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< Back Becoming David Cowles Nov 8, 2021 Absolute evil is non-being. But non-being is inconceivable since whatever we conceive is conceived as at least potentially being. Non-being is not and has no potential to be. Absolute evil is non-being. But non-being is inconceivable since whatever we conceive is conceived as at least potentially being. Non-being is not and has no potential to be. Relative evil, however, is alive and well and its headquarters seems to be Planet Earth. War, genocide, deadly pandemics, natural disasters, poverty and injustice seem to be all around us: relative evil is all around us. Were it not for relative evil, we would be living in Paradise…which apparently we are not! But relative evil is not absolute evil; it’s not absolute evil because things that are ‘relatively evil’ nevertheless actually are. What partakes of being cannot be absolute non-being. Relative evil is most definitely a ‘privation of being’ but not a total privation of being. Evil (non-being) is what constitutes conflict. Event A is not event B and vice versa. A lacks some of the being of B and B lacks some of the being of A. By themselves, A and B are mutually incompatible. It is either A or B but never both. But A and B are not by themselves; they are surrounded by other events (collectively let’s call them ‘C’) that partake both of A and of B. A and B mutually compatible in C and when A and B are compatible, the conflict between them becomes ‘contrast’. What we call ‘becoming’ is the progressive transmutation of conflict into contrast. But becoming is an entropic process. The transmutation of conflict into contrast generates heat and eventually erodes all order. In the end, becoming undermines being. Fortunately, however, contrast is merely a way-station between conflict and something infinitely better: harmony. The transmutation of ALL contrasts into harmony is the function of the unique event (D) that we call God. In God, all things are more than just compatible; they are mutually enriching. When universal conflict becomes universal harmony, Paradise is realized. Harmony is the ultimate order. It is the eternal aspect of temporal events. 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 Beyond Gertrude Stein David Cowles May 11, 2023 “The agony of childhood is only incidentally related to bad parenting. The Prince and the Pauper are, above all else, children, and childhood is exile.” As ATM frequent fliers already know, we are big fans of Gertrude Stein. In my view, she is one of only a handful of truly original 20 th century prose writers. So the title of this article, Beyond Gertrude Stein , gave me pause. There’s precious little ‘beyond GS,' but here goes… Famously, Ms. Stein wrote, “We are always to ourselves young men and young women.” No matter how old or young we are ‘objectively,' we feel ourselves as ‘young men and young women.' I’m 23 and free! I can go anywhere and do (almost) anything. In our culture, the range of so-called ‘age-appropriate’ behaviors is broadest during the period we define as ‘young adulthood.' Age consciousness is lowest and, therefore, so is age-related tension. This is our period of maximum chronological mobility . This is our golden age! Even so , society always has its expectations: “These are the best years of your life, don’t waste them; if you plan to have a family, you better start soon; I ran into Betty at the supermarket, her Mikey is already a junior partner.” Nuisances, no doubt, but a far cry from the boot camp of childhood or the super max of seniority. Still, even a nuisance can cause tension; that’s why I always keep a fly swatter in my desk drawer. When we were in nursery school, we were all pretty much the same; so it is again now that we’re all on Boot… I mean Shady… Hill. “Damn girl, is that you? Weren’t you in my play group at Humpty Dumpty Academy?” In fact, a bunch of us HD grads are matriculating at SH now, getting ready for that final ‘final exam.' From nursery school to nursing home, about 3.5 miles I’m told, but oh, the adventures we had on the way! We had a million different jobs; we traveled to a million different places; we met a million different people; we had a million different kids, some of whom still visit on holidays. At every stage of life, we experience age-related tension. We must be what we are not: a baby, a child, an adolescent, etc. Naively, we assume that people can and should just be themselves whatever their age, but, of course, you can’t ever ‘just be yourself,' not at any age. You must always ‘prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet’ (Eliot). At least you’re in good company! These days even God ‘prepares a face.' He caught Moses’ attention in a ‘burning bush’; he confronted Job ‘out of the whirlwind’; and he revealed himself to Elijah as a ‘still small voice.' Imagine that the course of one’s life is like a sine wave. The peaks correspond to the periods of greatest age-related tension, the troughs are energy sinks . Once I am at rest in an energy sink, I’m ‘trapped’…but blissfully so, and young adulthood is the mother of all such sinks! From here, no matter which way I move, tension can only increase. This is as close as I’m ever going to get to my ‘Octopuses’ Garden in the shade’ (Beatles), and we cling to it…desperately. Growing up, I had a perfectly acceptable life. Nevertheless, when I left home ‘for good’ at age 18, I felt as though a tremendous weight had been lifted. I was surprised; I had not known that I was carrying such a heavy load. Many times over the next decade, I remarked to friends, “My worst day since leaving home was better than my best day before .” Had my parents overheard, this would have been hurtful. They did what they could to make my childhood a positive experience. In retrospect, nothing they might have done differently would have made much difference. The agony of childhood is only incidentally related to bad parenting. The Prince and the Pauper are, above all else, children, and childhood is exile. We sojourn in a foreign land! Like most ‘60s kids, I hungered for independence; even so, I did not anticipate the extent of the physical relief it would bring. At the age of 23, I found myself splashing about like an empowered infant in my newly discovered Kohler ‘energy sink.' From nursery school to nursing home, you’re prodded all along the way to ‘act your age.' But how? We’re not born with a sense of ‘age.' It might sound crazy, but you have to learn to be an infant (“be cute…or else”), a kid, an adolescent, an adult, a geezer. From this data, Stein concluded that ‘young adulthood’ is our ‘natural age,’ but there is nothing intrinsically special about it. Society has made it special by glorifying it. We have only minimal behavioral expectations of young adults. ‘Don’t shoot someone’ is a far cry from ‘drink your milk’ or ‘ring the nurse when you need to move your bowels.' It’s not so hard/being me/now that I’m finally/23! Of all life’s stages, young adulthood is when we’re least conscious of age. We’re old enough now to do most anything we want (except run for president), but we’re still young enough to ‘indulge our inner child’ when necessary. You can hobnob with septuagenarians at a morning board meeting and then join a pick-up basketball game with 14-year-olds in the afternoon. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for all our lives! Free at last…at least sort of. Stein takes this to mean that “we are always to ourselves young men and young women.” Actually though, we’re ageless! Being expected to “act your age” is tension-generating at every age, albeit least so in young adulthood. On the other hand, it sucks being five…or, God forbid, 75! Image: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973). Gertrude Stein, 1905–6. Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 32 in. (100 x 81.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Gertrude Stein, 1946. (47.106) © 2019 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Previous 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.

