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“This tiny prayer…is a cyber-wonks dream. The density of the information content is out of this world, quite literally!” < Back The Our Father David Cowles Jun 1, 2023 “This tiny prayer…is a cyber-wonks dream. The density of the information content is out of this world, quite literally!” Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name! Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven! Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil, Amen! Everyone knows the Lord’s Prayer . The version quoted in the Gospel of Matthew (6: 9-13) are probably the best-known verses in all of Judeo-Christian scripture. In Issue #4 of Aletheia Today Magazine , we examined the prayer from the perspective of Pauline theology: read St. Paul's The Lord's Prayer and Faith, Hope, Love . Yet when Roman Catholic children first learn this prayer, they don’t call it the “Lord’s Prayer”; they call it the “Our Father” in recognition of the prayer’s personal tone and pastoral focus. Attention is drawn to the compassion of a father rather than to the majesty of a Lord. This tiny prayer (about 55 words in most English translations) is a cyber-wonks dream. The density of the information content is out of this world, quite literally! The Our Father consists of three stanzas of three verses each, followed by a surprise ending! The first stanza concerns the identity of God and the nature of our relationship with him; the second stanza has an eschatological focus, while the third stanza is concerned with every day social relations. We are all so familiar with this prayer that we may not always notice these sharp thematic breaks. In the first stanza, we learn that God is “our father” – not just the father of the cosmos or of Israel or of Jesus Christ, but the father of everyone, our father – not merely “the maker of heaven and earth”! The role of father is very different from the role of creator. As creator , God establishes the conditions necessary for existence per se , including our own existence; he is the ground of our being. But as father , God enters into a personal relationship with each of us. Next, we learn that our father is transcendent (“in heaven”) …and therefore eternal: he is not subject to the corruption and death characteristic of immanent, spatiotemporal reality. Finally, we acknowledge that God’s name is holy . In the ancient world, a person’s name was not just ‘her handle.' A name also defined the person’s role in society; in God’s case, it defines his role in the universe (which is his ‘society’). This is why Moses ( Exodus 3) was so concerned to learn God’s name. He knew the Israelites would ask and would not follow him until they knew. In the language of philosophy, a name is ‘essential,' not ‘accidental.' God does not disappoint. He tells Moses that his name is YHWH (“I am who am”). There’s no doubt about it, God is Mensa material. Notice how skillfully he positions himself for the lay-up while taking care to block out his opponents. Brilliant! God’s ‘name’ defines him as unique. Obviously, one and only one entity can answer to the name YHWH . Only one being can be Being itself. Some philosophers have gone so far as to assert that Ex. 3:14 is self-evidently true and therefore ‘proves’ the existence of God. We’ll leave that one alone! But God’s name is certainly ‘holy’ (or hallowed”): it is by definition unique and that makes polytheism an oxymoron. Yes, God is ‘ Roger Penrose smart’ . The second stanza of the prayer is eschatological. While the first stanza reveals the ‘primordial’ state of things, this stanza presents the ‘ultimate’ state of things: his kingdom comes, his will is done, and the boundary between heaven and earth disappears. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (Rev. 22:13) The Our Father sums up the entire Book of Revelation in just 3 lines. The first stanza of the Our Father identifies God’s as the Alpha Dog while the second stanza confirms that he will be ‘the last man (sic) standing.' But these stanzas provide no hint of how we are to get from Alpha to Omega. Rightly so! The first two stanzas are visions, not a parenting guide, not a political platform. We still need GPS, and fortunately, the third stanza provides just that! This third stanza is concerned primarily with daily life, the spatiotemporal realm. The unique ‘magic’ of Christianity is its ability to turn Being inside out, revealing alternately, Gestalt-like, its immanent aspect and its transcendent aspect. We have already been introduced to the Alpha and the Omega; here is where we learn the rest of the alphabet, i.e., everything in-between. As ‘father,' God has a care to provide for and protect his ‘children,' and it is very specific: feed me, forgive me, protect me! What child has not uttered these same petitions at one time or another to his own father? And what loving father has not granted these petitions, when appropriate, to the best of his ability? “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?” (Matthew 7: 9-10) In this stanza, we learn that our primordial relationship with God and God’s eschatological vision for the universe are relevant, not only to the transcendent realm, but also to the immanent. Now we learn something key: we are co-creators with God, co-creators of both temporal and eternal reality: “on earth as it is in heaven." We ask God to give us ‘our daily bread’; but here we can step up too. In the spatiotemporal realm we can function as God’s agents by giving ‘bread’ to those in need. Likewise, when we “forgive those who trespass against us," we also do the work of God (mercy). Finally, “Lead us not into temptation” refers to the level of care God has for each of us and that we in turn must have for one another. We all have a duty to protect others. Each of us is a ‘keeper’ of our ‘siblings’ and by siblings we mean all our neighbors as defined by Jesus in the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Does it take a village to raise a child? Heck no, it takes a cosmos! Now for the finale! Earlier I promised you a ‘surprise ending’ (remember how The Sixth Sense ended?). Well, here it is: “But deliver us from evil. Amen!” Really? That’s your surprise ending? We already knew that! (Ok, but did we understand it?) At first glance, this petition seems redundant; and in a way it is. After all, didn’t we already pray for that when we asked God to provide for us and protect us? But something even deeper is at work here. While neither Jesus nor the Evangelists knew the Second Law of Thermodynamics, they were all keen observers of the natural world. They knew that ‘all things must pass,' and they were familiar with texts like Ecclesiastes : “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity.” They understood the universality of mortality. Today we understand ‘change’ as ‘entropy’ and we know that every ‘change’ works to increase the overall entropy of the universe. (Entropy is the measure of disorder.) Consider the cosmos: “In the beginning…the earth was without form or shape (maximal disorder)…Then God said ‘Let there be light’ and there was light…God then separated the light from the darkness (order)…Then God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters to separate one body of water from the other’ (order)…the water under the sky was gathered into its basin and dry land appeared (order)…God created mankind in his image…male and female he created them (order).” (Genesis 1) Whether you prefer the model