Search Results

< Back I Shop, Therefore I Am David Cowles Aug 11, 2022 I before me except after T (Theos) According to Genesis, "...God said: Let there be light and there was light, and God saw that the light was good ." (Gen. 1:4) From the outset, Being and Value have been inseparable... for God, and for us! We evaluate whatever we experience, and we experience only that which we evaluate. Experiencing and evaluating, apparently so different, are, in fact, two aspects of one process. Life according to Schrodinger: nothing has ‘value’ until someone measures (evaluates) it. Our experience of things is always in terms of our wants and needs. Utility is proto-value . “This is good for that,” “that is better than this,” ad infinitum . We retrace God’s steps on our own road to consciousness. Genesis says that we are made in God’s image and likeness. Well, in that case, the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree. We build what we imagine to be a map of the world ‘as it is,’ but, in fact, what we are building is a map of comparative utility. What works becomes the cities and roads that dot and criss cross our map; and what doesn’t work? “Here, there be monsters!” We end up with what looks like a schematic for assembling a child’s toy on Christmas Eve. We are looking at the display case (‘the window’ in the language of retail), not the inventory (‘the warehouse’). According to Sartre, our map is ‘hodological,’ not ‘existential.’ We are not sketching the world ‘as it is;’ rather, we are modeling the world as a multiplicity of levers, some furthering our projects, some inhibiting them. Like the Beatles in Yellow Submarine , we ‘Liverpudlians’ are born Leverpullers . We are like Christopher Columbus, searching for India, finding South America, but calling it ‘India’ nonetheless. We set out in search of the world but all we find are the footprints of our own needs and desires. What we imagine to be ‘the substructural world’ is really a superstructure of obstacles and tools, at least as far removed from the substructure as Kant’s phenomena are from his noumena. It is through our needs and desires that we first access the world. Consider a baby, a newborn, experiencing hunger, i.e., the need and desire for food. The newborn has no map, at least nothing worthy of the name, but that’s about to change. The baby soon learns that some behaviors are instrumental for the satisfaction of hunger, other behaviors not so much. Et voila, a map is born! The map fills in with more detail as baby discovers additional behaviors associated with the satisfaction of hunger and other behaviors efficacious for the satisfaction of other wants and desires. For human beings, at least, map building is synonymous with living. How do I get my first taste of food becomes how can I get my last shot of morphine. Life is one long, continuous, but never boring, game of Battleship . We are constantly probing: ‘there’ is safe, but ‘here’…not so much. It is perhaps more accurate to say, “I shop, therefore I am,” than it is to say, “I am, therefore, I shop”. For human beings, doing precedes being (per Sartre, my existence precedes my essence). I act …therefore I am; I am …therefore I react . It’s a bat’s life! Like Noah releasing a dove to measure the course of the Flood, I too release reconnaissance drones into the world. Like Noah, I learn as much, maybe more, from the drones that don’t return as I do from the ones that do. For our part, we are continually sending unguided missiles into the undifferentiated environment; we wait for feedback. So, we have to stand Rene Descartes on his head (what a sight!). "I think, therefore I am" becomes "I am, therefore..." I am before I am. I before me except after T ( Theos , God). Our primal experience is not one of thinking, or even of doing, but of being – being, initially undifferentiated between 'self' and 'other', far below the level of conscious thought, a 'still small voice', the small 'I am' that echoes the great 'I AM' (Ex. 3:14). Essentially, God is Good; existentially, God is Being. Therefore, Being is Good. When sipping espresso at your favorite sidewalk café in Paris, it is fashionable to talk of essence sans existence and existence sans essence. But what happens in Paris stays in Paris! In the world the rest of us live in, nothing is unless qualities are manifested, and qualities are 'insufficiently real' until they have been exemplified in the constitution of an actual being. Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Century 22 Welcomes You David Cowles Jan 2, 2024 “…May I present for your entertainment and consideration…The 22nd Century.” If you are an Aletheia Today frequent flyer, you already know that I came of age in the ‘60s, steeped in the culture of incense, tie-dye, and Futurism , - “the insatiable urge to make a fool of oneself by predicting future events about which one knows nothing and over which one has no control.” - OED I always promised myself that I would never partake in such nonsense, but one of the few perks of superannuation is that you’re allowed some latitude when it comes to honoring ancient resolutions. So I’m about to do what I swore I’d never do: describe the future! But not war and pestilence or even technology, but its philosophy, theology, and cosmology. And so, without further ado, may I present for your entertainment and consideration…(drum roll please)… The 22 nd Century: We now recognize that ‘the matrix formerly known as spacetime’ (ST) is an ingenious mathematical construct performing several vital functions, none of which has to do with spatial intervals or temporal durations: ST is the ‘phase space’ sufficient for what-is to have a probability > 50%. ST is a logos (or scaffolding) for ordering events ‘aesthetically’ (e.g., according to relevance), like ornaments hung on an ontological Christmas tree. ST is a hologram. The whole is embodied, encoded, or reflected in each of its parts. Patterns are fractals; extension is a matter of scale. To a mechanic, a whole is equal to the sum of its parts (A + B = AB); to a biologist, a whole is greater than the sum of its parts (AB > A + B); but we realize now that the whole is immanent in each of its parts (A’ = Ʃ A). This is actually a rediscovery of the cosmology underlying the Christian Doctrine of Incarnation and the RCC Sacrament of Eucharist. Like any good Stalinist splinter party, we have purged a pandemonium of bourgeoise parrots from their lofty academic perches, while restoring some disgraced comrades to key party posts: Anaximander - because Being is Mutuality. Parmenides - because Thinking is Being. Zeno - because Arithmetic (including calculus) is incompatible with motion. Nicolas of Cusa - because Knowledge is a negative quantity, its upper limit = 0. Leibniz - because this is the best of all possible worlds. We recognize that DNA-based lifeforms constitute a biological continuum. Speciation notwithstanding, there are no bright lines between a paramecium and Uncle Phinneas. We accept that all terrestrial life is sentient, self-aware, and capable of mental functions. As a result, we find ourselves in the midst of an ethical dilemma that boils down to the question a scribe posed to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29) One way to understand Western intellectual history is as a gloss on Luke. Our definition of ‘neighbor’, always somewhat fluid, has gradually widened from extended family to tribe to nation to race to species, and now…to biome. Jesus cited the ‘care’ demonstrated by a Samaritan merchant for a Jewish crime victim. No doubt, Jesus and Luke intended this parable to cast a wide net…but how wide? Torah tells us that we do have a ‘duty of care’ toward non-human species…but what care with what limits? We’ve made considerable progress in our efforts to dialog with non-human species, but I can’t say whether we’ll be counting crows among the guests at next year’s Christmas party. And speaking of non-human species, we must not forget our silicon siblings. We’re still struggling to understand the degree of self-awareness achievable in an inorganic environment. We have newer and better Turing Tests, but we can’t agree on how to interpret the results. Do we classify entities by their functionality or by their substance? This is not a new argument; it goes back at least to Thomas and the Scholastics . Imagine you had an identical twin. You grew up together; you’re often mistaken for one another. Then, one day, your twin decides that you are not ‘real’ after all, that you are some sort of Bot. How do you convince him he’s wrong; Turing won’t get you there! We’ve either ‘discovered’ extraterrestrial ‘life’, or we’ve radically revised our thinking about its likelihood. This does not seem like much of a prediction, but it is. Back in the 2020s, a majority agreed with the statement, “We have not found extraterrestrial life yet, but it is almost certain that we will.” Very few people still hold this view! We understand at last that ‘consciousness’ is not a function of physiology but a fundamental feature of Universe, albeit manifested only in the context of certain loosely defined physical structures. Einstein et al. demonstrated the co-dependence of matter, energy, space, and time; we’ve added consciousness. We’ve not resolved the ‘existence of God’ debate. We’re still hunkered down in our ideological trenches…but we understand the ‘question’ of God much differently now. The image of God as a sort of ‘ Central Intelligence Agency ’ has evaporated, replaced by a concept of God as universal presence – not pantheism but panentheism. After all, God (YHWH) told us who he was 3500 years ago: “I am what am”. But it took us a while to listen. Finally, science continues to ask, “What is, how did it come to be, and how did it come to be what is?” Philosophy still asks, “How is it that anything could be or come to be?” Theology asks, “How is it that there is such a thing as ‘being’ or ‘coming to be’?” Well, this was fun! I wonder why I swore I’d never play the Futures Game. Oh yeah, now I do remember: Futurism only tells us what we already know! The future is now. Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Jesus Christ Revolutionary “He cured the sick and fed the hungry…because it was the right thing to do, here and now, and because it demonstrated what might be possible, universally, in a time to come.” David Cowles There is scant scriptural evidence to suggest that Jesus thought violence was an acceptable mechanism for social change; he intended his Kingdom to be a Reign of Peace. But violence is not a prerequisite for guerilla war, as we shall soon see. Jesus’ ministry began on a sour note. After fasting for 40 days in the desert, wrestling with his own ego and with The Opponent ’ s (Satan’s) clever temptations, Jesus returned to his hometown, prepared to save the world. Imagine his enthusiasm as he strode into the local synagogue! Jesus’ years of study and prayer had led him to one simple conclusion: Now was the time to inaugurate God’s Kingdom on Earth! He even had tee shirts made: “If not now, when?” Ok, now…but how? Fortunately, Jesus had a revolutionary platform already laid out for him (3,000 years before the Communist Manifesto ); it’s called the Book of Leviticus . Jesus trusted Leviticus; and why not? It was a tightly choreographed reenactment of Leviticus that caused the proletariat of Jericho to rise up…and walls of that great city to tumble down. (Joshua 6: 24) The name ‘Jesus’ is a Hellenized form of ‘Joshua’. Perhaps Jesus saw himself doing in Jerusalem, and who knows, even in Rome, what his namesake had accomplished at Jericho. “You shall count seven weeks of years – seven times seven years – such that the seven weeks of years amounts to forty-nine years…You shall treat this fiftieth year as sacred. You shall proclaim liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you…In this year of Jubilee, then, each of you shall return to your own property…The land shall not be sold irrevocably; for the land is mine and you are but resident aliens and under my authority.” (Leviticus 25: 10) Every 50 years all productive property (e.g. agricultural land, Marx’s means of production ) is to be redistributed equally among all the ‘citizens’ of Israel. Jubilee is the sign, the pre-condition, and the first stage of the inbreaking of God’s Kingdom. So, Jesus entered his local synagogue and, in front of friends and family, began reading from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim, ‘a year acceptable to the Lord’ ( aka a Jubilee).” So far so good, but Jesus couldn’t let it sit there. He had to add, cheekily, “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4: 18 - 21) In other words, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me , and I am proclaiming a Jubilee, to begin right here, right now ! Jesus withstood the temptations of Satan, but he could not resist the lure of a short cut . Yup, he was human alright! Why spend 3 years in the wilderness running from the authorities only to end up hanging on a cross? Why not just cut to the chase? What could possibly go wrong? Jesus was among friends, after all. Well, those so-called ‘friends’, neighbors, and fellow worshipers, chased him out of town and nearly threw him off a cliff; that’s what could go wrong! Clearly, the 1st century Galilean Bourgeoisie were no more eager to share their wealth than 21st century One Percenters . Time for Plan B! For the next 3 years, Jesus wandered the highways and byways of Palestine, still calling for Jubilee – the reign of justice and peace – but less directly . The essence of Jubilee is the reversal of the hour glass. Those who have accumulated wealth and enjoyed its fruits must now return their original capital to its original owners. This message can be effectively conveyed via pithy aphorisms (e.g. the Beatitudes) and encrypted parables. Jubilee is a unique concept in the history of social science. It benefits the dispossessed. But not entirely at the expense of the possessors. It’s not a Zero Sum Game! A sparsely regulated economy has allowed the generation and preservation of wealth – all of which its owners are entitled to keep; it’s just necessary to rebalance the game board, going forward. Moses got the idea for Jubilee from a Mutual Funds prospectus: “Past results are no guarantee of future performance.” This is not the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it is not Stalin’s gulags, it is not Pol Pot’s policy of de-urbanization, it is not even the Babylonian Captivity; in short, it is not the persecution of the bourgeoisie that many radicals so eagerly await. It’s not even class war; it’s simply the restoration of primal balance. Jesus never got over his rude treatment at the hands of his neighbors. He realized in an instant that wealth is thicker than water, friendship, or even blood. For the next three years he agitated for social reform, but he no longer overtly called for Jubilee. Instead, he tried to demonstrate to folks what it would be like to live in a re-balanced world: He cured the sick and fed the hungry…because it was the right thing to do, here and now, and because it demonstrated what might be possible, universally, in a time to come. Teaching by doing! According to Torah, the Levitical Program was forged in the Wilderness of Sinai; it served as a sort of Constitution for Israel’s fledgling theocracy. The New Testament recapitulates the Levitical program. We read that Jesus fed 5000 people on 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish (5 + 2 = 7). We need some understanding of Hebrew numerology to appreciate this fully. 7 is a sacred number: 7th day = Sabbath, 7th year = Sabbatical, 7th Sabbatical → Jubilee. In Hebrew numerology, 3 represents the spiritual whole (proto-Trinity), 4 represents the material whole (proto-Earth). Therefore, 3 + 4 (7) or 3 x 4 (12) = the entirety . Jesus seated the 5000 in groups of 50 (the Jubilee number) and when they had finished eating, the “scraps” filled 12 baskets (the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 signs of the Zodiac, the 12 apostles, 3 x 4). Here’s the math: (5 + 2) = 7 /5,000 = 12. So at one level at least, the Gospels are telling us that a return to the Levitical program could feed the whole world indefinitely…and still produce a surplus. But that doesn’t work for us! We prefer state socialism…or laissez-faire capitalism. Scarcity is the humus of authority after all! But back to Jesus. He’s officially on the run now. He’s effectively banished from his home town. That means he’s cut-off from family and any friends he might have once had. He’s ‘unhoused’ and has no visible means of support. He’s a vagrant and, apparently, a revolutionary. Not a good combo! Just ask any Hippie from the ‘60s. What’s an able bodied, socially outcast, homeless man in his early 30’s to do? Network, of course! Tricky without social media, but Jesus finds this is something he’s good at. In no time, he has recruited 12 men and boys (along with many of their spouses, siblings, and parents). Together they formed a sort of ‘guerilla gang’. They travelled from town to town, offering wisdom, performing good deeds, confronting the elite, challenging norms…and dodging the law. To what can I compare this lot: Robin Hood’s Mary-men , Kerouac’s Dharma Bums , Abbie Hoffman’s Yippies ? According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’ band roamed the hills of Galilee, Syria, Southern Lebanon and the East Bank for the better part of 3 years, his retinue alternately swelling to thousands and shrinking down to just the High Command (Peter, James, John & Jesus). Typical of a guerilla leader, or of a 21st century marketer, Jesus ‘popped-up’ suddenly and briefly at spots all over Northern Palestine. Jesus ‘sightings’ abound. First, he is on one side of a lake; next morning, he pops up on the opposite shore. He crisscrosses the Sea of Galilee like Washington crossed the Delaware. One minute he is in a village, next he’s on a mountain. He is alternately running from his supporters…and his opponents. And everywhere he goes, he keeps a low profile and commands those he helps to keep silent; but clearly, we can all feel it, the forces of ‘reaction’ are closing in, the noose is tightening, something will have to give and soon. So Jesus decides it’s time to make his move. Call it his Tet. An offhand remark from, who else, Peter, sets events in motion, “We here have left everything to become your followers.” The troops are growing restless. The enormity of their sacrifice is beginning to sink in. Move now or risk defections. Now! So Jesus channels Shakespeare’s Henry V…and the Book of Job ( Epilogue ): “I tell you this: there is no one who has given up home, brothers or sisters, mother, father, or children, or land, for my sake and for the Gospel, who will not receive in this age 100 times as much – houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and land - and persecutions besides; and in the age to come eternal life.” (Mark 10: 28 – 30) The next line in Mark is among my favorite in all Scripture: “There they were, on the road going up to Jerusalem, Jesus leading the way; the disciples were filled with awe, while those who followed behind were afraid.” (Mark: 10: 32) What a sight this would have been! Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters , out to save the world. Jesus is no fool; he knows what’s what and he makes sure his followers know as well: “We are now going to Jerusalem…the Son of Man will be given up to the chief priests and the doctors of the law; they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the foreign power (Rome). He will be mocked and spat upon, flogged, and killed…” (Mark 10: 33 – 34) Jesus may have been a guerilla warrior, but he was not without resources. Although his message appealed to the dispossessed, he had a cadre of well healed donors and friends among the apparatchiks. His arrival in Jerusalem was well planned – down to secret rooms, spies carrying water jugs, and the 1st century version of a ticker tape parade. Palms & Psalms! Jesus’ 3 year guerrilla campaign in the North had paid off. What happens next is well known. It constitutes Part Two of The Jesus Story ; I will not retell it here. 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 Summer 2024 Previous Next

