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< Back Good God Too David Cowles Oct 4, 2025 “Where once I was judged by the standard of the Decalogue, now I judge the Decalogue by my standards.” Once upon a time, we defined ‘being good’ in terms of an external metric like the Ten Commandments, or the 613 mitzvah of Torah, or the precedents of English Common Law, or the Rules dad just posted on the refrigerator door. ‘Good’ was a function of Rules, Rules a function of Authority, and Authority a function of Divine Right. Once upon a time… Now we determine for ourselves what is Good, and we use that determination to regulate our conduct and ultimately, to define our God . God no longer offers standards for us to meet (“Love one another”), now we impose our standards on God (“Do this for me”). Where once I was judged by the standard of the Decalogue , now I judge the Decalogue by my standards. When I say something is ‘good’, I mean that I would like it to be so. It’s how I’d like things to be: ‘a good job, a good marriage, good children, etc.’ It may or may not be so or, very likely, it may be so but only imperfectly or in part; but to whatever extent it is so, it is good . To be is to be good! What is not good, to the extent that it is not good, simply is not . Of course, many things seem to mix good and bad parts or aspects…but that is an illusion! Such ‘things’ are just incomplete . (They avoided military service; they failed to be all that they could be.) Example : A glass of milk turns sour. Now it is less perfectly ‘milk’ than it was before. It has lost one of the defining characteristics of ‘milk’, namely, its refreshing drinkability. Of course, it is still a liquid; it retains those attributes. But as ‘milk’, it is less good than it was before, and therefore it is ‘less milk’ than it was. Its ‘milkness’ is incomplete. I know, crazy…but makes sense. Evil is privatio boni - a privation or absence of good, much like darkness is the absence of light or cold the absence of heat. Evil is Good, unrealized! They say there’s no such thing as a ‘bad boy’ and they’re right! But I’ve known my share of ragazzi who were ‘insufficiently virtuous’. In fact, I think Sister Mary Martha wrote that very phrase at the bottom of my 3rd grade report card. (P.S. It was not well received by my overlords!) If this seems like an arcane distinction, it isn’t. It’s a crucial tenet of Christian ontology, dating back at least as far as Augustine (c. 500 CE). It is part of what distinguishes monotheism from gnostic dualism. Of course, we still use the word, ‘evil’: “Deliver us from evil!” But evil in this context refers to sin, entropy and death: privationes boni. Some translations of the Lord’s Prayer replace ‘evil’ with ‘the evil one’ (or Satan). But even here, ‘Satan’ needs to be understood as Being’s template or shadow, not as an Actual Entity in his own right. Without God, there is no Satan! There is no such thing as Evil per se ; it does not exist because to be is to be good. Nothing is bad per se . “Everything is beautiful in its own way,” (Ray Stevens) and all things are bright and beautiful…to the extent they are at all. Admittedly, this is an unfamiliar way to view the world. We love black and white; we hate grey. (Or is it that we love grey and hate black and white?) We love to put labels on things so that we can relativize them and contextualize them down the road. God is Good. Good is God’s essence; it’s what God is. Good is who God is. Good is what God does. According to Sartre…and Job ... God's essence (Good) precedes (logically only) his existence. God is Good. It’s hard to imagine otherwise. And yet, for that very reason, knowing that God is good is not very helpful. It only matters if we know what constitutes Good . And where might we find such knowledge? Perhaps it was revealed by God in Torah or the Gospels…but note the circular reasoning. Or, as noted above, defining Good may be up to us after all. But how? Perhaps we are endowed by God with souls that have an innate sense of Good…but that too would be circular. Or maybe an innate sense of Good has evolved naturally and is now encoded in our DNA. But in that case, Good would just be synonymous with pragmatic and we know that that is often not the case. Or perhaps we develop a sense of Good by applying reason to our experiences, personal and collective. Obviously, this is a big leap. It confers virtual sovereignty on our capacity to experience events accurately and to reason about them logically. Nevertheless, of the options available, this is the ‘least obviously impossible’, so following the logic of Blaise Pascal and Sherlock Holmes, when we remove whatever is absurd, meaningless, oxymoronic, irredeemable or impossible , we must consider that whatever is left is at least probable . ‘Good’ has a dense connotative value but zero denotative value. Saying something is ‘good’ says nothing specific about the thing itself but everything about how the thing templates its world. In this context, Good is a verb. It describes a process rather than a steady state. That is why we only experience God as ‘active’ in our World. That is why idolatry is a bad faith , passive version of iconoclastic Atheism . For a concept to be useful, it needs to be fleshed out with applications identifiable in the course of ordinary human experience (e.g. measurements); but those applications need to be something other than habits, tastes, and opinions. There can never be 100% consensus about what constitutes the Good but, if the concept has validity, we should be able to detect some semantic convergence. Indeed, folks broadly agree that Good is experienced by us in our world as Beauty, Truth, and Justice. Let’s be clear: we may vehemently disagree about what objects are beautiful, what propositions true, what social structures just. But for the most part, we agree that there are such things as Beauty, Truth, and Justice and that they are desirable in their own right. The alternative is some form of nihilism . Of course, my ideas of what constitutes Beauty, Truth, or Justice may be polar opposite to yours. That doesn’t matter as long as we agree that it is legitimate to apply these three values, as we interpret them, in every situation. Consider the alternative: you are a person who assigns no value, or even a negative value, to Beauty, Truth, and/or Justice. Now we have a problem, don’t we? I will debate forever about what constitutes Justice, but I can’t have any conversation with someone who does not recognize Justice as a value. Of course, in God, Beauty, Truth, and Justice are not distinct. God is one, God is simple, God is just plain Good . But that Goodness appears in our world in diverse forms appropriate to different media of experience. *** Pablo Picasso — Guernica (1937), oil on canvas - Picasso’s vast monochrome mural confronts the horrors of the Nazi bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. Fragmented human and animal forms writhe in a shattered space, their beauty stripped to stark geometric agony. Light—symbolized by a glaring bulb and a woman’s candle—flickers as fragile truth amid overwhelming darkness and moral chaos. 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 Tarot David Cowles Oct 6, 2025 “Tarot can be seen as a paradigm of Judeo-Christian spirituality. So deal me in…please!” It is hard to pick up a deck of Tarot cards without triggering associations with ordinary playing cards : the time you won big at the Black Jack tables in Vegas, the time you lost a game of strip poker at camp. Playing Cards are such a fundamental part of our culture that it is hard to imagine a time without them. And yet they were not introduced to Europe (from the Islamic world) until late in the 14th century CE. 100 years later, the first Tarot decks emerged, like seemingly everything else, in Northern Italian city states like Milan. Disney Movie : DaVinci, Machiavelli, and Savonarola are playing cards with members of the Medici family in Florence; the stakes: Middle Earth (Europe). Spoiler alert : Savonarola lost more than his clothes! Tarot modified the original deck to give it a distinctly European and Medieval character and to open up the possibility of applications beyond mere games of chance. Sidebar : History is fraught with ‘false flags’. Take the Renaissance, for example. Supposedly, it marked the rebirth of classical culture; actually, it killed it. Tarot has a similar biography. It turned Medieval Culture into a 15th century version of a Marvel comic and it confined Christendom to a pavilion at ‘Epcot Firenze’. All this 100 years before Cervantes’ great ‘Requiem for the Moyen Age’, Don Quixote . So ‘this is the way the Middle Ages end, not with a bang but a snicker ’. But there’s much more to Tarot than this! A standard Tarot deck consists of 78 cards. They are usually divided into 56 cards of the Lesser Arcana and 22 cards of the Major Arcana. Cards in the Lesser Arcana vaguely resemble the playing cards we inherited from Islam, the cards we knew and used to love…until that last trip to Atlantic City. They’re grouped in 4 suits (Swords, Wands, Cups, and Pentacles) of 14 cards each (vs. our standard 13), including 10 cards in each suit with associated numerical values (A – 10) and 4 additional cards in each suit corresponding to personages in a paradigmatic medieval court (King, Queen, Knight and Page). Completing the Tarot Deck are the 22 ordered cards of the Major Arcana, forming what’s called the Fool’s Journey – a metaphorical path of physical and spiritual development. Two analogies spring to mind: the Via Crucis or Stations of the Cross and El Camino de Santiago , aka The Way. We might view Tarot as ‘polite penance’ or ‘posh pilgrimage’ – spiritual practices well suited to the less devout and more affluent leisured classes emerging in Renaissance Italy. And speaking of journeys through life’s stages, fast forward to the mid-20 th century and meet Erik Erikson, a psychologist who divided the human life cycle into 8 stages, beginning with Infancy (0 to 18 months) and running through Seniority (Age 65+). Erikson associates each stage with a specific emotional dichotomy and a particular developmental milestone. For example, for children ages 6 through 11, the emotional challenge is Industry vs. Inferiority and the milestone is Competence . But back to Tarot: the very first card in the Major Arcana is a tipoff that we’re not in Vegas any more. The card is numbered 0 (rather than 1) and the ideogram on the card is known as The Fool – not the most auspicious way to begin a journey… or is it? My reading of the Major Arcana is that they divide life’s course into 4 rather than Erikson’s 8 stages with every journey beginning at the same spot, Ground Zero , i.e. with The Fool (#0), i.e. ‘everyman’ (sic). This is not King Lear’s Fool. This is you and me and every other sentient being in our own personal state of nature – each of us, fresh out of the womb, experiencing the world with no pre-conceived categories to guide us. The first stage takes us through puberty, and it consists entirely of our introduction to the category of the Other, i.e. other people. In our initial encounters, the Other assumes the forms of Magician and High Priestess, emphasizing the Transcendence of the Other in the experience of a newborn. Sidebar : There’s a world, there’s me, and now there’s another ‘me’ who is not me ? One of my favorite games with < 1 y.o. grandchildren is to show them their image in a mirror and watch them trying to figure out what’s happening. Of course, we are all surrounded by mirror images of ourselves 24/7, no reflective surface required. 