Science and Belief in Lucky Charm

On this commemoration day of Niels Bohr, we reflect on an anecdote about the famous scientist receiving a colleague* in his log cabin at the Danish coast. The fellow visitor noticed Niels Bohr had put a horseshoe in the cabin as a talisman – lucky charm. He asked Bohr if he, as a scholar, could believe that his horseshoe could bring good luck. Niels Bohr is said to have replied: "I don't believe it, but they tell me that it brings good luck, even if you don't believe it!".

This anecdote says a lot about what faith is. Faith is not scientific certainty, not perfect control. Rather, faith is a humble attitude of surrender. It is acknowledging that others could know more about the theme, something that does not suit us very well in this time of strong opinions. It is letting go of all certainty, leaving the truth open and trusting others while remaining open to the possible positive effect of your faith practice.

That doesn't mean we can believe everything. At the very least, there must be confidence that our faith and our faith practice are good and healthy for us. And this confidence can only grow with the help of fellow human beings who have grown up in that same faith. There must also be respect for the faith of others.

The anecdote also reveals something about science, or at least about the wise attitude of Niels Bohr as a scientist. Niels Bohr starts from an attitude of humility. He makes a clear distinction between what he believes is true and what is actually true. He recognises there may be a difference, with a certain non-zero probability. Probabilities are popular in quantum mechanics. Moreover, even though he doesn’t really believe it, Bohr opens the door to the possibility of the workings of lucky charm, an interesting viewpoint for the world of quantum mechanics, where the observer may influence the actual outcome of a measurement. According to some, this may explain the evolution of the universe.

I refer to my blog Bigger than my faith and to Belief Creates the Actual Fact.

(*) Probably not Albert Einstein. The frequent scientific dialogues between the two have suggested Einstein as a visitor, but that is an apocryphal story, a so-called urban legend.

Image by Bernhard Rauch from Pixabay

Epictetus’ Toolkit for a Good Life

Epictetus was the main contributor to the late Stoic Roman philosopher school of which Seneca and Marcus Aurelius were the best-known representatives. His work Enchiridion is a handy pocket guide for a good life according to the Stoic tradition.

One of the foundations of his teaching is that man should make a clear distinction between the feasible and the unfeasible. To the realm of the feasible he considers our feelings, emotions and opinions about the things we go through. To the realm of the unfeasible are the things we go through themselves: changes in material prosperity and honour, health and disease, life and death. Epictetus states that whoever masters the feasible, will be equanimous towards the unfeasible and therefore he will be happy.

While writing this, it struck me that postmodern man has an almost opposite view on the feasibility of things. He considers his possession, his health and his personal safety as belonging to the realm of the feasible, whereas he keeps shouting, in this age of endless self-expression, he can’t do anything about his feelings, emotions and opinions. By sticking to this inverted view on the feasibility of things, postmodern man actually follows the perfect recipe for unhappiness as we can see from the full therapist waiting rooms.

Epictetus considers possession, fame, health and safety (the unfeasible) as belonging to the authority of the gods. He recommends people to become philosopher, to accept the godly decisions and to believe they happen for the greater good. As such, we should remain respectful towards our gods, we should neither be upset from injury nor from insults against us, we should neither engage in gossip nor in judgement. (Surprisingly, we should not even engage in praise towards third parties according to Epictetus – I still need to think why not.)

The Enchiridion is really another Swiss army knife for a Good Life and I intend to keep it in my travel bag for interrupted reading in public places. This theme is also related to Hartmut Rosa’s book about unavailability.

The Increasing Likelihood of Flying Teapots

When Bertrand Russell formulated his famous flying teapot analogy, he deliberately chose a very British object, one that nevertheless would have looked very awkward if it were ever observed to be revolving in an orbit around the sun, the Earth, or around any celestial body.

The flying teapot analogy was often referred to by atheist thinkers as a rightful argument against religious dogmatism. I myself being a religious person, I nevertheless fully concur with Russell’s viewpoint. The flying teapot analogy is not only well found and funny, it rightfully lays the burden of proof to the one making an unfalsifiable statement. Saint Thomas was right to question his friends’ statements, which remain unfalsifiable to us. I however disagree with some atheist thinkers that religious adherence requires rational proof of the related beliefs. I agree with atheist thinkers that religions should not disdain non-believers.

