Category Archives: Rationalism

Life is a precious gift, undoubtedly. Without a manual however, making the most of it or better yet, serving its purpose can be a tad difficult. And because of this, we stagger through triumphs and mistakes that ultimately come with lessons that help us glide through the next step of our existence and eventually, life itself.

Othniel Pilipili, an entrepreneur, engineer and systems builder says life has taught him that many barriers to achieving what is meant to be achieved by a human subject always start with a simple thought (either innate or from senses). And since a simple thought can be developed innately, it follows that the origin of success (or its personal metrics based on ones purpose) is designed by oneself.

This has led him to always double check what he knows, to learn and unlearn, and always compete with himself as he wrestles daily to win over life defects that he says are not always obvious in social environments.

Every good thing in life comes at a cost.

He says, life has taught me that constantly resetting myself to my default settings (by challenging my knowledge, belief systems or aspirations, knowing of course that unknowing is not the same as not having known and bias can use this weakness) is a design powerful enough to reduce stereotypes, hasty generalisations, stress, unhealthy peer pressure and unhealthy competition with other people from the past, the present or the future.

In the current information age, its easier to get caught up in the daily, self-transcendent automatic experience and lose sight of life in its original sense. I consider it failure if by 11:59PM every day, I either did nothing new or I have no reason for having done what I did besides everything being just a predesigned system that I walked through, he says.

His life is run on both rationalism and empiricism, valuing the power of innate thoughts and deduction while highly considering external inputs to create a reality thats worth living.

As an entrepreneur, software engineer, systems engineer, psychologist, data scientist, digital marketer, poet and evolutionary psychology champion, I identify myself with living based on fundamental truths from either pure deductive logic or empirical approaches rather than swimming in the subjective world or that of analogy, he notes.

Pie Kombe a reflexologist believes that everything in life costs and that one needs to make sure they make a choice of what they can afford and to never give up.

Anything is possible. Enjoy the process because the destination alone is never satisfying. Take it one day at a time, be courageous and always give your best even to the smallest task, he says.

He also emphasises that proper living is that where you never forget to balance work, social life and your mental health, Dont try to be a hero. We are all trying in this life, love yourself more.

For Ines Reine Ishime, a designer, life has taught her that if an opportunity is on the table, you should grab it because if you dont, it wont come back and you will live with regrets.

She lives everyday with her favourite quote: Plus tard il sera trop tard. Ta vie cest maintenant, loosely translated as later it will be too late. Your life is now.

The best approach to living life fully for me is: pray, be kind to others but remember that your happiness also matters. So, do whats best for you and dont let societal labels get to you.

Life is not all about choices

Octave Vuguziga a mechatronic engineer believes life doesnt have a formula- life is a school and always teaches us lessons either bad or good.

Never give up, when you know what you are doing is right, but you are not sure if youre going to make it or want to give up because its too difficult, thats the time to persevere, persist and patience on what you want to do. Many things might happen in between, take them as challenges because there is no success without failure, he says.

Be humble and keep God in all your activities. Life becomes easier with this and you live fully, he notes.

From scratch, you can be someone you dreamt about: I personally was lazy when I was younger but I learnt to push myself. People will throw stones at you. Dont throw them back. Collect them and build an empire: I found these words written somewhere but they really inspired me. They reflected how people mostly do bad things in life, but its wise not to react the same.

Pilipili accentuates that his philosophy for life is not a choice, rather identification as he continues to shape his purpose in life.

He thinks its more productive to be guided by independent truths verifiable by science or deduction than daily normal configurations in social, family, academic or professional settings.

The universe is almost 14 billion years old. I was born just recently on June 16, 1995, and the universe will continue its course until the word until will stop making sense in trying to draw a timeline for time itself. When I reflect on this, it only makes me respect existence and do the best from my human abilities to live it fully for me and for future generations, he notes.

