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The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. < Back Kandinsky: The Painter of Other Worlds David Cowles Oct 15, 2022 The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. All art forms have a fascination with alterity , the idea of the other. Many 20th century painters explored this idea in depth. Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944), however, stands out as a painter who devoted his entire career to the exploration of other worlds, and who developed a tool kit and a language to help us continue that exploration. It’s 1910 and a young Russian, Wassily Kandinsky, is starting to paint. Even in his earliest works, Kandinsky explores worlds that differ from the world of ordinary experience. Part dream, part hallucination, part fantasy, Kandinsky’s early works preserve the identity of the subject and the structure of the ground, but he makes the two nearly interchangeable, and he invests the whole with a dynamism, a palette and a perspective unlike anything we would ever call mundane . The name of a 1911 work, Romantic Landscape , sums up this early period. As Kandinsky’s work matured, his landscapes became more abstract, and the relationship of colors and forms became the real subject of his painting. Then in 1913, in Painting with White Border , Kandinsky experimented with a new technique. He situated his imagined world within another, wider world by means of a “white border.” While he is not yet exploring substructural worlds, he is moving conceptually toward the recognition that the world of subject-object, space-time, and sense perception is situated in a much broader cosmos. Later that same year, Kandinsky began to paint canvases without any representational features. Light Picture and Black Lines begin a new era. No longer is Kandinsky abstracting from the world of everyday experience and reformatting that world according to a new logic and a new aesthetic; now he is creating (or unveiling, aletheia ) entirely novel worlds via paint. In 1919, he painted White Oval , a rounded rhombus containing an entire physics of fanciful forms, situated within a dark, vague border that suggests nearly empty space. This world is like a womb, self-contained within the larger body aka ’reality’. Modern cosmologists might recognize this as a bubble universe, an apparently self-contained and finite universe that is really just one “bubble” in a foam of bubbles (all universes, similar or not so similar to our own). During this period, Kandinsky regularly organizes paintings around irregular geometric shapes. For example, Red Oval (1920) depicts what cosmologists might call a brane, a space situated within a higher dimensionality. In Red Oval , all the inhabitants link to the brane (or to something else that links to the brane). Some objects link to the brane at one end point only, others at both end points; does this remind you of today’s strings ? Objects may equally well link to either side of the brane, or they may run through the brane like arrows. All the activity in this world takes place in or just above/below this brane. Compared to the higher dimensional universe in which it is situated, the brane is something like a pancake. Beginning in 1922, Kandinsky’s paintings show the influence of the Bauhaus. However, he incorporates that influence into his own style. In the Black Square (1923), he inserts the architectural forms of Bauhaus into his brane-world. During this period, Kandinsky’s painting becomes increasingly dynamic, and he begins to explore motion as a “thing in itself.” In Yellow Accompaniment and One Center (1924) the subject of the piece is dynamics. The colors, forms, and constructed objects just serve to make otherwise invisible ‘motion’ visible. Remember Zeno’s Paradox , the work of an early Greek philosopher of the same name. Zeno demonstrates that the phenomenon of motion is not possible in any world where the axioms of arithmetic apply. Zeno’s radical conclusion, attacked anew by each generation of mathematicians and logicians, remains unrefuted…2,500 years later. Kandinsky seems to accept both Zeno’s conclusion and the challenge it poses. Kandinsky’s canvasses illustrate the reality of motion, but only in worlds where the axioms of arithmetic do not hold. Using paint, Kandinsky offers us a syllogism: (1) Motion can only be real in a world where the rules of arithmetic do not hold; (2) Motion is real; therefore, (3) the rules of arithmetic do not hold. (I know a bunch of third graders who will be very happy to hear this news!) Accent in Pink (1926), for example, depicts a brane-world, inhabited not by shapes but by bursts, eruptions of color. Kandinsky paints these bursts in cross-sections so that the viewer actually sees the eruptions in process. He anticipated by decades the concept of a ‘block universe’ where time consists of a sequence of slices off the block. Can you say, “Cheese?” Music had a profound influence on Kandinsky, and his works began to take on the quality of musical composition rather than architecture. At the same time, Kandinsky began to explore the semantic nature of artistic forms. In Levels (1929), Kandinsky creates a hieroglyphic language, a kind of Rosetta Stone, and adds a grid to help the “reader” decipher the “text.” Striped (1934) and Delicate Accents (1935) continue this trend, but the apex of this period may be Succession (1935), which presents symbols on a grid reminiscent of musical notation. In the context of other worlds, Kandinsky is here exploring the notion known today as “It from Bit” (Wheeler). Reality is information. It is essentially a code; perceptions are merely clues to that code. But it is with Movement 1 (1935) that Kandinsky's embrace of other-world cosmology ripens fully . This canvas presents a fantastic assemblage of branes, self-contained mini-verses, hieroglyphs and geometric forms of varying dimensionality linked by strange, string-like objects running throughout. From 1935 on, Kandinsky’s works are predominantly characterized by these elements. Until recently, philosophers exploring the idea of ‘other worlds’ were limited by the notion that any viable world must be self-consistent. Beginning with Movement 1 , Kandinsky rejects that assumption. After all, Emerson wrote that “…Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” and literally no one has ever accused Kandinsky of having a ‘little mind.’ Moving forward, Dominant Curve (1936) presents a chaotic variety of topologies, somehow co-existing harmoniously on the representational plane of a canvas. It suggests that a multiplicity of inconsistent realities may lie beneath the more routine world we accept as real. Those of us raised on Heisenberg, Godel, Bell, and Feynman will not find any of this the least bit surprising. Might it be that the treasured consistency we claim to find in our world is put there by us? Grouping (1937) continues to explore this theme; it explicitly shows these incongruous regions co-existing and in some strange way, perhaps even using that incongruity to reinforce one another. Could it be the case that meta-reality is the consistent interaction of many worlds, at least some of which lack internal consistency? Capricious Forms (1937) situates a foreground of perpetually moving and morphing organic entities in a static, rectilinear background. Kandinsky is using the elements of his multi-verse to construct a universe that reminds us, at least in some ways, of our familiar world. He may be suggesting that our rectilinear world is emergent from, or a special case of, this sub-structural multiverse. All of which leads naturally to Thirty , another 1937 piece, that suggests 30 unique solutions, some rectilinear, some organic, some musical, some hieroglyphic to the basic problems of ontology. Like M Theory, Thirty suggests that there may be more than one right answer to the riddle of cosmology. Finally, Around the Circle (1940) begins with a somewhat typical assemblage of unexpected ontological entities, all approximately coplanar. But then it adds a window which suggests a sort of “wormhole,” an escape into another far-off multiverse which is itself a collection of varied, yet perhaps subtly different, entities. From Kandinsky’s window, one can see into Carroll’s Looking-glass World. With this work, Kandinsky suggests that dimensional democracy may not only exist within worlds but also between worlds; the process of deconstructing classical reality could turn out to be infinitely regressive. Kandinsky avoids the temptation to offer his own systematic ontology; that is not the job of the artist. The role of the artist is to challenge “common sense,” to point out the unrecognized assumptions that underpin naïve realism and to suggest certain directions we might travel in pursuit of deeper truth. This Kandinsky did, brilliantly! At one time, it was in vogue to classify worlds as “real” or “imaginary.” For many centuries, Parmenides' “Way of Seeming” was misunderstood as an illusion compared to his eminently real “Way of Truth.” But that facile way of thinking won’t cut it anymore! Today, we know that we have to take all worlds into account in order to understand the universe. As we continue on this intellectual journey, we would be well advised to return to Kandinsky for inspiration. His paintings provide us with rich and varied models of alterity . Image: Movement I. (1935). Wassily Kandinsky . Public Domain David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com. Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Fall '22 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back The Fight for Our Children's Hearts Starts at Home Amy Toman For a culture that values education, we seem to forget that our children need to be educated in the Word, not just the world. Our culture puts a high value on the education of children. We have preschools that require entrance exams, schools that earn money based on students' test scores, community colleges, and universities with graduate and postgraduate degrees. For a culture that values education, we seem to forget that our children need to be educated in the Word, not just the world. The repeated theme in western education is one of “sending." We send our kids away to be taught academics at schools. We send children to be taught discipline and endurance through structured sports programs led by trained professionals. We send them away to be taught morals and truth at church. The continually reinforced reality is that we send them away. This pattern reveals a tremendous lack. We as parents are not equipped to be teaching our children. It is due to our lack that we send our children to those who have a supply. Our children must be taught by someone who has the correct credentials. We see this broken theme within every sphere of our society. Do we wonder why so often our youth abandon their heritage in culture and faith? We need to look no further than our own habits. They haven’t wandered away; we have sent our children away. The prevalence of youth and young adults leaving the church is astounding. If you look around at churches today, you will see that there is a significant age group missing: young adults. Our children are being won over by the culture of the world, not Christ. This can be changed for future generations. For a problem to be rectified, it must first be identified. There is time to bring our children back to Christ, and it starts at home. The training of our children to love God and contend for the faith starts at home. Deuteronomy 6:6-7 says, “And these words, which I command you this day, shall be in your heart: and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up.” Scripture doesn't tell us that our children will learn about God from their private school teacher, their pastor, their youth group, their friends, or their youth pastor. Scripture tells us our children should be learning about God primarily from their homes. God’s word should be in their hearts daily and heard in their homes. But how do we as Christian parents do this? How are we supposed to teach our children daily in the instruction of the Lord? We are all super busy people. We may work, our kids are in school all day, then there is homework and sports and bed. There just isn’t enough time in the day, or is there? There are many ways that we can train our children in the Word, one of which is family worship. Worship is paramount in the life of a Christian. The definition of worship is the “feeling and expression of reverence and adoration for God," according to Webster's dictionary. Worship is about God. Worship is our expression of reverence and adoration to God our Father, our maker and creator. But what exactly is family worship, and how are we to start worshiping the Lord daily in our homes as a family? Family worship is a specific time when your family comes together to read God's word, pray, and sing. No elaborate sermons or messy crafts are required. Starting family worship is a lot easier than it seems. First, talk to your spouse and pray together about how best to spend time together in worship as a family. Second, choose a book of the Bible that you enjoy and start at chapter one. Start with reading a few verses every night, and as your family is able, increase your reading to an entire chapter. As you are reading, pause and ask basic questions about the passage: what just happened? Why do you think this passage is in the Bible? Who are the people in this passage, and did anything stick out to you? There is no need for any special devotional book, just your Bible. Reading scripture is the first step to family worship, but it is not the whole thing. During family worship, you should also sing and pray to God. Make a list of some of your favorite hymns and rotate through them regularly. Singing together may seem scary to many of us. I know I am not the best singer! I take comfort in the statement from Psalm 100:1: “Make a joyful noise to the Lord”. It is important to remember that throughout Scripture we have references to the Israelites and Christians singing praises to God. The entire book of Psalms was originally set to music. It was the songbook of God’s ancient people. We should sing praises to God whether we think we have a great voice or musical talent. Scripture reading and singing are two of the three components of family worship. The last component is prayer. It is important that we as families pray together. James 5:13 says, “Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.” God calls us to pray regardless of what is going on in our lives. Praying with our children teaches them how to pray and how to rely on God. We cannot expect our children to have a personal prayerful relationship with the Lord if we do not show them how. Praying together will bring your family closer, as you share joys and struggles with each other and bring them to the Lord. Family worship does not guarantee that our children will not leave the church, but it will make an impression. Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old, he will not depart from it.” It is God’s work to save our children, but it is our job to train them according to God’s Word. The hearts of our children need to be won at home. They need to be shown the love of Christ within the context of their family. They must see and hear how God's Word applies to every aspect of their lives. Spending time in worship, singing, and prayer as a family will change who you are and will change your children. Scripture shows us several other instances of children being taught the ways of God through their parents as primary instructors. I encourage each of you to look at your daily schedules and see if you are teaching your children the ways of God. Our children will be sent out eventually. Maybe it’s for educational reasons, or maybe just because they have spread their wings to establish their own home. What will be their foundation when they are sent out? Will the truths of God’s Word be their firm perspective of reality? What values will our children treasure, and what values will future generations wish they had been taught? As a society that puts such a premium on education, prioritizing our children’s faith education is an effort that will see benefits wherever they are sent. Amy Toman has a B.S. in Early Childhood Education from Central Michigan University. She has been married to her husband for 13 years and they have four living children. Amy spends her days teaching her children, managing her household and writing as often as possible. She delights in engaging conversation and seeing children thrive in their curiosities and abilities. Return to our Spring 2023 Table of Contents Previous Next