Climate change deniers believe climate activists believe in flying teapots, but climate change is falsifiable science, it is not a belief. The existence of climate change deniers can't be denied though.

With the shifting thin grey line between the feasible and the unfeasible, it looks like Russell’s analogy becomes more likely in time. We can already send teapots in an orbit around the Earth, and our telescopes could then see them flying. Sending over a few dozens could be done at reasonable cost, say $500 to $1000 per teapot. A teapot constellation would make a nice student project and I’m sure the funding question will come up soon. The Kessler syndrome, ending in clouds of pieces of porcelain in space, could be the end to this very British dream.

I refer to my blogs “Belief Creates the Actual Fact” and to “What Satellites Can Do For You”.

Picture Patricia Deneffe ©2024

A Faith of Absurdities

At this feast of Easter, one conclusion can’t be denied. Christianity is a faith of paradoxes and absurdities. I’m not claiming other religions don’t have them, on the contrary. Jesus, however, is a person who seemed to embody the controverse and the paradox. I give some examples below.

1.      He is dead, but belongs to the living.

2.      What was hidden from the wise is revealed to children.

3.      The last will be first.

4.      For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. (The Matthew Effect)

5.      Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land.

6.      Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe.

7.      Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

8.      For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.

9.      The blind see and the deaf hear.

10.  The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.

 

A lot of lectures start with something obvious, e.g. “this person is a sinner”. After Jesus’ intervention, sometimes by means of a metaphor or a parable, the obvious proves to be not so obvious and the contrary of the obvious proves to be closer to the truth after all. This pattern occurs a lot in the gospels. Now, you could claim that wisdom is often like that. Confucius, Socrates and Seneca were not bad at paradoxes either. That is probably true, but the fact that Jesus has the courage to stick to his paradoxes until the last moments of his life probably played a role in the 2000-year popularity of his messages.

This is not to say that Christianity is only about wisdom, paradoxes and absurdities, and the correlated popularity of the message. Christianity is not meant either for a small tribe of intellectuals who believe they understand the astute subtleties. The heart of the matter goes much deeper. It is about his modesty, and the faith, love and hope he shared. We should not celebrate Easter because we give his wisdom a thumbs up. We celebrate Easter because this controversial personality is still with us and because we love Him so much.

Afbeelding van Kathryn Kolencik via Pixabay

Temperance Saves the World

Temperance is a virtue which doesn’t have a prominent place in economic textbooks. Yet the word economy refers to thrift and frugality. Economy allows you to be self-reliant and to survive with little means.

Our popular culture and our company culture seems to go the opposite direction, the direction of ‘never enough’, or is it simply greed? It is much easier convincing people to do something than convincing them not to do something. The reason is the imagined group loyalty. Pleading against something may be seen as a rebellious act, a result of laziness or complacency. Pleading in favour of something big is seen as positivity, energy, and good willingness. As a result, companies do too much and have a total lack of focus. Hyperactivity and Beschleunigung have become a plague.

Temperance is exactly what companies need now. Instead of asking what they should do, it may be worth asking what they should no longer do. The question is equally important in times of scarcity of resources. Leadership is also shown through temperance.

I refer to my blog: “Economic Justification in a Culture of Scarcity”.

Picture by Curtis Yancey via Pixabay

Leadership and Subjectivity

When Moses arrived on the top of Mount Nebo in Jordan, how did he know this was the land he had announced to his people, the Promised Land? The objective truth is: he didn’t know. Perhaps the view is magnificent as we can see on the picture, but there were other people and other armies down there. It is reasonable to assume Moses got tired roaming through the desert for forty years. Otherwise, there was no objective fact indicating this was the end destination for his people.

The book of Exodus, which tells the story of Israel’s people leaving Egypt under Moses and his brother Aaron’s leadership, is a splendid manual on leadership. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t read the scriptures because they are useful. I read them because I love them. I love them because they are beautiful and because I feel like they could make me a better person. But for those of you who don’t love the scriptures, beware the book of Exodus contains all you need to know about leadership.