20+ cards later this still seems magical to me! Stage One ends when we encounter the Other as our peer partner in a relationship of romantic Love. In between we meet the Other in more secular guises: Empress (mom), Emperor (dad), Hierophant (teacher, guru, mentor). Stage Two corresponds to adolescence. It poses three challenges: Mobility (Chariot), Strength, and Interiority (Hermit). Before puberty, we are weak, we rely on others for our movements, and we wear our hearts on our sleeves. With adolescence we need to assume responsibility for our own actions (Chariot), develop a quiet self-confidence (Strength), and experience the beginnings of an inner life (Hermit). With adulthood, we enter Stage Three, the realm of Industry, Commerce and Procreation. Like the Christmas elf, we place our inner Hermit on the shelf. We are immersed, if not submerged, in the realm of Chance (Wheel of Fortune), Responsibility (Justice), Consequence (Hanged Man) and Mortality (Death)! Finally, we’re ready for Stage Four, the atemporal Eschaton (Parousia, Apocalypse, Eternity). Stage Four is reminiscent of the Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead . It consists of milestones ‘on the silk road’ from Immanence to Transcendence. Step one, let go of our attachments (Temperance); step two, confront evil (Devil); step three, overcome pride (Tower, Babel?); step four, reject Narcissism (Star); step five, smash idols (Moon). In truth, these 5 steps are all forms of iconoclasm. We have ‘misplaced concreteness’ (Whitehead), mistaking things that are immanent for Transcendence. With step six, we embrace sensuality and joy (Sun), a foretaste of the Transcendent. At step seven, we pass judgment on ourselves and our world and we are ready to let ourselves be judged by others in turn (Judgment). The final card in the deck (World) completes stage four; but it is also the climax of the entire journey. And what a journey! We all start off as the Fool - tiny, defenseless, and bald (no hair, Hawking) - a quantum of being. Ideally at least, we all end up with the same reward, i.e. The World. Not too shabby! Sidebar : The Old Testament Book of Job outlines a similar trajectory. Job is living a successful and virtuous life (Immanent), but he loses everything and is brought back to the state of nature (#0). He is Fool-again ( a la Joyce) – so ‘foolish’ in fact that he dares to confront God (Transcendent) face to face, judging and submitting himself to judgment (#20). As a result, he inherits the World (#21). Orthodox Christianity has for the most part taken a dim view of Tarot. At worst, it is ‘magic, demonic, and wicked’; at best it is a dangerous but frivolous distraction. Even so, the climax of the Fool’s Journey must have come as a bit of a shock: the final reward is not Paradise (Heaven) but the World. On the one hand, the Book of Revelation does speak of a New Jerusalem, so there is room for a new World in orthodox eschatology. However, Tarot’s utter lack of any reference to Heaven, or to Hell for that matter, must have been disconcerting to some. We cannot resist the temptation to see this aspect of Tarot as an omen. Machiavelli is about to turn Christian ethics upside down (‘ends justify means’). Out of Machiavelli’s head will spring the full bouquet of isms characteristic of the our Enlightenment era: Capitalism (Smith), liberalism (Locke), utilitarianism (Mill). socialism (Bentham), communism (Marx), pragmatism (James), fascism (Mussolini), secularism, and moral relativism. Of course, pockets of resistance persist: Existentialism (Sartre), Organism (Whitehead), and Hasidism (Buber) to name just three; but there is no denying that Mechanism ( La Technique – Ellul) is the dominant Spirit of this Age. But to blame that on Tarot is a bridge too far. At most, Tarot is a sign and harbinger of things to come. That said, we can embrace the profound human insight and the ultimately optimistic eschatology of Tarot without sacrificing any Judeo-Christian principles in the process. In fact, Tarot can be seen as a paradigm of Judeo-Christian spirituality. So deal me in…please! *** Image: Agnes Pelton — Awakening (Memory of Father (1943 Agnes Pelton’s Awakening (Memory of Father) (1943) is a luminous abstraction expressing a mystical experience of loss and transcendence. Soft radiating light rises from a central form, suggesting the soul’s ascent and a bridge between earthly grief and spiritual renewal. The painting embodies Pelton’s vision of awakening consciousness—where personal memory transforms into a universal, serene illumination. 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.

Philosophy, theology, and science merge in Aletheia Today, the magazine for people who believe in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together with western philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and Jean-Paul Sartre. Deep dives into the meaning of the Old Testamant, the New Testament, and where the Bible fits into modern-day society. Is God real? Does Heaven exist? Find your answers to life's questions at Aletheia Today. Cosmology Philosophy Philosophers Society Science Guests Theology The Bible Culture The Arts Archives Spirituality Subscribe today for FREE! Enter your email address here: Subscribe now! Thanks for submitting! We are happy to be able to provide Aletheia Today to all interested readers at no cost. If it ever becomes necessary for us to charge a subscription fee, we will grandmother for life anyone subscribed as of 07/01/2025.

For centuries, many Christians have found support for their faith in the accounts of miracles worked by Jesus, and following Jesus, by various apostles, saints and martyrs. Others, however, have rejected these accounts as ‘impossible’ and therefore ‘unbelievable’ and this judgment has led them to dismiss all accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings as ‘suspect’. Robert Frost, Quantum Mechanic Robert Frost This article offers the best overall introduction to Frost and his contribution: Robert Frost was Wrong So woods-walking Frost finds himself at a crossroads. Like each of us 100 times every day, he must make a choice. But what is the nature of ‘choice’ per se? The Road Taken Frost’s poem can be viewed in light of the more recently developed Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of QM. We argue that what Frost proposes is not MWI…but better! Janis Joplin and Robert Frost Finally, we examine Frost’s contribution to the ‘Freedom vs. Values’ debate and include perspectives from Joplin, Nietzsche, Sartre, and…wait for it…Pope Leo XIII. The Frost Diamond We expound on the ontological implications of Frost’s model, comparing its structure to that of a liquid, suggesting parallels with Heraclius (everything flows): Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

< Back I Led Three Lives David Cowles “Modern physics is right now living at least three lives and possibly a fourth.” In the 1950s there was a popular TV show, I Led Three Lives , about the life of a spy during the early days of the Cold War. I would submit that modern physics is right now living at least three lives and possibly a fourth: an Einsteinian life, a Newtonian life, a Quantum life, and perhaps, a Sub-quantum (Bohm) life as well. Our job, should we choose to accept it, is to find a single principle of explanation that can potentially account for events manifested at all 4 levels, a principle that would allow us to decode the “signatures of all things I am here to read.” (James Joyce) Some proposed ciphers find that all events are determined, either by the Laws of Science (Dawkins) or by the Will of God (Paley), or, popularly but bizarrely, by some ad hoc combination of the two. Other ciphers (Hume) find a randomly seething sea beneath each legible signature. They ascribe emergent structure to chance and coincidence. For almost 3,000 years, Western philosophers have been concerned to explain the relationship between so-called phenomena (signatures) and noumena . Of course, none of these ciphers (above) yields a cogent translation. Philosophy (the ‘linguistics’ of science) is the quest to find the key that will unlock the messages (signatures) and provide us with a coherent translation. Philosophy is the search for the ontological Rosetta Stone. To me, a universe subject to intelligent design, even if a benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient God is the designer, is doomed to be an impoverished universe indeed. If the 20th century taught us nothing else, it should have taught us that centralized, top-down engineering can never compete with decentralized, bottom-up emergence. Eventually, Blockchain will put Central Banks out of business. On the other hand, I see no reason to believe that our 'cloud-capped towers, gorgeous palaces, and golden temples' ( The Tempest ) can be explained by chance combinations of atoms, subatomic particles, and their forces. “I see no reason,” true enough, but I can do you one better: I have proof! Meet George Jetson, oops, I mean John Bell (1964). He started with a normal assumption: an 'event' is focused on a contiguous but bounded region of spacetime. Then he went to work. When he was done, he had proved that the prevailing concepts of 'event' and 'locality' are inconsistent, that a 'local' model cannot account for the richness of actual phenomena. Bell is the Zeno of our time! Bell proved mathematically that the universe exhibits a level of connectedness inconsistent with mere locality. A universe of events localized in spacetime cannot account for our experience of events. Instead, Bell proposed a model in which the concept of ‘event’ is non-local… and “Bingo!” Both Zeno and Bell produced arguments that were logically unassailable, but no one believed either of them. (Even today, almost no one believes Zeno.) Libraries are full of attempts, unsuccessful in my view, to falsify Zeno. Fortunately, Bell fared a little better. In 1971 Alan Aspect proved Bell's theorem experimentally. It was Bell’s Equivalent of Einstein’s ‘Mercury moment’! But still, folks weren’t convinced. "There must be something wrong." We claim to believe logic, math, and science above all else, but apparently, we don’t. Apparently, we believe what we want to believe, logic and observation notwithstanding: “Zeno and Bell can go to H…” No wonder the world is in the shape it’s in. What is the universe if it is neither random nor engineered? What if it’s a 'floating craps game' played with loaded dice, or more easily, with the payout odds tilted in favor of the player rather than the House? What if the player is the House? The fix is in! The player(s) will one day end up with all the chips. That we know! What we don't know is the outcome of any single bet or dice roll. A series of apparently 'random' events is certain to produce a particular result, but we have no idea how or when. This is a modified version of the ‘emergent order’ model of the universe. It is much closer to Hume than Dawkins, but it differs from both in that it includes an ontological constant (a tilt toward Good and Being) and this all folks call God. 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 Next