He adds that the best approach to live life fully is trying your best not to live it as we know it; A normal human life process includes being born, playing with other kids, going to school, looking for a job, starting relationships, getting married, having and raising kids, taking care of thy parents, retiring until the dusk is kissed. You follow that path and you will hardly encounter anything new, Pilipili shares.

Try something out of the ordinary: do something that we have objectively established, that its not based on internal biases. Avoid admiration or external influences to a significant extent, it can all start with something very simple and obvious such as going to the office using another street, mindfully doing something we know we have no passion for, or tracking down the actual reason you eat oranges etc.

Simple tasks can help uncover biases or routines that are not helpful to maximising the small number of years that history and biology have proven us individually to have on this earth.

dmbabazi@newtimesrwanda.com

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What philosophy has shaped your life? - The New Times

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We tend to love those who don't play ball, such as Tom Cruises Maverick in Top Gun. But how do we respond in the Covid environment?

OPINION: Most of us love rebels and underdogs. Begrudging the conformity that's necessary to survive in any human community, even a liberal democracy deluding itself with buzz words like 'diversity', we make heroes of those who don't play ball. It's no coincidence that Tom Cruise became a star playing a Maverick, that Clint Eastwood's Harry turned him into a 'dirty' icon of Nixon's 'silent minority' or that the most famous figure in 20th century popular culture was Charlie Chaplin, an outsider tramp vilified on-screen and off.

Movie star rebels tend to lack specific causes. They operate more as escape valves than flash points. In the social and political arena, the stakes are higher. Immortality beckons for martyrs. Che Guevara had a face that launched a billion t-shirts. John Lennon imagined a world beyond the one that shot him.

Arguably, no rebel is as brave or as a foolhardy as the conscientious objector in time of war. To stand against the collective effort of your country to combat a force identified as a common foe requires reserves of strength well beyond that of those willingly conscripted. In World War I, New Zealanders who took such a stance were often declared insane. Looking at transcripts of their trials today, over a century later, the opposite seems true. The Waikato didn't lack for clear-headed farmers capable of reading the international situation, of identifying a meaningless, European, colonial bloodbath and wanting no part of it.

Those whose refusal to take part in a conflict is grounded in genuine pacifism hold a special place in the history of civilisation. The clearest New Zealand example has unfortunately been obscured by politics and murky denials. When the Moriori met in 1835 to debate a response to the invasion of the Chatham Islands by Taranaki Maori, they elected to remain true to the pacifist ideals of their ancestors, declaring "the law of Nunuku was not a strategy for survival, to be varied as conditions changed; it was a moral imperative". Enslavement and genocide followed.

READ MORE:* Worse than Covid: The effects of past disease outbreaks still being felt* Covid-19: Two arrests and more likely at anti-lockdown hkoi * Formal complaint against anti-vax lawyer lodged with the Law Society* Covid-19: Dozen complaints to IPCA over police not making lockdown protest arrests

STUFF

There are 10 ingredients in the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. A microchip is not one of them.

Today, the world is at war with Covid-19. Medical and social advancements in the fight ensure that the future of our species is not at stake but it is still a matter of life and death. Case numbers rise by the day. Vaccinations will dull the impact but more fatalities are inevitable.

In this context, how are we to respond to those opposed to vaccination and/or those who gather in large prohibitive numbers to express resentment against social restrictions designed for the common good? Are these rebels free spirits, worthy of our admiration, the equivalent of conscientious objectors? Should we politely agree to disagree, a response all too rare in today's divided political landscape? Should we take our lead from a constabulary more than willing to accept dissent, who would rather stand around taking photographs of a crime than act to prevent it?

Christel Yardley/Stuff

The very act of gathering in large numbers for Covid-19-related protests imperils others, Swainson says. Pictured are protestors at Claudelands Park, Hamilton.

I would argue there is an important distinction to be made between respecting the right to protest and respecting the protest itself. The former is essential in a free society. The latter requires a judgement call. It is exactly like religion. A democracy must enjoy religious freedom but don't ask me to respect religion itself, two centuries or more after the Enlightenment. Let us progress on the strength of science and rationalism, not continue to be mired in superstition and idolatry.