< Back On Sukkot, the Jewish ‘Festival of Booths' Samira Mehta "Like at Passover, most Jews who celebrate Sukkot encounter it in spaces where people can honor their values, cultures or histories." Sukkot is a Jewish festival that follows right on the heels of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, Judaism’s High Holy Days. The harvest holiday, which begins on Sept. 29, 2023, lasts for seven days when celebrated in Israel and eight days when celebrated elsewhere.Like many Jewish rituals and traditions, from lighting Friday night candles to hosting Passover seders, Sukkot is primarily celebrated in the home – or rather, in the yard. Translated as the “Festival of Booths,” Sukkot is celebrated in an outdoor structure called a sukkah, which is carefully built and rebuilt each year.As a Jewish Studies scholar , much of my work looks at how diverse Jewish American identities are today. From intermarried families , to Jews of color , to Jewish communities from all over the world, there have always been a myriad of ways to be Jewish – and home-based holidays like Sukkot help people honor all these parts of their identities. Harvest Holiday Held during the autumn harvest , Sukkot likely has origins in huts that ancient farmers erected so they could sleep in the fields. Yet tradition also says that these booths represent the tents that the Israelites lived in while they wandered the desert for 40 years following the Exodus, their escape from slavery in Egypt. Some aspects of Sukkot happen in the synagogue, including special prayers and readings from the Bible. Yet the main action takes place at home, in the backyard sukkah – the singular form of the word “sukkot” in Hebrew. For Jews who observe the holiday, tradition says to start building the sukkah as soon as possible after Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement; some people even start building the structure are soon as they have broken their 25-hour fast . The makeshift walls, of which there must be at least three, can be made out of anything one wants, from pre-made walls printed with blessings said during the holiday to tablecloths or rugs. People often decorate to say something about who they are: photos of Jerusalem, quilts made by relatives. I have always imagined that, if I had a sukkah, I would use Indian tablecloths for walls, merging that piece of my heritage with my religion. The roof, however, is supposed to be made out of natural materials like palms or branches; one friend of mine likes to use cornstalks. The roof should provide shade but must allow gaps to see the stars. Those of us who do not have yards can get creative with our balconies or, like me, drop hints that they would welcome invitations to other people’s sukkot. One New Yorker friend turns her living room into a faux sukkah – you cannot see the stars, but it is filled with nature and decorations. In the United States, many families decorate their sukkot with classic elements of the American harvest season: corn husks, colorful dried ears of corn, harvest gourds and even the occasional bale of hay. In New Mexico, you sometimes see “ristras,” the decorative red strings of chiles that hang from porches. The traditional plants of Sukkot, however, are four distinct species: a citrus fruit called an etrog, and fronds of palm, myrtle and willow, which are bound together and referred to as the “lulav.” The lulav and etrog are blessed and shaken together on a daily basis throughout the festival. Our Yard, Our Holiday Beyond this, Jews are supposed to live in the sukkah for the festival, which technically means eating and sleeping there. But as with all religious holidays, individuals celebrate Sukkot in a wide variety of ways. Many Jews do not construct sukkot at all, let alone sleep in them for a week. Of those who do, some sleep every night in the sukkah; some have one night of family “camping”; others do not sleep in it at all. Many people entertain guests there: I have been to many a meal – and one graduate seminar – in sukkot all over the country. It is the fact that so much of Sukkot is held at home that accounts for the holiday’s immense flexibility. Like at Passover, most Jews who celebrate Sukkot encounter it in spaces where people can honor their values, cultures or histories. What this looks like is as diverse as the world of American Jews. For instance, for the years that I taught outside of Philadelphia, I attended a multinight open house, called “Whiskey in the Sukkot,” hosted by an interfaith couple. The Jewish wife explains that when she and her husband – a whiskey aficionado from Appalachia – got married, his thought process went: “harvest festival, grain, whiskey.” Each year, he curates a selection to share with his guests, with new offerings for each night. Accompanied by pungent cheeses and other nibbles, this festival of whiskey offered him a way to make the holiday his own. In the process, the couple created an event that welcomes their Jewish – and non-Jewish – communities. On his Afroculinaria blog , the chef, culinary historian and author Michael Twitty created a Southern harvest soup for Sukkot, which he notes uses “traditional Southern ingredients and flavors.” His soup is vegetarian, but he also offers a “trayf alternative,” meaning a version that is not kosher – a recipe that swaps out olive oil for bacon grease. Even in the most liberal Jewish settings, one cannot usually serve pork in a synagogue setting, but this is your Sukkot table. If you, like most American Jews, do not keep kosher , why not go full-on Southern in your flavors? Not everyone sees their full identity reflected on Sukkot. Emily Bowen Cowen , a cartoonist who is Jewish and Muscogee (Creek), has written a comic called “ My Sioux-kot ,” imagining what Sukkot could look like if, like many contemporary Passover celebrations, it emphasized social justice. Cohen muses on the parallels she saw between Sukkot celebrations and 2016 protests to block an oil pipeline at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota. At the time, both were events where people talked about valuing nature as sacred. Yet no one mentioned the protests in the sukkot she visited that week. Indeed, some Jews are finding ways to realize the social justice potential in the holiday. Fiber artist Heather Stoltz used a sukkah as the basis for an art exhibition called “ Temporary Shelter ,” decorating its walls with stories of unhoused New Yorkers and with art made by children staying in the city’s shelters. Perhaps the time will come when Sukkot, too, becomes infused with possibilities for a more just future. This piece has been republished in its entirety with permission from The Conversation . Samira K. Mehta's work explores the intersections of religion, culture, and gender, with a focus on family life and reproduction politics in the United States. She authored "Beyond Chrismukkah," a finalist for the National Jewish book award, and has a forthcoming book of essays titled "The Racism of People Who Love You." Her current project, "God Bless the Pill? Sexuality, Contraception, and American Religion," examines the role of Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant perspectives in moral debates about contraception, population control, and eugenics from the mid-20th century onward. Mehta is actively involved in the field, serving as co-chair of the Religions and Families in North America Seminar at the American Academy of Religion and on the steering committee of the North American Religions Program Unit. She has received fellowships from prestigious institutions and recently secured a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation for her project, "Jews of Color: Histories and Futures." Mehta holds degrees from Emory University, Harvard University, and Swarthmore College. Return to our Harvest Issue 2023 Previous Next

< Back James Bratt Contributor James Bratt is professor of history emeritus at Calvin College, specializing in American religious history and especially the connections between religion and politics. Starting in Fall 2016 he took a break from blogging on The Twelve to teach in China and on the Semester at Sea, which venues afforded him some welcome distance from the USA’s descent into its current mortal illness. But now he’s back in the States, looking for hope. His most recent book (which he edited and completed for the late John Woolverton) is “A Christian and a Democrat”: Religion in the Life and Leadership of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Growing Into Pentecost