< Back Matzah of Hope--Passover Part One B.J. Yudelson "This matzah, which we set aside as a symbol of hope for the thousands of women who are anchored to marriages in name only, reminds us that slavery comes in many forms." You may remember that back in the ’70s and ’80s, we added a fourth matzah to the three required for the Seder and called it the Matzah of Hope. It was a symbol of the three million Soviet Jews who had no freedom to be Jews. Some twenty or thirty years later, our united voices had changed the situation. I propose that this year we once again add a fourth matzah to our Seder table and read the following. What do you think? Maybe together we can change the situation for the Agunot, women anchored to men who neither want them as wives nor are willing to free them to lead their own lives. This matzah, which we set aside as a symbol of hope for the thousands of women who are anchored to marriages in name only, reminds us that slavery comes in many forms. Three thousand years ago, Jewish women were forced to see their baby sons die. They themselves were forced to follow the orders of the Egyptian masters to make bricks and perform other onerous tasks. Today, there are women enslaved to unsustainable marriages. The common term for them is “chained” women. But the Hebrew, agunah, comes from the root that means “to anchor.” These women, who have asked for a divorce but are dependent upon their husbands for the “get” that completes the divorce procedure, are anchored in place by men who refuse to comply. Tethered under water, it is as if they are mired in the muck on the bottom. Although the water that swirls about them represents opportunity, freedom, the ability to navigate to new and different Jewish places, they can barely breathe. How tantalizing to be surrounded by freedom yet to be prohibited from leading the free, fulfilling Jewish lives they crave. These women can dream of a new life, of new experiences that await them in a different part of this lake or sea they are trapped in. But they can’t, by themselves, hoist the anchor to change their situations. They need our support: our prayers, our petitions, our demonstrations. They need for us to convince our rabbis to take action, for where there is a rabbinic will, there will be found a rabbinic way to free agunot. As we set aside this matzah in their honor, let us pledge to do more in the coming year to free all agunot from the bondage that weighs particularly heavily as we celebrate freedom this Seder night. This was republished with permission from T he Jewish Pluralist . It is first in the series Four Women’s Collected Essays on the Meaning of Passover . Click here for introduction to the series. This essay was also published on B.J. Yudelson website. Image: Passover Seder, 19th Century B.J. is an explorer who loves both the comfort of the familiar and the challenge of the unknown. As a child growing up in Atlanta, she knew the size and position of every tree in the wooded ravine behind her house as well as the best rocks for crossing the creek at the bottom. When she passes a street repeatedly, she may suddenly turn onto it just to find out where it goes, making the unknown familiar. World religions, her own beloved Judaism, a foreign country, or a local park all bring out the explorer in her. She writes to make sense of the inner landscapes of family and friends, the ins and outs of her community (currently, Rochester, New York), and the beauty of loon-filled lakes. Her writings—published in a variety of literary journals, websites, and anthologies —explore family, Judaism, nature, and overcoming obstacles. She invites you to join her on her adventures. Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Previous Next

< Back There Are No Theists in Foxholes David Cowles Feb 14, 2022 “There are no theists in foxholes,” at least not according to ‘conventional wisdom’. After all, even Dostoevsky had a death bed conversion! So, in this rare case, it turns out that conventional is, in general, correct. Or was he correct! I do not think it is correct any longer. Why not? What changed? “There are no theists in foxholes,” at least not according to ‘conventional wisdom’. After all, even Dostoevsky had a death bed conversion! So, in this rare case, it turns out that conventional is, in general, correct. Or was he correct! I do not think it is correct any longer. Why not? What changed? Prior to the late-20th century, most Westerners (Europe & the Americas) had strong religious upbringings. Or if they didn’t, their friends did! I’m not talking about the casual nod to ‘spirituality’ or ‘the force’ that passes for religion today. I’m talking about a set of beliefs and practices that permeated every corner of a young person’s life. While few of us were saints, none of us challenged the basic tenets of our faith. To us, they were as self-evident as the sunrise. And they came neatly packaged in their own language. I’m not talking about the ritual languages of Hebrew, Arabic and Latin. I’m talking about the rituals themselves, rituals marking life’s stages: Baptism/Circumcision, Ba-Mitzva/Confirmation, Marriage, and Death. I’m taking about the weekly (e.g., Sabbath) and yearly observances (e.g., Easter) that polka-dot each year’s calendar. I’m talking about daily prayer: both morning & evening, grace before meals, scripture reading or even the rosary at night. In my old neighborhood, the bells of the local Catholic churches (3 within walking distance of my house) rang out The Angelus, a Christian ‘call to prayer’, at 6AM, Noon & 6PM daily; and almost everyone stopped whatever they were doing in acknowledgement. I’m guessing that for most of us at that time, when push came to shove, these fundamental habits and beliefs would have trumped the lessons in philosophy and science that we learned later in life. Therefore, no atheists in foxholes! Not so today! For most of us, religion is no longer part of our existential core. We do not hold firm theological beliefs. We barely celebrate the ‘rites of passage’ and, for the most part, we ignore the annual, monthly, weekly, daily rituals…or we pay lip service to them. In their place, we have interiorized the assumptions and methods of science, the ethics of acquisition and consumption, and the language (most any modern Indo-European language will do) of subjects & objects (i.e., rulers & ruled, employers & employees, predators & victims, bourgeoisie & proletariat, etc.). Collectively, these habits of mind are now part of our existential core. Now, when push comes to shove and we crawl back into our core, it is science, not religion, that takes over. So today, for better or for worse, we may say, “There are no theists in foxholes!” 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 War...or Peace David Cowles Jun 27, 2023 “Now at last, we’re in a position to fix all of God’s mistakes!” You’ve heard of the Thirty Years War and the Hundred Years War; these cute historical nicknames make it seem as though war is an exception to the rule, the rule of peace . On what planet? The first recorded war was about 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia. It is likely that there were wars before then, but our records only go back so far. Since the first recorded arrow was shot into the air, it is barely an exaggeration to say that the genus homo has been in a perpetual state of warfare. War against whom? We have met the enemy and he is us . - Pogo Just in my few short years (75 to be exact) my homeland has been involved in wars in Korea (3 years), Vietnam (15 years), Iraq and Afghanistan (30 years combined). But this litany creates the false impression that these 48 years of warfare were punctuated by 27 years of peace. Nothing could be further from the truth. Lest we forget, there’s Guatemala, Lebanon, Cuba, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Ukraine, etc. Not to mention the Cold War! And we’re only talking about my homeland, one nation. There are over a hundred other nations we need to survey. All in all, I think it’s fair to say that I have lived my entire lifetime in a world at war. Looking back, my parents and grandparents didn’t have it much better. So we fight? So what? All animals do, so do plants and other life forms. It’s the biosphere itself that’s bellicose, right? Wrong! Emphatically wrong! Animals kill animals of other species for food. They may fight with members of their own species over conjugal rights, etc. but those conflicts are rarely group affairs, and they rarely result in any deaths. Generally speaking, plants and fungi have a symbiotic relationship. They can’t live without one another. But sometimes a particular fungus will harm (and even kill) a particular colony of plants. Animals feed off plants (and, rarely, vice versa), but animals and plants are engaged in a planet wide symbiotic pageant as they recycle each other’s carbon and oxygen. So why is homo the odd genus out? Natural selection, of course, survival of the fittest; where else do you think all these cool Bond-like adaptations came from? Nope, sorry, not from natural selection! Gene mutations still occur, but civilization has so broadened the spectrum of ‘reproductive fitness’ that physical evolution may have slowed to a crawl. Taking its place: cultural evolution. Humans adapt the environment to their needs to a much greater extent than they are adapted (genetically) to the needs of their environment. We are the only species on Earth ever capable of making large-scale adjustments to our environment. At the same time, we are the only species who, to some degree at least, can consciously direct its evolutionary course. We find ourselves in a uniquely advantageous situation. Our species’ evolved ability to transform its environment, combined with our recently discovered ability to alter our genetic code, has created a truly unimaginable opportunity. Given any ‘problem’ we can choose whether to alter the environment or the genotype or both : Adaptation goes Exponential! Now at last, we’re in a position to fix all of God’s mistakes! (Perhaps that’s the whole point of the last 14 billion years, the age of the universe, or at least the last 4 billion years, the period of life on