The Bible says Moses knew from God. But how does God speak to man? It never happens through objective reasoning. Moses didn’t have any useful objective data that would have allowed him to make a reasonably good decision. Moses knew almost nothing about the land in front of him and the strength of its armies. He needed to rely on his inner voice, through intuition, prayer, belly feeling, dreaming, sense of responsibility and love for his people, in short through his own subjectivity.

If good leadership in difficult circumstances requires subjectivity, it has a serious implication for the leader. The people need to believe him. They need to give him the authority to rely on his personal subjective feelings. They will only do this if they believe he is good, wise and integer. And this belief is usually based on some common experience in extremely bad conditions, such as the experience in the Sinai desert. If the people’s belief gets lost through some negative experience, the leader becomes extremely vulnerable. The leadership crisis we observe today, is due to a lack of common experience in the desert and a lack of willingness to grant authority to someone else, usually because of our own narcissism. The conclusion of this blog is that in leadership, subjectivity is objectively required.

I also refer to my Dutch blogs Leadership and Love and Dreamers Who Do.

Picture: Mount Nebo, Jordan, 2023 Courtesy of Patricia Deneffe

Let them be wrong about you

We may embrace the idea of not judging others; this does not immediately free us from the fear of being judged by others. Hans Christian Andersen's story of the ugly duckling reminds us of the fact that we may be excluded, simply based on the fact of being different. Being different makes us vulnerable and vulnerability may end up with injury. In the end, we become our injuries. The fear of being injured in the future may have a paralysing effect on us, even to such an extent that we proclaim a final judgement over us that is worse than the original blame. (Moreover, of all dreadful judges, you are probably the worst one for yourself.)

In the social media, we discover our fellow human beings are often wrong about many things: be it elections, climate or the meaning of woke. Even in academic circles, the reasoning of our fellow human beings is far from straight. The most educated people may end up with totally opposite opinions, depending on how their youth traumas made them look at the world. We may deeply regret this but generally we have no other option than to live with it. If our fellow human beings are wrong so often about so many things, why couldn't they be wrong about us? We do our best in the hope that humanity keeps a nice track record about us. Alas, humanity does not care.

In general, gossip, misunderstanding and stupidity may destroy our reputation in our limited social habitat. It doesn't help to be perfect: don't even try this! Instead, accept it, let it go and allow your fellow human beings to be wrong or at least incomplete about you. You rarely lose anything by allowing that to happen. People say stupid things all the time and they would have been wrong about you anyway! The happy ending is not that you become a swan, but you may feel like one! You win an enormous freedom: the freedom to be and to do what you like. You will no longer be paralysed. This can be a very liberating thought.

I also refer to another Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale: the Emperor's New Clothes.

Picture: from the book Andersens Sprookjesschat, Zuid-Nederlandse Uitgeverij – Antwerpen/Amsterdam 1966

Onbeschikbaarheid – Unverfügbarkeit – Unavailability

Hartmut Rosa sharply describes tendencies in society that are typical for our time. We know him from his book Beschleunigung about the increasing pace of life in society. In this book Unverfügbarkeit, he explores how contemporary citizens deal with availability and unavailability of things and experiences. He explains how the new categorical imperative sounds like everyone should maximise his reach in the world. He should maximise his possession; he should maximise his impact; he should maximise his fame and maximise his ‘experiences’ in this world. Many things can be explained from other typical features of our time such as the fear of status loss (status anxiety) and the fear of being dumped into the losers’ pit of oblivion due to the power of the Matthew effect.

The author sharply observes the behaviour of city citizens. Like spoilt children they behave ‘blasé’ and cool. They do their utmost to give the impression they can never get impressed by anything. This leads to a kind of numbness and a kind of despair. If everyone performs the impossible to get recognition and nobody is prepared to give anyone else recognition, this leads to a society full of desperate losers. Moreover people tend to seek their happiness in material meaningless differences yet at the same time they can never be happy and remain restless after any material achievement, which happens to be temporary by nature.