< Back The Riddle of Job David Cowles If I do my job in this essay, you may become a modern-day version of Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, who “stoppeth one of three." You’ll be spreading the truth about Job to anyone who’ll listen. Ask absolutely anyone, and they'll gladly tell you that the Old Testament Book of Job is a treatise on the Problem of Evil ('POE'): Why Bad Things Happen to Good People (Rabbi Harold Kushner, 1981). But is it? Is it possible that everyone (well, nearly everyone) is wrong about Job…and has been wrong for more than 2,500 years? Not very likely, I'll grant you…but possible, yes. Proceed at your own risk, reader! If I do my job in this essay, you may become a modern-day version of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, who "stoppeth one of three." You'll be spreading the truth about Job to anyone who'll listen. No? Still with us? Then let's get started: Simply put, the Problem of Evil (POE) asks why God, presumed to be all good and all-powerful, would allow injustice to infect his creation? It is his creation, after all, correct? Then fix it already! The author/compiler/editor of the Book of Job attacks POE head on, but so do most other philosophers and theologians. Job showcases many potential solutions to POE, but tough questions remain: Are any of the solutions mentioned in Job satisfying? Does the author/compiler/editor of Job endorse any of these answers? Or does he (sic) offer a solution of his own? Or is POE not what the Book of Job is about after all? And if not POE, what? No proposed solution has achieved broad acceptance, and non-believers often cite this as the #1 reason for their disbelief. 20th century philosopher, mathematician, and social activist, Bertrand Russell, based Why I am not a Christian on POE. The Problem of Evil is often viewed through the prism of Job, and rightly so! The Job-poem, which makes up 95% of the Book of Job, is one of the world's great epics. Even in translation its language is dazzling, but more importantly for our purposes, the poem catalogs more 'POE solutions' than any other comparable source. But we have a problem: the poem debunks every one of the solutions it 'proposes,' and it does not seem to offer any new solution of its own. Odd, don't you think? It is customary for philosophical writing to critique prior opinions, but it is also customary for it to propose solutions of its own. The Job-poem does plenty of the former, but none of the latter: 40 chapters and still crickets! From the earliest times, commentators have struggled, unsuccessfully, in my view, to tease a solution to POE out of the Job-text itself. But what if the Job-poet never meant to propose a solution to POE in the first place? What if Job is not about the Problem of Evil at all? What if that's just its 'narrative skin?' In that case, understanding Job as a treatise on POE would be roughly equivalent to understanding Joyce's Ulysses as a Dublin travelog. Job is not about POE; just the opposite. In fact; Job asks questions like: What is the nature and origin of Good? What makes something, anything, 'good,' and what makes one thing better (more good) than another? Is something subjectively good because it is God's will; or is it God's will because it is objectively good? (For more on this, check out The Problem of Good , elsewhere in this issue of AT Magazine.) To this last question, the Book of Job gives a clear and unequivocal answer: God is subject to the same objective ethical values and standards as the rest of us! This is what the book is really all about. Be skeptical, dear reader, but please; hear me out! The Book of Job consists of three parts: an epic poem (the 'Job-poem') that spans more than 40 chapters and makes up 95% of the total text; a short prose Prologue (1:1 – 2:13), and a very short prose Epilogue (42: 7-17). The two prose sections were almost certainly not part of the original text, but were added later. They function as 'bookends,' creating out of whole cloth a possible context for the poem; but in fact they amount to an early (and not very good) commentary on the epic The Job-poem is structured as a dramatic dialog. There are six main characters: Job, four so-called 'friends'… and God! (What would an epic be without God?) Over a very short time, Job, by all accounts a virtuous man, right in his own conduct, just and generous in his dealings with others, has lost his wealth, his children, the respect of his community, and ultimately, his good health. The Job-poem opens with Job sitting on a 'dunghill' covered in boils, lamenting his fate: "Let the day disappear, the day I was born and the night that announced: a man has been conceived. As for that day, let it be darkness…let darkness, dead darkness, expunge it." (3: 3 – 5a) Job asks, "Why couldn't I be a stillborn?" and then goes on to extol the benefits of 'being dead:' "There, no more restless are the troubled…all prisoners are at peace. They hear no more the voice of their oppressor. The small and the great, there are the same; and the slave is set free from his master." (3: 17 – 19) Then, stunningly, Job's understandable self-pity turns into unexpected curiosity: "Why give light…to a man whose path is hidden from God, who screens him off from his sight? (3: 20 – 23) Job can't help himself. As he recounts his sad tale, he stimulates his own sense of wonder. Job's focus shifts from 'why did I have to be born' to 'why does anyone have to be born' to an even bigger question: 'why create a universe at all, if it's going to include so much suffering.' Job's opening speech ends with a further meditation on the human condition, followed by an astounding conclusion: "They (human beings) are quashed before twilight, from daybreak to evening they are crushed; when it is not even nightfall, they forever disappear. Their tent-pin is pulled up on them. They die without knowledge." (4: 19 – 21) Job has just given a detailed description of his plight (and ours) in language worthy of Dante's Inferno . He ends by lamenting the fact that humans 'die without knowledge?' Of all the tortures he's endured, is it possible that the worst is the prospect of 'eternal ignorance?' The Job-poem is structured as a legal proceeding. Job feels that his current sufferings are unjust. He has lived a righteous and generous life; so why is it that so much evil has befallen him? And even if he did inadvertently commit some sins along the way, those sins cannot possibly justify the enormity of his suffering. Job will not feign guilt and throw himself on God's mercy, as his friends suggest. Instead, he decides to bring legal action against the Deity. As we will see shortly, Job's determination does not come out of any disrespect for God, but rather out of profound faith. Job does not imagine that he has the power to divert God's will; and he knows that no court can compel God to appear and make an answer, much less force him to comply with its final judgment. But even with no real hope of prevailing, Job wants to be heard, and he wants to hear from God; and a legal proceeding offers a most conducive venue for such an exchange. Like so many lawsuits today, Job's is not so much about winning as it is about forcing the defendant (God in this case) to divulge some of his trade secrets. And as we will see shortly, in that respect, at least, Job is successful. So, Job asks God for nothing less than a full accounting of himself. What did he have in mind when he 'created the heavens and the earth,' why didn't he do a better job, and why doesn't he fix it now? In this proceeding, Job is the plaintiff, appearing pro se , God the defendant initially in absentia; and the so-called 'friends' are an ancient version of Johnny Cochran's Dream Team…but self-appointed, and much less competent . Pity any god who cannot afford better representation than this! Job bears a heavy legal burden. To defeat God's application for Summary Judgment, Job must show that he has probable cause, that there is a court with jurisdiction, that he has legal standing, and that a potential remedy exists. Job v. God opens with Job offering the court a detailed summary of the injustices done to him. Then, each of the four 'friends' attempts to "justify the ways of God to men" (Milton, Paradise Lost ). They take turns defending God, reprising all the usual POE arguments, but then adding some new ones of their own; these are two of my 'favorites'…not: Job is being punished, not for his own sins, nor for the sins of his father, but for the sins of his sons. Job has been punished (past) because he was eventually going to take God to court (future). Job's friends reason deductively; they accept certain things a priori and they reason from those axioms to the analyses and remedies they offer. That most of their so-called solutions make no sense (e.g., the two above), is of no concern to them; common sense is irrelevant in the face of divine revelation. One by one, Job effortlessly swats away his friends' arguments by appealing to concrete experience. Job is the ultimate empiricist, long before there was any such thing as empiricism. Against the dogmatic deductions of his friends, Job appeals to empirical facts; here's a 'Cliff's Notes' version: I have lived a righteous and just life; yet I am being punished most severely. Others, not as upright as me, often deliberate workers of evil, in fact, are not punished at all. They live lavish lives in good health and pass that wealth onto future generations, intact. I, on the other hand, have no assets, and no children to leave them to, and I live on a dunghill covered with scabs. But Job can read the handwriting on a wall. He realizes that he can't meet a single one of his legal burdens: no one has standing to challenge God, no court has the power to compel God to answer, no one can ever have probable cause to sue God, and even if all these things were otherwise than they are, no plausible remedy exists. So, God-4, Job-0. "There is no joy in Mudville…Mighty Casey (Job) has struck out." Or has he? Job invokes the legal doctrine known as 'Nullification;' he asks the court to look behind the veil of legal procedure and judge the case solely on its merits, i.e., based on universal values and on empirical evidence, without regard to pre-conceived religious dogma. This is a big ask. Job is asking the court to acknowledge Natural Law (as well as written law) as an element in its ruling. Job is also asking the court to rewrite the rules of evidence. What drove Job to challenge God? Had his faith waned? Did his agony finally drive him to blasphemy? Quite the opposite! It is Job's extreme faith that gives him the wisdom and the courage to proceed: "I know that my vindicator lives and that he will rise -p upon the earth…While in the flesh I'll see Eloah…my eyes, not a stranger's, will see." (19: 26-27) Job can challenge God because his faith goes beyond God. Job has faith in a 'higher power,' a power that transcends even God - to wit, 'the Good,' which we experience as Beauty, Truth, and Justice. Bottom line: God cannot be unjust and still be God. 