Earth.) When we were kids, we literally scheduled times to fight, between homework and Little League. Rival gangs of 8-year-olds (can a group of 8-year-olds be called a ‘gang’?) would agree to meet at such and such a place at such and such a time, and bring your wooden ‘swords’ and ‘spears’. There was no animosity between the rival gangs (we were all friends, separated into gangs by accidents of geography, school choice, etc.). There was no intent to injure anyone, and it was exceedingly rare for someone even to get hurt. Still, it was crazy fun! I feel as though I’ve grown into an adult world that mimics my old neighborhood – minus the lack of animosity. Bigger boys, bigger toys! Wars feel more and more like the scheduled events of my childhood. World War II was scheduled at Versailles (1919). Vietnam was scheduled at Dien Bien Phu (1954). Afghanistan was scheduled when Russia withdrew (1989). Iraq II was scheduled the day Iraq I ended (1991). I could go on! So-called ‘peace’ seems to be the equivalent of Mom calling you in for dinner. It’s just an opportunity to regroup…and rearm. Now, the stakes are incalculable, the risks overwhelming, and the prospects of success, infinitesimal. Yet, there is just one ray of hope . Prior to the end of WWII, all war was all out war: no holds barred! Poison gas, atomic bombs, everything goes. Korea was perhaps the first consciously self-limited war. Since then, for all its horror and brutality, every war has been fought according to Marquis of Queensbury rules. Perhaps this is a first flicker of recognition that war has lost its usefulness as an instrument of social change. For the sake of the human experiment, we can only hope. Image: Pablo Picasso. 1937. Museo Reina Sofía , Madrid , Spain 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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< Back Afraid of the Dark David Cowles Jul 16, 2021 Most young children are afraid of the dark. As adults, we tend to dismiss those fears. But as in so many other ways, it is the children who are right…and we who are wrong. They have not yet wrapped themselves in the cocoon of consumer goods. They still see life as it is. Most young children are afraid of the dark. As adults, we tend to dismiss those fears. But as in so many other ways, it is the children who are right…and we who are wrong. They have not yet wrapped themselves in the cocoon of consumer goods. They still see life as it is. So too the poet: “Do not go gentle into that good night…Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” – Dylan Thomas Have you ever noticed how common house flies prefer to hang out in well lit parts of the house, especially at night. They sometimes curl up in my home office, under a desk lamp, atop a white index card, and rock themselves to sleep, seemingly unaware of the threat I could pose to them if I chose. Do flies also dread the dark? At some level, do they have ‘intimations of mortality’? Much later in life, certainly sometime after age 70, you will rediscover your primal fear of the dark. You will remember what it was like to be a little child in a dark bedroom. We return to the words of Dylan Thomas, “Old age should burn and rave at close of day. 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 CIA and the Mind of God David Cowles Dec 28, 2023 “Centralized mind, even computer-aided, simply cannot keep up with decentralized matter.” When we were ‘tweens’ (long before that term had even been coined), we were just as full of ourselves as tweens are today. If I sent a letter to a friend (yup, a ‘letter’, no emails, no texts back then), I would address it: “Master Robert Johnson, 37 Redgate Rd., Milton, Mass. (no postal zones or zip codes either), USA, Planet Earth, Milky Way, Universe, Mind of God.” We were astonishingly arrogant, given that we were spectacularly ignorant. As a species, we knew only a fraction of what we know today, and as tweens, we knew only a fraction of what was known. But turns out, we were on to something big! Consider ‘Artificial Intelligence’. On one level, a computer is simply an aggregation of silicon atoms and their compounds, but on another level, it’s a ‘mind’. Conscious or not, it thinks; it’s a thinking machine. Presumably, the discrete elements aren’t what thinks; the totality thinks. As tweens, were we proposing something akin to ‘Universal Intelligence’ ( panpsychism )? We know that an aggregation of largely inorganic molecules can manifest ‘mind’; could we view the physical universe itself as such an aggregation? If so, Universe surely manifests ‘the mother of all minds’, but were we justified in calling it ‘the Mind of God’? Well, what else could we call it? Universe manifests mind, whether it be the mind of God or the mind of Roger Penrose ( Road to Reality )…assuming there’s a distinction. In either case, what could be ‘beyond’ it? According to theologian Paul Tillich, Faith is Ultimate Concern. AA would recognize the object of such Faith as our Higher Power. But then, what could our Ultimate Concern be other than the totality of things, and what else could God be but their totalization? It all comes back to God, no matter how well disguised. There’s a persistent fly in our intellectual ointment. We assume, uncritically, that order radiates outward. We’re control freaks. We think, and then we project our ‘thoughts’ into the world via actions. We are all ‘agents’ of our own, personal CIAs. In any 12-step program, participants are asked to surrender ‘the illusion of control'. We should all join AA, if for that alone. We are all addicts—all addicted to control. Three words: Central, Intelligence, Agency – often considered oxymoronic, but we use them as if they were synonyms. Yet, we have ample evidence that ‘central intelligence’ is ‘lack of intelligence’. Central intelligence was at the foundation of Marxist-Leninist economics; how did that work out? In fact, central planning has failed everywhere it’s been tried. Centralized mind, even computer-aided, simply cannot keep up with decentralized matter. Irony: Marxism rediscovered the primacy of decentralized ‘matter’ over centralized ‘mind’ (Dialectical Materialism)…and then promptly imposed a level of centralization that would have made Europe’s Emperors and Popes cringe. Augustus → Boniface → Stalin. Of course, this analysis ignores an unstated premise: matter ≠ mind. But what if that is not the case? We know that the phenomenon of ‘mind’ is dependent on a decentralized ‘material’ substructure (brain). But what if we could go even further? Paraphrasing Keats (and Ryle), what if we could say, “Mind is matter, and matter mind?” One phenomenon, opposite perspectives! Stand at the center of Being and look out: One → Many. Now stand on the edge and look in: Many → One. Centuries ago, many folks believed that matter was an emergent property of mind. Today, it is more common to think that mind (consciousness) is an emergent property of matter (Dawkins). But what if neither is true? Consider the Universe: an aggregate of subatomic particles and their forces, but what if it were also a ‘mind’? What if the material universe is itself a ‘brain’? We can’t get our heads around this. We are too steeped in carbon privilege and anthropocentrism. We all belong to a secret society of narcissists. Our motto: “If not me, it’s not to be!” We are the measure of all things, and we are guided by our own infernal ‘logic’: I have a central nervous system and I think; therefore, everything that thinks must have a central nervous system. In fact, we know that many, if not most, species demonstrate ‘mental process’; yet many of those species lack even the rudiments of a ‘central nervous system’. For example, some bacteria apparently ‘think’ by adjusting the concentration of iron in their cytoplasm. Members of many species communicate with one another; most don’t use anything we’d recognize as words. Some secrete molecules that are then ‘read’ by neighboring organisms, often leading to concerted, or at least intentional, behavior. Following Descartes because we think, we think we are, but what if we are because we think we are? What if we are because we are self-aware? What if thinking and being are co-dependent? I am holding a rock in my hands. It is. But what is? Is it the stone per se, or is it the minerals that make up the stone? Or the molecules, atoms, quanta, or waves? These are all manifestations of ‘being’, but only that which exhibits a faint trace of ‘mind’ can confer ‘identity’, a prerequisite of ‘primary being’. 20th-century British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead believed that primary being consisted solely of self-aware ‘events’; anything else (e.g., qualia) was ‘secondary being’, an aspect of a primary event. So we were not wrong! To whatever extent we are, we manifest mind, but true mind is decentralized. (Think blockchain, not the Fed.) And that’s why all of us can be said to share the same ultimate address: the Mind of God. 