Aletheia Today is a magazine for those who believe in both God and science. It blends process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays, featuring thinkers like Alfred North Whitehead and Jean-Paul Sartre. The magazine explores the meaning of the Old and New Testaments and their place in modern society. Addressing questions like "Is God real?" and "Does Heaven exist?", Aletheia Today fosters a dialogue between faith and science. Inside Our Summer 2024 Issue Philosophy The End of History “Fukuyama proclaimed ‘The End of History’ with a celebratory flourish. But be careful what you celebrate!” Playing with Blocks “Everything I needed to know about cosmology, I learned watching my grandchildren play with blocks.” Some Thing or No Thing “Whatever is, is self-aware, and what is self-aware, is!” The Living and the Dead “1,500 years ago, we didn’t have these problems. We knew all that we needed to know about life.” Theology Proof of God: The Empirical Argument “Because God is not perfectly manifest anywhere in our World, we perceive that God is present everywhere…” Job Verses God: The Trial of the Epoch “Job verses God is the Marbury verses Madison of theological law.” Proof of God: The Ontological Argument “Value permeates every nook and cranny of the World. God is Value… No values – no world...” Jesus Christ Revolutionary “He cured the sick and fed the hungry…because it was the right thing to do, here and now, and because it demonstrated what might be possible, universally, in a time to come.” Culture & The Arts The Beatles’ Commentary on the Gospel of John “Both Johns looked out their respective windows and saw their worlds on fire. Both Johns situated their profound and ultimately hopeful message in that apocalyptic context.” Norman Lear Neo-Talmudic Sage of Democracy and Good Times "Nobody wins democracy. It's not a possession, but a continuous process that requires everyone's participation." Spirituality Embracing the Sacred Season of Summer: Who Will You Be at the End of Summer "Summer is a season for resting and relaxation but also renewal and transformation." A Bird Teaches Humans a Lesson of Compassion, Bravery, and Love "This black-crowned bird truly taught me three lessons today – compassion, bravery, and love. It’s a lesson I will cherish in my daily life." 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 The Future of Art in the Age of AI David Cowles Nov 21, 2024 “There is no civilization without novelty and no novelty without art." “A poem should not mean but be.” (Archibald MacLeish) In our lingua-centric culture, there is a tendency to want to translate every meaningful experience into a well-formed string of words (sentence). “What does this poem/painting/partita mean ? What did we learn from this experience?” This tendency is exacerbated by pedagogues who tell us that something is real only to the extent that it can be represented in language. In reality, some aspects of human experience lend themselves to linguistic representation and others don’t. When language functions as Representation we call it prosaic ; when it functions as Art, we call it poetic . Confusion stems from the fact that language plays a dual role. On the one hand, it is our culturally chosen medium of explication; on the other, it is its own artistic medium. In its purest form, we call ‘linguistic art’, poetry (or verse ). But poetic language drives other art forms as well: for example, drama and choral music. Further, the poetic use of language can transform even the driest explication into an artistic masterpiece ( Moby Dick ). Imagine you are the new Schopenhauer. Your magnum opus might be titled, “The World as Art and Representation”. Good news! You can skip the writing part. Everything you need to say is in the title. To understand the significance of this duality, we need to turn to Heidegger…of course! He defines Art as that which shows you something new about the world. Language can do that (poetry)…but so can music, painting, dance, etc. What can we say about the world? It is ever new (Art) and always the same (Representation). Representation must then be the antithesis of Art. One can only ‘represent’ what is already conceived, so what is ‘ready for representation’ is never new and therefore cannot be Art. A ‘poem’ cannot mean anything…and still be a poem! Together, Art and Representation function as Penrose Tiles. They perfectly template one another and together they can cover an indefinitely large surface without any pattern ever repeating. It is fun to be alive after all! (Thank you, Roger) But back to MacLeish. A poem should not mean but be. What would be an example of a poem that means something? Verse that could be translated into another medium (e.g. prose) with no appreciable loss of content (information). Consider the fine art of translation. A poem that is merely ‘translated’, conserving its denotative content, is no longer a poem. But in the hands of an Ezra Pound or a Seamus Heaney a poem can be translated into another poem with its own fresh ‘aha moments’. Recently, I received a newsletter from Rob Howard, Founder of Innovating. He was discussing AI generated art in general and Coca-Cola's AI-generated Christmas ad in particular. Is AI generated ‘art’ any good? Can it be? Is it even Art? How will AI impact the broader Art world ? His questions answer themselves. He writes, “Anyone can now make nearly Hollywood-quality video with a text prompt!” A text prompt! No drawing, no filming, no voice over. And quality? Check! But Art, no! An AI generated ‘painting’ can never, ever be Art because it merely reproduces information that pre-existed in the prompt. Concept precedes execution. Therefore, nothing new can be attributed to the art work itself. If the execution of all ‘works of art’ in all media (image, sound, etc.) is subcontracted to AI Bots, at least as we know them today, then we will be condemning ourselves to the be world’s first ‘art-free civilization’, which is an oxymoron. Or are we? The fact that novelty will no longer emerge through the execution of ‘a work of art’ does not preclude the possibility that new things will happen, new discoveries be made, or that people will experience what’s happening in new ways. Today, painters are translating their visual ideas into code (i.e. prompts); likewise composers with their musical thoughts. This artificial state-of-affairs cannot continue for long though. Soon artists will have to learn to think, and create, in code. Prompts will be the new medium of artistic expression, and all artists will need to learn to think in code. Have you ever mastered a foreign language? For the longest time, you translate what you hear back into your mother tongue; likewise, you compose your answers in English before you deliver them in perfect French. Then one day you don’t. You can speak and hear without the need of an internal translator. You think in French now. (You, not me, quelle domage !) On the other hand, my AI Bots are innately multilingual. In fact, if I type more than a few French words in a row, my Bots assume I’ve renounced my American citizenship and relocated to the EU. Silly Bots! Now I’ll need to spend my time persuading them that I’m still the same old Okie from Muskogee (Merle Haggard). Or perhaps I’m just feeling carbon entitled . I don’t mean to minimize the situation. Moving from finger paints and the recorder to ‘code castles in the air’ will not be an easy transition. We will need a new mindset, and it will require a huge epigenetic adaptation. But the alternative is far more daunting: the disappearance of human culture and civilization as we know it…because there is no civilization without novelty and no novelty without Art. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to contact us on any matter. How did you like the post? How could we do better in the future? Suggestions welcome. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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< Back Order and Anarchy David Cowles Mar 21, 2023 “The order that emerges among self-governing entities is the only real order.” Notice the title, Order and Anarchy . Anarchy is the absence of imposed order, not the absence of order per se . In fact, no one is more invested in the emergence of order than the Anarchist. Anarchism celebrates the spontaneous emergence of order, i.e. ‘self-ordering’ aka ‘bootstrapping’. In fact, to be is to combine an element of order inherited from the Actual World with an element of spontaneous ordering (novelty); every genuine event requires both: Order + Order! Every event is both rejection of an old order and appetition for a new order. Of course, from the perspective of inherited order, emergent order appears as mere discord; and from the perspective of emergent order, inherited order appears as institutionalized resistance to novelty. Yet, every event inherits a settled past and proposes a novel future. That’s exactly what an event is. The reaction of the present (event) to the past is never mindless copying or blanket rejection. Something of the past must be conserved to serve as exoskeleton for the present and endoskeleton for the future. Rejection of inherited order is never blind or capricious. It is always done in the service of a proposition, i.e. a concrete proposal. Sidebar : Abbie Hoffmann notwithstanding, there is no such thing as a Revolution for the Hell of it …except in book(s). Where is the Youth International Party today? What happened to yesterday’s Yippies ? Did they turn into Yuppies ? A coherent critique of the 60’s radical youth movement in the US might include the observation that the radicals lacked a coherent ideology. Sure they had issues: Vietnam, Civil Rights, etc. but issues alone do not translate into a detailed political platform and, per Lenin, “There can be no revolution without a revolutionary ideology.” Something of the past must be destroyed to ‘make room’ for novelty. New order cannot