'Being just' is not a choice that God makes from moment to moment (as we do), nor can he choose not to be himself; i.e., not to be God. (Jean-Paul Sartre repeatedly asserted that God is the being whose essence precedes his existence. Unlike us, he cannot be other than he is.) Being Justice, per se , he cannot act unjustly! Therefore, Job and a court of competent jurisdiction, can hold God accountable after all. An unjust God is a violation of Natural Law (the Good). So, there is a remedy: the court can simply order (or remind) God to be God! God cannot refuse to be God because God is God. The legal process must grind on. But Job is 'all in.' He decides to go nuclear! Like Truman (Hiroshima) Job has saved his WMD until the very end…and now he decides to unleash it. Job closes by offering an 'Oath of Innocence.' According to the common legal customs of the ancient Middle East (e.g., The Egyptian Book of the Dead ), when one party swears a proper Oath of Innocence, that party is immediately presumed to be innocent. If God still wants to contest Job's claim, he must now appear in person and accept that the burden of proof is now on him. The downside of this strategy for Job? If a party offers an Oath of Innocence that is later shown to be untrue, the 'taker of false oaths' will have earned himself severe additional punishment. Let's listen to some excerpts from Job's oath: "If a poor man would extend me his hand, if in time of disaster he cried out to me (30:24)…If I've ever thwarted a poor man's desires…or ate a loaf by myself, so an orphan could not eat of it (31:16-17a)…If I ever saw a vagabond with nothing to wear or the needy with nothing to cover him (31:19)...If I ever raised my hand to the fatherless (31:21a)…If I ever made gold my reliance and called pure gold 'my security' (31:24)…If I ever looked at the light (starlight) as it shone or the moon as it moved so nobly (i.e. if I ever engaged in pagan worship) (31:26)…If I ever rejoiced at my enemy's ruin and exalted when evil befell him (31:29)…If ever my land has complained of me, if ever it's furrows cried out (31:38)…" Job seals his oath: "Here is my mark, let Shaddai respond! … Complete are the words of Job." (31: 35-40) God's defense team panics, as well as they should. Fearing defeat, they allow a fourth 'friend,' young Elihu, to deliver their closing argument on God's behalf. Perhaps new blood will shake things up…it doesn't! God can 'read a room' as well as the next guy. He sees that his team is losing. Hoping to avoid an adverse judgment, God takes over his own defense. He decides to testify after all; he appears "out of the whirlwind" and takes the stand. Is there a more exciting moment in all of literature? God imagines that he can dispose of Job with a simple display of majesty and might. That usually does the trick where muggles are concerned! But Job is no muggle, far from it, in fact, as God is about to learn, to his dismay. God is supremely confident, over-confident as it turns out, that he can prevail in this Case of the Pesky Plaintiff . He decides to approach the challenge as an American presidential nominee might approach a debate with her opponent. God will begin by questioning Job's 'real world' experience. But first, he calls on Job to put on his big boy pants: "Who is this who obscures good counsel, (using) words without knowledge? Bind up your loins like a man! I will ask you – and you will help me know !" (38: 2-3) Job's God has a keen sense of humor! (So does Job, as it turns out.) God suggests that he is here to learn from Job. In fact, of course, his questions are designed to demean Job, to demonstrate that Job has no business being on the debate stage, much less giving instruction to God: "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations? (38:4) …Have you ever reached the sources of the Sea and walked on the bottom of the Ocean? Were you ever shown the gates of Death? (38:16-17)" "Have you ever in your days summoned daybreak? Made known to the dawning its place, holding the earth by its corners so the wicked would be shaken from it?" (38:12-13) As sarcastically as possible, God highlights Job's inexperience; then he turns attention to Job's competence. Can Job do the things that God does? Can he do them better? If the answer to both these questions is negative, then what's the point of Job's lawsuit? And what's the remedy? "Who cleaves a downpour's channel and a path for the thunderstorm to rain down on land without people, on wilderness with no human in it, drenching utter wasteland and sprouting grassy growth." (38:25-27) Note that God is concerned for all creation and for all creatures, not just human beings. When God 'created the heavens and the earth,' he created an ecosystem. What happens 'off camera' is just as important as what happens 'center stage.' Is this the first clear reference to 'ecology' in Western literature? Is it the first conscious attack on anthropocentrism? "Do you hunt down prey for the lion and quell the hunger of beasts?" (38: 39) "Can you tie the wild ox by rope to a furrow?... Do you give the horse its bravery…Does the falcon take flight through your wisdom?" (39: 1-7) Chapter 39 offers a litany of animals, each with its own special characteristics and needs – needs that are met by God through the medium of his creation. If Job were to be awarded custody (of the universe), could he do as well? Here God pauses, thinking his work is done. Confident that he has put forward irrefutable arguments, he takes one last swipe at his opponent: "Should Eloah answer (such) an accuser (Job)?" (40:2) Prior to Elihu's rant, Job finished his summation, closing with the words, "Completed are the words of Job." (31:91) Job did not expect to address the court again. Notice that he did not rebut Elihu, but that was before God appeared and testified on his own behalf. In God's opening discourse, he attempts to bully Job into submission (and most commentators think that he does just that). But Job is anything but submissive; he is furious and frustrated. He is not cowed by God's bluster, and he is well aware that God has not answered any of the points in his complaint. Job cannot let God's sarcastic taunts go unanswered; and he cannot back down to a bully. "Lacking respect, how can I answer you? My hand I place over my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not repeat; twice, and I will no more." (40: 4-5) It is easy to see how these words could be read as an 'Act of Contrition.' Job placing his hand over his mouth could be interpreted as a gesture of submission. If this were the actual end of the poem, it would be one of the greatest anti-climaxes in all of literature. This epic is beautifully composed and intricately constructed; it seems unlikely that it would end with such a thud. But how else could the text be read? Could it be that it is God who's disrespecting Job (not the other way around), that Job is the object of the disrespect, not its subject? God's sarcastic tone demonstrates his lack of respect for Job. God sounds like any adult lecturing, and demeaning, a small child. Job's placing his hand over his mouth may be a declaration of victory, rather than a gesture of defeat. Lacking God's respect, what point would there be in Job's talking further. Nor does Job need to speak. He already set out his case in detail during the trial, and God has not addressed, much less rebutted, a single one of his arguments . Therefore, Job's original testimony should be more than enough to secure judgment for the plaintiff. Job will not talk past the close! Is that a quizzical look I see you wearing, dear reader? You're not totally convinced? You're thinking that you might stick with the traditional interpretation after all? Please think again! If the traditional reading were right, the trial would have ended when Job said, "I will speak no more": Game. Set, Match, God! But that's not what happens, is it? Seeing that Job is bloodied but unbowed, God doesn't miss a beat. He launches right into Phase Two of his defense. He no longer expects an outright victory, but he still hopes that an amicable settlement might be possible. The first God/Job exchange boiled down to taunting, bullying and name-calling. (Good thing, nothing like that could ever happen today, right?) But now the time for posturing is past; it's time for God to 'get real!' God has underestimated his opponent – his intellect and his courage - and God knows it! God realizes that he will need to do more if he wants to resolve this matter. He is not going to get away with the parental classic, "Because I said so." God wants to pursue a settlement, but to do so he needs to give Job as much of what Job wants as God can give, safely. God will have to 'open his books.' He will need to share with Job deep secrets regarding the structure and the process of the created world. He must grant Job's request for knowledge! Remember, Job has not asked God to abdicate; he has not asked for reparations or restitution; he has not even asked God to end his suffering. Job is clear, he's only in this for the knowledge! God can no longer get away with talking to Job as if he were a child; he can no longer name call or taunt, and he will not defeat Job by asking him if he has ever summoned daybreak, etc. In his second speech, God treats Job as his equal, and he challenges Job to work with him to rid the world of injustice: "If you've an arm (as strong as) El's…look for the proud and lay him low…crush the wicked where they stand. Cover them all in dust; in dust, wrap their faces! Then I myself will praise you as your right hand brings you triumph." (40: 8-14) This time God challenges Job, not to do something cosmic, something absurd on the face of it, but to do something that is local and conceivable but just very, very difficult. God is happy to join Job in the pursuit of justice; but first he needs to give Job a 'heads-up:' the problem is not as simple as it appears, and the remedy is not as easy as it looks. The balance of God's testimony is given over to Behemoth and Leviathan, two of God's creatures. Traditionally, Behemoth has been identified as 'Hippopotamus' and Leviathan as 'Crocodile' or 'Sea Monster.' God introduces the beasts as a way of explaining to Job the 'ecology' of creation: "Behold now Behemoth which, like you, I created!" (40:15) The creation of Behemoth was not secondary to the creation of Homo Sapiens . The process of creation is the same for both! All creatures are ontologically equal; and Behemoth is a worthy exemplar of creation. And Leviathan? "Can you pull Leviathan (out) with a fishhook? Can you bind his tongue with a rope? ...Will he make a pact with you? Will he be your slave forever? Can you toy with him like a bird? …Who has ever confronted him and survived?" (40:45 – 41:3) "Of all that's under heaven, he is mine. I cannot keep silent about him, the fact of his incomparable valor…Even 'gods' live in fear of his majesty; they're in terror of the ruin he wreaks…He has no match on earth, who is made as fearless as he? …Over beasts of all kinds he is king." (41:43-26) So ends God's defense! He will speak no more. Job has twice promised not to speak further…but once again he changes his mind. God had hoped to convince Job that the process of creating and managing a world is much more difficult than Job imagined. Job cannot rid the universe of evil (he is no superhero), but then neither can God! No one can pull Leviathan out with a fishhook; he is part of the ecology of the universe. But even if God could rid the world of Behemoth and Leviathan, he wouldn't do so! These beasts are an integral part of creation; they have unique qualities of their own. True, their behavior may from time to time appear to be 'evil' from the perspective of creatures with conflicting interests, but that's all part of the ecology of creation. Imagine how human behavior would be judged, if judged from the perspective of other species! The Job-poem ends with Job's 'final speech'…and this time it really is final. Job gets the last word…but listen to what he has to say: "Who is this hiding counsel without knowledge? Truly, I've spoken without comprehending – wonders beyond me that I do not know. Hear now and I will speak! I will ask you and you help me know. As a hearing by the ear, I have heard you, and now my eye has seen you. That is why I am fed up; I take pity on 'dust and ashes' (i.e., humanity)." (42: 3-6) Notice that Job's closing lines (38: 1-3) nearly duplicate God's opening, complete with the dripping sarcasm. But now, it is Job who mocks God, not the other way around. We've come full circle and there can no longer be any doubt about the outcome. But before we 'call' the contest for Job, we'd better check to see how the media is spinning it. In a review of 17 independent commentaries on Job, written over the past 150 years, Stephen Vicchio found 15 calling the fight for God and only two calling it for Job. With the publication of this article, I'm staking my claim to be number