Superstition and idolatry and an unhealthy dose of social media paranoia inform protests that reference high concepts like 'freedom' but only on the most superficial of levels, ignoring any sense of collective responsibility. Protesters are like petulant children, throwing their toys around after being made to go to bed early. Judging by one recent photo, they are children who have overdosed on the cult film V for Vendetta, wearing Guy Fawkes masks, either playing out anti-authoritarian fantasies or celebrating November 5 somewhat early.

RICKY WILSON/Stuff

Brian Tamaki has been charged over his involvement with recent protests. Hes pictured leaving the Henderson Police Station after his arrest for breaching his bail conditions.

Brian Tamaki ranks as the biggest child of the lot, even if his preference for black shirts and aggressive rallies and demagogic rhetoric brings to mind a certain Italian dictator who was always on top of the train timetables. One can only assume that our judicial system is carefully avoiding making this antipodean Mussolini a martyr to his meaningless - or rather self-serving - cause. How else can we explain a wet bus ticket response to sequential offences and bail violations?

A unique problem of Covid-19-related protests is that the very act of gathering is at once an act of defiance and behaviour that imperils the existence and well-being of others. To rally in large numbers verges on the suicidal. If protesters were just playing with their own lives there would be a certain Darwinian poetic justice to it all: let them literally die for their convictions, improving the gene pool. Unfortunately, super-spreader protest events threaten the rest of us as well.

It is also dismaying how debates around the Covid-19 response have spilt over into a wide range of other political issues. Sensitivity to historic injustices has somehow informed a contrary determination to ignore contemporary expert advice. You wonder at the sanity of a Murupara kaumtua who refuses Pfzier on the grounds that it must inferior to other vaccines because the Crown recommends it. Might not it be more useful to recall Mori lives lost a century ago and use the vaccine that is at hand to prevent a recurrence? And what of the hkoi that set out from Rotorua, somehow travelled through level 3 Waikato, only to force a stand-off at the Auckland border? Whatever grudges and grievances this lot harbour, no cause is advanced by such stupidity.

New Zealand proved itself big enough in time of war to countenance those of conscience who resisted the martial spirit. If it proves itself big enough again to accommodate those who selfishly detract from efforts to suppress Covid-19, these rebels command no respect.

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In the war with Covid, rebels who risk spread don't command respect - Stuff.co.nz

The Trojan Women is a genocide narrative. In this play, the great Athenian dramatist Euripides explores the enslavement of women, human sacrifice, rape and infanticide.

By Chris Mackie

The story of the long struggle for the life of the city of Troy might be thought of as the pre-eminent Greek myth. Extensive narratives of the war are told in the oral traditions of myth and literature, and they also appear very significantly in the material evidence of Greek art and architecture.

The Trojan Women, a play by the great Athenian dramatist Euripides (485-406 BC), was produced in Athens in the early spring of 415 BC. It is set immediately after the fall of Troy and the killing of the Trojan men, when the fates of the royal women and children of the city are being decided by the victorious Greeks.

The grim subject matter and mood of the play in its Trojan setting have a parallel in the Peloponnesian War, which was being fought at the time between Athens and Sparta (431 to 404 BC). The Trojan Women speaks both to the renowned war at Troy, described most famously by Homer in the Iliad, and to the great military struggle taking place in Euripides own lifetime.

If there was a historical Trojan War it was probably fought in the late Bronze Age, perhaps in the 12th century BC at Hisarlik in what is now northwest Turkey. Accounts of the war seem to have been passed on orally, culminating in epic poems that probably date to the end of the 8th century BC and after. The Iliad (c. 700 BC) and Homers Odyssey (dated perhaps to a generation or two after the Iliad) are our two surviving early Greek epic poems on the Troy theme.

But we also know of a series of poems, now lost, called the Epic Cycle, six of which are focused on the Troy saga. All of these offered accounts of different parts of the Trojan War (which in the Greek tradition lasted for 10 years).