simply pile-up on top of old, like levels of civilization at the site of an archeological dig. Gertrude Stein wrote that mortality is nature’s way of making room for the future. Philosophical Anarchism is the belief that all true order is sui generis , that it emerges in the course of an event, any event, and that it is conserved as the ground from which all future events emerge. True order must be organic and unconstrained. Freedom is prerequisite; imposed order, on the other hand, springs from a desire to preserve what is at the expense of what might have been and could yet be. It is a form of disorder disguised as its opposite. Think 1930’s Germany for example. Some men (sic) see things as they are and ask ‘why change’; others dream of things that are not yet and ask, ‘why bother’. Inherited order is the exoskeleton that protects embryonic order in utero , but later, as imposed order, it functions as a strait jacket. Neither is anarchy synonymous with chaos . In fact, it might be its antonym. Chaos, ab initio , appears as disorder , but upon deeper investigation chaotic systems are shown to be deterministic . Anarchy is neither! Anarchy is order, freely emergent. An-arch-ism is the belief that certain entities are capable of self-government but self-government must include the ability to enter into ordered relationships with other entities; otherwise it becomes a form of nihilism. 2025 NYC Bumper Sticker: “Socialism not Solipsism!” At the risk of repeating myself, the order that emerges among self-governing entities is the only real order. Freedom and order have a dialectical relationship. There is no freedom without order and no order without freedom. Order without freedom is tyranny while freedom without order is barbarism. Pure order and pure freedom are concepts only; neither can be realized alone, by itself, in any actual entity. Taking a page from Sartre, no event can be what was, every event must be what is not yet. Without negation of the past and appetition for the future, there are no events. An event is not the Actual World it inherited, nor is it the Superject it contributes to the future, nor is it the self-satisfaction it hopefully feels. An event is the transition per se from what was to what is not. An event is a double negative: “Not what was, not what will be, therefore I am!” Anarchism then is the gnosis and praxis of Being. Anarchy is the universe in the image and likeness of God. Likewise, Political Anarchism does not advocate the disintegration of society; it merely opposes the mirage of order known as the State . But alleged anarchist plots to blow up critical infrastructure have understandably given it a bad name. We think of order and freedom, past and present as a continuum, a spectrum ranging from the complete absence of institutional constraints on one end all the way to a full-blown police-state on the other. But even that model may be too restrictive. It would be more useful and accurate to ‘graph’ the relationship between order and freedom on a plane with order on the X-axis and freedom on the Y. Every possible non-degenerate social structure (event) includes elements of order and elements of freedom in varying proportions. What then could be our paradigm? How about a Bach concerto? It is as rigidly structured as can be, but every note is astonishing, and every performance is brand new. We understand order and freedom so poorly that we do not see that they are locked in a dialectic embrace that spans all scales and all systems. “They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.” (Joni Mitchell) But the very next day, green shoots appeared in the cracks and 10 years on, the lot was advertised for sale as ‘unimproved land…some litter removal required’. 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. 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< Back Mass Casualty Events David Cowles May 9, 2023 “There is broad consensus that loss of identity and a sense of belonging has played a huge role in the mental health crisis, especially among teenagers… I’d like to throw another log on that fire.” Through April, we have had more mass shootings in the US than there have been days on the calendar. In other words, we are averaging approximately one mass casualty event per day. Long prior to the pandemic, folks were already feeling lost. Ever since the virtual started to replace the real, ever since chat rooms took the place of barrooms, we have been unmoored: today, nobody knows your name ! The pandemic only served to accelerate processes that were already well under way. The honeycomb of civil society that furnished robust social networks in the past has all but vanished. 40 years ago, a successful parent might have served on a parish council, coached a pee wee soccer team, joined a country club or fraternal organization, and still found time to make an occasional appearance at the corner tavern. Our lives are being reorganized…with no input from us. No more one-income households, no more 40-hour work weeks, no more fiercely guarded family time , no me-time at all! We are urged to balance life and work. A great idea! You should try it. Going, going, pre-pandemic, gone! The collapse of civil society checks all the boxes on the mental health admission form. It has taken away important confirmations of my personal identity; it has greatly restricted my opportunities to experience ‘belonging’, i.e., to join with others in a common enterprise. Finally, it has robbed me of the chance to share ideas with others in reasoned, respectful dialog - to make a contribution to the public debate – to be a citizen. Ok, but what does this have to do with mass shootings ? I think there is broad consensus that loss of identity and a sense of belonging has played a huge role in the mental health crisis, especially among teenagers. I agree with this analysis, but I’d like to throw another log on that fire. Once upon a time, politics was our national pastime – ok, along with baseball. If we weren’t talking about the one, we were talking about the other. These conversations were often heated. As the 1950s became the 1960s and beyond, the rhetoric got extreme…but the conversation never stopped…until now. The 1960s was no golden age, no matter what anyone says. Political dialog was fierce…but there were unwritten rules! First, there was an assumption that ‘ something is true’ and that efforts to discover that ‘truth’ could bring us closer to it. I’m not sure we make any such assumption today. Wow! Think about the implications of that ! It is not ‘truth’ that’s under assault; it’s the concept of Truth itself. A world full of lies is not a good thing, but it is paradise compared to a world without lies. In such a world, all propositions co-exist. None has pride of place over another. None links to another, none crowds-out another, they all just sit there, inert. Hmm, doesn’t this sound a lot like political speech today? Sit there? Inert? Second, there was an expectation that everyone’s hierarchy of values would include the sharing of truth with others. Again, we do without such an assumption now. So with our identity supports and our social networks already depleted, it’s also dawning on us that we will have no voice in the public discourse going forward. We can’t talk politics at work or at home or when we’re out with another couple for dinner. One thought injudiciously phrased or inadvertently shared could have consequences for you and yours, down to the third generation . Society is moving at lightning speed to marginalize the input of its citizens. Could there be a cost to this? Could someone who feels permanently frozen out of any meaningful participation in public life decide to ‘cast a vote that can’t be canceled’? Tragically though, such overtly political acts rarely come with any agenda, except no mas ! I have traded the bustling political life of the hive for a solitary spot in the rookery carved into the mountain side by wind and rain; and I’m not most pleased! Millions of Americans will have this same experience, but few of them will perpetrate a mass casualty incident. One differentiator is the presence of a pre-existing psychiatric condition. So there are four ‘I-beams’: Identity loss - a fading sense of personal identity. Who am I? Isolation – a deterioration in one’s social support network. Impotence – I’m frustrated by everything that’s going on around me, but I have no one I can share this with and, worse, there’s nothing I can do about any of it anyway. Illness – a pre-existing psychiatric condition, psychological problem. Imagine you’re a Hollywood mogul charged with making the next Lawrence of Arabia . Here’s what you’ve been given to work with: “A person with psychiatric issues loses the daily ‘identity confirmation’ of a trusted partner. In response, our anti-hero withdraws from society and isolates himself from everyone in his orbit. In the background, you can hear the drone of the CNN anchors.” You take it from there! Who among us would fail to turn an opportunity like this into a blockbuster? By seeking to understand the psyche of the mass shooter, I in no way mean to justify these horrible acts. However, I think we do ourselves a favor when we try to see the world through the eyes of others. I am hoping that properly labeling the four pillars of alienation – identity loss, isolation, impotence, and illness will contribute toward the development of more effective, comprehensive, and holistic therapeutic strategies. Keep an eye on this space! Keep the conversation going! 