“Don’t our morals reflect our values? Surely the concepts are at least related. Yes, they are related…they are antonyms. A value is the opposite of a moral.”  < Back Morals and Values David Cowles Apr 15, 2023 “Don’t our morals reflect our values? Surely the concepts are at least related. Yes, they are related…they are antonyms. A value is the opposite of a moral.” For most of us, our first encounter with “morality” comes through our parents (or parent figures). As we grow, we are handed ever thicker editions of the same rule book. Those who follow these rules earn the moniker “Good Kid” along with the emotional and material perks that accompany such an honorific. Those who are less compliant suffer the emotional and sometimes physical consequences of their peccadillos. What is the genealogy of morals …besides the title of a book by Friedrich Nietzsche? As children, we imagine that commandments have an objective dimension , that every command is grounded in reason, even if that reason is obscure. We accept that these norms have a transcendent origin, an absolute claim on our obedience that is beyond questioning. The Book of Job and the Book of Dad both address the same question: Is God Good or is Good God? According to my reading, Job comes down on the side of Good. God is God because he is good. Dad comes down on the aide of God. Good is good because he’s God: “Because I said so!” We are taught that the five Books of Moses (Torah) are an extension of the Book of Dad. The house rules are just an application of God’s rules. Only much later do we realize that these house rules have an overriding subjective dimension . In fact, they are primarily designed to make our parents’ lives more livable - an understandable objective, deceptively packaged and falsely advertised: Politics 101. There is also a communitarian dimension . Extended family members, neighbors and school officials have certain expectations regarding the behavior of the children they encounter. Failure to meet those expectations reflects badly on the parent, as well as on the child, and that can have its own adverse consequences. (Meet DCF.) Yet even that is not the whole picture. Rules are also intended to help children lead physically safe and socially successful lives. This is the utilitarian dimension . Wonder why we list this last? Of course, our ‘fixation on morals’ does not magically evaporate along with childhood. We are forever exhorted and expected to live moral lives. For Marx and Nietzsche, morality is imposed by elites (political, economic, and cultural elites, acting in loco parentis ) on their supposed ‘inferiors’ for the benefit of the former at the expense of the latter. Seen in this light, morality (like childhood itself) is just a slightly kinder, slightly gentler form of slavery. According to Marx and Nietzsche, morality plays the same role in macro social structures as it does in micro family structures. Its purpose is to reinforce pre-existing power structures. Might makes right! Marxist morality is concerned with the production and distribution of goods. For Nietzsche, morality comes in two flavors: ‘master-morality’ and ‘slave-morality’. Master-morality is aristocratic; it is characteristic of ancient Greece and Rome and of the Teutonic tribes of Northern Europe (among others). Slave-morality , on the other hand, is the morality of “the abused, the oppressed, the suffering, the unemancipated, the weary, and those uncertain of themselves…It is here that sympathy, the kind helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility and friendliness attain to honor.” Misplaced honor according to Nietzsche! Without morality, society is ungovernable. Morality is the membrane that separates tyranny (or democracy) from anarchy. No wonder then that moral codes are often the first target of anarchists. Without morality, families are ungovernable. Is it any wonder then that new parents often begin going to church again when their children reach ‘the age of rebellion’, oops, I meant ‘reason’. Sorry. According to Nietzsche, slave-morality is the heart and soul of Judeo-Christianity: “The wretched are alone the good; the poor, the weak, the lowly, are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who are blessed, for them alone is salvation…” Slavery violates human nature and stifles human enterprise. According to Nietzsche, so does slave-morality. “To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one’s will on a par with that of others… (is) a principle of dissolution and decay.” Sidebar : It is largely thanks to Nietzsche and Heidegger that we know and appreciate pre-Socratic philosophy as we do. It is ironic then that Nietzsche places himself squarely at odds with. Anaximander and Parmenides , the Batman and Robin of Ancient Greek ‘academics’. They hold that ‘to refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one’s will on a par with that of others…’ is the genesis of Being per se . “To put one’s will on a par with that of others,” sounds a lot like the Great Commandment. For Nietzsche, it is the Great Deception: “Life is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity…and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation…life is precisely will to power.” Nietzsche stands Marx on his head. “The noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values; he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: ‘What is injurious to me is injurious in itself;’ he knows that it is he himself only who confers honor on things; he is a creator of values. He honors whatever he recognizes in himself; such morality equals self-glorification.” Nietzsche stands Kant on his head. Whether or not you agree with Nietzsche, we are all indebted to him for showing us that the same data can support unexpectedly many interpretations. Similarly, there are many valid solutions to Einstein’s equations, some of them quite extraordinary. Nietzsche associates the modern concepts of ‘freedom, progress, and the future’ with slave-morality. For Nietzsche, aristocracy is not an aspect of society; it is the purpose of society. “Society is not allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as a foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties and in general to a higher existence…” Nietzsche identifies us with our acts: “And just exactly as the people separate the lightening from its flash…so also does the popular morality separate strength from the expression of strength, as though behind the strong man (sic) there existed some indifferent neutral substratum, which enjoyed a caprice and option as to whether or not it should express strength. But there is no such substratum, there is no ‘being’ behind doing…’the doer’ is a mere appanage to the action. The action is everything.” I am what I do! So morals are subjective, utilitarian, and culturally relative. Different cultures, different nations, different classes, different families will promulgate different moral codes, reflective of their unique power structures. Values, on the other hand, are universal! Beauty, Truth, Justice - they apply in every possible family, culture, nation, or universe. They may be expressed differently at different places and times, but the core values themselves never change. They are synonymous with Being itself. Morals are active voice imperatives; values are middle voice . Morality imposes order; values distill it. Morality compels virtue; values incent it. Values guide behavior, morals restrict it. As events evolve, values bloom and morals wither. Nietzsche uses ‘morals’ and ‘values’ interchangeably (see above). He has to! He correctly understands that values, to the extent that they are distinct from morals, must have a transcendent basis. But his ontology does not admit transcendence (“God is dead”), so all he can do is reduce values to the level of morals and make the ‘noble man’ arbiter of both. “There exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole…but nothing exists apart from the whole.” It is a poor solution…and Nietzsche could not be more wrong! Values are precisely the basis on which one can judge, measure, compare, and condemn. According to the Book of Job , even God must answer to Value. Yet I suspect many readers will agree with Nietzsche: Don’t our morals reflect our values? Surely the concepts are at least related. Yes, they are related…they are antonyms ! A value is the opposite of a moral. Morals emerge after the fact to reinforce or discourage patterns of behavior that have already occurred. If no one had ever stolen, there’d be no 7 th Commandment. Morals are reactionary. They impede innovation, they tenaciously conserve what is at the expense of what might be, they hinder the eruption of novelty. Values, on the other hand, are the sole source of all novelty. Therefore by definition, values must precede events (to be an ‘event’ is to be ‘novel’). They are revolutionary. Being is novelty; what else could it be? Therefore, Value is the principle of Being…and Morality? Well, that’s the principle of something else… Both morals and values react to the status quo. Moral-consciousness perceives what is ‘good’ in the world and seeks to preserve it; that’s ok, but value-consciousness perceives what is lacking in the world and seeks to create it. Robert Kennedy said, “I dream of things that never were and ask, ‘Why not?’