Early Greek epics made no attempt to document the historicity of the conflict in a modern sense, not the least because history hadnt been invented when they were composed. History (a Greek word meaning research or enquiry) is a product of later (i.e., 6th and 5th century BC) rationalism and literacy.

As a late 5th century BC Athenian dramatist, Euripides is an heir both to the traditions of oral poetry and mythmaking, and to the rational enquiry of philosophy, rhetoric and history in a broad sense. While Homer was greatly admired by the literati in 5th century Athens, he does represent a world already long gone. (Homers Iliad may date up to 300 years before Euripides Trojan Women as distant a period as the early 18th century is for us.)

Euripides himself (485-406 BC) was still writing into old age, not unlike his contemporary, the tragedian Sophocles (497/6-406 BC), who was still producing plays at Athens into his early nineties! Euripides wrote about 90 plays, of which 18 survive, whereas the evergreen Sophocles wrote more than 120 plays, only 7 of which survive. They often competed at the dramatic festivals, with Sophocles easily the more successful.

Euripides wrote four plays for performance on that day in the early spring of 415 BC, although only The Trojan Women has survived. We know, not the least from fragmentary evidence, that the first three plays were on the Trojan War theme, but they were not a tightly interconnected trilogy of plays, as is Aeschylus Oresteia.

First was the play Alexander, which focused on the earlier life of the Trojan archer-figure Paris, or Alexander, as he is often known. In the myth of Troy it is he who judges the divine beauty contest (the Judgement of Paris), that precipitates the war between Greeks and Trojans.

The second play was the Palamedes, about a clever but rather obscure Greek prince at Troy. The Trojan Women was the third play presented on that day, and was followed in turn by a more light-hearted satyr play called the Sisyphus.

We learn from an ancient source that Euripides plays came second in the dramatic competition of the year 415 BC.

The Trojan Women focuses on a small group of women of the royal house of Troy who await their fate in Greece Hecuba, the widow of king Priam; Cassandra, the prophetess daughter of Priam and Hecuba; Andromache, widow of Hector and mother of the boy Astyanax; and Helen of Sparta, who has to plead for her life from Menelaus, her former husband. The chorus of the play are captive Trojan women.

The only Greek prince to feature as a character is Menelaus himself whose task is to decide on Helens fate now that she has been captured. The cruel decisions of the departing Greek forces occur with Odysseus as a key player, but these are enunciated to the women by Talthybius, a Greek herald.

The women are dispersed as slaves to particular princes throughout the Greek world who have led contingents within the Greek army. The obvious cruelty of this process is added to by the cold calculation as to who will go where.

Thus, the girl Polyxena, daughter of Priam and Hecuba, was supposed to go to Achilles after the war; but seeing Achilles is now dead, she is sacrificed at his tomb.

Hectors wife Andromache goes to Achilles son Neoptolemus because Hector and Achilles were rivals and had a major single combat in battle (told in Book 22 of the Iliad). Hecuba herself is to go to Odysseus a terrible fate, upon which she laments her ill-fortune: it is my lot to be slave to a vile and treacherous man.

Cassandra will go as a sex slave to the lascivious and repulsive figure of Agamemnon, while Helen the face that launched a thousand ships is given back to Menelaus.

Cassandra is murdered with Agamemnon upon their return to Mycenae, whereas Helen is a remarkable survivor upon her return to Greece. We encounter Helen again most especially in Homers Odyssey Book 4, where she has a kind of normal life and marriage with her former husband Menelaus in Sparta.

It is important to remember that the extended story of the Trojan War is a genocide narrative, and that this comes through very emphatically within the play itself (as it does in other Greek literature).

The Greeks did not shrink from describing Greek atrocities perpetrated on the defeated Trojans. Indeed it is a feature of their narratives to focus on Greek cruelty. In the Iliad, for instance, Agamemnon urges his brother Menelaus on the battlefield to kill all Trojans, even the boy that is carried in a mothers womb.