of creation known as ‘Genesis’ or the model known as ‘Big Bang,' it is clear that ordering per se is synonymous with the creative act. Big Bang or Fiat Lux , take your choice. Then, call it Original Sin or Thermodynamics, the entropic process begins. Entropy increases, order decreases. At some time in the far distant future, the universe will reach or approach a state of maximal entropy; all order will be lost and, effectively at least, the universe will cease to exist. “You cannot count what is not there.” (Ecclesiastes 1: 15b) Order then is denotatively synonymous with Being and therefore also with Good. Then where does that leave evil? If order is good, then entropy (disorder) must be bad. Of course, this is not in the first instance intentional, or subjective, evil; it is purely objective evil. Entropy is ‘evil’ because it erases being, which is intrinsically good. But that is the reality of our temporal world. We relish the marvelous things we experience as entropy unravels creation; but we dread the inevitable consequence: nothingness. At the level of organisms (like us), the ultimate expression of entropy is mortality, death. According to Stephen Hawking, no friend of theology, entropy is just another word for time (and vice-a-versa). Time is the true “destroyer of worlds” ( Bhagavad Gita ). From the perspective of a purely temporal world, death not only terminates our existence…it erases it! The only intellectually honest emotion then is despair. Unless …reality also has a transcendent (eternal) aspect (or dimension)! The opposite of faith is not doubt, which is unavoidable, but despair. The finale of the Our Father asks God to deliver us from evil. It is the climax of the greatest verses ever written. What then can it mean? We are asking God to free us from the otherwise inevitable ravages of entropy. We, like the Psalmist (e.g., Psalm 23), are asking God not to let our existence be erased. We are simply asking for eternal life, that’s all! It is appropriate that this portion of the prayer be phrased as a petition. After all, eternal life is the ultimate gift, the only gift, the ‘pearl of great price,' the difference between being and nothingness (sorry, Sartre). But spoiler alert : we don’t need to pace the floor on Christmas Eve worrying that Santa won’t bring us what we asked for…because it’s already purchased and delivered (and not by Amazon). The incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus has delivered us from evil, once and for all. And if we wish, we can re-experience that deliverance every day in the Sacrament of Eucharist. In the ontology of the Our Father, everything that happens in the temporal realm is real; and to the extent that anything temporal can be harmonized with God’s values, everything is preserved eternally. The terrible pall of certain and impending mortality evaporates. “The Lord is my shepherd (father); there is nothing I lack (daily bread) …He guides me along right paths (lead us not into temptation) for the sake of his (holy) name. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death (the temporal world), I will fear no evil, for you are with me (deliver us from evil) …I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever (on earth as it is in heaven).” Amen. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Summer 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next Share Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. 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< Back “…And the Pursuit of Happiness.” (The Declaration of Independence, 1776) David Cowles Mar 25, 2022 We honor ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ as inalienable human rights, but not all of us can say with assurance that we are always on the side of ‘life’ and ‘liberty’. Sometimes we can’t even agree on what these words mean, and we certainly don’t agree on how these rights should be applied in specific situations. (For example, many of the men who wrote the Declaration themselves owned slaves. We don’t always see ourselves through the eyes of civilization or the lens of history.) We honor ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ as inalienable human rights, but not all of us can say with assurance that we are always on the side of ‘life’ and ‘liberty’. Sometimes we can’t even agree on what these words mean, and we certainly don’t agree on how these rights should be applied in specific situations. (For example, many of the men who wrote the Declaration themselves owned slaves. We don’t always see ourselves through the eyes of civilization or the lens of history.) But the ‘pursuit of happiness’? Now that–that–we’ve got down! That’s something we know something about, something we know only too well in fact. Some might say that Americans invented the pursuit of happiness. No matter that we all have different notions of what constitutes happiness! Whatever it is, we’re pursuing it vigorously and nonstop. But do we ever get there? Are we any closer today than we were years ago? Or, are we hamsters, mindlessly running on a wheel-to-nowhere, locked in a cage? In Jewish tradition (Kabbala), two virtues can be mirror images of one another: Netzach, for example, refers to restlessness, while Hod refers to gratitude. It is the restlessness of Netzach that makes us want to leave the world better than we found it, while it is the gratitude of Hod that allows us to find perfection in the here and now! I am reminded of Molly Bloom’s famous soliloquy at the end of James Joyce’s Ulysses . It begins with “Yes…”, and 1600 lines later, it ends with the very same “…yes.” It has been called literature’s Great Amen. Joyce balances a keen eye for folly and a sharp ear for suffering, with an overwhelming sense of the ‘rightness’ of it all. Christians sometimes refer to this dichotomy as ‘the Kingdom already’ verses ‘the kingdom not yet’. Spirituality calls us to get comfortable with this apparent contradiction. In the famous Serenity Prayer, we ask our higher power for “the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Successful living needs this balance. If we cannot recognize the immediate presence of ‘the kingdom already,’ then we cannot dream of the future presence of ‘the kingdom not yet’. 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 Kabbalah and Thomas the Train David Cowles “Children and tank engines are not so different from the rest of us. They crave meaning! They only settle for pleasure when…they lose hope.” How plugged in are you to the five-and-under crowd? Not so much? Ok, try this for an icebreaker: ask your favorite neighborhood terror to name his or her favorite character from movies, TV or books. Expecting Winnie the Pooh or Paddington Bear? You may be in for a surprise. Ask that question of any properly aged, English-speaking child on either side of the Atlantic, and you’re likely to learn a lot more than you ever cared to know about Thomas the Tank Engine and his Friends on the Island of Sodor in the UK. Created in 1945 and popularized in 1979, Thomas represents a very different take on the ‘childhood hero.’ Thomas is not mischievous; he is not introspective; he is not filled with existential angst; he’s not even heroic, and he certainly has no superpowers. Thomas defies the stereotype of childhood as fantastical, hedonistic, self-indulgent, and anti-social. His sole goal in life is to be “a really useful tank engine.” In this sense, he is the anti-Pooh. Thomas wants to earn the respect of his boss, Sir Topham Hatt, and the friendship of his fellow engines and rolling stock. He wants a sense of identity; he wants to belong. Unfortunately, young and inexperienced as he is, Thomas makes mistakes, each of which he feels deeply. He finds himself at times teased, ridiculed, ignored, criticized, and even disciplined – like any child his age. But he never loses his good humor; he never stops trying to ‘be all that he can be,’ and from time to time, he has well-recognized successes. Thomas may be sad, angry, or frustrated, but he is never depressed. His only response to adversity is to try even harder to be the tank engine he knows he was ‘born’ to be. Anything less is out of the question. So what’s so revolutionary about this? Defying the West’s philosophical consensus, Thomas puts zero weight on personal happiness . He evaluates himself by one and only one criterion: is he being useful, and, if so, is he being as useful as he could be? It turns out that children and tank engines are not so different from the rest of us. They crave meaning! They only settle for pleasure when, like The Great Gatsby , they lose hope: “Living well is the best revenge!” Pleasure is the graveyard of hope and a poor substitute for purpose. Imagine, children have an innate desire to be useful! Who knew? But we systematically frustrate that desire and divert it into self-centered pleasure seeking. Not you? You never offered a child a bowl of ice cream to ‘make up for’ some disappointment? Yet we marvel, “What’s the matter with kids today?” Answer: Look in the mirror! We do things to and for and occasionally with children, but we’re terrified to let them do anything on their own. We need to be needed, and we’re happy to exploit the children in our orbit to satisfy that need. “You will be dependent on me…or else!” A baby is born! Hallelujah! But somewhere along the way, no later than age seven, usually much earlier, we encase that ‘caterpillar’ in a chrysalis until its 18 th birthday when it is expected to emerge, fully formed and beautiful, as a butterfly. It’s a dangerous reproductive strategy, one that frequently goes awry. Yet with each hiccup, we double down. Like any species caught in an evolutionary cul-de-sac , we insist on making our adaptations work, empirical evidence notwithstanding. Crystlle Medansky creates children’s literature from the tradition of Kabbalah – an ancient school of Jewish mysticism related to, but not identical with, Hasidism. In one story, A Droplet , she tells the tale of a single drop of water, aptly named Dewy. Dewy lives in the sea but the experience is unsatisfying. Vast, undifferentiated water is not very interesting, and by itself it reveals nothing about the nature of Dewy, the ocean, or the world. So Ocean agrees to send Dewy on a quest of self-discovery; it begins with Dewy’s evaporation and resumes with his eventual recondensation. Dewy’s goal is to return to Ocean, newly enlightened about the world, the self (Dewy) and the other (Sea). It is the paradigm of all life-experience. The soul of any such quest is the journey itself, not the destination. After all, when all is said and done, we end up right back where we started. Oh, but the adventures we have along the way! Dewy is anxious to complete his quest by returning to the ocean of his birth, but he does not place himself and his interests on a pedestal. Along the way, Dewy encounters various fellow creatures who need his help. Despite the urgency of his own mission, Dewy does not begrudge others the help they need to complete their own life journeys. First, a stalk of wheat needs hydration. “I’m in a hurry, but if you need my help, I will stay.” And Dewy stayed with the wheat until it had ripened. Then a stream needed Dewy’s help to wear away enough rock to create an unobstructed pathway to the sea. Again, Dewy responded generously. Next, Dewy encountered a boat that needed a wave to push it out to sea; Dewy selflessly delays his own reunion with Ocean in order to accelerate the arrival of his ‘fellow traveler .' At last, just as Dewy can hear the roar of the ocean ahead, a young mother calls to him from the embankment: “Can you help me take care of my little child?” Of course I can! Quest complete, Dewy finally reunites with the source of his being, the ocean. We don’t know what Dewy’s expectations were when he embarked on his quest, but it’s doubtful he expected to be gone for so many years. Still, it’s a small price to pay for the Pearl of Great Price, aka Enlightenment. Dewy’s quest allows him to realize that the meaning of life is not mystical union with the sea, but the helping hand he can lend to others on their own personal quests. Life is what happens while you’re waiting to begin living. Dewy was waiting to complete his quest so that his enhanced life with Ocean could begin. Instead, he discovers the real meaning of life lies in the projects of the others he encounters on his way. After an experience like this, Dewy will not be satisfied with the simple pleasures of frolicking with Ocean. Dewy, like Thomas, has discovered purpose…and nothing else will ever satisfy him again. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Summer 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

"Like most people of my generation, I cringe when I hear the M word." < Back Korach Over Dinner Tzvi Freeman Jul 15, 2023 "Like most people of my generation, I cringe when I hear the M word." Chabad.org invites the readers of Aletheia Today to read this article in full by following this link . Return to our Beach Read 2023 Table of Contents Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Consciousness David Cowles Feb 16, 2023 “Consciousness is an agent of identity, a consequence of identity, and an expression of identity…” The idea of free-floating consciousness is absurd. Consciousness is not some sort of disembodied pseudo-substance, detectable (in theory and in practice) only through its various, otherwise inexplicable, manifestations. It is not a ghost in a machine (Gilbert Ryle). Consciousness is not inferred from data; it is the direct experience of data that includes the awareness of that data as data and the awareness of awareness itself. Consciousness is recursive; it is the ultimate stage in the integration and unification of elements in the constitution of an actual entity. Consciousness is an agent of identity, a consequence of identity, and an expression of identity – all in no particular order. Bumper sticker : Consciousness happens! It is a paradigm of non-linear, recursive, self-reinforcing process. Therefore, every actual entity, to the extent that it is, in fact, an actual entity, is conscious . However, the intensity and the subjective form of that consciousness varies widely from one actual entity to another. The idea of hard-wired consciousness is also absurd. Consciousness cannot be reduced to some sort of physical structure, e.g., a network of molecules or cells, but that is not to say that some sort of physical structure is not required for consciousness to manifest – it is! So, if consciousness is neither free-floating nor hard-wired, what is it? Consciousness is an emergent property of a nexus of elements; it is characteristic of certain patterns . It is a homeostatic behavior that accompanies the process of transition from mere multiplicity to actual entity. Consciousness unifies and identifies. Ontogenesis is an atemporal process. It is entirely unrelated to what we call causality (which is by definition a