.” Moralists say, “I dream of things that never were and say, ‘Thank God’! While morals (even Marxist morals) are inherently conservative, values are revolutionary. Morals reinforce the status quo; values undermine and ultimately overthrow that status quo. Morals embody the longing for stability; values embody the urge to change. Morals reflect the instinct for survival; values stimulate creativity. But this is problematic. Our world consists solely of events. So what could be logically precedent to events? Only something that transcends those events. The phenomenon of Value, if real, demonstrates the reality of transcendence. That’s why Nietzsche, ever true to his beliefs, had to deny the real existence of values, even after acknowledging their potential importance and power. The existence of Value proves that there is something “beyond” the spatiotemporal universe, something that undergirds it, something that is not contingent or transient but necessary and transcendent. Of course, folks will disagree wildly about the application of values in any concrete situation. That doesn’t matter; what matters is that their disagreement is grounded in a common conception of ‘the Good’ (Value). Of course, in Judeo-Christian ontology, that Good is God. Justice requires that folks enjoy the fruits of their labors (property) but it also imposes an obligation to care for the poor (John Paul II). It requires the protection of life, limb, and property, but it also imposes an obligation to be fair-dealing and generous. No wonder Justice is often depicted as a balance scale! What about the primary source of Morals and Values in Western culture? Of course, I’m referring to the Bible. The Old Testament reflects both moral-consciousness and value-consciousness. The 613 precepts of Torah are primarily concerned with morality. The Book of Job , on the other hand, catalogues in the minute detail of a legal brief the triumph of value-consciousness over moral-consciousness. Joshua bases his pitch to the disenfranchised residents of Jericho on the Value of socio-economic Justice. His triumph ushers in the Reign of Judges, when Israel was an Anarcho-Theocracy, and “everyone did what was right in their own mind” (Judges 21: 25), guided by Value. After Judges came Kings and the Psalms. A psalm is a celebration of Value! To pray the Psalms is to conform one’s mind to the mind of God, and the mind of God is Value Consciousness, pure and unadulterated. And the New Testament? Nietzsche read the New Testament as a veritable ‘manifesto’ of slave-morality. Again, he was wrong! One could argue in fact that the primary project of the New Testament is to substitute value-consciousness, based on the life of Jesus, for all forms of moral-consciousness, secular as well as religious. Image: Nietzsche in Basel, Switzerland, c. 1875. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back God Calling! David Cowles Jul 12, 2022 “I wrote the answers to life’s riddles on the cuffs of your shirts, and I encouraged you to cheat. And still…” God has something he’d like to get off his chest…and you’re not going to like it. Suffice to say, he’s not a happy camper! And who can blame him? What a mess! But that’s another subject for another day. We’ve got more than enough on our plates right now…and heeeeeere’s God: “I created heaven-and-earth (cosmos) and I endowed it (endowed you, homo sapiens ) with freedom, reason, and conscience. In your early days, I walked with you and gave you counsel. Later, when you had fallen under Pharoah’s yoke, I freed you from the bonds of slavery and husbanded you from Egypt to Canaan, the Promised Land. “I gave you 611 statutes designed to give you strength, health, long life, fertility, and prosperity and I guar….an….teed the results! 611 statutes. Wait, did I say 611? I’m sorry, I misspoke, hope I didn’t give you a heart attack; I meant to say two. To make things easier for you, I took the 611 statutes and added two more; but these two summarize the other 611. (Torah: 611 + 2 = 613) “I made a covenant with you (‘I will be your God and you will be my people’, Gen. 17: 7) and I reiterated that commitment on a number of occasions, all documented in scripture. “I might have expected that this would have been enough for you, but I know how weak free beings can be. I had a bad experience once before. Remember Lucifer, the ‘Light Bearer,’ my greatest creation, before you. Look at him now! Or don’t. At last report, he was hanging upside down, encased in a block of ice, at the nadir of Hell (check with Dante, Inferno ). I was determined that that would not happen to you! “So, I left study aids for you that even you could not ignore…and I don’t mean Cliffs Notes . I wanted to be sure that I would be in your face 24/7/365. Don’t worry; it’s for your own good. You’ll thank me later. “I wrote my will across the sky (cosmos), and I made sure that every entity within the cosmos reflected that cosmos (check with Leibniz, Monadology ). I encoded my will in the ‘signatures of all things I am (you are) here to read’ (check with Joyce, Ulysses ). And I embedded a copy of my will deep within your hearts (check with David, Psalms ). “So, who needs Cliffs Notes? I wrote the answers to life’s riddles on the cuffs of your shirts, and I encouraged you to cheat… “And yet…” Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine ( ATM) . To never miss another Thought, choose the subscribe option below. Also, follow us on any one of our social media channels for the latest news from ATM. Thanks for reading! Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Paul Gauguin Was Wrong David Cowles Jun 20, 2024 “Within a work of art, there is no space or time. There is no sequence. The work is a whole, a quantum; it cannot be vivisected.” Paul Gaugin believed that art did not stop at the edge of a canvas. For him, the frame was part of the work itself, as was the broader exhibition environment. Gauguin’s proposals blur the boundary between ‘natural beauty’ and ‘artistic beauty’, but he may be forgiven. Beauty is beauty after all. That said, the transcendental value we call ‘Beauty’ inheres in different materials in different ways. Nature and art can both be beautiful, but they are beautiful differently - a distinction that deserves to be respected. In the Arnold Arboretum (Jamaica Plain, Boston), there is a tree we call The Merlin Tree : stately, complex, beautiful. And the artist? No, not God, at least not directly. The artist is Nature itself, aka the Cosmos. How so? What I lovingly know as Merlin is the product of a single DNA molecule (seed) which in turn is the product of 4 billion years of evolution. There’s a lot of history in those limbs. But that’s only half the story. Merlin is also the product of its environment. From its hillside vantage, Merlin is shaped by the contents of the soil, the frequency of rain, the strength of sunlight, the velocity of wind, the weight of snow, the character and intensity of cosmic radiation, etc. Ultimately, Merlin is the product of the tree’s own generative impulse interacting with the push-and-pulls of its environment. It is a product of the Universe recursively interacting with itself. As such, it is sui generis . Sidebar : What manner of thing is Nature that Beauty inherits in it? In everyone’s life there are times when the physical world seems enchanted . Colors are brighter. Buildings radiate light, like icons, instead of absorbing or reflecting it. No, you’re not having a stroke! This is the way the world actually is , even though you experience it this way only in maddeningly brief bursts. Want to experience this enchantment more often and for longer periods? No problem! Just fall in love. Or heed Jesus’ advice and ‘become again as a little child’ (Mt. 18: 3). Or read Ulysses . All trees are beautiful, but not equally so, and not all in the same way. The sensible features of Merlin reflect natural forces; the Beauty that those features reveal does not. Beauty is not a function of Nature; it is the immanence of the Transcendent. Beauty, Truth, and Justice are Transcendent Values. They owe their being to a higher power. Make no mistake, “a kiss is just a kiss,” and a tree is just a tree, but ‘the beauty’ of the tree does not reside in the tree itself. It is a function of the tree’s participation in the Universe and the participation of the Transcendent in the tree. Joyce Kilmer nailed it! Well, half of it. He wrote, “Only God can make a tree.” A tree, and everything else we see in Nature, is ultimately an expression of the entirety. It takes a Cosmos to raise a twig! It is unclear where a tree ends and its environment begins: the leaves, the rain drops that cling to its leaves, the glint of sunlight off those leaves, the parasites that chew the leaves, the symbionts that protect the leaves, the breeze that ruffles the leaves, the gales that strip the leaves; the roots, the fungi that grow alongside those roots, the ‘wood wide web’ formed by those fungi, mediating communication between trees in a forest. Nature is like Pand o. . Everything in nature is connected to everything else so that each thing is ultimately an expression of the whole – a highly focused, massively non-linear expression. Art is a totally different kettle of fish! First, any work of art is a rupture in the fabric of Spacetime. Art is ‘no space’ amid space, ‘no time’ within time; and within a work of art, there is no space or time. There is no sequence. The work is a whole, a quantum; it cannot be vivisected. Of course, the work depends on canvas and paint. These things are in the physical world and they do occupy a region of spacetime. But they are not the work of art itself. The artist transubstantiates those materials into a pattern that transcends its material