The horrific culmination of the cruelty in the Trojan Women is the killing of the boy Astyanax, the very young son of Hector and Andromache. This occurs within the course of the play itself (off stage, of course). Odysseus comes up with the idea of throwing him from the battlements of the city, and the Greeks even threaten to refuse the burial of his body if the Trojan women dont cooperate with the decision to execute the boy.

Astyanax is a silent character in Homer and in Euripides, but his fate in the aftermath of the war speaks to us about infanticide, much as the fates of the Trojan women do with regard to rape and murder and the enslavement of women in war.

It does seem to be significant too that the only compassion for the women coming from Greek male characters in the play belongs to Talthybius, the (non-aristocratic) herald of the Greeks.

The Athenian audience in 415 BC knew very well the main mythical narratives of the aftermath of the Trojan war and the return home. They would know all about the death of Astyanax and about the return of Helen to Sparta to live again with her husband. They would also know, not the least from the prologue of Euripides play itself, that the Greek fleet will be hit by storms on the journey home on account of the rape of Cassandra by Locrian Ajax at the altar of Athena an unpunished act which occurred prior to the opening of the play.

So the Trojan Women deals with the sharp end of Greek brutality in the war for Troy the enslavement of women, human sacrifice, rape and infanticide.

The graphic violence dealt with in the play speaks to us about the absence of heroism in the narrative of Troy, despite what Homer and the epic poets provided in their earlier accounts.

The focus on womens suffering in the war is in keeping with other works by Euripides, many of whose plays focused on female lives and female suffering in relentlessly male dominated environments.

Inevitably, Euripides play has inspired many later treatments of the Trojan women theme. Two modern conscious responses to the Greek poets are novels by English author Pat Barker, who was moved to write The Silence of the Girls, based around the Iliad, and (most recently) The Women of Troy: A Novel, to hear the voices of the women themselves from Euripides play.

Lucy Hughes-Halletts review of The Women of Troy in the Guardian reiterates the violence of the language in Barkers version: clearly and simply told, with no obscurities of vocabulary or allusion, this novel reads sometimes like a retelling for children of the legend of Troy, but its conclusions are for adults merciless, stripped of consoling, impressively bleak.

Chris Mackie is a Professor of Classics at La Trobe University. This article was published inThe Conversationand is republished under a Creative Commons License.

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Euripides' The Trojan Women An Unflinching Look at Brutality of War - Greek Reporter

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The announcement last week that Pope Francis may be planning a visit to Canada to apologize for the Catholic Churchs involvement in the abuses committed against Indigenous children in residential schools prompted a reflection on the state of the church today. The simple fact is that the churchs influence in the world is now at its lowest ebb since the early days of Christianity.

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For centuries, the Catholic Church was one of the great pillars of western civilization. It built magnificent cathedrals and monasteries throughout Europe. It established the first great universities. It provided health and education services to the poor. It ran great estates that were a significant part of the agricultural economy of many countries. Its leaders, cardinals and bishops, were trusted advisers to kings and queens and occupied major ministerial positions. A long succession of popes played a major role in European politics. And its missionaries spanned the globe, bringing Christianity to peoples in Asia, Africa and the Americas. No other institution was more influential in the progressive westernization of the world at large.

Over the centuries, the church suffered two major blows to its power and prestige. The first was the Great Schism of 1053, which saw an irreversible split between the sees of Rome and Constantinople. The result was the creation of what came to be known as the Eastern Orthodox churches, with headquarters in Constantinople, Athens, Antioch, Cairo, Moscow and Kyiv. These churches remained essentially true to the doctrines of the Catholic Church but ceased to recognize the Pope as their leader. This split did irreparable damage to what had until then been a largely united Christendom. The second blow occurred in the 16th century with the Protestant Reformation. The Protestant reformers took exception not only to many of the corrupt practices that had become evident in the church, but also to many of its doctrines. There emerged from this movement a variety of denominations, including Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans, Presbyterians and Baptists. These denominations solidified their presence in Germany, Britain, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries and from there spread their wings to the New World, where they spawned yet more new churches, such as Mormons and Shakers. The once total domination of the western world by the Catholic Church thus came to an end.