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. 4. Aletheia Today Magazine (ATM) will be devoting its entire fall issue (released 9/1/23) to artificial intelligence (AI). What are the philosophical, theological, cultural and even spiritual implications of AI powered world? If you’d like to contribute to the AI Issue, click here . Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! 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“Take Vegas! The casino’s ‘edge’ is as little as 1% on some bets. At those odds, I should be able to play forever…but probability is not actuality.” < Back Determinism…or Entanglement? David Cowles Jan 15, 2024 “Take Vegas! The casino’s ‘edge’ is as little as 1% on some bets. At those odds, I should be able to play forever…but probability is not actuality.” “If we could know the position and the momentum of every ‘particle’ at any one time, we would know the position and momentum of every particle at every time.” This is the classical definition of determinism - and it certainly seems to make sense. Consider 'A, then B’ for example. If we believe that A ‘causes’ B, then knowing A means knowing B as well. But let’s take a deeper dive: There’s a problem with our premise, isn’t there? Turns out, we can’t know both the position and the momentum of any particle at any time (Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle)… that’s certainly a bit of a bother for determinists. Worse yet, this is not an issue with our ability to know A; it’s an issue with A itself! It’s not we who are ‘uncertain’ about A; it’s A that is uncertain. It literally can’t make up its mind what it wants to be for Halloween . A is an existential hero. It lives in a permanent state of angst as it searches for an identity that doesn’t exist! Determinism’s apologists (yup, it has ‘apologists’, Stephen Hawking among them) admit Heisenberg but marginalize him: it’s not X that is determined, it’s P(X) – the probability of X. Schrödinger’s Wave Function, simplified as P(X), evolves deterministically. We’re funny about math. We know it’s an artificial logic that incidentally yields uncannily accurate predictions about the real world, but we treat it as the real world. We mistake the map for the territory; we fall prey to what Whitehead called the ‘Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness’. Take calculus, for example. Brilliant! Don’t leave Earth without it. But it has nothing to do with the real world. Calculus describes a world that is perfectly continuous…but we don’t live in such a world. Still, it is often useful to treat the world as if it were continuous, hence calculus. Take Vegas! The casino’s ‘edge’ is as little as 1% on some bets. At those odds, I should be able to play forever and never run out of money. But probability is not actuality . Probability doesn't prevent me from losing my life’s savings at the craps table, pulling out a gun, shooting 20 fellow punters and taking my own life. The laws of probability are indeed determined, but the stochastic consequences of those laws are not. Food processors are wonderful things; they smooth things out. But when you come to my house for Thanksgiving dinner, your mashed potatoes will be ‘real’, i.e., gloriously lumpy. “Glory be to God for dappled things…” (Gerard Manley Hopkins). We live in a chaotic world, a world in which a butterfly can flap its wings and trigger a tornado, a world in which an untimely ‘7 out’ can set off a mass killing spree. So now we’re face to face with our second challenge: A chaotic world is chaotic because it is strictly determined; anything is capable of triggering anything else. It’s causality ! But how is that any different from a world in which events happen randomly? Wings flap, dice roll, shots are fired, punters perish – these things just happen! What about the connections that seem to crop up between events? Well, what if it’s we who fabricate those connections - after the fact – triggered by accidental resemblances (Freud)? A is round, and B is round, so A and B must somehow be related. What if we make our world look rational…when it isn’t? So we find ourselves in quite a pickle. It makes no empirical difference whether events are determined, chaotic, or random. It doesn’t matter whether everything is caused by something else, or everything is caused by everything else, or nothing is caused by anything else. And you still say we don’t live in a weird world, Horatio? Clearly, the concept of ‘causality’ has no heuristic value. If we want to understand (1) why there are any events at all and/or (2) why events are what they are, we’ll need an entirely different approach. In our world, events are connected but indeterminately. Sometimes B follows A like an Irish twin; sometimes B looks a lot like the postman. We live this every day. “Nothing ever changes!” Until it does! And then, Whoa! Continuity and catastrophe – lumpy, that’s how the world is, not at all the way you’d expect it to be if it were determined, chaotic or random. The world is ‘patterned’…and that pattern is not just in our heads! Ultimately, our world displays solidarity, but not continuity. How can we model such a world? Every event is juxtaposed between what used to be and what is not yet, between what is actual and what is ideal. Without this differance (‘quantum of difference’ per Derrida), the world would be static (and hence non-existent). There would be no incentive, no motive force, for change; temperature could never be other than 0° K. In Norse mythology, the world comes to be in the misty gap ( Ginnungagap ) between ‘absolute heat’ and ‘absolute chill’. Likewise, in our mythology, events come to be in a ‘gap’ between what already is and what might yet be. The lure of an unrealized future tugs on the inertia of an unsatisfying past. Every novel event originates as a reaction against its ‘actual world’, i.e., the ordered multiplicity of prior events. Only one class of entity could simultaneously provoke judgment on what is and appetition for what is yet to be: that’s Value - objective, eternal value – the Good as it manifests in our world. And what might such ‘manifest values’ be? At a minimum, Beauty, Truth, and Justice. Every judgment reflects a valuation, and every aspiration presupposes a goal. But judgment, aspiration, realization, and communication are terms we normally associate with conscious (e.g., human) behavior. They are aspects of reality that resist characterization as determined, chaotic or random. Something seems to be buffering the chaos. Have we entered the controversial realm of ‘intelligent agency’, aka ‘free will’? Every event resembles every other event in some way and to some degree; the ‘resemblance’ can even be ‘negation’ (ground templates figure). But no two events are ever identical. In fact, the phrase ‘identical event’ is an oxymoron. It is as if events were sampling prior events as part of their process of becoming. We see the shadow of the past in the present, but not in a way that is ever perfectly predictable…or ultimately controllable. Ergo History . There is yet one more relevant model to consider: Entanglement. In the 1950s, quiz shows were popular on TV. In those days, contestants were sequestered in soundproof booths. Each would answer questions posed by the host, but neither would know what the other player answered. The same apparatus was used to test for ESP (Extra Sensory Perception). Instead of general knowledge questions, the host would draw a card from a standard deck of playing cards and ask the contestant(s) to say whether the card was red or black. If a subject were right significantly more than 50% of the time, ESP would seem to have been demonstrated. Entanglement is similar. After a Google of questions, a pattern is confirmed. If A answers X, then B also answers X… always ; or if A answers X, B never answers X. But there’s no possibility of communication between A and B. (In reality, it doesn’t have to be always or never ; any meaningful deviation away from 50/50 could indicate entanglement.) Entanglement requires no ‘intelligent agent’ to mute the chaos. An ‘entangled universe’ is neither causal nor random, yet events are coordinated, and that coordination does not require conscious intervention. When two apparently exclusive theories (e.g., intelligent agency and entanglement) account equally well for the same phenomena, it is wise to ask whether the two theories (as ‘Big Chill and Big Crunch’ per Roger Penrose) might actually be the same theory in different guises. Failing that, we should inquire whether the two explanations are complementary (e.g., particles and waves). Can you see where this is going? Well, Bon Voyage! Better you than me. Write to me, though; let me know what the world’s like…once you’ve gone over the edge. 