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 Holy Moments David Cowles Nov 28, 2023 “You were made in the image of God; act accordingly!” In an earlier edition of Thoughts While Shaving , we contrasted Matthew Kelly’s concept of a ‘Holy Moment’ with Jean-Paul Sartre’s ‘Perfect Moment’. A perfect moment is an effort to create (or recreate) Paradise, using artifacts from the material world. Utopian political systems are examples of perfect moments. But laws are required only where humanity fails…law turns out to be a poor substitute for love. Memo to Marx: Love is the ‘withering away of the state’. A holy moment , on the other hand, is an action we undertake to project God’s values into the world. The ‘anti-political’ system that ‘governed’ Israel for c. 250 years between the death of Joshua and the coronation of Saul was ideally suited to facilitate such moments. The Book of Judges can be read as a compendium of holy moments that occurred during that period. How can we create our own holy moments ? There’s no definitive list, but here are a few ideas: Treat every person we meet as if they were Jesus in disguise. Ask yourself, ‘what would Jesus do (WWJD) in this situation’. Honor Ephesians 2:10: “For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works (holy moments?) that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them .” Do what you prayerfully believe God is calling you to do. “Here I am, Lord!” Take life one holy moment at a time. Always ask yourself, “What is possible in this moment?” Always ask yourself, “Is this the best version of myself?” When I was but a wisp, The Baltimore Catechism taught that ‘God made us to know him, love him and serve him…' What else is a holy moment but a way to know, love, and serve God? Now, if these 300 words have convinced you to make Holy Moments your new life’s work, here are some things you would do well to keep top of mind: Our hunger for Goodness comes from God; it is God: ‘God with us’ - Emmanuel . “Character is destiny” (Heraclitus) and virtues are the building blocks of character; in fact, virtues are reflections of God’s character, his essence. What matters is what you do next: ‘today is the first day of the rest of your life’. Holy Moments are not something you do (active voice) or something that is done to you (passive voice); they are collaborations ( middle voice ). One seemingly insignificant holy moment may generate a tidal wave of goodness. Moments are plastic. You have the power to deflect them toward the Holy…or not. The Holy Moments campaign is the stepchild of Matthew Kelly, but its ‘biological’ father is none other than Jesus himself. What are the Beatitudes but an anthology of holy moments? Plus, every holy moment is a transfiguration ; it opens a window onto what’s possible. Bobby Kennedy: “I dream of things that never were and ask why not.” The Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert talk of two hungers: ‘the little hunger’ (for food) and ‘the great hunger’ (for meaning). Job preferred knowledge/meaning to wealth, health, and life itself. Jesus counseled us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (little hunger) and “Forgive us our trespasses…lead us not into temptation…deliver us from evil” (great hunger). Victor Frankl, writing after the Holocaust, echoes Job: Meaning is more important than Happiness! Or perhaps you are not yet convinced. You say, for example, “I don’t have time for this Holy Moments nonsense; I’m out to change the world.” Well, God bless you; “we’d all love to change the world” (Beatles); you have a lot of deck chairs to rearrange, so best get to it. In reality, Holy Moments are the solution to the world’s problems…Unholy Moments got us into this mess, and only Holy Moments will get us out. Matthew Kelly offers a single meme to summarize Holy Moments Spirituality: “You were made in the image of God; act accordingly!” 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 End of History “Fukuyama proclaimed ‘The End of History’ with a celebratory flourish. But be careful what you celebrate!” David Cowles In 1992, Francis Fukuyama, in a famous essay of the same title, proclaimed the ‘end of history’. He wrote in the halcyon days immediately following the Cold War. But he was only the latest in a long line of self-proclaimed social prophets, including Nietzsche, Marx, Hegel, and yes, Jesus, to proclaim the end of our familiar social dynamics. History! I’d rather study it than live through its perpetual cycle of war, conquest, subjugation, exile, slavery, genocide (‘ethnic cleansing’), and only finally…Revolution – you can keep it, thanks! Of course, the ‘end of history’ implies arrival at a relatively stable state-of-affairs in contrast to the vicissitudes of the historical process. For Jesus the end of history was the coming of the Kingdom of God, inaugurated in the first century CE but only ‘fully realized’ at the Eschaton. For Judeo-Christians, history ends where it began, in Paradise ( aka The Garden of Eden). Ironically, the social contradictions inherent in Paradise, as it was created, gave rise to the historical process in the first place: malevolent snakes, forbidden fruit, secret knowledge, and a naïve citizenry – what could possibly go wrong? Eden is recreated at the Eschaton…with important changes: Satan has been vanquished, bans have been lifted, knowledge is shared, and we see God face to face. The contradictions have been resolved, once and for all. Like it or not, Reconstructed Eden is the dominant model of Paradise in Western thinking. For Marx, history ends with the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, followed by the withering away of the state and the advent of pure communism. Marx looked forward to a permanent resolution of the contradictions inherent in capitalism. In other words, What Jesus Said . For Hegel, history ended in 1806 (Napoleon defeated) with the ‘proper state’ now governed by the principles that inspired the American and French revolutions. He must have drunk Rousseau’s Kool-Aid! Did he really imagine that Liberalism was the moral equivalent of the State of Nature? Apparently! Like Jesus before him and Marx to follow, Hegel saw lumpy history dissolving into smooth harmonies. Fukuyama seems to agree with Hegel on this…except for the date. He prefers 1989 to 1806. He recognized that nationalism, fascism, and communism still had to be thoroughly vanquished before the world could do its ‘happy dance’ in the end zone. For Fukuyama, tearing down the Berlin Wall is what defeating Napoleon was for Hegel. Unfortunately, Hegel and Fukuyama were willing to settle for a lot ‘less’ than Jesus…or even Marx. For Fukuyama, society’s ‘end state’ is Democratic Capitalism, not an ‘end’ in the sense of utopia but in the sense of stability. For better or worse, the Liberal state sufficiently, if not perfectly, resolves the socio-economic contradictions that inspired periodic upheavals over the prior 10,000 years. As presented (above), this is an attractive theory, but Fukuyama goes overboard: “But surely, the class issue has actually been successfully resolved in the West… the egalitarianism of modern America represents the essential achievement of the classless society envisioned by Marx…” Really, this is the ‘classless society envisioned by Marx’? For Fukuyama, “the root causes of economic inequality do not have to do with the underlying legal and social structure of our society, which remains fundamentally egalitarian and moderately redistributionist…” On the contrary, he blames society’s ongoing socio-economic conflicts on “the cultural and social characteristics of the groups that make it up…” “But at the end of history it is not necessary that all societies become successful liberal societies, merely that they end their ideological pretensions of representing different and higher forms of human society.” “…The People's Republic of China can no longer act as a beacon for illiberal forces around the world, whether they be guerrillas in some Asian jungle or middle class students in Paris. Maoism, rather than being the pattern for Asia's future, became an anachronism.” Especially in China itself! Fukuyama might be excused for his bit of excessive euphoria. It was 1992 after all! Politicians were seriously talking about a peace dividend , i.e. the redirection of funds from defense to infrastructure and social welfare. How has that worked out? The notion that historical conflict ended with the collapse of the Berlin Wall is contradicted by the Nightly News . Conflict in the world has not subsided…not the least bit. If anything, the lack of super power balance has created additional breathing room allowing regional conflicts to intensify and expand. I can’t resist the superfluous urge to do some scrap-booking here: The new 30 years’ war over the Fertile Crescent, the rise of militant Islam (Jihad), 9/11 (Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, ISIS), the chaos that was Palestine, the proliferation of ‘failed states’ (e.g. Somalia, Haiti), often replaced by narco-terrorist gangs, the reemergence of an Axis of Evil , the tragedy of Ukraine, the collapse of the U.S. border, and the supply driven Fentanyl epidemic. There, done! What happened to the Golden Age? Where’s the peace dividend ? And yet, one could also ask, “Where is the revolutionary spirit?” These days, however much someone might want change, they are unlikely to risk their lives, and the welfare of their families, to effect that change. How different this is from 1776, 1789, 1848, 1871, 1917, 1968 or 1989! How come? Has socio-economic conflict, if not yet resolved, at least been defanged? Has Liberalism led to a society where there is just enough popular input into social policy and just enough economic opportunity to keep folks coloring between the lines? In fact, no modicum of actual popular input or real economic opportunity is required – the mere perception will do fine – and today we are masters of our collective perceptions. ( Propaganda , Jacques Ellul) Given the level of injustice in the World today, it is a bit surprising that ‘revolution’ is not on the tip of every tongue. Well, not all that surprising. A successful revolution requires 4 elements: A sober analysis (critique) of the status quo. A concrete notion (image) of how things could be different. A practical program ( What is to be Done? – V.I. Lenin) to get us from A to Z. A ‘revolutionary’ ideology that explains the injustice of the present, grounds our vision for the future, and justifies the less palatable aspects of the program . I would argue that none of these conditions is present today, at least not in the First World. Our analysis is cock-eyed. In the place of an in-depth reflection on society and its contradictions, we have bumper stickers: “Down with Halliburton, Crush the 1%, Bush lied/people died, MAGA.” Our concrete image of ‘better days’ is just “More, please” ( Oliver Twist ): more democracy, more prosperity, an even bigger Big Mac! So were Hegal and Fukuyama right after all? If so, they were right for reasons they did not fully understand. For the most part we live in a world where things move. Everything flows! (Heraclitus) Unimpeded, things tend to move in straight lines. (Newton) We frantically build structures designed to limit that flow and protect the status quo: The Great Wall of China for example, or Constitutional Government . Now imagine a subatomic particle. Normally, it speeds through space at close to the speed of light; but we can put an end to its cosmic wandering; we can trap that particle in an EM lattice, effectively converting its linear motion to oscillation within a narrow range. Once ‘captured’, our particle cannot leave the lattice unless energy is injected from outside. It does not have enough native energy to overcome the restraints. Unliberated, it will persist in its current state ‘until the 12th of never’. It is trapped in a so-called energy sink . Fukuyama’s eschatology could be understood in these terms. While most people are not satisfied with today’s status quo, we may well be satisficed . Imperfect as things are, it is not worth the energy (or risk) required to change them in any significant way. The devil we know… Once upon a time we were addicted to progress: our children will always be better and do better than us. No more. Now we are content not to go backwards. We are happy to oscillate within a fixed range. Doubt me? Just look at the electoral history of the United States since 1988. Fukuyama proclaimed ‘The End of History’ with celebratory flourish. But be careful what you celebrate! Might we be left with all of history’s horrors, without the balm of revolutionary hope? David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to Summer 2024 Previous Next

< Back Trickle-Down Economics David Cowles Aug 1, 2024 “Forests have turned ‘trickle-down’ economics, literally, into an art form. By sharing resources, trees ensure that the tide will raise all boats.” Economists, politicians, ideologues, and demagogues all love to disparage trickle-down economics . The phrase itself is pejorative. On the other hand, if someone says, “A rising tide lifts all boats,” we’re ok with that. Denotatively, they are saying the same thing; connotatively, they are expressing polar opposites. Dispensing with the aquatic metaphors, the real issue here is the relationship between the health of the economy as a whole and the well-being of its individual members. We are still living in the shadow of Karl Marx. We like to pretend that economics is a zero sum game and that one player’s gain must come at the expense of other players’ losses. But economics is not poker. The game has a wide range of possible outcomes in which the total wealth available for distribution is variable just as is each player’s share of that wealth. For example, let’s assume we have an economy with just 10 participants. Our job is to divide the wealth in 10 ways. For the sake of the arithmetically challenged (me), let’s assume that the estimated total wealth is $55. We could just give every player 1/10th of the total. That’s socialism. Or we could give 9 players the minimum ($1) and direct all residual wealth ($46) to the one remaining participant. That’s robber baron capitalism. Between these two extremes there are more than 8,000,000 possible ways to divide up a $55 pot so that every player receives a whole dollar amount (no pennies). To make matters worse, or better, there is no guarantee, indeed no likelihood, that the total pot will be the same under different distribution scenarios. Economies are organic. We believe that distribution impacts production. One distribution scheme will produce more aggregate wealth than another; we just can’t agree on which one gets us to the max! Experience has taught us that neither of the two extremes (socialism or robber baron capitalism) is likely to maximize the pot. We imagine that there is a sweet spot somewhere between these 2 extremes; finding that sweet spot is what keeps economists employed. Not that ‘more’ should be the only criterion! Justice is at stake here as well. But once again, we don’t necessarily agree on what’s just. Is it ‘just’ that everyone gets the same regardless of their relative effort and contribution? Or is it ‘just’ that some players get only the ‘minimum’, even if their contribution is marginal? There’s a lot to consider. One branch of economics concerns itself solely with production. What is the distribution formula best calculated to maximize production? Another branch looks at the social implications of the distribution scheme. What is the cost of strict meritocracy? We rely on professional economists to quantify our alternatives but we alone, acting through our chosen political representatives, can balance values to make the final decision. Not sure? Need help? Let’s ‘phone a friend’. Does it matter that our friend is a fungus? Homo is not the only civilization on this planet. Single and multi-species ecosystems are all around us. The Serengeti has settled on a different distribution formula than the Mariana Trench. Each has worked out its own algorithm for maximizing production subject to its unique set of ‘ethical’ constraints. Our forests (plants and fungi) offer a particularly successful example of a non-human economy. Vegetation covers most of the habitable zones on Earth. Absent human intervention, trees can live hundreds of years, fungi thousands. While forest life is not conflict free, sorry Snow White, it comes close. How does it work? Fungus runs the show. The ‘wood-wide-web’ links trees of the same and different species in a resource and information sharing network. Are predator insects in the area? News travels from one end of the forest to the other, quickly and efficiently, so that trees can deploy their chemical armor. Are we in for a drought? Or a blizzard? The entire forest prepares together. Does a particular tree ‘look’ a bit peaked? The fungal network will divert water and life saving minerals to that member. If nature favors a particular tree with great height, exposure to sunlight, and a healthy root system, that tree will seek out opportunities to share its wealth, first to its ancestors and descendants, then to the entire forest. How come? Is fungus better than us? Maybe, but the forest has also run its own algorithms. It has determined that an unhealthy forest is an existential threat to even its most robust members. Likewise, every plant, every fungus is most likely to flourish in a healthy environment. Forests get what we often don’t – we’re all in this together! Forests have turned ‘trickle-down’ economics, literally, into an art form. By sharing resources, trees ensure that the tide will raise all boats. Next time human society faces an economic dilemma it would do well to ask, “WWFD?” (What would the forest do?) 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. Keep the conversation going. 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.

