To you, it would look like a forest, and so it would be. But all those tree trunks that surround you, blocking your way are ‘stems’ (parts) of one, single tree. Pando is triploid, meaning that its cells contain three copies of each chromosome rather than two. As a result, Pando cannot reproduce sexually; instead it clones itself, over and over. Today, it consists of 40,000 trunks, supported by a single, vast root system covering an area the size of 100 American football fields. Pando is at least 15,000 years old. Its individual trunks, however, have a Life Expectancy of just a few hundred years. This is the Ship of Theseus Hot Link writ large; not one of Pando’s OG trunks is alive today, and yet Pando is still very much Pando. Materially, we are dealing with an organism that is completely different now from what it was in its early years. What has been preserved is the DNA, the computer code that runs it; as a result, the pattern of relationships we call Being Pando is conserved over however many generations: Pando is Pando because Pando isn’t ‘Pando’ anymore! Let’s go back to the beginning. Out of some undetermined past shrouded in biology’s mythical mists, an aspen-zygote has been conceived. Call it ‘Alfie’. On schedule, Alfie undergoes mitosis leaving us with ‘Brian’ and ‘Charlie’. How are they related? And what happened to Alfie? You can say that neither Brian nor Charlie is Alfie; or you can say that both Brian and Charlie are Alfie. But please don’t say that Brian is Alfie but not Charlie, or Charlie but not Brian, because Brian and Charlie are interchangeable products of Alfie’s mitosis. Alfie doesn’t play favorites; like you, it loves all its children exactly the same. So are trees sentient, intelligent, self-aware, conscious? Interestingly, debate over this goes back millennia. It seems, for example, that the ancient Greeks and the Celts, at least, believed that trees displayed intentionality and self-awareness. This idea would have been a lot less popular in the latter half of the 19th century CE. However, the pendulum has swung back. There is little doubt now that trees and forests display some mental processes. Communication occurs, family members are recognized. In the allocation and exchange of resources (minerals, water), special care is taken to provide for the young, the sick, the unthriving, the elderly, and even the deceased. Unlike some members of another species I could name, trees naturally engage in eleemosynary behavior. Is this the product of natural selection or is it evidence that trees follow some sort of ethical code? If so, how does that code come to be? Does it emerge democratically or is it hard wired by a transcendent agency? Smart as it may be, Pando can’t read the Bible. But there is a school of thought that considers Written Torah (the first 5 books of the Old Testament) to be a codification of pre-existent Oral Torah , ( aka Natural Law). In this way, Torah is accessible to all sentient beings, including Pando: “signatures of all things I am here to read.” (Joyce) Natural Law is woven into the fabric of being itself. It’s what gives it its shape. In Written Torah , there are 2 verses that, taken together, constitute what’s known as the Great Commandment . According to some schools these 2 mitzvoth summarize the other 611. One, as cited by Jesus, is to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” As, not like! Unlike standard prescriptions to ‘behave charitably’, the Great Commandment eliminates the ontological distinction between the donor and the donee. This is not ‘charity’; it is ‘mutuality’. You give to your neighbor, if you do, for only one reason – because your neighbor is you – and you don’t get any extra credit for doing right by yourself. So Pando does seem to follow some sort of ethical code, but it is not easy imagining what sort of ideation might accompany that process. Is Pando ‘conscious’? If so, where does that consciousness reside? Externally (in the noosphere), in the organism-entire, in the individual trunks, or in each of the constituent cells? The form of our questions betrays us. We have assumed that consciousness is an either/or affair: there is only one Pando-consciousness and it occurs at only one particular biological level. But what if it’s not? What if it’s an and/both affair? What if Pando-consciousness can and does occur at several different levels of biology simultaneously? Now if you were 5 years old, you’d know exactly what question to ask next. But you’re not so I’ll help you: “Are, for example, cellular-conscious and organism-conscious Pando aware of one another? Do they impact one another? Do they communicate (share info)?” If human physiology is the paradigm of a Hamiltonian central bank, the plant kingdom relies on blockchain. Imagine the Billboard: “Blockchain. Endorsed by the Plant Kingdom: It’s the only brain we trust .” Wow! I could-a-been a Mad Man! Lacking a centralized nervous system, decision making by plants is necessarily ‘distributed’ throughout the organism. And it’s not only plants. Animals too can process data on a decentralized network. In