Looking for unique experiences, we will always fail if we don't allow the resonant spaces in between the races we run daily. Always looking for news on our smartphone, we succeed in killing every authentic experience. Believing everything should be reachable and feasible, we fail in being grateful for anything achieved. If something goes wrong and proves to be unfeasible, we blame other people, we always find someone guilty and someone to be liable for today’s imperfections of society.

A book worth reading for all people interested in understanding the signs of our times.

I refer to my blogs Disaster and Sin and The Thin Grey Line between the Feasible and the Unfeasible.

Against the Tide

This book is a posthumous anthology of Roger Scruton's writings, edited by Mark Dooley. Roger Scruton was an eminent British conservative thinker. Conservatism in his opinion is the awareness that many of the good things we enjoy now, are actually the fruit of self-sacrifice from our predecessors and therefore they require protection. It is self-evident that in times of change, this protection is highly needed.

The term sacrifice is all too often associated with abuse and exploitation, whereas sacrifice is actually essential to achieve anything worth pursuing. The mainstream press associates conservatism with populism, as this press considers itself progressive. Conservative thinkers like Roger Scruton also emphasise the fact that citizenship involves obligations for the people who reside here. Therefore also the benefits should return to the people who reside here.

By living among freedom fighters in Eastern Europe before 1989, the author became aware of the transforming effect of sacrifice on the human character. He explains the resistance of countries like Poland and Hungary against Europe. European institutions have no soul and their bureaucracy resembles the bureaucracy of the old communist party. Europe, Quo Vadis?

The author rightfully complains about the destructive work of postmodernism (my wording). The spoilt post-war children sneer at our ideals but never understood why we needed them. Truth, virtue and beauty no longer seem to exist. Our society can never degenerate to a point where vice alone has a following. “When we start to celebrate ugliness, we become ugly too”.

Roger Scruton is extremely critical against modern pedagogy. He detests the jargon created by ‘people who can neither write with skill nor read with understanding’. He is not willing to adopt the art of taking offence, the ‘woke’ or witch-hunt culture, which dominates the social media. He doesn't deny the possibility of injustice but he unmasks the sociologists who detect structural violence behind all power exercised, even power that is a legitimate outcome of consent and compromise.

Scruton also asks why holiness has not retained its meaning to us. Christian faith is now covered with ridicule by trivialising materialists and sarcastic cynics but as the author points out: Christian religion exactly teaches us to accept ridicule. The validity of the Christian message can never be affected by what others think or do. Those who read my blogs from time to time, know that this is a central theme for me.

I refer to my blog The Honour of Humiliation and The Chasm between Populists and Academics. Roger Scruton is also one of the thinkers in the Dutch book Denkers van vandaag voor de wereld van morgen.

Alles Leben ist Eins

This book written by Renée Weber carries the subtitle: “the Encounter of Quantum Physics and Mysticism”. It is a compilation of interviews with renowned scientists and thinkers, such as David Bohm, Rupert Sheldrake, Ilya Prigogine, the Dalai Lama and Krishnamurti. The starting point is that scientific rigorism forbids us to pursue more hypothetical theories about the coherence between matter and meaning or about the possibility of consciousness at other abstraction levels of our existence. However, it is in humankind’s DNA to wonder about our origins, to search for a meaning in life and to speculate about our destiny.

Looking at recent scientific findings, be it in astrophysics or life sciences, can make us stand in awe (Deutsch: Ehrfurcht, Nederlands: ontzag) for the beauty of science. I believe it also makes us humble. A first finding is that ‘Gods book’ has been written with the letters of mathematics, which is already amazing when you think about it. Why do we have laws of nature that can be expressed or approximated with mathematical equations? A second finding is that we are ‘star stuff contemplating the stars’ and therefore we seem to constitute a part of the universe’s awareness. Carl Sagan was not a mystic, but he could certainly bring his audience in the same spiritual awe we are considering here.

What if awareness exists in many levels of our existence, even in the subtle, at first sight incomprehensible behaviour of small parts in quantum mechanics? Can matter and meaning be separated from each other? What is the nature and the meaning of light, probably still the largest mystery in physics? Are we seeing only the ‘holographic image’ of a multidimensional universe? If the laws of nature have not always been the same, could it happen they adapt with the universe’s evolution?