three; can I put you down for number four? "You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time." This famous quote is traditionally, but dubiously, attributed to Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln or not, it's apparently wrong. A survey of Job commentary reveals that you can fool almost all the people almost all the time. How come? People hear what they expect to hear! We might all just as well have been members of God's discredited defense team. Like Job's 'friends,' we see the world through the lens of our preconceived notions of what's real: "Dewey beats Truman" and "God beats Job." Image: Job by Léon Bonnat (1880) 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 The Seven Pillars of Wisdom David Cowles “Kabbalah kept the pre-Socratic tradition alive until it could be born anew in the Age of Aquarius.” According to the ancient Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, the Universe is ‘built’ on scaffolding that consists of 10 nodes (‘vertices’) connected by 22 paths (‘edges’). Identifying these nodes using our modern languages is a challenge and not every commentator agrees on how best to translate each term. Here’s one approach: While the terminology can vary slightly between traditions the order of these nodes is invariable…and significant. The first three are predominantly conceptual and sit like a cornice (crown) atop the other, more physical, seven (body). These 10 nodes (called Sefirot ) are interconnected by a network of 22 pathways: 3 horizontal, 7 vertical and 12 diagonal – 3, 7, 12, three numbers with outsized importance in Judeo-Christian culture, theology, and spirituality. Kabbalah maps virtually every aspect of lived experience onto these 10 Sefirot and their 22 connecting pathways (e.g. there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet). Parts of the body, hours of the day, days of the week, months of the year, angels, patriarchs, etc. all map onto Kabbalah’s universal logos . For example, in terms of the human body, Keter is the head (cerebellum), Tiferet the heart, Yesod the procreative organs, and Malkhut the progeny, i.e. our ‘footprints in the sand’. Fully explicating this system is literally the work of a lifetime. In this article, we will focus on the 7 verticals, the so-called Seven Pillars of Wisdom (T. E. Lawrence). These 7 are grouped into 3 ‘columns’ corresponding, roughly, to the feminine (3), the masculine (3), and the divine (4) aspects of reality. The central column links God and the World: Godhead ( Keter ) through Beauty ( Tiferet ) and Foundation ( Yesod ) to Kingdom ( Malkhut )…and back again. Keter represents the purely conceptual aspect of Universe, Malkhut the purely physical. Tiferet (Beauty) and Yesod (Sexuality) refer to the procreative process that unites the two. Unlike Manhattan, Kabbalah has no one-way streets. Influences trickle down from Godhead, through Beauty and Foundation, into the World just as they bubble up from the World to Godhead. Remember the days when coffee ‘percolated’? Water at the base of the pot turned to steam at the top which trickled down through the grounds and left a delicious liquid residue on the bottom. The Tree of Life is modeled on a similar concept of process. On the right side are the ‘masculine’ Sefirot : Wisdom ( Chokmah ), Love ( Chesed ), and Victory ( Netzach ); on the left side, the ‘feminine’: Understanding ( Binah ), Strength ( Gevurah ), and Splendor ( Hod ). Such gender based characterizations may offend our contemporary sensibilities, but it is important to understand this terminology in the context of the ancient and medieval sociologies from which it rose. It is also essential to understand that Kabbalah means neither of these gender designations literally. Gender is just one of the parameters it uses in building its map. We wouldn’t call French a sexist language just because it has gender specific articles (e.g. le and la ), would we? Kabbalah’s apparent hierarchical structure is also misleading. Panta Ra (Heraclitus): “ Everything flows” … both ways. What trickles down bubbles up and vice versa. Likewise, the apparent crystallization of process into self-contained Sefirot belies the more complex structure of Kabbalah. Pan in Panti (Anaxagoras): Everything in everything. Each Sefirah ‘contains’ or ‘reflects’ (think Leibniz’ Monads) the other 9, but each Sefirah predominately showcases one particular aspect of the life process. So, Victory is in Understanding, Strength is a component of Love, etc. And of course, Keter (Godhead) and Malkut (World) are in all as all are in them. Understanding how each Sefirah contains the other Serifot is an important part of mystical practice. A 20th century philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, developed a cosmology consistent with Kabbalah. His ‘center column’ linked the Primordial (conceptual) Nature of God ( Keter ) and the Consequent (physical) Nature ( Malkhut ) through a series of ‘actual entities’ (events) that exhibit both the conceptual (Beauty) and the physical (Foundation) aspects of the divine nature ( Keter ). Once again, with Whitehead as with Kabbalah, it is essential to note that influences flow both ways, down from Keter to Malkhut , up from Malkhut to Keter . Actual entities , the stuff of the Universe, originate in the contrast (the gap, Ginnungagap in Norse Mythology) between conceptual values and physical realities. Actual entities inject divine values (e.g. beauty) into material reality and release physical reality into the mind of God. Whitehead’s analogous term for Yesod is ‘Superject’ and for Malkhut , ‘Objective Immortality’ (our ‘footprints in the sand’). The procreative function (understood broadly) is jointly motivated by the conceptual appreciation of beauty and the physical recognition of need (desire). So our three central column ‘pillars of wisdom’ connect conceptual values (Keter) with appreciation (Beauty), appreciation with procreation (Foundation), and procreation with immortality (Malkhut). Our remaining four ‘pillars’ connect the 3 masculine Sefirot and the 3 feminine Serot . These connections are somewhat less intuitive. For example, Wisdom ( Chokmah ) links with Love ( Chesed ) which links with Victory ( Netzach ), while Understanding ( Binah ) links with Strength ( Gevurah ) which links with Splendor ( Hod ). These are what Whitehead would call ‘subjective forms’, i.e. ways in which the core process (above) might be experienced in different contexts. To understand this, we need to dig deep into the ancient/medieval mindset. The feminine side is the more easily understood. Binah is the womb; it is in Binah (Understanding) that Wisdom gains application to the World. Strength and Splendor are two traits readily associated with the so-called ‘feminine ideal’; all together these Sefirot work to support the central procreative process. The rationale for the masculine side of things is more obscure (surprise, surprise). Today at least, nobody would reasonably claim that masculinity enjoys a special connection to Wisdom or Love or Victory (Achievement)…no one who hoped to live beyond sunset that is. I think it is more helpful to understand the gender terms as placeholders for the active and passive aspects of events. Strictly speaking, there are no active/passive relationships in Kabbalah. Everything takes place in the Middle Voice . As we say above, all process is reciprocal. However, the right and left ‘wings’ could be understood as the ‘active’ and ‘passive’ aspects of events that occur in the central column (between Godhead and the World). The medieval system of Kabbalah bridges the gap between 5th century BCE pre-Socratic philosophy (Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, et al.) and 20th century CE Process Philosophy (Whitehead). While the West was mesmerized by Plato, Aristotle, Descartes and Kant, Kabbalah kept the pre-Socratic tradition alive until it could be born anew in the Age of Aquarius as Relativity, Holography, Quantum Mechanics, and Entanglement. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com ress, Literary Journal Spring 2023. Return to Harvest 2024 Previous Next

< Back Enlightenment! David Cowles “It is often said that victors write history. That is even truer when the war is cultural rather than political.” Whenever history decides to grade itself…beware! ‘Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment’ – see a pattern here? it all sounds so cheery. And why shouldn’t it? Someone turned European History into a ‘self-graded class’, and like any self-respecting fifth grader (think Bart Simpson), History’s given itself an A. What about what went before? What happened between Rome and Renaissance? We’re talking religion before it was ‘fixed’ by Martin Luther, art before it was ‘fixed’ by the introduction of perspective, and the feudal system before it was ‘fixed’ by capitalism and the idea of constitutional government. This year, Sister Martha Mary decided to change again the way students are graded in her class. Instead of students grading themselves, each student is now graded by another member of the class. Guess what? Not an A in sight…but lots of C’s, D’s and, oh so many F’s. Does it surprise you that 10-year-olds are harder on others than they are on themselves? (Guess you never had siblings!) Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment: consider the words carefully! Now what would you call periods of history that were none of those things? Why you’d have to call them ‘Dark Ages,’ obviously. And History has obliged. It is often said that victors write history. That is even truer when the war is cultural rather than political: Our culture is who we are, our politics are what we are. (My apologies to Karl Marx.) In the June 27, 2022, edition of Thoughts While Shaving (TWS), we explored the difference between Faith (who we are) and Belief (what we are) . We are grandchildren of the Enlightenment. Sir Isaac Newton (c. 1700) flipped a switch, et voila, “Fiat Lux” . At that moment, the clouds were swept away and for the first-time humanity was able to see the world ‘as it is,’ without the camouflage of religion: No God, no Spirit, no Soul…this world is Nietzsche’s sand box. If you’re into science and technology, the Enlightenment is your era! It was a period of unparalleled invention and discovery, but also a period of war, tyranny, and myriad atrocities. But I digress. I said earlier that the Enlightenment was a period of invention… Was, not is! The period misnamed ‘Enlightenment’ is mercifully over…though our politicians, generals and terrorist leaders apparently missed the memo. The Enlightenment turned out to be an ouroboros. Like the Vacuum Monster is the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine , it consumed itself. Most often, epochal shifts occur when a ‘better idea’ replaces the current paradigm. That could have happened here…but it didn’t. Revolutionary discoveries in science (1900 – 1930) were a death sentence for the Enlightenment…but gracelessly, it insisted on exhausting every avenue of appeal. And it’s not done yet! Like President Trump, it’s still looking for 12,000 votes in Georgia. Enlightenment’s paradigms of materialism and causality were demolished by the discoveries of Planck, Einstein, and the ‘Quantum Mechanics.’ But instead of ‘exiting stage right’ as scripted, Enlightenment has refused to leave, even though its final scene is long since played out. Unlike the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the Enlightenment did not “go gentle into that good night;” it raged against the dying of its imaginary light. Enlightenment refused to leave the stage before ‘the fat (sic) lady (Brunhilda)’ sang; and boy did she ever sign! Fittingly, Brunhilda’s final aria in Wagner’s “Ring” also heralded the collapse of a civilization preserved now only in Norse Mythology (The Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda )…and Marvel comics. The demise of the Enlightenment played on two stages. Stage right: Fascism. Stage left: Stalinism. Though mortal enemies on paper, these two ideologies both see the world through the paradigm of mechanization. Human beings are essentially machines and human society is akin to an assembly line: an arrangement of resources designed to maximize the production of goods and services…especially goods. Think nuclear! An atomic bomb can be understood as the self-annihilation of matter. Now think the self-annihilation of Enlightenment: Auschwitz, Buchenwald and the Gulag archipelago. Hitler, Stalin and their ‘gangs’ were determined to make the world safe for mechanization, i.e., the transformation of human beings and their social systems into ‘machines.’ To do so, they needed to rid the world, or at least Europe, of competing ideologies: Judaism (especially Hasidism and Kabala), Catholicism, Orthodoxy, tribalism (allegiance to smaller, more culturally focused groups), and individualism (in philosophy, in art and in lifestyle). Image: Reading of Voltaire 's tragedy of the Orphan of China in the salon of Marie Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin in 1755, by Lemonnier , c. 1812. 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 Next