an octopus, for example, independent mental structures are located in each of the individual tenacles; they communicate and coordinate across a network. So far, we have been unable to isolate a particular structure that enables consciousness (an if and only if ). What does the human brain have in common with a bacterium that allows us to use the word conscious in both contexts? What would it mean to say that an adult human and a bacterium are both ‘conscious’? Would a bacterium’s experience of consciousness have anything in common with a human’s experience? What would it mean to have something in common…or to have nothing in common at all? Two entities that have nothing in common do not exist in the same universe. So there will be an element of commonality. That element may be precisely the phenomenon we want to call ‘consciousness’; but how to isolate it? …Oh…I get it…you were waiting for an answer? Sorry, I’m two Nobels short for that. All of which brings us back to that “certain unnamed animal species” we met earlier. Am I Pando ? (Or at least Pando-like ?) Am I one of the 8 billion living trunks (persons) or am I one aspect of a single organism (species)? Do I automatically do unto myself what I do unto others? If so, then morality is not a choice; it is a fact of life. What if reality itself is recursive? What if we live in a universe with a curved or folded (vs. flat) topology? In such a universe the Law of Karma is fundamental: it’s not about a reaction to an action. Karma is an embedded element in every action per se ; it is prerequisite to the constitution of an event. Every action bridges the gap between one settled state-of-affairs and another. But in bridging that gap, a twist in structure means that bridge also acts on itself, modifying itself as it performs its bridging function . So, Newton had it wrong. Every action (active voice) does not entail an equal and opposite reaction (passive voice). Rather action and reaction are two interchangeable aspects of a single event ( middle voice ). We have a lot to learn, working alongside our Quaking Aspen! 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 . Return to Yuletide 2024 Share Previous Next

< Back Everybody's Autobiography David Cowles Is it possible to write an autobiography of everyone, to somehow incorporate the wildly varying events of different people’s lives into a single story? Absurd, right? But not so fast! Gertrude Stein once wrote, “Anyway, autobiography is easy. Like it or not, autobiography is easy for any one, and so this is to be everybody’s autobiography.” ( Everybody’s Autobiography ) Is it possible to write an autobiography of everyone, to somehow incorporate the wildly varying events of different people’s lives into a single story? Absurd, right? But not so fast! When we talk about ‘wildly varying events’ we implicitly admit that there must be a common substructure upon which these ‘variations’ occur. Ok, if not absurd, then at least impossible. You will grant me that much, right? Sorry, no again! Compared to what Joyce and Pound were attempting, Stein’s project is child’s play. When Stein wrote Everybody’s Autobiography , Joyce had already written and published his Ulysses and Pound was well into his Cantos . (In fact, some of the early Cantos had already been published.) These works are very different from each other and both are very different from Everybody’s Autobiography . Joyce and Pound did not share a common style or even a common medium ( Ulysses is prose, Cantos poetry) but both wanted to write a ‘universal history’ – a history of tout le monde , the whole world. But they approached their project very differently. Joyce chose to telescope the world’s history into a single place (Dublin) and a single time (June 16, 1904, now called Bloomsday after the book’s hero, Leopold Bloom). Like all of us, Stephen Hawking included, Joyce stood on the shoulders of giants. He recognized two previous attempts to write a universal history: Homer’s Odyssey and the liturgy of the Roman Catholic church ( Mass ), and he incorporated both into Ulysses . Joyce meticulously mapped the world’s events (historical, mythological, and liturgical) onto the imagined events of Dublin on Bloomsday. Joyce discovered what today we would call ‘the fractal nature of reality’…long before Benoit Mandelbrot. Pound took a radically different course. He attempted to catalog all the world’s events, but he used a different device to avoid writing a 'million volume novel’. He picked only those events that he judged to be richly emblematic of other events. All the events described in Cantos are paradigms. Stein takes a third direction. She records the minute details of her life with Alice B. Toklas, but she chooses to include only those life events that Gertrude and Alice had in common with everybody else. They got up; they went places; they saw things; they engaged in conversations; they ate food; and they drank wine, etc. In this, their lives were no different from my life or your life or anyone’s life. Stein discovered the common substructure of all human life. Previous Next