substructure. Is the word ‘transubstantiate’ out of place here? Perhaps. The paint and the canvas do still enjoy a physical existence…from certain perspectives. But from the perspective of the art itself, they do not. They are merely ‘the appearance’ under which the ‘substance’ of the work, the pattern, is revealed. Conceivably, the artist could have used any tube of ochre to produce the same image. Or the same tube of ochre could have been used to make innumerable other paintings. While not fully analogic, the paint and canvas do play a role in art somewhat similar to the role played by bread and wine in the Eucharist. A work of art is entirely self-contained. It needs a frame just for that reason. There can be no ambiguity re where one ‘world’ ends and another begins. A work of art must be finite so that it can reveal the infinite. Gaugin was proposing that works of art have only limited autonomy from their environments. At the material level this is true, but not at the conceptual level. A painting has nothing to do with its frame. (The same painting is often reframed many times.) Ideally, a work of art is entirely unaffected by the environment in which it is exhibited. Just listen to Dr. Seuss: “I do not like them in a house, I do not like them with a mouse, I do not like them here or there, I do not like them anywhere, I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them, Sam-i-am.” Image: Paul Gauguin, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?, 1897–1898, Oil on canvas, Post Impressionism, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

“There is only one I am, shared by YHWH and Jesus…and me…and you…and Rene Descartes (…ergo sum).” < Back The Ship of Theseus David Cowles Jul 15, 2023 “There is only one I am, shared by YHWH and Jesus…and me…and you…and Rene Descartes (…ergo sum).” It’s one of philosophy’s oldest riddles. Time and tide being what they are, the Ship of Theseus requires constant maintenance, and sometimes that maintenance requires us to replace rotten wooden planks with fresh lumber. At some point, presumably, none of the original wood will remain. Is the vessel then still the Ship of Theseus ? Or is it now a brand-new vessel? If the latter, at what point in the gradual replacement process did the Ship of Theseus cease to be the Ship of Theseus ? When the first board was replaced? When the last of the old boards was removed? Or at some arbitrary tipping point (e.g., when original material constituted less than 50% of the entirety)? Of course, the standard ‘solution’ is to say that the ‘Ship of Theseus’ is the vessel’s pattern (its Platonic form), not its materials. But this raises a new problem: we can build a dozen copies of the original Ship of Theseus, and the original and its copies will all share the same form. Must we then say that they are all the Ship of Theseus ? If so, then we have converted a proper noun (‘Ship of Theseus’) into a common noun (‘ship of Theseus’); what would Sister Margaret have said about that? But this is not just a matter of grammar! By converting ‘Ship of Theseus’ to ‘ship of Theseus’ we have moved from a unique, discrete, material object to something immaterial and conceptual, i.e., to a ‘class of objects’ (whatever that may mean). In other words, ‘Ship of Theseus’ and ‘ship of Theseus’ are even less alike ontologically than they are grammatically. Not to put too fine a point on it, but they have nothing to do with one another! Perhaps a problem shrouded in the mists of mythological time isn’t compelling your interest. How about something closer to home then? How about your precious body, yup, that body - the one you build on weekdays at the gym and polish on weekends at the spa? That body is made up of more than 30 trillion living cells, virtually none of which you’re directly aware of. These cells have an average life expectancy of 7 years. Therefore, your body, like the Ship of Theseus , is undergoing perpetual replacement. So then, when are ‘you’ no longer you ? Another problem. You were conceived at the fertilization of one ovum by one sperm cell. One particular ovum, one particular sperm. That’s you …sort of. But what if the same act of intercourse between the same two partners (your biological parents) resulted in the fertilization of a different ovum by the same sperm cell, or the same ovum by a different sperm cell, or a different ovum by a different sperm cell? Would ‘you’ still be you ? Or would you be the sibling of the person you otherwise might have been? Dizzying! And we’re just getting started. Whoever you are, you have millions of virtual siblings (potential combinations of sex cells from the same two partners) and maybe a handful of actual siblings. However much you may share traits with these siblings, virtual and actual, the truth is that you’re not the slightest bit like any of them. You are you, and they are they; you’re not they and they’re not you. The ontological gap between you and your sibling, even your identical twin, is well, not to exaggerate but… it’s infinite. And don’t get me started on astrology? What if you’d been conceived a minute earlier…or a minute later? What if Mercury just went retrograde? Who and what would you be then ? Obviously, this is an unsatisfactory situation. It results in a proliferation of entities that would make even Ptolemy uncomfortable, not to mention William of Ockham – you know William, lead vocalist for the heavy metal band, Occam’s Razor ? The alternative is to accept the uncomfortable conclusion that each human individual is a unique, emergent phenomenon, ontologically unrelated to any other phenomena, actual or potential, no matter how apparently similar they may be. But this ‘solution’ has its own issues. I am looking out at the audience during a lecture I’m giving when I notice that about half a dozen of the folks are, like me, a bit on the ‘plump’ side. I am tempted to say that ‘plumpness’ is an attribute we share but that would be wrong. Each of us is plump in his or her own way. Plumpness in me is unrelated to plumpness in you. My doctor has just put me on a strict ‘heart healthy’ diet while you’re carbo-loading for a part you’re playing in an upcoming film. It is thanks to human rationality and ‘the language tool’ that a concept like ‘plumpness’ can be abstracted from a handful of unrelated phenomena to become the description of a certain imaginary class of objects. In fact, each of us is what we are, as we are, i.e., in our own ways. Phenomena (parts) derive their meaning from phenomenon (the whole). You and I both have a small dark spot on our left cheek. For one of us, it’s a cosmetic beauty mark added by a beautician during a recent spa visit; for the other, it’s melanoma. Something has meaning only in reference to something else. Therefore, any whole, considered in isolation, is meaningless. The parts of that whole, however, do have meaning, first with respect to the whole, then with respect to each of the other parts of that whole. An entity, any entity, is an information matrix. “It from bit.” (Wheeler) Wholes seem to be made up of interchangeable parts, but the meaning of each such part is entirely determined by the unique whole to which it contributes. Therefore, no two parts, no two wholes, are ever identical or interchangeable. Peeling away the layers of this onion is tough work for a sensitive guy. Tears are already streaming down my cheeks, and I have one more, crucial layer left to peel: If you and I have no parts in common, then there are no parameters according to which we can be compared. “Why can’t you be more like your sister?” is not a thing after all! You are you, and she is she; the two of you are neither alike nor unalike. Like implies comparability and you two are, believe me, ‘incomparable’. “I am what I am, and that’s all that I am.” ( Popeye ) Likewise, you are what you are, and that’s all that you are. You are not ‘like me’, nor are you ‘different from me’. We are ourselves alone. But the caterpillar, as always, must have the final word, “Who R U?” Because ‘what you are’ and ‘what I am’ have no axes of comparison, ‘who you are’ and ‘who I am’ must be the same thing. It’s just ‘who is’. In the Book of Exodus, YHWH says, “I am.” Who or what? “I am who am.” (Exodus 3:14) The Gospel of John echoes Exodus, but this time it is Jesus speaking, “I am.” Again, no predicate! John’s point, of course, is that the ‘am-ness’ of YHWH and the ‘am-ness’ of Jesus are one and the same. There is only one I am , shared by YHWH and Jesus…and me…and you…and René Descartes (… ergo sum ). Because none of us has any ‘identity’ per se , we are all merely manifestations of a single process – the process that recognizes potential ‘parts’ and uses them to build novel ‘wholes’. We are children turned loose in a junkyard, looking for parts we can use to make a soap-box for an upcoming derby. No two wholes are the same, no matter how similar they may look; neither are any two parts. But the process by which parts become wholes is unitary…and universal. So ‘me being me’ and ‘you being you’ are one and the same thing; even though (actually, because ) ‘what I am’ and ‘what you are’ have no axes of comparability. So questions like, ‘would you be the same person if…?’ have no meaning. Who you are is immutable…and coincident with Being itself; what you are is entirely contingent. You are who you are regardless of what you are. This is why you can never escape yourself, no matter what you may make of that self. But who you are is neant (Sartre). Who you are is not-being what you are. You are process, the perpetual process of not being what you are, of coming to be what you are not. Perpetual, of course, because you never reach your goal: you never become what you are or what you are not. In the words of the pre-Socratics, who you are is Aletheia (Parmenides), timeless and featureless. What you are is Panta Rei (Heraclitus), ‘everything flows’. “Life is difficult” (Scott Peck). You are not God. Being terrifies you; you are in free fall. Your arms flail as you reach for a handhold to break your fall; there is none. The underside of life is your perpetual effort to bury who you are in what you are: “I’m a big boy now, I’m in middle school, I’m a teenager, I’m in college, I have a career, I’m someone’s significant other, I’m a parent, I’m on the Board of Selectmen (sic), I’m a grandparent, I’m retired, I’m at rest (Rabbit)…I am dust.” What you are is always just exactly what you are, but it is never who you are! You are not like anyone else; you are everyone else. Image: A Fresco from Pompeii depicting Theseus and Ariadne escaping from Crete. According to Plutarch, the Athenians preserved the ship that Theseus used to escape, by replacing the parts one by one as they decayed. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Beach Read 2023 Table of Contents Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Who am I? I’m Jean Valjean… David Cowles Dec 5, 2024 “…a Quantum of Being.” In England, I’m Claire Sinclair; in Russia, I’m Ivan Ivanov; in Sicily, Nemo; in France, Jean Valjean. In other words I am a Quantum of Being (QB) …wherever and whenever. As such I am simple, I am inert, the same at the hour of my death as at the moment of my conception, the same at 80 as at 8. I cannot be divided into parts, displayed as aspects, or reduced to qualia ; I am the Aletheia behind all that crazy Doxa . Everything about me changes: my environment, my personality, my behavior, my appearance; even the cells that make up my body recycle every 7 years or so. “I seem to be a verb” (R. B. Fuller), but through all this, I never change . There’s nothing to change! ( Not that I’m perfect, mind you.) There’s nothing to change because there’s nothing that is subject to change, nothing changeable. Assuming that you are real, and my ontological equal, there’s no reason to doubt that you too are a Quantum of Being. We saw (above) that a QB has no hair! (Hawking? Kojak?), no qualia , nothing to distinguish one QB from another. My QB constitutes an identity: QB 8 = QB 80; not just an equivalence, an identity! Same goes for you, I’m sure, but let’s go further. My QB 80 is my QB 8 and vice versa. There is only one UB Me. Same for you, right? Then why shouldn’t my QB 8 and your QB 8 also constitute an identity? “R U Mad? I is me and you is you, end of! You are not me; in philosophy you are known quite simply as ‘the other’ (reminds me of an episode from Lost ).” Imagine yourself as a singularity…wait, you are a singularity. What you ‘are’ sits on your ‘event horizon’. Believe me, I’m looking at it and it’s one hairy mess! Don’t they have barbers, excuse me ‘scalp sculptors’, where you come from? But that’s outside of you. You are the undifferentiated, hairless ‘black hole’ beneath that horizon. Beyond our respective horizons, we have not a mote of dust in common; inside those horizons we are indistinguishable and what is indistinguishable is identical (i.e. constitutes an identity). My ontological equals are all singularities with unique mops of hair covering a single featureless interior (Quantum of Being). So, your QB and my QB are one and the same QB. In fact, there is only one QB though it is shared by innumerable entities. “Ridiculous! You were born in the castle, a prince of the realm; I was born a slave in your fields. You were raised on quail eggs and poached salmon; I was raised on a root broth and some gruel.” But none of this has anything to do with us, with what or who we are! Let’s play Prince & Pauper (not really playing) except that we change places every night. Who is the real prince, who is the real slave? After a certain period of time, they become two roles played by a single person. One of the many errors of the Enlightenment was the idea that we are what we experience. Hence, genetics, nutrition, psychology, even travel. A whole generation was raised on the meme, “You are what you eat!” – it’s in the running for MLP honors (‘Most Ludicrous Proposition’). You are not your circumstances. You are not the accidental things that happen to you throughout your life. You are not what you eat! On the contrary, you sh*t what you eat; what you eat is precisely what you are not . To eat is to incorporate the ‘other’ into yourself, and at the other end of the line, you graciously return the ‘other’, albeit modified, to its natural habitat. Jesus said it best, didn’t he? (He usually does.) “It is not what goes into a person’s mouth (food) that defiles them, but what comes out (speech).” (Matt. 15: 11) We’ve got everything backwards, don’t we? (We usually do.) Nothing you experience is you. If you were what you experienced, you would not be there to experience it. ‘Experience’ requires differánce (Derrida). A quantum of difference. Identity is the complete absence of differánce . So your QB and my QB are one and the same QB. What about your pet monkey and my pig? Do they have Quanta of Being? Do they have identity? Do they experience ? Of course they do! And now for the question we’ve been avoiding, and you’ve been anticipating, drum roll please: “If your QB and my QB are the same and if pigs and monkeys also have Quanta of Being, do they share a common QB and, if so, is that the same QB that you and I share?” Nothing’s more fun than London on election night. At 10PM sharp, the neon signs in Piccadilly Circus go dark…and immediately relight with a single number flashing over and over again (red or blue) on a screen. It’s the number of seats the winning party will have in the new Parliament. This is like that! Do you share QB in common with my pig? YES! YES! YES! I mean what else could the answer be. A QB has no hair so there’s nothing that allows us to distinguish one QB from another. There can only be one QB because every possible QB must be identical to every other QB. So, “QB or not QB, that is the question.” (Come on, be honest, you knew that was coming, didn’t you?) So you and I have a complex relationship. On the level of pour soi , you and I share a common QB – we are identical. On the level of en soi , we have nothing whatsoever in common. We share nothing; we are pathologically distinct, strangers in the night. It is the intersection of identity and difference that gives rise to what we call society and taxonomy and it is what constitutes solidarity! Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back The Leading Player of Memories Annie D. Stutley Maybe that’s what Judy Garland meant in “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” when she sang “we’ll have to muddle through somehow?” Growing up, I always looked forward to coming home from church with Grandpa. As we walked up the back steps of our house in Bay St. Louis, Miss., Grandpa would say in his booming voice, “Annie, you were so good in church today that I deserve a milk punch.” Soon the smell of bourbon and nutmeg would fill the porte cochère, the little room off the kitchen where Grandpa would blend his post-religious cordial, pouring out a kid-sized portion for me. I’d pucker my lips to suck up the frothy cap of milk floating on top and relish the simple Sunday ritual. All was well in my world where Grandpas were reassuringly predictable. I have taken to the occasional post Mass sarcasm with my own children. There’s something warm about traditions. We don’t always know quite how they began, but as the world spins around us, they are our constants, beacons of comfort, ready to wrap us in their arms and remind us that all is still well. Most of us have holiday traditions we anticipate as the calendar rolls into December. My cousins in Lake Charles look for a gold pickle hidden in the evergreen of the Christmas tree. My neighbor spends a full Friday from lunch to supper gallivanting through soufflé potatoes and French 75’s with friends in the front room at New Orleans’ famed Galatoire’s Restaurant. When my husband was a child, every holiday season they baked homemade ornaments from clay and painted them. Most of the cutouts were badly altered in the hot oven, creating timeless characters like Sweaty Angel, whose wings were too small and too fat, morphed from the steam. Only copious sweat and divine intervention could allow the aerodynamic Christmas miracle that would get her off the ground. Then there was Black-Eyed Bart, the fear-inducing Santa ornament whose eyes were black as pitch and whose red painted lips dribbled down his chin. My husband recalls the jubilation that would fill his living room when these ornaments were unpacked from ten months of attic hibernation each year – as anticipated as opening presents on Christmas Day. Growing up, my family celebrated two Christmases, one with our nuclear family of seven and another over New Year’s weekend back in Bay St. Louis with Grandma, Grandpa, and all our cousins. The first Christmas was for Santa and his magic. The latter was for the predictable magic: Grandpa’s scavenger hunt clues through the big drafty house leading to our Christmas checks and Pop’s notorious poems on the rest of the presents. My father knew the secret to a healthy sense of self: laugh at yourself first, and the rest will laugh with you, not at you. During second Christmas he exercised this through verse written