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But the Catholic Church rebounded from these setbacks with the Council of Trent, the Counter Reformation and the birth of the Jesuit order of priests, who came to be known as the shock troops of the Pope. The church managed to maintain its dominant position in countries such as France, Italy and Spain. And it, too, spread to the New World. All of the countries of Latin America became predominantly Catholic, and Catholicism remains the largest single Christian denomination in the United States and Canada. In the United States, the church established for itself an enviable position in higher education with universities such as Georgetown, Fordham, Notre Dame and Loyola. And Catholic leaders such as Cardinal Spellman of New York and Father Hesburgh, the president of Notre Dame University, became highly respected national figures in the United States. The church scored a notable breakthrough with the election of the first Catholic president in the history of the United States in the person of John F. Kennedy in 1960.

The glory days of the church were already beginning to be numbered, however, in the 1950s. Hundreds of thousands of Catholics left the church over its positions on birth control. They were simply not prepared to kow-tow to the churchs strictures or injunctions to have ever larger families. This flight from the pews was to grow exponentially over the decades. Women in Europe and North America became increasingly disenchanted with the churchs total domination by men. Religious and lay women began to demand a greater role in the government of the church. When their demands were steadfastly resisted by the church hierarchy, many went into overt opposition. One byproduct of this is that the recruitment of women to the religious life has dwindled to a trickle. Most nuns today are distinctly aged, and numerous convents have been closed down. Nuns in the classroom or on hospital wards are now as rare as hens teeth.

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If the recruitment of nuns has dwindled dramatically, so, too, has the recruitment of new priests. Parishes in Europe and North America are all suffering from a shortage of clergy. Churches that once had two or three priests on staff are now reduced to sharing one priest among two or three parishes on Sundays. Many churches have had to close down because of the shortage, and not only in remote rural areas. One of the main reasons for this is that the church has steadfastly refused to allow priests to marry. Thousands of ordained priests have jumped the wall for this reason alone. (A perfect illustration of the problem is to be found in the Grand Seminary in Montreal. Once home to some 400 recruits to the priesthood, it is now reduced to less than 40 and has had to shut down its grand building on the slopes of Mount Royal.)

The closure of churches is not attributable solely to the shortage of priests. In one church after another, congregations have grown older and many parishioners have died off. The remaining parishioners can no longer afford the costs of maintaining their churches. (The most obvious local example of this phenomenon is to be found in what was the Church of the Good Thief on King Street West. It is a magnificent old stone church dating back to the 19th century, but which now carries the sign closed at its front door.) This decrease in the size of congregations is attributable to many factors, including growing materialism and the advances of rationalism and secularism in the modern world. Many young people simply feel no attachment to religion and are not inclined to go to church solely because their parents did. In short, the church is greying and aging in many western countries.

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The latest challenges confronting the church are to be found in the multiple revelations regarding the sexual and physical abuse of children perpetrated by members of the Catholic clergy. Over the past 20 years, there has been an outpouring of such revelations in one country after another. Church-sponsored and government-mandated commissions of inquiry have revealed a pattern of criminal activity by literally thousands of priests. And further inquiries have shown the efforts mounted by the Church hierarchy to hide the truth and protect both the perpetrators and the image of the institution. This year alone has been notable for the findings of a commission in France regarding the sexual abuse of thousands of French children by priests over several decades and for the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves on the grounds of former Catholic-run residential schools in Canada.

The churchs response to these revelations has been anything but exemplary. Beyond trying to cover up the facts, numerous bishops have gone to court to try to avoid having to provide financial compensation to the victims. Others have been reluctant to share documents and records relating to the events. The past two popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, did whatever they could to sweep the matter under the carpet and not face up to its gravity. It has been left to Pope Francis to deal with the issue and the mounting toll that it is taking on the churchs reputation. He is obviously a man of good will who wants to do the right thing, but he seems overwhelmed by the enormity of the task at hand. He has issued several apologies for the actions of the clergy and will no doubt issue more, but these are widely viewed as insufficient by the victims of abuse. In the meantime, Catholics by the thousands are abandoning the church and leaving it a weakened institution.