spatio-temporal phenomenon). Every nexus includes the entire multiplicity of events that it subtends. The nexus-stage of ontogenesis ‘orders’ the multiplicity so that it can function as patterned raw material for the emergence of a novel actual entity (event). In one sense, a nexus logically precedes the formation of an actual entity. In another sense, it is the consequence of that formation. Therefore, it cannot but be acausal and atemporal. In fact, it is the actual entity that determines the identity of the nexus, not the other way around. T-shirt : One nexus, one entity: one entity, one nexus! That’s ontological democracy for you. Think Three Musketeers : one for all and all for one! ( Theistic translation : God for us and us for God!) That’s Being . But again, it’s the actual entity that drives the process, i.e., that gives the nexus its character . It is as a nexus that the activities of the independent elements of the omnipotent multiplicity (think Aristotle’s ‘matter’, i.e., pure potentiality ) begin to align (think metal filings as they encounter a magnetic field) in the initial stage of the formation of an entity. It is consciousness, the homeostatic behavior of certain nexus (pl.), that is responsible for the phenomenon of identity . Identity in turn functions as its own engine of homeostasis. Once again, like every element in ontogenesis , this is a non-linear, recursive, auto-reinforcing process. Like terrestrial species defined by their DNA, all nexus (pl.) share elements in common. In fact, the elements of ‘neighboring nexus’ (pl.) are likely to overlap…massively. But that doesn’t mean that the entities that ultimately emerge from those nexus (pl.) will be phenomenally similar; far from it! I share 70% of my DNA with a fruit fly; it is my brother from another mother. 'Nuf said? Only an actual entity ‘creates’. ( Sidebar : Therefore, in a theistic ontology, God too must be an actual entity.) Only an actual entity can contribute both unity and novelty to the world. In fact, to borrow a construction from Keats, unity is novelty and novelty unity – that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know! Bottom line : each nexus constitutes a unique ‘actual world’ for the emergence of a unique actual entity (or event). The process that happens between an Actual World and an Actual Entity is quite complex – too complex for this venue. (Check out Process and Reality – Alfred North Whitehead.) It involves values, objectives, feelings, choices, contrasts, etc. The culmination of that process is the emergence of a unique entity (event), adding yet another element to the vast multiplicity of events that are available to be ordered in a nexus so that it can function as an element in the emergence of other actual entities. Self-awareness ( aka consciousness, aka identity) is a defining element of ‘actual entity’ per se . 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.

“Value permeates every nook and cranny of the World. God is Value… No values – no world...” < Back Proof of God: The Ontological Argument David Cowles Jun 1, 2024 “Value permeates every nook and cranny of the World. God is Value… No values – no world...” In the Middle Ages, the most attractive ‘proof’ of the existence of God was what’s now called ‘The Ontological Argument’. It is most often attributed to Anselm of Bec (c. 1100) but it pops up here and there all across the theological landscape of the late Middle Ages. The ‘proof’ is as follows: God, by definition, is a perfect being. In such a ‘God’, all perfections must subsist…and they must subsist perfectly, i.e. to the greatest degree possible, so it is impossible to imagine any being more perfect in any way than ‘God’. Hamlet notwithstanding, ‘to be’ is better than ‘not to be’; apologies to Sartre, but ‘being’ is better than ‘nothingness’. If God, as we define ‘God’, did not exist it would be possible to imagine another being, the same as ‘God’…only existing . That God could beat up our God! In that case, our ‘God’ would not be God. Only a ‘God’ that exists can qualify as God. Therefore, according to the Ontological Argument, God, the perfect Being, must exist! Clever. Somewhat convincing perhaps in the context of Nominalism…not so much in the Days of Deconstruction . I won’t reproduce the counter argument here. I don’t have to. We can sense intuitively that there is something wrong with this version of the ‘Ontological Proof’; it just doesn’t pass ‘the smell test’. But might there be a way to formulate the argument that would command our super sophisticated 21st century attention? Let’s see… When we say ‘God’, we mean a being in whom all perfections subsist to the max. According to Nietzsche et al., there are no ‘perfections’ and therefore there are no gradations. There are no ‘values’, period. And did I mention, there is no God? Nietzsche is gloriously consistent, his successors, not so much! If Nietzsche is right, the World is flat; sorry, Columbus. There are no ‘values’; things just are , and they are the way they are. So-called Historical Process is just Fate. Nothing is better, or less good, than anything else; everything just is. To say otherwise would require ‘evaluation’ and that would require us to entrust the power of ‘valuation’ to some region within the World (like ourselves)…or to some entity beyond the World (like the verboten God). Nietzsche understood that to bifurcate World into ‘evaluator’ and ‘evaluated’, even if those designations were fluid, would disrupt flatness and create hierarchy. In that case, the evaluator, whether understood as part of, or separate from, the World, would in fact transcend the World. Evaluation is a species of recursion: the World sees itself and/or the World acts on itself. The subject is the same as, but different from, the object. A flat (linear) cosmos cannot be recursive (non-linear). There is no subject, there are no objects. But what if we stand Anselm on his head? What if we follow the lead of the 6th century Irish poet, St. Dallan? What if we begin, not by defining God but by provisionally asserting God’s existence. “Naught is all else to me save than Thou art!” If God exists, what can we say about him? First, God transcends World. That’s by definition; it’s what we mean by ‘God’. Going further, we can say that God is Transcendence per se . What transcends the World is God…again, by definition. In Genesis, God begins the process of creation by separating darkness from light. But there must have been a prior step, only implicit in the text: the distillation of immanence out of transcendence. To transcend the world is to judge it, explicitly or implicitly, just as to judge the world, by definition, requires us to transcend it. Judgment discloses Value; all judgments refer to values. The application of Value is what judgment is. So the theoretical question of God’s existence comes down to the empirical question of whether ‘values’ are operative in our World. Of course they are! Right now, I’d love a nap, but I judge it more important to keep writing. I value B over A. Later today, I will choose a TV program to watch, a book to read, a snack to eat – all driven by the application, however trivial, of Value. How does God fit in? Does God prefer Law & Order to Seinfeld ? Kafka to Faulkner? Corn chips to popcorn? Of course not. But God is the well-spring of Value which enables us to make such choices for ourselves. 