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 above to return to Winter 2024. 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< Back Me at 75…and at 5 David Cowles Oct 4, 2025 “What’s it like to be a 5 year old version of myself? It’s exactly like being a 75 year old version…because 5 year old me is 75 year old me!” I am. I know that I am because I experience things and react to them and because I experience myself experiencing things and reacting to them. I am 75 years old. Since I am 75 now, I must have been 5…once. And that’s not a problem for me because I remember being 5. In fact, I feel like I’m in touch with that 5 year old version of myself right now. How so? First, I remember things that happened when I was 5. I don’t just remember that they happened (history), I remember them happening . Second, I don’t just remember things that happened from the outside in; in some cases I (re)member them (N.O. Brown), I (re)experience them (from the inside out), or I experience them for the very first time ( Proust ). Finally, when I experience myself , I don’t experience a bunch of different selves; I experience a single entity. Being ample , I am smeared out over space; being ancient , I am smeared out over time. As is so often the case, the key insight is captured in a nursery rhyme: As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with 7 wives, and every wife had 7 sacks, and every sack had 7 cats, and every cat had 7 kits…how many were there going to St. Ives? Every hand in Mr. Maguire’s advanced math class shoots up. We know the answer: obviously it’s 7⁴ (2,401) – except of course it isn’t. Our math accounted for wives, sacks, cats, and kits, but it didn’t include the beleaguered traveler who’s stuck with these recalcitrant companions. So the right answer must be 2,401 + 1 (2, 402) – except that’s also wrong. How many were going to St. Ives? Only one! “As I was going to St. Ives…” So other than demonstrating our ignorant arrogance, does this doggerel have a point? You bet it does! My trip to St. Ives includes up to 2402 potential encounters , but there is just one traveler (me) encountering all of them. I am the constant unifying all my experiences. “Everything flows” (Heraclitus), except me. I am an island in the stream . This phenomenon is the subject of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past . In this multi-volume autobiographical novel Proust recounts his discovery of a ‘wormhole’ capable of conflating events (with no loss of detail, i.e. information) far separated in ordinary spacetime. According to Proust, Italy-yesterday and France-today can be coincident; they can occur in one place and at one time which is either both Italy-then and France-now or, what amounts to the same thing, neither Italy-then nor France-now: A*B = -A*-B. To be specific, spacetime is not substructural. But also, let’s be clear: the spacetime between the two ‘events’ is not obliterated; it’s still there, part of the cosmic superstructure. But Proust found a way to bend that structure so that far distant points effectively become adjacent or even co-incident. Proust established the principle of non-locality based solely on his analysis of human experience. 50 years later, John Bell proved it mathematically, and over the next 25 years, Alan Aspect confirmed it experimentally. Name your poison. Phenomenology, mathematics, or physics? The phenomenon of non-locality is triple confirmed. Only hard core realists remain skeptical. There is a house in my neighborhood that always catches my eye. A soft light fills the windows every evening. I long to know what life’s like for the people who live there, so… I decide to take a peek. After dark, I approach the house. I stand in the bushes in front of a first floor window and I look in. The things that go on behind supposedly closed doors! I am a voyeur. But this only whets my appetite. I need to experience life on Cherry Hill Lane first hand. So I break in. Now I am a burglar. But much to my surprise, the residents do not immediately call the police. They let me tell my story and, when I finish, they invite me to stay. I am a house guest. But not for long. My host family is only renting, their lease is up, and they’ve already made plans to move to America. On learning this, my first reaction is panic. I’m about to be locked out of my dream house, probably forever. Then it occurs to me, “Perhaps I could buy the property.” “Who owns it?” My hosts don’t know, they send their monthly rent check to a lock box. So I visit Town Hall. Only then do I learn the truth: I already own the house through a blind trust my grandfather set up for me at my birth. I am simultaneously owner, landlord, house guest, burglar, voyeur, passerby. But I am just me. All these things are parts of what it is to be me. So what’s it like to be a 5 year old version of myself? It’s exactly like being a 75 year old version…because 5 year old me is 75 year old me! It is the 75 year old me, because there are no versions ; there’s just me. I am simple, not composite. I’m single, not legion. I have no ‘aspects’, I have no ‘hair’. I am a quantum of being. Quiddity without quality. I just am , and in so being, I’m doing my very best impersonation of God. Sidebar : A friend of mine, now deceased, used to ask everyone he met, “Do you think people can change?” At the time, I didn’t have an answer; now I know. Yes, people are chameleons constantly in the process of changing; and no, because there’s nothing to change from, nothing to change to, nothing to change or have changed. In Exodus 3, YHWH tells Moses, “I am who am;” he is ‘am-ness’, i.e. Being. Like YHWH, I am a quantum of being. But whereas YHWH is Being per se , I am a being, a reflection of YHWH. I am only because I participate in am-ness, i.e. in YHWH. To be clear, I am not God! But I only am because God is. And like God, my template, I am one being with innumerably many faces. 5 year old me is one face, 75 year old me is another, but behind every face is the one and only, ever unchanging and unchangeable me. *** Winslow Homer — Snap the Whip (1872), oil on canvas - Set against a rural American schoolhouse, barefoot boys play a lively game, linking hands and spinning across a sunlit field. The scene captures the innocence, freedom, and communal spirit of childhood in post–Civil War America. Through warm light and sweeping motion, Homer contrasts the simplicity of country life with the encroaching modern world, turning play into a symbol of youthful resilience and unity. 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.

Aletheia Today celebrates the Holiday Season by bridging the gap between faith and science. In this special edition, we explore the rich tapestry of holiday traditions through process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays. Addressing questions like "Is God real?" and "Does Heaven exist?", this issue offers a thoughtful exploration of the spiritual and scientific aspects of holiday celebrations, encouraging a harmonious dialogue between faith and reason. Inside Our Yuletide Issue Philosophy Do you Know What I am ? “I am my own great-grandmother (‘Eve’). Eerie…not to mention incestuous." Logical Positivism “Following the science, LP assumes that the same act, performed under the same conditions, will always produce the same result…it’s true, precisely 0% of the time!” Do We Need ‘God’? “Does the idea of a Supreme Being make you uncomfortable? No problem; just will it away!” Utilitarianism “Pragmatics is now the measure of all things. Unless we intervene!” Theology King Christmas “Isaiah’s vision of Eschaton is a vision of a world without conflict. Is such a world even conceivable? If it is, is it possible to conceive of Eschaton as anything other than such a world?” The ‘O Antiphons’ “We are asking Christ to come… to teach us, rescue us, shine on us, free us and, repeated three times, to save us.” Re-Imagining the Magnificat "In our zeal to project our conceptions of The Ideal Woman onto this enigmatic first-century figure, we’ve strayed a bit from the little we do know." Christ and the Kids “So what is it that makes children so much better than us? First…a child is not a ‘mini-you’… Is an Octopus a mini-you? Then neither is a child.” Culture & The Arts Love...Actually! “…When your identity is indefinitely plastic, when events are no longer ‘orientable’, when relations are neither transitive nor commutative, that’s Love…actually.” Why the World Needs Polymaths "Just as the ocean's waves weave tales in their dance, polymaths craft stories of innovation by seamlessly blending knowledge from diverse domains." Spirituality Do You Noh? “In the eternal present, not only is every historical event preserved in real time, but every possible event is preserved as well.