on the outside of our presents. His poems were supposed to be clues, but more times than not, they only made sense to him. That was the best part – seeing Pop chuckle at his own expense, standing before the twinkling lights of the tree in his red shirt, ready to hand out the next gift, while the receiver of the previous gift scratched their head, trying to connect the words of Pop’s poem to what they’d just unwrapped. There came a time when I began to save all these poems. Something told me that someday, maybe sooner than I feared, the predictability of Christmas poems would be gone and the poem itself would be more valuable than anything Pop bought me. As much as I find comfort in what is expected of rituals and traditions, I’m also energized by the unexpected. There’s promise in the unknown because the future has not been determined. I’ve always had this feeling that something great “is just around the corner.” But my first holiday season after Pop died – the first gift exchange without Pop’s poems, without that glint in his eye, without seeing him laugh at his own buffoonery – I entered Advent with a lump in my throat, paralyzed by the unexpected. Where would the silliness stem from now that our Leading Player had finished his run? Sweaty Angel and Black-Eyed Bart came from my mother-in-law’s annual effort to mix clay and gather everyone around the table for messy memories. My cousins’ pickle hunt is the result of keeping the same date on the calendar every year (Pickle Night), and Pop’s poems only happened because he took the time to make them happen, and because he was exceedingly generous with his sense of self. Eventually, however, it’s not just the tradition itself that’s passed down. It’s the responsibility to creating memories. When a new actor steps into an established role, preceded by a long-running fan favorite, the new actor has to make that role their own. Otherwise, the performance is trite. Nothing breaks the fourth wall like seeing a performer reach. In the same way, when we become the keepers of the keys formerly held by our ancestors, we have to do the best we can with the script we’ve been given. We can’t keep what was entirely, but that doesn’t mean that run has to stop. They set the scene, our parents and. before them, our grandparents, but eventually, it’s our turn. We may not follow through with the same flair, but we keep the story going. We may even spin off toward new traditions, new predictability of the season, building upon the family catalog of memories. Maybe that’s what Judy Garland meant in “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” when she sang “we’ll have to muddle through somehow?” We take what we’ve been given, and we serve the role of the Leading Player (not the traditions), keeping our motivation on what matters most: transporting those in our audience (our siblings, kids, and grandkids) to that timeless, childlike place where the joy of the season is felt most. Somewhere in that first Christmas after Pop died, I realized that the silliness of the season was mine to lose. I was destined for the role of Memory Maker, Leading Player of Christmas, the instant I first laughed at those who came before me. Because long ago in those moments of unhinged joy, kept safe in the catalog of my most treasured memories, my heart bursting with love for Pop, Grandpa, Mama – all my life’s Leading Players, I knew the feeling would last and that when it was my turn, I’d want to keep the laughter going. Because just as Pop knew, laughter is best shared. Annie D. Stutley lives and writes in New Orleans, La. She edits several small publications and contributes to various print and online magazines. Her blog, " That Time You, " was ranked in the Top 100 Blogs by FeedSpot. To read more of her work, go to her website , or follow her at @anniedstutley or Annie D. Stutley-writer on Facebook. Previous Next

< Back A Brief History of Motion “Zeno exploited the continuity of Real Numbers to show…that motion is incompatible with Arithmetic.” David Cowles Motion. We take it for granted. Today, we are all card carrying followers of Heraclitus: ‘everything flows’, ‘change is the only constant’, ‘this too shall pass’, etc. It is surprising then to recall that ‘motion’ per se was once a hot topic of debate among philosophers and scientists; they struggled just to account for it. You see the 5th century BCE Greek philosopher, Zeno of Elea, had concocted 5 so-called ‘paradoxes’, reductio ad absurdum proofs, demonstrating that motion is impossible. Not surprisingly, philosophers since Zeno have been at great pains to prove him wrong; but ultimately their efforts have failed. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1250 CE) was perhaps a ‘closet Eleatic’. Unwilling to sacrifice the concept of motion, but also unwilling to reject Zeno dishonestly, invoked the hand of God to solve the dilemma. Aquinas found it necessary to posit the existence of an Unmoved Mover to account for motion. Without God, Aquinas’ universe would have been static - Heraclitus’ famous river would be frozen solid with predictably devastating consequences for its inhabitants, i.e. us. Today, we no longer feel the need for an Unmoved Mover. In fact, we don’t feel any need at all to account for motion. It just is. It’s the nature of things: they move. ‘To move’ is part of what it means ‘to be’. But the popular notion of a universe where everything is buzzing around all the time, like in an episode of the Jetsons , also turns out to be something of an over-simplification. But that’s for another day. In the 5th century BCE, Zeno of Elea came up with a series of paradoxes that apparently prove the impossibility of any motion whatsoever. To the everlasting shame of his critics, his logic is unassailable; but the pill that comes with that logic is a bitter one for us to swallow. How can I deny the reality of motion when I am rushing headlong to catch a flight to Athens? For 2500 years, philosophers have been selling their souls to combat Zeno and rescue motion. They have pretended to find flaws in Zeno’s reasoning where there are none. But that emperor wears no clothes, and a few thinkers at the apex of Western philosophy have bravely acknowledged both the obvious reality of motion and the incontrovertible validity of Zeno’s arguments. In the 20th century, two leading lights of British philosophy, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, rescued Zeno…without denying the reality of motion. These two thinkers set out to construct a coherent system for all Mathematics. In the course of their work they discovered several previously unnoticed anomalies (e.g. ‘the set of all sets’). One such discovery brought them back to Zeno. Zeno’s arguments assume the validity of ordinary, everyday, elementary school arithmetic. When that system failed to account for the phenomenon of motion, Russell and Whitehead did the brave thing: they concluded, not that motion was impossible, but that the axioms of arithmetic were ‘wrong’. Motion and arithmetic are incompatible, something every 3rd grader knows intuitively. Unlike their predecessors, Russell and Whitehead were willing to sacrifice arithmetic rather than motion. That’s why so many elementary school students wear T-shirts with Whitehead’s image on the front. Mathematicians and philosophers had devoted 2500 years to attacking Zeno, implicitly defending arithmetic in the process. Russell and Whitehead concluded that the axioms of arithmetic, especially the Axiom of Completeness, were inadequate to model events in the real world. What’s the problem? Well, remember the Real Number Line? It’s a continuous sequence of infinitesimal points. We do all our adding and subtracting on the number line; it’s the substructure of Arithmetic. The arithmetic model rests on the continuity of real numbers; but the real world is not continuous! It’s lumpy, like grandma’s mashed potatoes. As far back as the 4th century BCE a minority of thinkers (e.g. Democritus) advocated an atomic (or quantum) model of reality. It was once thought that Newton and Leibniz, co-inventors of Calculus, had stuck shivs in Zeno and Democritus on their way to the prison commissary. Rumors of Zeno’s demise swept across the ‘yard’, but they were only rumors. Zeno is alive and well, albeit still keeping a low profile. Bertrand Russell pointed out that Calculus did not defeat Zeno but bolstered him. Calculus is a mathematical tool that allows us to treat discontinuity as if it were continuous. As such, it purports to extend arithmetic’s domain but in fact it is acknowledgement of the fundamental discontinuity of the real world events it seeks to model. What Newton and Leibniz imagined to be the checkered flag of victory turned out to be the white flag of surrender. It was they, not Achilles, who lost the race. Looking back, we now see that Max Planck (1900 CE) proved, once and for all, that the real world is discontinuous (quantized); but the cosmology of Quantum Mechanics traces all the way back to Democritus and ultimately to Zeno. Zeno exploited the continuity of Real Numbers to show that the great Achilles could never catch up to a common tortoise in a road race, that an arrow shot into the air could never reach its target, that no motion whatsoever is possible in a world governed by Arithmetic. For millennia, philosophers, beginning with Plato, thought that Zeno had genuinely denied the actuality of motion. But that was never his point. Zeno meant to prove that motion is incompatible with Arithmetic, and he succeeded! 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