“How new wealth is to be distributed is just as important as how old wealth has been distributed.” < Back Utilitarianism David Cowles Dec 1, 2023 “How new wealth is to be distributed is just as important as how old wealth has been distributed.” The Greatest Good for the Greatest Number – who could possibly argue that this is not the proper metric for measuring the ethical value of any act? I mean, what else could it be? Could an act that produces less good for fewer people possibly be preferable to one that produces more good for more people? In practice, when we’re not being totally selfish, most of us are guided by some version of Utilitarianism in our daily lives. It’s not a terrible way to live; it certainly speaks of good intentions (whatever they’re worth). But beyond that, what does it mean ? Like most self-evident memes, when we try to untangle this one, it falls apart in our hands. Take ‘Good’ for instance. I won’t even get into the general problem of defining ‘Good’; that’s not necessary for this purpose. Instead, whatever ‘Good’ is, I’ll just ask: How do we know what’s good for another person or group? Do we assume that what’s good for one is good for all? Is what’s good , good in every circumstance? Or is good ‘context dependent’? Is what’s good today, automatically good tomorrow? Or does that evolve over time? But even if we could know what’s good for every person at every time in every circumstance, how do we quantify various goods so we can compare them? Otherwise, how could we determine ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’? Plus, when we talk about what’s good, are we talking about immediate, short term, or long term good? Do we discount ‘future goods ’ by calculating their ‘present value’ or do we just add them all up? How many ‘ goods in the bush’ does it take to equal one ‘ good in the hand’? Finally and most importantly, are we prepared to reduce ethics to arithmetic? Suppose we have 100 ‘units’ of good ; how do we best spread those 100 units across 20 potential beneficiaries? Of course, it doesn’t matter. Whatever we do, we’ll end up with 20 people sharing 100 units of good ; everyone benefits. We are assuming, of course, that the quantity of good does not change, no matter how we ‘share the wealth’. (Below we’ll consider scenarios in which this may not be the case.) So, what are my options? I could give 1 unit of good to each of 19 beneficiaries and 81 units of good to one beneficiary; or I could give 5 units of good to every beneficiary; or I could do anything in between. The doctrine of Utilitarianism per se does not offer any obvious solution to this dilemma. Are we to conclude then that every distribution model is morally equivalent? Or do we need to start adding conditions to modify our original meme? And if we do, will we end up with something like Ptolemaic cosmology, Rube Goldberg economics, and Justinian law? So the famous meme, for all its high sound, is hollow. It’s denotatively vacuous (that’s ‘meaningless’ for those of you sent down ). But unfortunately, it’s not connotatively vacuous. Since it can be perverted to justify almost any distribution scheme, it effectively blesses our worst instincts. It allows both robber-baron capitalists and Stalinist economic planners to sleep soundly while you and I toss and turn. The Peter and Paul of Utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, did not fully understand the impact that distribution has on productivity. The store of goods is not only not fixed, it’s highly volatile. It is subject to amazing growth spurts, and contractions, that turn out to be surprisingly sensitive to the way goods are distributed. The distribution of goods fuels demand, which in turn stimulates supply. To the extent that total supply increases the additional goods need to be distributed – but not necessarily according to the same formula as before. In this, economics is a bit like Quantum Mechanics: the future (measurement) influences the past (data). How new wealth is to be distributed is just as important as how old wealth has been distributed. Can we redeem the Utilitarian impulse? Sure, just create a computer model, plug in the various distribution options, press enter and see which strategy produces the most goodies, weighted as you will, over the next 20 years. That’s surely the distribution option that generates the most good for the most people. But are we willing to bless such an outcome? Is it morally acceptable? Worse, is it an ethical imperative? We have unmasked Utilitarianism as the naked Pragmatism it is. Kids, get ready to head back to the sweat shops, J. S. Mill is coming for you! Who’d have thought that a kid who read ancient Greek at the age of 3 would turn into such a bully? The British Utilitarians put lip stick on Machiavelli’s pig…and they did a first rate job of it. How many school kids have been taught that Machiavelli’s ‘ends justify means’ is wrong while Mill’s ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ is right? Even though they mean exactly the same thing! But what’s the alternative? Ethical nihilism ? On the contrary, Utilitarianism is ethical nihilism, all dressed up with nowhere to go. So what’s the solution? We need to reject all ‘results based’ ethics and turn instead to an ‘acts based’ morality. Causality is a useful concept…in engineering, but not in ethics. It’s useful when you’re building a skyscraper or landing an astronaut on Mars because the universe of discourse is rigidly defined. It is useless when you need to measure what’s good over an indefinitely large population, over an indefinitely long period of time, in an indefinite variety of circumstances. In that case, there is no well-defined universe of discourse. So, we need to divorce ethics from pragmatics. In fact, true ethics is often anti-pragmatic: sometimes we have to make hard choices, even die to defend our beliefs or to rescue a child or to save a friend! When we make such a choice, we don’t first calculate the pragmatics. It’s easy to calculate ‘the greatest good’ and then devise and execute a strategy to achieve it. Before ‘ political alienation ’, politicians used to campaign on slogans like “Progress & Prosperity” or “A Chicken in every Pot”. To advocate against such a strategy on ethical grounds is difficult, so it’s no wonder that the corrupt kings of Israel hated the prophets. A successful anti-utilitarian ethics must be based on the act itself, not on its distant consequences. In fact, according to Chaos Theory , the very idea of ‘long term consequences’ is an oxymoron. ‘A then B’. In so far as A and B are poles of a single act, they are properly co-dependent. But once Act A reaches its conclusion (‘satisfaction’), any subsequent B is indeterminable. B may be partially predictable based on the laws of probability, but no B is ever determined by any A. That doesn’t mean ‘everything is permitted’ (Dostoyevsky). Acts-based ethics can be very, very strict. Consider the 10 Commandments, the 611 specific mitzvahs of Torah, or the ‘House Rules’ our moms used to post on the refrigerator door. The history of Western ethics consists of oscillation between nihilism ( aka pragmatism) and legalism: everything is permitted…or nothing is permitted. Neither is correct! Every act begins by executing judgment on the world as it is, guided by divine values such as Beauty, Truth, and Justice. In today’s secular terminology, every act aims to make the world a better