“ The Mystery of the Star of Bethlehem For more than two millennia, the Star of Bethlehem, which guided the Magi to the city where Jesus was born, has been rousing the curiosity of researchers worldwide. Refresh the Crèche "Maybe it was that I, myself, had just given birth—but as I held the perfectly composed Mary in my hand, she no longer felt believable." Choices that Lead to Deception I often ponder over what drives individuals to opt for a deceitful path rather than a righteous one. 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 Better in the Long Run? David Cowles Jan 23, 2024 “If any action is ever to be considered morally superior to any other action, that superiority must reside in the act itself and not in its consequences.” How often have you said, “It will be better in the long run if…”? Seems straightforward - just so long as we know what ‘it’, ‘better’, and the ‘long run’ mean: What will be better? What makes it better? And when? Let’s worm our way in. “When will it be better?” Assuming we know what ‘now’ is and that we can snapshot it, we just need to know when to take our second picture for comparison purposes. But that’s problematic. The universe is expected to endure another 85 billion years. Which moment in that time frame will we designate as being ‘the long run’, i.e., our target moment for measurement purposes? And why that moment rather than another? Both Classical and Christian cultures make a lot of ‘the hour of our death’. Did he die heroically? What was the state of her soul? But why should that ‘final moment’ take precedence over any other moment? Is our ‘final moment’ one moment among innumerable others? Or is it the summation (Ʃ) of all our moments? Does your life really flash before your eyes? The universe is becoming progressively more disordered. Counterintuitively, there does not appear to be any limit to that disorder, other than heat death , i.e., non-existence. To the extent that value is contingent on at least a modicum of order, it will become ever more difficult to find value in the future. In contrast to the Enlightenment belief in ‘progress’, physics seems to support the much maligned notion of a primordial Golden Age that devolved into the present sorry state of affairs. The only problem with this is that it seems to equate Golden Age with Big Bang , and it’s hard to see how this moment of maximal order could also be the moment of maximal value. It seems that the relationship between order and value is not a simple linear function. Value is probably greatest in a ‘Twilight Zone’ where the ratio of order to disorder falls within a critical range. In any event, the notion of value without any order whatsoever is a bridge too far, at least for me. The ‘long run’ covers quite a span: from ‘the end of the day’ to ‘the end of time’. So when remains elusive. How about ‘better’? What’s ‘better’ and how do we measure it? Jeremy Bentham suggested we use ‘aggregate net pleasure’ as our measure. John Stuart Mill expanded Bentham’s ‘pleasure’ to the even more elusive ‘happiness’. Elsewhere, we considered Utilitarianism more fully. Even if one could locate a moment in time when aggregate happiness was maximal, it would be hard to equate that with ‘value’ if it was merely an island in a sea of misery. Thanks to Leibniz, we can avoid this by using the integral rather than the value at any given t, as our measure of the ‘long run’, but this requires us to sum ‘value’, Planck moment by moment, over at least 85 billion years. Notice how we’ve worked our way back from when to what . Now what’s this ‘it’ that is supposed to be ‘better in the long run’. Is it my personal state of mind? Or the aggregate states of mind of my family and friends? Or is it possible to define the domain more broadly? What roles do age, gender, race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, ideology, class, and caste play in defining the ethical domain ? Working out an answer to this question has been our species’ #1 ethical task. Matthew’s “And who is my neighbor?” stands beside Shakespeare’s “To be or not to be?” as ultimate questions. And just as we seem finally to be headed toward some consensus on this matter, a brand- new variable has been introduced: other species! New, not new! Torah (1,500 to 500 BCE) makes it clear that the welfare of animals and agriculture was of critical concern to the early Israelites. Yes, they understood the utility value of ‘best practices’, but that was not the whole of it: ‘nature’ has inalienable rights too! PETA would have been in its glory. Unfortunately, Europeans lost sight of this wisdom, and we are paying the price. Now, the world is buzzing with ideas about how to make up for the damage we have inflicted on the biosphere, and we have finally come to terms with the fact that we are not descended from angels. We are, in fact, descended from other apes, primates, mammals, animals, and finally, from bacteria. We are discovering that the physiological and behavioral lines supposedly dividing us from ‘the others’ are more like smudges. Our species’ next great task is finding a proper place for other species in our ethical tent. And then there are bots! So the seemingly simple notion of ‘better in the long run’ turns out to be impossibly complex. What is the ‘it’ that is supposed to get better? What’s ‘better’ and how would we quantify ‘better’ so that we could measure it? Finally, what do we mean by ‘the long run’? The very next Planck instant (t + h )? Or the moment of heat death (ω)? Or some preferred moment between t and ω? Or the sum Ʃ of all t between t + h and ω? ‘Better in the long run’ turns out to be a ‘word salad’. We cannot define any of its terms, and no proposition framed this way can ever be tested. Like most ethical standards since Machiavelli, ‘better in the long run’ means ‘do whatever you want to do today’. Nothing is prohibited so everything is permitted. Quite literally, anything can be justified by resorting to an imaginary future. If any action is ever to be considered morally superior to any other action, that superiority must reside in the act itself and not in consequences that we can neither predict nor control. We can be neither omniscient nor omnipotent, but we can be Good . Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back The Porta Potty Perspective Annie D. Stutley "Job was, you might say, trapped in a Porta Potty right there in the desert, despairingly dejected and despondent." It began with an innocent craving for a York Peppermint Pattie. It was the end of the Sunday night of Mardi Gras in New Orleans a long, long time ago. The last float had passed, the crowd dispersed, and the party retreated upstairs to an apartment far above the muck below for some post-parade libations. All matters of the day settled, two more days of revelry on the horizon, the atmosphere inside nestled into the sweet smugness of good times rolling along...that is, until one member of the party--a friend--was motivated enough by a sudden craving to excuse herself from the carnival laissez-faire. She announced her intentions of a brief absence and set out across the street to where, in the banged up freezer of an old convenience store, would hopefully lie the frozen, artificially flavored mint delight of her deepest desire: a York Peppermint Pattie. She dodged carnival sludge and scattered, discarded beads in the street, for the street cleaners had not yet made their way to this slice of the avenue. She could hear them in the distance, beyond the arching oaks covered in colorful beads and the muted hollering of pop-up parties that dotted the route. She crossed not one, but two streetcar tracks, dodged more sludge and gooky parade throws until before her, lit up like a beacon of hope, was the blinking K under which she could “get the sensation.” But she suddenly had to “go”--a need to pee that came on as fast as the need for a Peppermint Pattie. How could she get the sensation properly while holding it in? To her right was a line of Porta Potties. It wasn’t ideal conditions, but it was better than rushing through her frozen mint chocolate moment. So she entered the last one in a line of publicly used and abused filth pots, locked the door, and did her business, unaware that pulling into the parking lot was the truck that would transport the pots of stinky gold to wherever they go to be cleaned. She also didn’t hear the sequence of padlocks clicking into place down the row of potties. It wasn’t until her door briefly rattled that she heard anything. Had a truck driven by or a gust of wind blown by? She wiped, zipped up, unlatched and pushed on the door, the peppermint pleasure seconds away. Only the door didn’t open but a tiny crack, and dangling in front of her eye was a padlock, quite definitely locked in place. Holy hell, I’m trapped , she thought. Holy hell, I’m trapped in a Porta Potty! It was the kind of realization usually accustomed to nightmare scenarios that belong in “would you rather” games? Would you rather be trapped in a Porta