< Back Dante and the Yellow Submarine David Cowles “Yellow Submarine did for the Divine Comedy what West Side Story did for Romeo & Juliet…but I very much doubt the Beatles had any idea what they’d done!” “In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straightway was lost. Ah, how hard a thing it is to tell of that wood, savage and harsh and dense…So bitter is it that death is hardly more.” (Dante, Inferno , Canto I) “Liverpool can be a lonely place on a Saturday night… and this is only Thursday morning.” (Ringo Starr, Yellow Submarine ) 650 years after Dante Alighieri completed his Divine Comedy , a rock and roll band from Liverpool retraced his steps. In 1968, they released a modern, ostensibly secular version of Dante’s epic. Yellow Submarine ( YS ) did for the Divine Comedy ( DC ) what West Side Story did for Romeo & Juliet …but I very much doubt the Beatles had any idea what they’d done! Still, the resonance between these two works is inescapable. Dante lived in the theocratic Middle Ages while the Beatles rose to prominence in the hyper-secular ‘60’s. Apparently, “the fundamental things (do continue to) apply as time goes by” ( Casablanca ). Fittingly, YS opens with a Beatles’ favorite, Eleanor Rigby . It is hard to imagine a song better suited to accompany Dante’s evening in the woods…or Ringo’s morning in Liverpool: “Father McKenzie, writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear… No one was saved…Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name. Nobody came….” Not exactly Christmas music! But it certainly prepares Dante, Ringo, and us for what’s ahead. As we shall see, Eleanor Rigby describes the World, not only as it is but as it must be…provided it lacks any transcendent dimension (i.e. provided it is wholly self-contained). Dante meets the Roman poet Virgil who offers to be his guide through Hell: “Thou must take another road if thou wouldst escape from this savage place.” ( Inferno , Canto I) Back in Liverpool, Ringo meets his own ‘spirit guide’, Admiral Fred. Virgil takes Dante, not through Tuscany but on a path perpendicular to spacetime itself – a path normally traveled only by the dearly departed. ‘Young’ Fred does the same for Ringo and his pals. We are familiar with the Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead , the Jewish Kadish and the Christian Last Rites . These are prayers recited or texts read aloud at the time of a person’s death. The purpose is to facilitate the transition from mortality to eternity. While neither recited nor screened bed side, DC and YS should both be considered part of our multicultural funerary tradition. Both offer detailed images of the stages connecting the angst of Liverpool/Florence with the joy of Pepperland/Paradise. “Abandon all hope, ye that enter here,” reads the sign posted above Hell’s gate. The souls in Hell no longer have the capacity for change. They cannot repent and they cannot influence events in the spatiotemporal world. They are defined now by their sins, and they are compelled to live out those sins eternally. They are expressions of determinism. Dante’s Hell is a spiral; all roads, all rungs, lead to Satan. It is a perverse version of Frost’s Two Roads . As Dante and Virgil descend lower and lower in the narrowing gyre, Hell starts to ‘freeze over’, quite literally. At bottom, they encounter Satan, encased in ice; here is the nadir of all being, a metaphor for Absolute Zero, a foretaste of the cosmic ‘heat death’ that awaits us all. Note : Satan and God share an unusual ontological feature. God is Good per se …but also the Agent of Good in the World. Likewise, Satan is the Agent of Entropy (disorder)…as well as being Disorder itself. This is not to suggest any sort of ontological parity between God and Satan, but that is a topic for another day! This is not the end! Immediately, Dante and Virgil discover that their direction has changed. They are no longer descending; they are starting to ascend Mount Purgatory on the way to Paradise. The first and last verses of Paradiso sum it up: “The glory of him who moves all things penetrates the universe…the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.” Back in England (1968), the Beatles are preparing to embark on their own mystical journey. Pepperland has succumbed to an invasion of giants known as “Blue Meanies”. Young Fred, the Beatles’ Virgil, recently appointed Lord Admiral of the Pepperland Fleet , has just escaped in, of course, a yellow sub (what else?). Its idyllic tranquility shattered, its population “bonked” into a zombie-like state of suspended animation, Pepperland land itself is laid waste (as in the Grail legends). The once rainbow-colored countryside is now a monochrome gray. Just as Paradise was lost but later regained (Milton), so Pepperland has been captured and must now be liberated. Ringo, led by the Admiral and accompanied by his three musical pals, proceeds through a gate of his own. The sign atop this gate simply reads “The Pier”…apt, for this is the launch site for the Beatles’ triumphant Free Pepperland campaign. The Pepper Path runs through a series of “seas” (or branes) that challenge every preconception our travelers have regarding the nature of reality. The first three seas deconstruct the phenomenal world into its basic elements: Time, Space, and Stuff (energy manifested as matter and force). Each of these Seas in turn undergoes its own particular deconstruction. First, the Sea of Time. Our time appears to flow one way (from past to future) at a steady rate – so steady that we hardly notice it. Real time flows at a variable rate and it flows backwards as well as forwards. In New England they constantly talk about ‘the weather’; in Olde England, apparently, they constantly talk about ‘the time’. The plodding phenomenal time that we take for granted turns out to be a very particular expression of multifarious noumenal time. Of course, if time is reversible, then whatever exists can be erased, retroactively…all of which leads to what I call, the Nihilist Conjecture : “Anything that can happen does happen; what can be will be and what cannot be won’t be; everything can be erased and all erasure is retroactive; therefore, everything that ever will be erased has already been erased; and nothing that has been erased ever was; therefore, nothing is, and since nothing is, nothing was and nothing can be, since nothing can come from nothing (Parmenides et al.).” This Nihilist Doxology challenges the competing Christian version: “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.” “To be or not to be” was never the question; the question has always been, paraphrasing the jazz favorite, “Is there is or is there ain’t a world?” Because if there is a world, then the Nihilist Conjecture (‘no world is possible’) has been falsified. So is there a world? The second sea, the Sea of Science, does for space what its predecessor did for time . As with time (clocks), human representations of space (Cartesian grids, Platonic solids) determine what space is. Dimensionality is flexible and not an essential aspect of ‘extension’. The third sea, the Sea of Monsters, deconstructs the material world including the phenomenon of life . It shows that what we consider ‘variety’ in our world is, in fact, a very limited and highly selective subset of all the structures and qualities that spacetime could support…and, according to the Beatles, does support. YS anticipates Stephen Gould’s Wonderful Life . In the Sea of Monsters, all possible ‘life’ forms flourish: “Let 1,000 flowers bloom” (Mao). Shape is continuously and indefinitely mutable. All boundaries separating the organic from the mechanical have been dissolved. Platonic forms have replaced by a Chinese menu of customizable combos : “My partner and I would like to order Combo #3, Combo #7, and Combo #12…and we’ll be sharing everything.” What we accept as ‘our prix fixe world’ is the artifact of a limited imagination. This third sea is aptly named. All the creatures are indeed ‘monsters’, not because of how they look or how they are made but because of how they behave (like some children I’ve known – not mine, or yours, of course). Without exception, they are involved in activities that are destructive to themselves and to others. One might question the adaptive advantage of such behavior, but Darwin is not on trial…at least not today. The Beatles’ monsters act exactly like the souls in Dante’s Inferno . Their natures are hard-wired, and they don’t have the capacity to overcome their ‘programming’. They are well outside the ‘state of grace’. Among the various monsters in this sea, one stands out: the Vacuum Monster (VM). As its name suggests, it is the nature of this creature to suck up whatever it encounters. In the “monstrous sea”, creatures threaten other creatures, but the VM threatens everything, first its fellow monsters, then spacetime, and finally, itself alone . The Vacuum Monster is the personification of entropy. In YS , the inexorable process of dematerialization is accelerated. Dante’s Satan, like Evil ( deliver us from… ) in the Lord’s Prayer, is the personification of ‘negation’; and nothing negates like entropy. Sure enough, VM sucks up all the other monsters. Then, seeing that there are no other monsters to suck, it sucks up spacetime, then itself, tail first, like an ouroboros, “into oblivion…or even further”. Like the souls in Hell, the monsters in Yellow Submarine are compelled to act out their destructive personae, even though that activity per se is the source of their desolation. Been there! If any proto-World must self-annihilate, then that World does not exist, never did exist, and never will exist, cannot exist. According to this model, unless anchored to some objective reference point beyond itself, it is inevitable that any possible world would self-annihilate; and if all possible worlds are doomed to annihilation, then no World can possibly exist…ever. Yellow Submarine begins ostensibly as a secular ontology, but it ultimately proves that no consistent secular ontology is possible, other than hardcore Nihilism, which is really an anti-ontology. We are faced with a modern version of Pascal’s Wager . Granted we cannot know for sure whether or not there is a world, we have