20th century philosophy begins in the 19th - with Nietzsche. Nietzsche alone in the modern era challenged the doctrine of Transcendence ( aka Godhead, Keter ), the root concept behind God and Value. Fundamentalists honor God over Value; humanists honor Value over God. Nietzsche had no use for either. Unfortunately, few if any of Nietzsche’s successors remained faithful to his core. Could there be two more different thinkers than A.J. Ayer (the British analytic) and Albert Camus (the French existentialist)? Both were affirmed atheists. Both denied the objectivity of Value. But unlike Nietzsche, both allowed values to ‘corrupt’ their thinking… sneaking in through a back door carelessly left ajar. After thoroughly debunking the concept of Value and declaring the World to be absurd, Camus provided a laundry list of identities that folks might coherently assume. The list is extensive. One suspects that Camus may have been moonlighting in the job placement office of some university. But don’t assume that Camus’s list is value agnostic. He dismisses any sort of asceticism (e.g. monasticism) as ‘incoherent’. He praises those who live lives full of variety and intensity , both values. Ultimately, he applied his own, quite detailed, value-based filter ( logos ) to the World. Ayer took a different tack in his break with Nietzsche. He boils the ethical imperative down to a single value, Kindness . Unfortunately, he offers no justification for this ethical choice. Is it possible that he fails to see that Kindness also is a value? Sidebar : Remarkably, the world is full of books that begin by stating a proposition and then proceed, unwittingly, to demolish that proposition. I am thinking, for example, of Something from Nothing , which begins by stating that the world we know can ‘naturally’ emerge out of ‘nothing’…and ends by inadvertently disproving that thesis. Who says that kindness is better than cruelty? Is it just a personal preference? Can we find no objective distinction between Mother Theresa and the Marquis de Sade? Can we find no objective criteria to underpin our condemnation of Adolf Hitler? If rejecting belief in God means placing Mother Teresa on the same ethical rung as Hitler, then I’m proud to have you call me a Theist ! Sticks and stones you know… Personally, I doubt that it is possible for anyone to live a single day without allowing ‘values’ to color perception or motivate behavior. The closest approach to such would be the lifestyle of the contemplative, the mystic. Yet this is precisely the lifestyle choice that Camus disallows. The traditional Ontological Argument assumes that manifestations of Value can be ordered by degrees relative to perfection . Then we have proven the existence of God only if we have proven that a perfect being must exist in order to account for various degrees of value in the world. But the Middle Ages set the bar too high. We don’t need to prove perfection ; we only need to demonstrate gradation. Of course, the experience of gradation may lead us to belief in perfection; but it doesn’t have to. The existence of gradation alone is sufficient to demonstrate the existence of God. Anslem moved from value to existence; we propose to move from existence to value. If God did exist, what would the World be like? Without God, could the World still be the way it is? Far from being flat (Nietzsche), the world is riddled with values. The phenomenon of Value is literally ‘universal’, as the Baltimore Catechism affirmed (c. 1955): “Where is God? God is everywhere!” The Nominalists and the Scholastics attempted to deduce the existence of God from first premises. How logical of them! We have attempted to infer the existence of God from observation. How empirical of us! Value permeates every nook and cranny of the World. God is Value, the source of all values, and all values inhere in God. No values – no world (as I know it). No God – no values! The unmistakable detection of Value in the World, not perfection but gradation, is empirical proof that there is a God. We can certainly imagine someone saying, “I don’t believe in the existence of anything perfect .” It is more difficult to imagine anyone saying, “I don’t believe that anything is any better than anything else.” Then to say, “I have satisfied myself that some things are better (e.g. more beautiful, more true, more just) than others,” is to say, “I have proven the existence of God.” Easy-peasy, but I await your rebuttal, dear reader! David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to Summer 2024 Share Previous Next Click here. Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! 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< Back Be Half There David Cowles “'Be Here Now,’ cried Baba Ram Dass in the ‘60s. But was that good advice?” Can you imagine what life would be like if we actually had to live it? Fortunately, we don’t! Ok, maybe we ‘half-live it’. At every juncture in life, you’re ‘half-there’. A part of you is always stuck in a remembered past while another part of you is already looking back from an imagined future. You see yourself not as you are, but as the peculiar complex of culturally defined roles you’ve adopted – i.e. your personae, your masks. You’re not a point, you’re not just ‘who you are, what you are, when you are’. Like an orbiting electron, you’re schmeared out over space and time. Just listen to yourself: “Next time…next time I’m in Maui, next time I come to this restaurant, next time I drive north in rush hour. “Last time…last time we visited Hawaii, last time we ate in this restaurant, last time I drove north in rush hour. “Back then…when I was Tweedledee…then when I become Tweedledum.” Whatever it is we’re doing, we’re simultaneously comparing it to something we did in the past, something we might have done in the present but didn’t, something we could yet do in the future. We’re also comparing our actions with culturally expected norms: “Big boys don’t cry,” and with the supposed actions of our icons: “WWJD?” Many spiritual teachers have observed these phenomena and railed against them. “Be Here Now,” cried Baba Ram Dass in the ‘60s. But was that good advice? To experience the present moment with no option to bury yourself in memories or hide yourself in fantasies or comfort yourself with counterfactuals or justify yourself via social norms (“just doing my job”) would be unbearable. We manage life by believing that we are redeeming the past and improving the future (whatever that might mean). We are ‘making a contribution’, certain as we are that ‘better days are coming’. We are leaving footprints in the sand, ripples on the surface. We are sustained by our memories (faith), we are energized by our visions (hope), and we are ever reliant on ‘the kindness of strangers’ (love). We do not act alone but as members of a community and we are proud of the socially defined roles we play within that community. “I am someone!” you say. ( Sidebar : when I was in my mid-20s, my mother once said to me, “You’re not people!” Later, I became ‘people’; thanks, Mom?) You are a student, spouse, parent, teacher, butcher, baker, candlestick maker…sequentially or all at once. You find your precious ‘identity’ by overlaying a stack of social filters. Can people change? Of course they can! Just change the filters. But can people really change? Of course they can’t! There’s nothing to change. We are relieved to know that some features of the past are done and gone, never to be repeated, but we are also comforted knowing that the present has inherited some familiar features from that same past. Believing