Potty or trapped in a tiny room with ten tarantulas? Dear God, I don’t know the answer! First, she screamed, “Help! Let me out!” until she was hoarse. No answer. Then she banged on the door until her fists hurt. Still no answer. Then she resigned her mind to the idea that she would either spend the night in a Porta Potty or die by death of toxic funk stench. The first would likely lead to the second. She thought about her brief 22 years on Earth--her parents, her boyfriend, all the dreams she never reached and that her death would probably turn into an urban legend. Until the end of time, at festivals and public gatherings all over the world, those with weak bladders would enter Porta Potties and joke to their friends, “Make sure no one locks me in!” Then she heard the worst sound she’d ever heard in her entire 22 years: the screeching sound of the motor of whatever machine drags a Porta Potty onto a truck. She pushed on the door and twisted her head so she could assess her inevitable doom. The Porta Potties were being connected to a mechanism that first dragged, then tilted them into the truck until they were upright again. Forget Mardi Gras sludge! She’d be covered in shit, swimming in shit, and undoubtedly die from shock of so much shit! Oh, hell no! This is not gonna go this way! So she pounded and yelled and kicked and screamed with all her might until, upon pushing on the door one last time, there on the other side of the padlock was another eye. She jumped back and then pushed on the door again. “What are you doing in there?” The voice of the eye was a weak, wavering voice. “What do you think?” she asked. “You’re not supposed to be in there,” the eye scolded her. “Well, you’re not supposed to lock me in!” she said. “Don’t you check these things before you lock them?” “It’s almost midnight.” The eye wouldn’t be discredited. But neither would she. “So! People still need to pee!" “You really should be more careful,” the eye began. “You should always bring someone with you when you go out like this.” Meanwhile, she was still stuck inside a Porta Potty and the eye was still outside in the land of fresh air. “Um, can you let me out, please?” she begged. The voice from the eye sighed, like maybe our friend's lack of judgment made her deserving of a few extra minutes surrounded by a day's worth of urine and carnival crap. Then, rather reluctantly, the padlock was released, and our peppermint protagonist burst through the door, gasping for air and sucking life into her lungs like she’d just been born. “Thank you,” she exhaled to the eye, which she now observed belonged to the oldest looking human being she’d ever seen. And she realized that it was no wonder he hadn’t heard her. He was 110 years old, probably half deaf, and yet moved with the pace of someone who acted like he had all the time in the world. He was a captor to be forgiven--just doing his job, though pretty badly. She shook his hand. She had been freed from death by human feces. That called for a generous dose of the human spirit. Then as if none of it had ever happened, she waltzed into the Circle K, meandered over to the freezer, and bought the only Peppermint Pattie still on the shelf. Either Peppermint Patties were a popular post-parade fare, or so unpopular were they that the one in her hand was as old as the eye itself. But none of that mattered, and as she sank her teeth into the curious blast of winter that settled onto her taste buds and ventilated her nostrils, a new perspective unleashed in her psyche. Shit happens, and sometimes it happens that we become trapped in it. Smelly, yes. repulsive, of course. But more than gross, it can be infectious--if we are weak to it. Shit tricks us into thinking it will always be this way, multiplying one negative thought on the other--despair on top of doubt on top of hopelessness. Job was, you might say, trapped in a Porta Potty right there in the desert, despairingly dejected and despondent. Like Job, it is far easier to let shit consume our outlook, define our future, yank us from hope, and control our thoughts, because whether we’re stuck in a Porta Potty or stuck in any terrible circumstance, it’s always easier to lose. Was it the day drinking turned night drinking talking, or had our friend experienced a life-changing nuance from within that Porta Potty? What if we considered all the problems consuming our fighting spirit to be nothing more than shit inside a Porta Potty? Your failing relationship, my anxious thoughts, this one's motherhood woes, that one's professional problems...your piles of crap and mine...what if we recognize that our losing response to our troubles is as infectious as the crap that almost compromised our poor, innocent, Peppermint Pattie-seeking friend? And furthermore, what if we decided that our moxie wasn’t going to go down with the shit of the world? What if instead we burst through our trapped door and breathe in a fresh perspective, one that refuses to succumb to negativity, refuses to give up hope for something better, and refuses to be taken down by the crap we permit to surround us? One that ultimately turns its back on all the muck and yuck and proclaims, "I know that my redeemer lives!" (Job 19:25), a resilience that knows we permit what our attitude promotes, one that leaves the past in the past, and gets on with living and believing, or, in the case of our friend, leaves the shit in the Porta Potty and gets on with the sensation for which she crossed St. Charles Avenue at midnight. I know enough to know that perspective can be found in the most unlikely places—like a used Porta Potty—but only if we’re open to perspective. Our friend teaches us a few lessons: never go to a public bathroom alone; never change direction without alerting your party firs; but more than anything, never let the shit get the best of you. If it isn’t worth the weight, don’t carry it into the future. Leave it in the toilet where it belongs. Our friend’s story didn’t reach urban legend status, yet it does have the makings of a sensational question: Would you rather be trapped in a Porta Potty of someone else's shit for ten minutes, or spend a lifetime trapped in a Porta Potty of your own making? Annie D. Stutley lives and writes in New Orleans, La. She edits several small publications and contributes to various print and online magazines. Her blog, " That Time You, " was ranked in the Top 100 Blogs by FeedSpot. To read more of her work, go to her website , or follow her at @anniedstutley or Annie D. Stutley-writer on Facebook. Return to our Spring 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back The Wonder School “Learning begins with curiosity and children are nothing but question-boxes.” David Cowles Would you send your child to a school that didn’t teach reading, writing or arithmetic? Suppose that same school had a track record of producing PhD’s too young to toast their own success? It’s a wonder that anyone in our society learns anything at all. We have turned the whole process of education upside down. We begin by teaching abstract tools, the three Rs, before we give students any credible sense of how or why anyone would ever want to use these tools. This is not how human organisms work. We set goals, guided by transcendental values such as Beauty, Truth, and Justice, and then we design, assemble or manufacture tools to help us achieve those goals. Our education system reverses the process. We drown our children in tool making exercises, long before they have any inkling of why they might want such tools. To paraphrase Jacques Ellul, we suppress curiosity and purpose in favor of La Technique , technical skill. Only children who manage to swim up through the swamp’s tangled undergrowth to the surface are allowed to climb onto lily pads to contemplate the stars. Those who do not make it to the surface, the majority as it turns out, are considered just so much collateral damage . Even those who do make it to the surface are often ‘changed’ by the ordeal. Some no longer have any interest in lily pads or stars; they are content to gorge themselves on the lavish buffet spread out on the swamp’s surface. Others are just grateful for the relative security of the lily pad. They are content to live out their days in sloth, never bothering to raise their heads. Not satisfied with the severity of ‘kill or be killed’ natural selection, we have added an arbitrary layer of cultural selection. Brilliant! We apply the same logic to the education of physicians. Day One, the med school class is full of young idealists, anxious to devote their lives to the wellbeing of humanity generally and the welfare of their own patients specifically. Suppose you’re the evil overlord of some hostile alien civilization (R U?). Your job is to stifle intellectual development on Planet Earth. How do you do that when the planet is covered with 2 and 3 year olds, chirping like hungry chicks in a nest, asking their never-ending questions. Your predecessor in this job, Herod the Great (c. 0 CE), came up with a clever