For scientists these questions may seem very unscientific. Stephen Hawking even claimed mysticism is only an excuse to those who are not able to understand the fundamental physics of the cosmos. On the other hand, admiration, sense of beauty and awe are human state of minds we can experience without the obligation to adhere to one or the other kind of belief. Perhaps they are the salt and pepper we need to give a taste to our work and our life.

The book was given to me by a former employer company manager and friend, who proved in this way that he knew me better than I could imagine.

I also refer to Homo Deus and to my Dutch blog: ‘Verdwaald in de werkelijkheid’.

Dare to Expect

Before being thrown into 'real' life again, we start making New Year's resolutions. The older you get the more anxious you may become to have high expectations. We tend to become afraid to get disappointed in life, therefore we tend to reduce our ambitions and expectations.

However if we want to achieve something in 2022, we should have high ambitions and expectations. it is true that disappointment may be lurking but if we are mild to ourselves we will never regret an ambitious endeavour. It rather becomes a problem when our ambition was too low and if we were too anxious to start in the first place. We don't really need a perfect outcome, but we should be glad about all progress made.

We should not only dare to expect from ourselves we should also dare to expect from others. Friendship should not only be giving it should also be demanding. We have the right to ask our friends for help and we should have confidence that they are prepared to help us to the extent possible. Again disappointment may be lurking but we should always be mild if our expectations cannot be met.

I refer to my earlier blogs “Ode to Audacity” and “Expectations”.

Picture source: SES

Expectations

Guest blog from Ray Sperber:

Recently I had some personal setbacks.  Throughout the distraught pondering of the events involved, several thoughts recurred.  One of them is:  What was I expecting?  

Superficially, this is easy to answer: Just play memories back to before the events.  Granted, this is sometimes painful.  And maybe hard to do accurately.

Then the issues start...  Why was it expected?  Was there any right to expect it?  

Obviously, since the outcome was not desired, the expectations should have been different...  How? Why? and what should have been done differently as a consequence?  And now, that the undesired has happened, how have expectations changed? (*)  Are the expectations now appropriate?

To all readers who may also experience, or have experienced, setbacks:  We wish you appropriate expectations.

(*) Mathematically minded readers may consider Bayesian statistics 

Ray

What to Do Next?

By my colleague and friend Ray Sperber: 

It is another Sunday afternoon, and one finds a free moment, unencumbered by immediate obligations, a few hours that are not already pre-programmed by the lives that we are living.

Default is to continue doing whatever one has been doing, content in one's comfort zone.  Clean up the car, arrange things in the house or yard, continue study on a topic one already knows pretty well, more of the same, maybe even sleep.  In a turbulent world, soothing one's soul.  Often, this is necessary.

Or one can consider to do something a little different... the path less travelled, so to speak.  This has appeal, since maybe it can be a step towards changing one's life.  For the better, we hope.  Such a choice is typically more complicated to make, since ...  What would actually help?

And, what metric are we using to evaluate the panoply of the different choices?

Perhaps:

• Money?
• Time?
• Physical effort?
• Getting closer to a special person?
• Whatever makes us feel best?
• Some other criteria?

The right answer is not necessarily the same at every opportunity.  But it is yours.  Enjoy it.

Ray Sperber

(During our walks and talks around Château de Betzdorf, we thought it would be a good idea to have Ray write a guest blog for us.)

Desire is more Beautiful than Fulfilment

 

My shortest blog ever: everything is in the title.

Disaster and Sin

Disaster is an inevitable consequence of the vulnerability of life. Most natural disasters are caused by coincidence: bad weather, volcanic activity, lightning. Due to our anthropo-centric thinking however, we all have the tendency to associate natural disaster with human failure. Noah’s Flood needed to wash away the sin of mankind. In the Middle Ages, epidemic plagues were caused by people collaborating with the forces of Evil. You would think that in our scientific paradigm, we could classify our recent flood disaster as a meteorological coincidence and not as a result of human sin? No, we still like blaming our fellow human beings. "The politicians didn’t see this coming." "Neither did the scientists." "China is pumping too much carbon dioxide in the sky" (but we still buy their products). This happens in a society which believes it has everything under control.