we can make the future qualitatively different from the present gives our lives purpose. Solidarity with others gives us a sense of security. These dispensations allow us to relativize the horror of real life. But flash! Those dispensations can be taken away. Future courts may have the power (constitutional and technological) to sentence serious offenders to relive a year, or two, of their lives. In this state, you can’t modify your behavior and you can’t alter the course of events in any way. Pain cannot be averted; boredom cannot be relieved. You must simply relive it all, all alone, as it was, with full knowledge that there is no pony hidden beneath the pile of excrement. Essentially, you’ve become a character in an ‘anti-version’ of It’s a Wonderful Life . You are watching an unedited narrative of you , but you are watching it from the inside, from the perspective of a real character in the movie. Jimmy Stewart experienced the world as it would have been had he not lived in it; you get to experience the world as it is because you lived in it. You are fully engaged, emotionally and intellectually, feeling every slight, every bruise, as if you were feeling it for the first time…but knowing that you’ve experienced it all before and that you’ll go on experiencing the same until your sentence is up. How is such a thing possible? Actually, it’s pretty simple once the bot brain barrier has been breached. Carbon and silicon; they go together like peanut butter and bananas. Ads for You - the Movie tell it all: “Cringe as you watch yourself repeat the same mistakes. Blush as you relive those legendary awkward moments . Tremble in anticipation of reliving past pain; cry as you watch yourself hurt others.” Without its dispensations, life is unbearable. Defendants dread nothing more than hearing, “…And so I sentence you to be yourself for a term of one full year.” It is well known that convicts sentenced to play the lead role in You - the Movie invariably return to court after a month or two. Sentenced to ‘real life’ for one year, they ask the judge to ‘commute’ their sentence…to ‘death by lethal injection’. 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. 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< Back Laura Cabrera Contributor Laura Cabrera's interests focus on the ethical and societal implications of neurotechnology and neuroscientific advances. She has been working on projects that explore the media coverage and the attitudes of the general public toward pharmacological and novel neurosurgical interventions for the treatment of psychiatric disorders. She has also worked on the public perceptions towards the use of different modalities of neuromodifiers for enhancement purposes, as well as their normative implications. Her current work also focuses on the responsible governance of neurotechnology. Neurotech Challenges Mental Privacy: New Human Rights?

< Back Voice Verbs David Cowles “I am stuck on Band-Aid ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me!” So says the jingle for one of the world’s most iconic products. But more importantly, and quite unexpectedly, this slogan is one of the best examples of ‘middle voice thinking’ in American pop culture. “I am stuck on Band-Aid ’cause Band-Aid’s stuck on me!” So says the jingle for one of the world’s most iconic products. But more importantly, and quite unexpectedly, this slogan is one of the best examples of ‘middle voice thinking’ in American pop culture. We are used to sentences built around active (or passive) voice verbs. (The passive voice is just the active voice turned around.) ‘Billy hit Tommy’ and ‘Tommy was hit by Billy’ describe the exact same event but each with a different focus. The active voice puts the focus on Billy (the one who hit) while the passive voice focuses on Tommy (the one who was hit). But what about the more likely scenario that Billy and Tommy are simply fighting. In English, we have to say, “Tommy and Billy hit each other.” Clumsy! Other languages, especially ancient languages, often include a third voice, the ‘middle voice’. If English had a middle voice, there would be a form of the verb ‘to hit’ that would convey simply the ‘middle voice’ reality of this event. In Icelandic, the language with a middle voice that is closest to English, you usually just add ‘st’ to the end of the root verb to make it middle voice: “Billy and Tommy hitst,” for example. The band-aid jingle highlights this dilemma. Is the bandage stuck on you (active voice) or are you stuck on the bandage (passive voice)? Or are you and the bandage ‘stuckst’ (middle voice)? See how the active and passive voices distort slightly what happens with a band-aid. It takes a middle voice verb form to properly convey what is actually going on. So, who cares? Well, we all do or at least we all should. The current active-passive dualism makes us prone to think in categories such as ‘maker-made’, ‘employer-employee’, ‘ruler-ruled’. I’s exploit it’s. For some purposes, the dominance of active/passive voice verb forms may make practical sense. After all, this is the language of the industrial revolution: skyscrapers and assembly lines. But it is decidedly not the language of interpersonal relations. The philosopher Martin Buber called the proper relationship between two persons ‘I thou’ (rather than ‘I it’). ‘I thou’ is Buber’s way of introducing middle voice thinking into languages (German and English) that do not have a middle voice verb form. One of the most profound lessons of the New Testament is that what I do to another is simultaneously done to me. I am both the subject and the object of my actions. But without a middle voice verb form, we Anglophones have no easy way to express this ethos – and therefore we tend to lose sight of it in our everyday lives – at immense personal and social cost. Previous Next

< Back Haiku Be courageous, take the leap. Dream it? Be it! Faith…not just Belief! (With credit to The Rocky Horror Picture Show) Autumn empty now, Leaves bore into soggy ground. Birds fold into clouds. (After Basho – 17th Century) Somewhere in the void, souls sojourn naked, awake. We are Resplendent. (Richard Blankenship) We build barricades - Kith and kin and kind – Hide from Our terror - the void. (David Cowles) Train rattles my ear, Sun reveals magic to us, A perfect moment. (Jack Cowles) Grits, butter, no cheese, explosion of Tabasco which cantaloupe cools. (David Cowles) You there, “Make snowballs!” They crumble. Age 6 and a Crooked arms dealer! (David Cowles) One caw of a crow Turns all of the fallen leaves A deeper yellow. (Richard Wright) Writing love poems now - Planting season so long gone – How ridiculous! (David Cowles) Drip, drip goes the water How I wish I could use it To wash the world away. (Basho – 17th century) Enough is enough – Except when it’s not; voila, ‘Rithmetic is born! (David Cowles) I am entropy, My touch unravels order, Agent of Kaos. (David Cowles) Good morning. Eyes up, Hearts full, Minds sharp! Compassion - On full blast. Let’s go! (after Lin-Manuel Miranda) Editor's note: a friend and I engage in a very short ‘Haiku-slam:' Hanging on corners - Dark streets, dive bars, and the Ritz - Having fun with friends. (David Cowles) Sleeping on the tracks - Flying first class selling dreams. Behold a poet! (John O’Brien) David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Share Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue Your content has been submitted Add to our haiku in the comment box below.