solution: Slaughter all 2 year old boys (sic)! But how did that work out? Now you’ve been sent to come up with a more effective, and possibly less abhorrent, solution. According to the Handbook of 20 th Century Attrocities , when you cannot eradicate some social phenomenon by force, the next best thing is to co-opt it. And so you did! You designed an education ‘system’, powered by curiosity, but virtually guaranteed to extinguish that curiosity. You’re a marvel! Would you mind if I put your name in the hat for a Nobel? Your genius was to insert a layer of ‘technical tools’ (the legendary 3 R’s) between the questions and their answers. “I’d love to answer your questions, Susie, but first you need to master trigonometry. Let me know when you’ve done that, and then I’ll be glad to help you.” Learning begins with curiosity and children are nothing but question-boxes. Why wouldn’t they be? They are thrown naked, ignorant, and defenseless onto an alien shore (Earth). They can’t afford to be bored, yet; their survival depends on figuring things out… and quickly. From their first cry in the delivery room, they are collecting data points for a personal Mappa Mundi . I can see why this would be threatening to an imperial power. But what happens apres vous ? Le Deluge ? (Louis XV) Perhaps a future generation of overlords will see some value in Earthlings’ insatiable curiosity. In anticipation of such an eventuality, I propose a pilot project, a test market. Let’s set up a small chain of magnet schools (we’ll call them Wonder Schools ) around the globe. Our founding motto: “Every question is a Nobel Prize in waiting!” So if my Wonder Schools are not going to teach the 3 R’s, what will they teach? Obviously, the curriculum will grow out of the specific interests of the students and their teachers. No two schools, no two grade levels, no two semesters will be the same. To accommodate the wide range of students’ curiosity, we’ll need to ‘stock’ our schools with enthusiastic, creative teachers who have multi-disciplinary interests. If this sounds a bit like 4 th /5 th century (BCE) Greece or 9 th century (CE) monastic Europe or 15 th /16 th century Italy (Renaissance), I’m ok with that. Our curriculum will emerge from the ground up, student directed, but our teachers need to be prepared with a few ‘standbys’... topics that can break the ice when things get sticky. Traditional (mis)education introduces new subjects to students as they mature. We will not do that! Our pre-K curriculum will mirror our Grade 12 curriculum…but at a very different level of depth, obviously. We conceptualize lifelong learning as a spiral, not a straight line. Of course, students will not study every subject every year; but neither is it ‘one and done’. Older students will often choose to re-explore, at a deeper level, subjects that they were exposed to at a younger age. Here are just a few ideas to get us going: Where are we? Look up! What’s in the sky (besides space junk)? All ages will enjoy exploring photos from the Webb and other telescopes. What have we learned from Voyager, Hubble, and Webb? Explore our solar system: what’s up with the neighbors? And what lies beyond? Where did all this come from and where is it headed? Students will be exposed to everything from Intelligent Design to Big Bang Cosmology, Bootstrapping, and Darwinian Evolution. Debate the fate of the universe: Big Crunch or Deep Freeze? Modern theories will be compared with views reflected in mythology, astrology, etc. Who are we? What am I made of? Where did I come from? What makes me, me? Subject to readiness, students will learn about the origins of life on Earth, DNA, cell structure, evolution, and the organization of the human organism. How am I my body? How am I not my body? The Hard Problem of Consciousness will be introduced. Are We alone? The Search for life, or ‘Intelligent life’ (SETI), in the Universe. Is there life outside Planet Earth? Is it intelligent? What are we looking for? What do we expect to find and how will we know when we’ve found it? How would life adapt to different environments? How would those environments influence the design and/or behavior of alien life forms? We’ve never been alone! We are surrounded by living things: pets, livestock, animals in the wild. Not to mention trees and flowers, coral and sponges, fungi and bacteria. How are we different from our pets? From other life forms? How are we alike? What do other life forms do better than us? Are other life forms aware of their environment? Do they feel? Do they emote? Do they think? Do they communicate? How? Do they use signs or symbols? How is their ‘language’ like/unlike ours? What is the role of family? What other social structures are operative? What about cultures, values, ethics? Advanced students may be introduced to the problem of Other Minds . Welcome to the Dinoverse A deep dive into the age of Giant Lizards. Where did they come from? How did they live? What happened to them? Will they come back? Can we bring them back? Should we? Students will learn about evolution, adaptation, and natural selection. Teachers will be encouraged to become familiar with Wonderful Life (Gould). Students will watch Jurassic Park , et al. We’ll never be alone! We are surrounded by things we’ve engineered. AI Bots are everywhere, embedded in everything. How are we different from our Bots? How are we alike? What do Bots do better than us? Are there things we do that Bots can’t do, now…or ever? Are AI Bots aware of their environment? Do they feel? Do they emote? Do they think? Do they communicate? How? Do they use signs or symbols? How is their ‘language’ like/unlike ours? Are they conscious? Can they be? Can they form social structures? Do they have cultures, values, ethics? To bot or not to bot, that is never the question! Rather, can we bolt on bots to make ourselves better? “Johnny got 3 wrong on his math test; maybe he needs a brain implant!” teased Julie. On the other hand, cells are populated with organelles descended from what once were independent organisms, assimilated into those cells and repurposed accordingly. Could that fate befall us? Students will be invited to watch episodes of Star Trek - The Next Generation , especially those that feature the Borg Collective, an early prototype for a post-organic civilization. Advanced students may be introduced to Alan Turing’s Imitation Game and John Searle’s Chinese Room . Welcome to the Marvelverse Stan Lee built a Universe, virtually from scratch. How did he do it? What are its features? It’s creatures? Does it have ‘laws’ (like our Universe)? What laws? How does ‘Marvel World’ compare with other ‘Other Worlds’, e.g. the worlds of Greek and Norse mythology, or of Kandinsky, Miro and Klee. Older students will be encouraged to explore the Many Worlds of Tolkien, either in film or in print. Finally, students will be encouraged to ‘create’ their own worlds, individually or in teams. This year’s science project: Create a Universe! Welcome to the Antiverse Traditionally, school has been about learning how things work. And you can do that at the Wonder School as well. But not everything does work, does it? The world is full of riddles and paradoxes and ‘unexplained phenomena’, and we’ll explore those here…at age appropriate levels, of course. Students may wish to grapple with Zeno, Godel, and/or Heisenberg; they’ll all surely want to pat Schoedinger’s cat. From UFOs to ESP to Crop Circles – it’s all on the table. Advanced students may wish to look into non-Euclidean geometries, non-orientable topologies (Mobius Strips), unreal numbers, etc. Episodes of Dr. Who (featuring the TARDIS) will be available for viewing. Note : there’s a Nobel waiting for the Wonder School student who resolves the problem of Quantum Gravity. We all Live in a Yellow Submarine Students will view the Beatles’ 1968 film as an example of late 20 th century mythology. Younger students will romp through the film’s many ‘alternate worlds’, imagining themselves confronting its various challenges. Older students will explore the film’s ground breaking ideas in biology, cosmology, physics, and metaphysics. They will compare the Beatles’ journey with ancient prototypes such as the Odyssey , the Divine Comedy , the Grail Legend, and the Crusades. Finally, all students will ask, “What is mythology anyway? Does it still play a role in our world?” Of course, this is just the surface of the stuff our classes will explore. But what about the pesky 3 Rs? Can you do honors level work without the ability to read or do arithmetic? Of course not! So we’ll have special skill workshops . When a student wants to learn to read or write or do math, we’ll have resource rooms available for them…but the impetus to learn must come from the students themselves. James Joyce ( Ulysses ) described the world as ‘signs we are here to read’. The Wonder School takes Joyce seriously. We trust our students to pick out the signs; we’ll help them read. 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. Previous Next