place. Emoji! Emoji! Emoji! Every act unfolds as a process of accepting or rejecting, amplifying or dampening, influences from the world it inherits. Guided by its evaluation of its actual world and by its interpretation of the divine values, every act forms a novel ‘subjective aim’. Of course, it never gets where it’s going! Nobody gets to be God expect God. Still, every process reaches an endpoint, having achieved its measure of ‘satisfaction’ which becomes the act’s ‘objective immortality’, projected forward (‘superject’) into the actual world of every subsequent act. Every act is completely responsible for itself. From its initial valuation of its actual world through its satisfaction – it lives in the ‘no excuse zone’. But once that act is complete, ‘satisfied’ and objectively immortal, that responsibility ends; novel acts are responsible for what happens going forward. My act compels nothing; it just gives the future material to work on and, hopefully, redeem. The only ‘effect’ an act should be concerned with is its effect upon itself (and its subject I suppose). I am my own cause and my own effect. But make no mistake: I am totally responsible for both. I’m just not responsible for what the world does with ‘me’ after that. It is no surprise that Utilitarianism became the dominant ethical ideology just as Leibniz and Newton were inventing Calculus. Utilitarianism represents the subcontracting of ethics to mathematics: irreducible qualities are treated as mere quantities. According to Utilitarianism, Pragmatics is now the measure of all things. Unless we intervene! 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 Yuletide 2023 Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. 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< Back The Zohar David Cowles Apr 25, 2023 ‘The Zohar’ is a TOE (a theory of everything) - everything from Big Bang to Big Freeze, from Creation to Eschaton. The Zohar was either written by a Rabbi who lived in a cave in northern Israel in the second century CE, or by a different Rabbi who lived in the bustling city of Leon, Spain, c. 1400 CE, or by person or persons unknown. The evidence one way or another is inconclusive. This is just the first ‘strange’ thing about one of the world’s strangest books. Strange, because we can pinpoint the authorship of many New Testament (NT) texts down to a single decade. Worst case ( Hebrews , Revelation ), we’re talking about a window of no more than 25 years, not 1,000+ years as in the case of the Zohar . (We use context clues to date NT material. The problem is, Zohar provides no context clues. It is a book about eternity, written in the language of eternity. Ugh!) Like any book worth its salt, The Zohar is a TOE (a theory of everything) - everything from Big Bang to Big Freeze, from Creation to Eschaton. Put it on your bookshelf next to Moses’ Torah , Homer’s Odyssey , Plato’s Timaeus , John’s Revelation , Joyce’s Ulysses, and Pound’s Cantos . The Zohar is yet another illustration of Heisenberg Uncertainty: the more comprehensive something is, the more incomprehensible it is! Corollaries : the better I understand something, the less useful it is to me; the more important something is to me, the less likely it is that I’ll understand it. Sounds just like my high school! Via Negativa : God is my ‘ultimate concern’ (Tillich); therefore, I can know nothing of God. The Zohar is ‘all ye know on Earth and all ye need to know’(Keats) – if only it were written in a language we could understand (and I don’t mean the Aramaic used in its composition). The Zohar , like Torah , is the story of our search for God and God’s search for us. Anything beyond that is just metaphor . According to Zohar , there are five ‘gates’, openings that connect Heaven and Earth; together these gates make up what Kabbalists call the Tree of Life : Keter , Crown ( Le Neant ) Hokhmah , Wisdom Bihah , Understanding ZA, God’s essence… Hesed, Love Gevurah or Din, Judgment (justice) Tif’eret, Beauty (harmony) Netsah, Eternity Hod, Splendor Yesod, Righteous One Malkhut or Shekinah , Kingdom (Israel, ‘Middle-Earth’) Well, it’s not everyday lingo , but it’s certainly not incomprehensible, not yet…but we’re far from finished. Each of these five gates consists of five ‘sub-gates’, and guess what? The five sub-gates are also called Keter, Hokhmah, Binah, ZA, and Malkhut . So we have five gates, each with five sub-gates: 25 ‘openings’ altogether, ranging from Keter-Keter to Malkhut-Malkhut . Are you still with me? Ok, how about now: each ‘sub-gate’ consists of five ‘sub-sub-gates’ also called… Get where we’re going with this? Now we have 125 ‘openings’ to describe, catalog, and account for, ranging from Keter-Keter-Keter to Malkhut-Malkhut-Malkhut . Will it ever end? Mercifully, The Zohar stops at three iterations, but in theory, at least, this pattern could go on forever. Next stop: 625 openings, and so on. I don’t care who you are; at some point you’re going to run out of bandwidth! What we are describing here is what mathematicians call a fractal – a pattern that repeats indefinitely regardless of scale. Another way of saying this: the universe is ‘self-similar’; it is continually mapping itself. Sidebar : Is that what we mean by consciousness? The structure that The Zohar identifies at the heart of Being is not imposed on Being or deduced from beings ; it is Being per se ! To be is to be a ‘piece of fruit’ on the Tree of Life but also to be the Tree of Life itself. Every part is the whole. What? Outrageous! Well, not so much. Consider the lowly acorn that you just ran over and crushed in your driveway. It is a piece of ‘fruit’ that once hung on an oak tree, but it is also a ‘seed’ consisting of a blueprint for a new oak (RIP). According to Kabbala, the fruit is the seed, and the seed is the fruit. Botany 101 = Cosmology 404. But there’s a problem here! The mathematical concept of a ‘fractal’ was not fully formed until the mid-20 th century! The ‘theologians’ who wrote The Zohar , whoever they may be, had a thorough working knowledge of the concept of ‘fractal’ many centuries before mathematicians formalized it. Now that we have our bearings, such as they are, it’s time for us to do a walk through of ‘the world according to Zohar ’: We begin our walk at Keter , nothingness (always a good place to start). Keter manifests as a point, Hokhmah , wisdom. Wisdom is the point where the transcendent ( Keter ) and the immanent ( Malkhut ) intersect. But like the ‘Planck point’ known as ‘Big Bang’, Hokhmah ‘inflates’, becoming Binah , Understanding. Binah is the womb of all things. Like Janus , Binah is two faced: one face turns toward Keter-Hokhmah , the other toward Malkhut . Keter (nothing) and Hokhmah (point) do not require or disclose any ontological structure that we might recognize as ‘spacetime’. Crown and Wisdom are eternal, period. So is Understanding; but within the eternity of Binah lies spacetime, Malkhut , the Kingdom, aka our World. Binah is where Crown-Wisdom meets Kingdom-World; but between the two lies ZA , God’s essence, which is God. ZA consists of the six virtues, qualities, behaviors of Emmanuel , ‘God with us’. God’s essence is God’s substance! ‘Simply’ stated, we ( Malkhut ) encounter Keter as ZA in Binah . ‘Crystal’, right? Don’t worry, we’ll be returning to The Zohar in future articles. (We couldn’t escape it if we tried.) 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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