“The most important thing we’ve learned is that we know so much less than we thought we knew.” < Back Is the Universe Real David Cowles Jul 15, 2024 “The most important thing we’ve learned is that we know so much less than we thought we knew.” What must it have been like to stare up at the stars c. 2000 BCE? The Universe is your patch! You have qualified dominion over the animals and plants, and you can imagine setting sail on that great whale rode ( Beowulf ) we now know as the Milky Way. It is easy to see how we might have fallen prey to hubris . “I’m the king of this castle!” Things look a bit different now, don’t they? We know so much more, and the most important thing we’ve learned is that we know so much less than we thought we knew. Of course, in absolute terms we have exponentially more data points; but relative to what is available to be known , our noosphere is shrinking. For one thing, much of what we thought we knew has turned out to be wrong; for another, each new, hard-won kernel of gnosis has shone a spotlight on vast new regions of ignorance. Once upon a time I knew nowt about arithmetic. Then someone showed me that 1 + 1 = 2. Cool beans! Then what about 1 + 1 + 1? Or 2 + 1? Or 2 + 2? In a couple of years I’ll give you Principia Mathematica. Imagine that X stands for everything there is to know, and Y stands for what we do know. In 2000 BCE, Y might have been 10% of X. Wow! But 4,000 years later, things have changed. What we know now is more like 1% of what is available to be known. We are learning what we don’t know faster than we’re learning in the first place. As fast as we learn more about our universe, the faster we learn how much more we don’t know. Sidebar : If this process continues unabated, we may reach the coveted mystic state of absolute unknowing. In 1900 CE, we were like 4-year-olds. We knew everything there was to know. By 1950, we’d learned that there was a lot more to be known than we’d imagined. To make matters worse, we realized that much of what we thought we knew in 1900 wasn’t what we thought it was. By 1950 we’d begun playing with computers; 75 years later, our computers are playing with us. For 50 years, we programed our computers; now computers program themselves. How long before those same computers program us? “What is man (sic) that God should be mindful of him?” Good question, but it was easier to answer when homo sapiens was top dog in a Universe we imagined to be less than half the size of our solar system. Not so easy to answer in the context of a Universe that is 14 billion years old and contains a trillion galaxies. Or in the context of a body that is made up of nothing but 30 trillion independent life forms (cells). Now what is ‘man’ again…? We have absolutely no right to expect our tiny lives to matter. But if that’s so, then all the agony of living has been for naught. In the cosmic context, we are sparks. What is just is. It’s not good, or bad; it just is. It came to be without regard to values of any sort. Even ‘order’, a prerequisite of Value, is in ever dwindling supply. In fact, order max’d out at Big Bang. Like a well wound watch, our universe is slowly running downhill. By some estimates we’re already about 15% of the way to Heat Death. To the extent that order is related to Value, the high point was 14 billion years ago, and every moment thereafter is a step in the ‘wrong’ direction. Look at it another way. The primary values - Beauty, Truth, and Justice – can all be appreciated as different manifestations of ‘order’. Without an ordered background to draw from, none of these values could be operative. Therefore, if they are at all, they must be gradually disappearing. Not much to look forward to, is it? A world which will necessarily become uglier, less truthful, and more unjust over time. (Hmm, sound like somebody’s political system?) Such a Universe is simply a process of self-annihilation. If Being = Good, then Entropy = Evil; and so Jesus taught us to pray, “Deliver us from evil”. And consciousness? According to this model, consciousness is the accidental consequence of increasing entropy (Hawking). It is a trace left behind by the order that is vanishing. Living consciously in this world is like watching your uninsured McMansion burn to the ground. No wonder folks are depressed. Unless none of this is true! Recent advances in neuroscience suggest that consciousness (self-awareness, recursion) is coincident with life itself. Like love and marriage pre-1950, you apparently can’t have one without the other. As far as we know, all life is cellular. It is apparently the minimal condition required for DNA to be expressed, conserved and replicated. According to this model, the DNA molecule evolved only once on Earth, and it evolved in tandem with a cellular superstructure. If and when we discover non-terrestrial life, we may find phenomena that we want to classify as ‘living’ but that has nothing like DNA and/or no such cellular structure; but all that is mere conjecture now. As soon as the Earth had sufficiently cooled, the first DNA molecule was synthesized…and expressed as a conscious cell. As far as we know, in the 4 billion years since that momentous event, not a single new DNA molecule and not a single new cell has formed. Remarkable! That means, as far as we can say with any certainty, life and consciousness are one-offs. But of course, we’ve only surveyed a tiny corner of this vast universe. If Universe came to be accidentally and spontaneously and if it will ultimately self-annihilate, then what is it anyway? Here our academic overlords are split: either (1) the universe is real but has no meaning, no value, no purpose, or (2) what we call ‘universe’ is not real but only virtual. According to this later interpretation, the Universe ‘exists’ in same way virtual particles ‘exist’…it doesn’t. A virtual particle is a particle still born; it has no being . It is a sub-momentary dispensation from the great Neant that ultimately comes to nothing. Turns out though, the two models are identical, one framed in the vocabulary of Idealism, the other in the language of materialism. Gregory Bateson’s seminal contribution to Western philosophy is his insight that ‘being’ applies only to entities that ‘make a difference’. To be is to be different and to make a difference; an actual entity is “a difference that makes a difference”. Whatever is not distinguished from its inherited world and/or does not make a distinguishable contribution to the inheritable worlds of other entities…is not! Camus and Sartre applied such a test to the existence of ‘God’. For them, God is an entity whose existence, or non-existence, makes no difference. Therefore, whether God exists theoretically or not, God does not exist. In the language of symbolic notation (A υ ~A) = ~A. We might say the same of Universe. Whether it’s fully virtual or merely meaningless, it cannot ‘be’ because either way, the events that constitute it make no difference. Alternatively, the Universe is a locus of events, real events because each event