The same happens in organisations. When an ICT incident happens in a company, it is not the hacker who is blamed, it is the company internal ICT security officer. Don’t forget we live in a meritocracy and in the delusion of immanent justice. If something bad happens, someone must have done something wrong. This delusion makes us associate the most 'natural' (in this case externally caused) disasters with the bad behaviour of our fellow human beings. 

Nobody seems to argue that this bad weather was simply not foreseeable and that our hydrological infrastructure is not ready for such quantities of water. Measures were taken, but not sufficiently. That doesn’t mean it is someone’s individual fault. Even collectively, we can’t really predict what the infrastructure priorities should be. Only our hubris assures us we can anticipate all catastrophes and work out the perfect policy against them. I don't suggest we shouldn't worry about the climate, on the contrary: the principle of precaution should always prevail. But we should not amalgamate bad weather and climate change.

I refer to my earlier blogs “Stop the Blame Game” and "Don't Watch the News".

We are Our Injuries

When we look at fellow human beings who have been hit by a physical disability, the impact on their lives is usually extreme. So extreme, that if we don’t know the people well, we will completely identify them with their disability, as if their personality could not reveal anything more important than their disability. We will finally refer to them with their disability, as if it were their name: the muco-kid, the softenon-baby, the old blind man, the guy who lost his hand, the lady in the wheelchair. It is as if the injury defines the person. The reason we do this, is because we are perfectly aware of the impact. Our brain is trained by millions years of survival to know that a serious injury can provoke exclusion from the tribe, and therefore death by starvation.

Being ‘normal’ people, we think we may escape from the stigma of injury, but we forget the trauma of mental injury. We know what it means to be excluded. This grows worse when we get older. Think of the elderly people you know. They all have their obsessions. They repeat them all the time. They often become zealots of a single cause that particularly hit them in the past. We know we will also become a caricature of ourselves - we already are. As the Dutch writer Adriaan van Dis once wrote: “Your character doesn’t wear off. It boils in. We all become a beef cube of our own soup.”

Yet there is also something beautiful about this. Our injuries are the most recognisable things about us. They are the grips through which other people hold us and cherish us. They make us who we are. 

I refer to my blog You are your Time and to my Dutch blogs The King’s Speech and to Lof der Zotheid.

Picture: Bernardo Strozzi, Tobit healed from his blindness by Anna, Rafaël and Tobias. This is a freely licensed work, as explained in the Definition of Free Cultural Works.

The Thin Grey Line between the Feasible and the Unfeasible

Happiness has long been considered a gift of the afterlife. In the Middle Ages, ordinary life was so tough that happiness could never be part of it. Happiness remained limited to catching an occasional big fish, or just not being killed by the next plundering army or the black plague. Otherwise, it was always wise to supplicate God for his mercy in this valley of tears, and to do his will so as to be worthy of his forgiveness in the afterlife. The world of the feasible was extremely small. Most of the world was the reign of the unfeasible and it was the sole competence of God.

The time of Enlightenment has gradually moved the thin grey line between the feasible and the unfeasible away from us, out into the universe. We see miracles happening in university hospitals, where hundreds of people are getting new limbs and new organs every day. Other people are being cured from the most recent plague. This is real progress. The downside of this is that our world creates the impression that everything is feasible. God has been chased away from daily life. We live in a Harry Potter world where you can conjure up a therapist for every little pain you feel. If you live in pain today, it is not because you are in disgrace with God but because you simply haven’t visited the right therapist yet. You still haven’t done what is doable, and the implication is that you deserve the misery you are living in. We tend to judge other people as being lazy or incapable, in case they are struck by miseries we don’t need to suffer ourselves. Even in misery, meritocracy prevails.

Therefore, let us not judge the misery of others. Just like prosperity and misery are unequally divided, feasibility is also unequally divided. What may be feasible for the strong, may not be feasible for the weak. This is another facet of the Matthew effect. We could do more for the weak. We could also expect more from the strong. Yet the unfeasible always has a place in our life whether we like it or not.