to put our chips somewhere. At this craps table, the Don’t Come pays Zero; so a Pass Line bet is the only rational option, however distasteful that might be. “I set before you Life and Death, therefore choose (even crappy) Life.” (Deuteronomy 30: 19) Of course, VM does its worst, and predictably we are left with no time, no space, and no stuff. Like Dante before them, our lads have reached the nadir of being, an empty state which the Beatles appropriately call, “Nowhere Land”. This would seem to be the end of our voyage…the end of all voyages in fact…the end of us. But no! It turns out to be just the beginning. As Mary Tudor said, “My end is my beginning.” Nowhere Land may be located at the nadir of Being but, as Dante discovered, your very next step takes you in a different, more positive direction, in his case up Mount Purgatory toward Paradise. But first, it turns out that Nowhere Land isn’t exactly empty after all. It’s not a void. It’s more like the world, as the Book of Genesis describes it, just before creation: "…The earth was without form or shape, with darkness over the abyss and a mighty wind sweeping over the waters.” Not much of a vacation destination to be sure (I’ve been to worse), but not quite empty either. In ‘nearly empty’ Nowhere Land, there remains an irreducible proto-being by the name of Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D. The Beatles aptly call him “Nowhere Man”. Dr. Boob (‘JHB’) is quite literally what’s left of a world after its total annihilation. JHB, you see, is pure information – but that information is so disorganized that it cannot know that it knows what it knows …and it cannot be harnessed to do any sort of ‘work’. So it does not pass the ‘Bateson/Whitehead Ontological Test’: it is not a difference that makes a difference. So JHB does not exist in any accepted sense of the word; he’s Being’s ghost. Stephen Hawking showed that black holes have the power to annihilate everything that falls through their event horizons; but he also showed that these same holes radiate that information back into the cosmos. The Boob is that information. He’s all hair, no head . According to the oldest-known Western philosopher, Anaximander, ‘actual being’ comes about only when two or more ‘potential beings’ grant each other “reck”. Unlike the souls in Dante’s Inferno and the creatures in the Monstrous Sea, Anaximander’s proto-beings avoid the allure of mutual self-destruction and decide, independently of one another (that’s essential) to let each other be ( Let it Be – Beatles). They do not do this out of any hope of personal gain or out of any expectation of reciprocity; they do it out of agape , non-thetic, unconditional Love . Here's how Disney would portray the moment of creation: Our hero is a disembodied voice on the edge of the abyss, crying out, “I grant you reck. I know not who you are or even if you are. Would you mean me well or ill? ‘Here’s no great matter’ (Eliot). I grant you reck, unconditionally…come what may, just because it’s the right thing to do.” Being is Value. This is a decision that all of us in the living world make every day. Every time we treat another as we would want to be treated, with no consideration of ‘results’, and no expectation of ‘reciprocity’, we co-create the universe with God. The souls in Hell do not have this opportunity; by their unrepented sins they have forfeited it. Neither do the creatures in Sea of Monsters; they are destined to destroy themselves and everything around them. There is no native Love in Hell, nor in the Seas of Time, Science and Monsters. So, where does totally selfless Love come from? What is its origin? In a universe powered by mutually assured destruction, the decision to let a potential adversary exist, placing your own existence at risk in the process, is utterly unnatural . Therefore, it has to originate outside the ‘natural’, spatiotemporal, material world. The Love that drives the universe cannot originate inside that universe. (It might have done, but that option is ruled out by the Nihilist Conjecture .) Love is a precondition of World; World cannot be a precondition of Love. The source of Love must be transcendent. For Dante, that means Paradise; for the Beatles, Pepperland. Take your pick! JHB does not (actually) exist, but he does have the potential to exist. He is in a coherent quantum state. He needs someone (or something) to grant him reck. Enter the Beatles! They choose to befriend the Nowhere Man: “Mr. Boob, you can come with us if you like…we’ll take you somewhere.” As a member of the crew, JHB finds purpose and, with that purpose, he begins to organize his information so that he can use it to ‘make a difference’…which, ultimately, he does. He exists! He becomes a full-fledged ‘person’ after all…Pinocchio, a ‘real boy’. But note: he does not organize himself; he is dependent on something outside of him: Value manifested as Purpose. The Beatles and the Boob grant each other reck and, as Anaximander predicted, ontogenesis ensues (2500 years later)! But to be born out of mutual reck, out of Love, is not to exist merely in the spatiotemporal, material realm; it is to exist in an eternal realm as well. Being is transcendental. To be is to transcend space, time, and matter/energy. It is our thesis that a cosmos limited to space, time and materiality, i.e., a secular universe, is impossible; it cannot exist. Sidebar : It may not be possible to prove directly that there is and must be a transcendent dimension to the World. But it may be possible, using a reductio ad absurdum , to prove that a Universe without a transcendent dimension cannot exist. In that case, the debate must shift to Descartes’ question: Is there something rather than nothing? Is there anything that can justify my saying with complete confidence, “ Sum ” or better yet, “ Est ”? (According to Descartes, there is: it’s “ Cogito ”.) The Beatles have dealt with Time and Space and Life itself; so what’s next? You guessed it, Mind: the Foothills of the Headlands , the land of disembodied thoughts. Its inhabitants want to help the Beatles on their journey, but they can’t. Like Dante’s souls in Purgatory, these creatures are immaterial and powerless to bring aims to fruition. Sleeping yet. Put on some coffee because here’s where things really get interesting! Our next stop is the legendary Sea of Holes, the realm of ‘negative space’. The usual relation of figure/ground is reversed. The sea itself is now the ground, and the holes in that ground now constitute the figure. Nothing has become concrete, so concrete that Ringo is actually able to put a ‘hole’ in his pocket. The topology of this sea is non-orientable. There is no consistent sense of direction, no spatial ordering. It’s like an Escher drawing on steroids. But if the Sea of Holes is non-orientable, then the entire universe in which it is embedded, including Liverpool and Pepperland, must also be non-orientable, albeit less obviously so. We may say that the universe is locally orientable but globally non-orientable because it has the Sea of Holes embedded in it. Think of the world we live in: Earth appears flat (locally) but I’m told it’s round (globally). Dante had his experience of non-orientability on the threshold of Purgatory. “I raised my eyes and thought to see Lucifer as I had left him; and I saw his legs held upward.” ( Inferno , Canto XXXIV) Just as Dante and Virgil turn to leave Hell, Dante looks back and is surprised to see Satan upside down, a reversal of orientation that is the trademark of non-orientable spaces. The Sea of Holes leads to Pepperland…but not so fast! You may only enter through an infinitely thin membrane (an event horizon?) called the “Sea of Green”… and only one of the holes in the Sea of Holes connects to the Sea of Green…and there are innumerable holes to choose from. One could easily spend ‘a lifetime’ searching for the one hole that connects to the Sea of Green and on to Pepperland…and never find it. Neither Dante nor the Beatles can reach their goal without the intervention of grace . Fortunately, our Argonauts do find the Sea of Green, and when they do, they immediately find themselves in Pepperland. Remarkably, Pepperland looks a lot like Liverpool, i.e., it’s drab…and lonely. But the Beatles quickly “unbonk” the Lord Mayor with “a snatch of a tune” and “ready the land to rebellion”. It is only now that they discover that they bear an “uncanny” resemblance to four of Pepperland’s permanent residents, the members of Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. In fact, the Beatles are the Sergeant Pepper Band! ‘The Beatles’ under the aspect of spacetime, they are ‘Sergeant Pepper’ under the aspect of eternity. Together, the historical Beatles and the eternal Pepper Band use music to restore Pepperland to its former glory. The Battle Hymn of their Republic: All you need is Love! The Blue Meanies are routed. But in the spirit of Love, the Beatles offer reconciliation: “Hello there, blue people. Won’t you join us?” And of course, they do: “Yes, let’s mix, Max!” Pepperland is restored. Welcome to Paradise! And a special thanks to Dante and Ringo for being our ‘spirit guides’ along the way. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Click the cover image to return to Holy Days 2024. Share Previous Next

< Back Xiako Can't Count David Cowles So, what’s up with the Piraha? How can they get by without numbers? Xiako is a typical teenager. Self-absorbed and rebellious, she would fit right in at any American high school. Not to say that she isn’t different. She is a member of the Piraha tribe, a small, self-isolating community in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest. Imagine that she’s visiting the United States for the first time as part of some sort of cultural exchange program. She’s smart, hard-working, and enjoys taking care of younger children. Of course, language is an issue. Her language isn’t at all like English. (In fact, it’s not at all like any other living language.) But Xiako has a much bigger problem: Xiako can’t count! Because she can’t count, she can’t do even the simplest math. Her host family is making great progress teaching her English, but they’re having no luck at all with arithmetic. How come? You said she was smart, and I can see that from the progress she’s made learning English; so, what’s up with her numbers ? Well, for one thing, she doesn’t have any! (Yup, you read it right: she doesn’t have any numbers.) The Piraha don’t distinguish 1 from 2 or 2 from 10, so no wonder she finds math difficult. Try solving the simplest math problem without using numbers…See what I mean? Without a concept of number, all attempts to teach Xiako the simplest arithmetic were doomed to failure. Even 1 + 1 = 2 made no sense to her. There’s no 1 to begin with, so there’s no 1 + 1 and if there’s no 1 + 1, how than there be a 2 (whatever ‘2’ might mean)? So, what’s up with the Piraha? How can they get by without numbers? Turns out, the Piraha get along quite nicely thank you, that is, until they cross paths with folks like us, i.e., folks from ‘number enabled’ cultures like ours. When that happens, there’s trouble, not violence (the Piraha are a peaceful people), but trouble! For example, how can you conclude a modern commercial transaction when one party uses numbers, and the other party doesn’t? Imagine that I run a trading post several miles downriver from a Piraha village. I have a customer! And my customer wants fish. I’d like to be able to ask, “How much fish would you like?” or “How many fish do you want?” or “How much do you want to spend?” but I can’t say any of those things. I can’t put the fish on a table and count them; I can’t put them on a scale and weigh them, and I have no idea how to communicate what I mean by ‘price.’ Why do we have numbers while the Piraha don’t? Perhaps because we understand the world as a collection of objects and/or events. In mathematics, a collection of things is often referred to as a set . I immediately want to know the size of my set, how many members does it have? How many apples? How many oranges? The Piraha have no idea of sets. Each event stands on its own. “One is one and all alone and evermore shall be so.” But Being Piraha doesn’t mean being lonely . Far from it. The Piraha are extremely social. Many cultures have a less developed number system than ours. For example, there are cultures that rely on just 3 numbers: One, two, many. Inconvenient? Yes. Impossible to work with? No. With just the numerals 1, 2, >2, we can work through any transaction. It just might take a ‘bit’ (pun intended): remember, computers do all that they do with only two numbers: 0 and 1. Big Blue won Jeopardy using nothing but 0’s and 1’s. But Xiago has no 0 and no 1. We’re having great success teaching her English, why can’t we teach her math? The difference is that Piraha understand ‘language’ (they have one) but not ‘numbers’ (they have none). To move from Piraha to English is difficult but possible. To move from no numbers, not even a concept of ‘number,’ to the Set of Real Numbers might just be impossible. This total lack of numeracy in Piraha culture caught anthropologists by surprise. There are roughly 7,500 distinct human cultures. 7,499 apparently have a concept of number, one does not. Guess which one! 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 Memes About Animal Resistance Are Everywhere Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond "Nonhuman animals do, in fact, engage in resistance, even if their defiance is futile. The will to prefer life over death is a primary act of resistance, perhaps the only act of dissent available to animals who are subject to extreme forms of control." Memes galore centered on the “orca revolution” have inundated the online realm. They gleefully depict orcas launching attacks on boats in the Strait of Gibraltar and off the Shetland coast . One particularly ingenious image showcases an orca posed as a sickle crossed with a hammer. The cheeky caption reads, “ Eat the rich ,” a nod to the orcas’ penchant for sinking lavish yachts. A surfboard-snatching sea otter in Santa Cruz, California has also claimed the media spotlight. Headlines dub her an “ adorable outlaw ” “ at large .” Memes conjure her in a beret like the one donned by socialist revolutionary Ché Guevara. In one caption, she proclaims, “ Accept our existence or expect resistance … an otter world is possible.” My scholarship centers on animal-human relations through the prism of social justice. As I see it, public glee about wrecked surfboards and yachts hints at a certain flavor of schadenfreude . At a time marked by drastic socioeconomic disparities, white supremacy and environmental degradation, casting these marine mammals as revolutionaries seems like a projection of desires for social justice and habitable ecosystems. A glimpse into the work of some political scientists, philosophers and animal behavior researchers injects weightiness into this jocular public dialogue. The field of critical animal studies analyzes structures of oppression and power and considers pathways to dismantling them. These scholars’ insights challenge the prevailing view of nonhuman animals as passive victims. They also oppose the widespread assumption that nonhuman animals can’t be political actors. So while meme lovers project emotions and perspectives onto these particular wild animals, scholars of critical animal studies suggest that nonhuman animals do in fact engage in resistance. Nonhuman Animal Protest is Everywhere Are nonhuman animals in a constant state of defiance? I’d answer, undoubtedly, that the answer is yes. The entire architecture of animal agriculture attests to animals’ unyielding resistance against confinement and death. Cages, corrals, pens and tanks would not exist were it not for animals’ tireless revolt. Even when hung upside down on conveyor hangars, chickens furiously flap their wings and bite , scratch, peck and defecate on line workers at every stage of the process leading to their deaths. Until the end, hooked tuna resist, gasping and writhing fiercely on ships’ decks. Hooks, nets and snares would not be necessary if fish allowed themselves to be passively harvested . If they consented to repeated impregnation , female pigs and cows wouldn’t need to be tethered to “ rape racks ” to prevent them from struggling to get away. If they didn’t mind having their infants permanently taken from their sides , dairy cows wouldn’t need to be blinded with hoods so they don’t bite and kick as the calves are removed; they wouldn’t bellow for weeks after each instance. I contend that failure to recognize their bellowing as protest reflects “ anthropodenial ” – what ethologist Frans de Waal calls the rejection of obvious continuities between human and nonhuman animal behavior, cognition and emotion. The prevalent view of nonhuman animals remains that of René Descartes, the 17th-century philosopher who viewed animals’ actions as purely mechanical , like those of a machine. From this viewpoint, one might dismiss these nonhuman animals’ will to prevail as unintentional or merely instinctual. But political scientist Dinesh Wadiwel argues that “even if their defiance is futile, the will to prefer life over death is a primary act of resistance , perhaps the only act of dissent available to animals who are subject to extreme forms of control.” Creaturely Escape Artists Despite humans’ colossal efforts to repress them, nonhuman animals still manage to escape from slaughterhouses . They also break out of zoos , circuses, aquatic parks, stables and biomedical laboratories . Tilikum, a captive orca at Sea World, famously killed his trainer – an act at least one marine mammal behaviorist characterized as intentional . Philosopher Fahim Amir suggests that depression among captive animals is likewise a form of emotional rebellion against unbearable conditions, a revolt of the nerves . Dolphins engage in self-harm like thrashing against the tank’s walls or cease to eat and retain their breath until death . Sows whose body-sized cages impede them from turning around to make contact with their piglets repeatedly ram themselves into the metal struts, sometimes succumbing to their injuries . Critical animal studies scholars contend that all these actions arguably demonstrate nonhuman animals’ yearning for freedom and their aversion to inequity . As for the marine stars of summer 2023’s memes, fishing gear can entangle and harm orcas . Sea otters were hunted nearly to extinction for their fur . Marine habitats have been degraded by human activities including overfishing, oil spills, plastic, chemical and sonic pollution, and climate change. It’s easy to imagine they might be responding to human actions , including bodily harm and interference with their turf. What is Solidarity with Nonhuman Animals? Sharing memes that cheer on wild animals is one thing. But there are more substantive ways to demonstrate solidarity with animals. Legal scholars support nonhuman animals’ resistance by proposing that their current classification as property should be replaced with that of personhood or beingness . Nonhuman animals including songbirds, dolphins, elephants , horses, chimpanzees and bears increasingly appear as plaintiffs alleging their subjection to extinction, abuse and other injustices. Citizenship for nonhuman animals is another pathway to social and political inclusion. It would guarantee the right to appeal arbitrary restrictions of domesticated nonhuman animals’ autonomy. It would also mandate legal duties to protect them from harm. Everyday deeds can likewise convey solidarity. Boycotting industries that oppress nonhuman animals by becoming vegan is a powerful action. It is a form of political “counter-conduct,” a term philosopher Michel Foucault uses to describe practices that oppose dominant norms of power and control. Creating roadside memorials for nonhuman animals killed by motor vehicles encourages people to see them as beings whose lives and deaths matter , rather than mere “roadkill .” Political scientists recognize that human and nonhuman animals’ struggles against oppression are intertwined . At different moments, the same strategies leveraged against nonhuman animals have cast segments of the human species as “less than human” in order to exploit them. The category of the human is ever-shifting and ominously exclusive . I argue that no one is safe as long as there is a classification of “animality.” It confers susceptibility to extravagant forms of violence , legally and ethically condoned. Might an ‘Otter World’ Be Possible? I believe quips about the marine mammal rebellion reflect awareness that our human interests are entwined with those of nonhuman animals. The desire to achieve sustainable relationships with other species and the natural world feels palpable to me within the memes and media coverage. And it’s happening as human-caused activity makes our shared habitats increasingly unlivable. Solidarity with nonhuman animals is consistent with democratic principles – for instance, defending the right to well-being and opposing the use of force against innocent subjects . Philosopher Amir recommends extending the idea that there can be no freedom as long as there is still unfreedom beyond the species divide: “While we may not yet fully be able to picture what this may mean, there is no reason we should not begin to imagine it ”. This is a republish in its entirety through permission from The Conversation . Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond works at the intersection of critical animal studies, decolonial studies, and comparative race and slavery studies. Above all, she is interested in troubling the human/animal divide, anthropocentrism, and the entanglement of animalization with racialization. Her publications include the book chapters, "Dogs without Masters: Astray with Akbar and in André Alexis' Fifteen Dogs" (2022), "A Pale Shade of Violet: Animals and Race in Machado de Assis" (2022), “Haunting Pigs, Swimming Jaguars: Mourning, Animals, and Ayahuasca” (2020), and "Slave Barracks Aristocrats: Islam and the Orient in the Work of Gilberto Freyre" (2014). She has also authored articles such as "Of She-Wolves and Mad Cows: Animality, Anthropophagy, and the State of Exception in Cláudio Assis's Amarelo Manga" (2011) and “Akbar Stole My Heart: Coming Out as an Animalist” (2013), as well as the monograph, "White Negritude: Race, Writing, and Brazilian Cultural Identity" (2008), and the edited volume, "The Masters and the Slaves: Plantation Relations and Mestizaje in American Imaginaries" (2005). In addition to her scholarly publications, she has contributed to various media outlets, including The Advocate, The Conversation, CounterPunch, Ms. Magazine, Persianesque, the Folha de S. Paulo, and Truthout. Return to our Harvest Issue 2023 Previous Next

< Back Amazon David Cowles Amazon provides reliable, rapid, and inexpensive delivery service; and the US Postal Service? Well, to be kind let’s say ‘not so much’. So who is being sued by the feds? You guessed it…Amazon. Apparently, success today is automatically an anti-trust violation. Amazon provides reliable, rapid, and inexpensive delivery service; and the US Postal Service? Well, to be kind let’s say ‘not so much’. So who is being sued by the feds? You guessed it…Amazon. Apparently, success today is automatically an anti-trust violation. Previous Next