is a difference that makes a difference. According to the ‘Standard Model’, events within Universe are actual entities because they are differences that make a difference, but not so Universe per se . That won’t wash! If Universe is annihilated at Heat Death, so are all its constituent events. Therefore, the great chain of difference is broken. In that case events are real only in the context of each other but not in any objective sense. So then, what of Universe itself? Events within Universe are real because they are differences that make a difference. Does Universe? Yes, but if and only if Universe is ‘different’ from the mere collection of events that make it up, and if there is something to which Universe can matter. If so, that ‘something’ must transcend the universe itself. Yet Universe must remain true to its name ( uni ). Only, Universe itself can meet this test. The Universe is a massively non-linear ‘perpetual recursion machine’. Every event shapes the whole as the whole shapes every event. Is this paganism? Or pantheism? Neither. The Universal process of perpetual recursion transcends the Universe itself. It is a manifestation of the Trinitarian God, the paradigm of recursion. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at dtc@gc3incorporated.com Return to our 2024 Beach Read Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? 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< Back The Paradox of Childhood David Cowles “…We treat children…as pets, slaves, snuggle bunnies and proto-adults”. Children are chronic ‘not-yets’. Not yet walking, not yet talking, not yet reading. Not yet matriculated, not yet graduated. Not yet a crime boss, a hit woman, an investment banker, a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker. Not yet! Children are exactly like us, only smaller…they are us, only ‘not yet’. They are proto-parents, proto-doctors, proto-miners (those who spend their working lives in mines, extracting ore – in case you don’t remember what a ‘miner’ is), proto-cubes (those who spend their lives working in cubicles, extracting data). Children are entirely unlike us. They are curious; we are either bored or overwhelmed or both. They have boundless energy; we’re already looking forward to our next nap. They cry at the drop of a hat; we don’t show our emotions. Children cannot be controlled, and it takes an elaborate complex of rewards and punishments, emotional and physical, just to ‘manage’ their behavior; and yet… “Girls are sugar and spice and everything nice; boys are snakes and snails and puppy dog tails.” Maybe, but we treat children of all genders as pets, slaves, snuggle bunnies… and proto-adults. Of course, children are none of these things! How hard must it be then for them to play all these roles at once…and without a single acting class? Up for a ‘thought experiment’? Who’s your favorite 8 year old? Ok, now replay the hackneyed movie plot: switch bodies (ridiculous, of course). Imagine that now you’re living your life as an 8 year old…for a year. What fun! Who wouldn’t want to be a kid again? No responsibilities, no bills to pay, spending half your waking hours ‘just playing’. Not quite so much fun when the giants you live with hurt you, demean you, berate or belittle you. You’d like to make them happy, but it’s not as easy as they would like us to believe. “Just be Good,” but HOW when the constellation of expectations shifts inexplicably from circumstance to circumstance? My father was an Eagle Scout. When I was 12, I followed in his footsteps and joined the Boy Scouts. One night I came home excited. I had just passed my first test. I was a tenderfoot now, and I couldn’t wait to tell my Dad all about it. He was furious. Something about my story, something I’d said, something I’d done, I still don’t know what, rubbed him the wrong way. Needless to say, that ended my brief flirtation with BS. Not quite so much fun when you’re forced to idle in school for 6 hours a day. Sadly, we have found a way to make the process of learning boring and its contents nonsensical – not easy to do in a world as wonderous as ours! We’ve figured out how to transform boundless curiosity into unrelenting boredom. We have become death, the destroyer of worlds. (Oppenheimer) Did you imagine your year would be all fun and games? You’re in a world where everything is either threatening or meaningless, terrifying or boring. Your year will be one of physical fear, social anxiety, and, did I mention it, crushing boredom. Parents, teachers, cops, bullies, pit bulls, bees and bed…and you 4’ 6” and 85 pounds soaking wet. Did your tween/teen ever yell at you, “This house is a prison?” That’s because it is! “But my children love me!” Ok, but have they also learned to ‘go along to get along’? And be honest – isn’t that exactly how you’ve raised them? “My boy is just like me; he’s grown up just like me.” (Harry Chapin) Nothing is worse than being a child…unless it’s being an adult. You want nothing more than to be a kid again while you kids want nothing more than to be… you . I mean, just exactly how crazy is that? Do things have to be this way? Clearly not. In ‘less civilized’ societies, for example, things are often different. Take an Amazonian tribe, the Piraha as an example. They impose no expectations on their children and make almost no effort to regulate their behavior. Punishment of any sort is virtually unknown. Of course, there’s a trade-off. Pirahanese children are quite literally ‘out-of-control’ all the time…but they are never malicious. Why would they be? They have nothing to rebel against ! As a 50 year old, you might not choose to live the Pirahanese lifestyle; but as a 5 year old, you’d love it. We take our children to Disney World. Pirahanese children live in Disney World. By current Euro-American standards, Pirhanese children are neglected; but by the standards of the Pirhana, they are simply respected. Euro-American adults cannot wait to have children. They’ll spend tens of thousands of dollars to treat infertility issues in hope of a single live birth. But once our angelic children are born, we can’t wait for them to grow up and ‘act like adults’. We have goals for our children: sleeping through the night, weaned, toilet trained, etc. To Pirahanese parents, the idea that these eventualities should be viewed as ‘goals’ seems non-sensical. All these things will happen organically, in their own time, without any adult intervention. Much worse, we plan our children’s lives for them before they know there’s anything to plan. “Sally’s going to be a teacher, I’m sure, and she’ll be good at it; she loves to explain things to other kids, and Skip? Well, he’s our budding little MD. I mean, ‘gag me with a spoon’!" Everything is upside down. The kids are trying to fashion a personality and a character; they are deciding, how, where, if at all, they want to be part of the social fabric. And us? Well, we are constantly getting in their way. Tell me, do you see a happy outcome here? 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 Next