Interesting hearing this contribution of Roger Scruton, although I see the problem of ‘Potterism’ as a more general society paradigm rather than a by-product of left wing thinking.

I also refer to my earlier blog: "The Delusion of Immanent Justice".

Why we like Calendars

Celebrating the end of an old year and the beginning of a new year is completely preposterous if you think of it. The transition from 31 December 2019 to 1 January 2020 has little geophysical meaning for the earth, yet it seems to keep us human beings extremely busy.

The Romans indicated old-to-new transitions with the double –faced deity of Janus. One side looks at the old things behind us, the other side looks at the new things in front of us. Janus was not entirely trusted though, exactly because of this ambiguous identity. It cast some doubt over him, because of his apparent schizophrenic character.

Yet we people are all a bit like Janus. We use the calendar to position ourselves in time, to look back on what is behind us, and to look forward to what may be coming. The calendar allows us to get rid of the old, and embrace the new. It makes us forget the tears and sorrows of the past and encourages us to make new resolutions. Calendars make us dive courageously into the uncertainty of the future.

Picture: taken at Archaeological Museum Zadar, Croatia 2018 ©Wim Lahaye

Dunameis

Dunameis or δυναμεις means 'forces', 'powers' or 'mighty works' in Ancient Greek. You may recognise the words dynamic and dynamics. Obviously forces exist in nature, and a scientific definition exists. But the word dunameis also has an old, spiritual meaning, one that I remember very well from secondary school. The dunameis were believed to be the underlying drivers of the long history of Salvation of Mankind, as described in the Bible. They were the good forces, including the miraculous works, which were a gift from God. Contrary to what you think, miraculous works happen more often today than in the past. They are now done on a daily basis by surgeons in university hospitals.

It still makes sense to think of the meaning of dunameis today. Everything we make and do as a living being, is somehow driven by our longing for a better life. The origin of every dynamism is always suffering, we are not pleased with the status quo and want to see things change. Leaving your ‘comfort zone’ is sometimes recommended, but I wonder what this comfort zone is, and whether I will ever live in one. It is clear that ‘living’ implies striving for some kind of salvation. The Biblical meaning of dunameis seems to correspond to the forces that are driving all living creatures in this world. Religions are just ancient ways of expressing the human condition and the human dunameis within us. Our society needs to understand this and give these expressions their righteous place in society. We tend to say we don’t believe in miracles but we could still stand in awe for the dunameis we observe within us and around us.

May the dunameis be with you! I refer to my blog “a Sea of Change”.

The Pain of Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a 20th century war product. The central thought of postmodernism is that truth, goodness and beauty are only illusions, chased by ignorant people. Truth, goodness and beauty simply don’t exist. Every kind of veneration already carries the seed of self-destruction. This awkward idea got its power from the destructive forces of the Second World War. The War did not only destroy houses and people, it also destroyed ideas that were originally believed to be great. Postmodernism is, in a strange way, a cultivation of a permanent feeling of disappointment and many artists keep finding their inspiration in postmodernism.

An interesting question is whether postmodernism is still playing a role in today’s society and whether that role is still ‘constructive’, although a constructive postmodernism seems to constitute a “contradictio in terminis”, if not an oxymoron. In his book “History of Progress”, the Dutch author Rutger Bregman points out that postmodernism has not only been good at destroying our traditional beliefs, but also our belief in progress itself. And as “Belief creates the actual fact”, non-belief also destroys the actual fact, therefore non-belief in progress will also halt the actual progress in society.

Cultivating postmodernism, as seems to be the case now since 70 years, constitutes a certain risk of lethargy. Postmodernism has however the merit it makes us critical against all kinds of fanatic belief be it in religion or political systems. It somehow keeps us on a sane track, because all fanatic belief must be insane. A moderate degree of postmodernism is healthy as mainstream current in society, as long as we remain somehow open-minded whenever new ideas emerge.

I refer to my blog “A Sea of Change”. My blog “De donkere kamer van Damokles” covers roughly the same thoughts about postmodernism in Dutch.

Picture: Artwork “Totem” by Jan Fabre and University Library tower, Leuven. This blog is not inspired by recent press.