Louis A. Delvoie is a retired Canadian diplomat who served abroad as an ambassador and high commissioner.

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The Catholic Church in retreat - The Kingston Whig-Standard

Wooofer: Palamas / Wikimedia Commons

Faith and reason are both important; the two complement and correct each other, so that when properly working together, they make sure we are not led astray. Reason helps us purify our understanding of the faith, while faith provides various principles which reason can never provide for itself. Reason can only direct us forward, it can never establish anything in and of itself. It can only develop what has been given to it; it cannot create. If what is given is little, what reason will provide is little. It would be foolish to assume the only truth is that which we can establish by reason alone. This is because we need to give reason its proper foundation, its proper seed. It never knows the truth in and of itself.

When dealing with theological matters, those who have little to no experience in spiritual matters, therefore, can be led astray if they think that all they need to do is believe what they can reason out for themselves. This is because they pridefully discuss matters which are beyond them and their experiences. They dont know enough to make sound arguments. St. Gregory Palamas understood this, which is why he was often critical of those who engaged theology. All they did was make rational arguments based upon uncertain, sometimes erroneous, premises. Or else they engaged scholarly studies, which could serve them some good if they read and believed the right things, but without spiritual experiences, without a way to judge scholarly arguments, they could easily be led to believe the wrong conclusions, especially as such studies encourages them to focus merely on what they can reason and think such activity, by itself, is enough. But it is not enough for they will not be able to know the truth in this fashion: Someone who has faith in his own reasoning and the problems which it poses, who believes he can discover all truth by making distinctions, syllogisms and logical analysis, can neither know the things of the spiritual man directly, or believe in them.[1]

Truth is not established through logic; logic only helps us delineate and discuss the truth which we have come to apprehend. We cannot create the truth. We cannot prove the truth through logic. The truth, ultimately, is not revealed through such arguments; arguments only help us in our understanding of that truth. If we do not have some experience of it ourselves, then our rational arguments, no matter how sound they are, will leave us wanting. Start with the wrong premises, and logic will lead you to the wrong conclusion. It is for this reason why Palamas said that for every word, every argument which we could make in favor of the truth, someone else could provide arguments against it:

Every word, it is said, argues with some other word. But what word can argue with life? We think that it is impossible to know yourself by methods of distinction, argument and analysis unless you free your nous from pride and evil by laborious repentance and active asceticism. Someone who has not worked on his nous by these means will not even know his own poverty in his domain of knowledge. [2]

Only those who have, with their mind, apprehended the truth will be able to discern which arguments best represent that truth. It is pride which makes us think we can, through reason alone, prove the truth. How do we expect to do so when those truths transcend the human intellect to comprehend? We can apprehend it. We can experience it. But we must not, out of pride, think we can invent irrefutable arguments which will lead people to hold the same belief as we do. Our experiences will differ. Our apprehensions will differ. Our relationship with the truth will differ. What Palamas suggests is that we must find a way to lead people to share in our apprehensions, to share in our experiences (or to have faith in them, if they cannot have them themselves). Then, our arguments will help them, not because those arguments will prove what we know, but because they will help elucidate and explain what it is we have apprehended in common. This is why Palamas, in arguing against pure rationalism, would employ all kinds of arguments in favor of what he had to say; their purpose is to persuade people to follow after him, to share in his experiences, so that they can perceive and apprehend the truth for themselves (or to realize and understand better what they have already experienced). Thus, like many before him, he suggested what is most important is what we do. How we live out our lives reveals the truth better to others than if we tried to reveal the truth to them through arguments alone: As for us, we believe that the true doctrine is not what is known through words and arguments, but what is demonstrated in peoples works and lives. That is not only the truth, but the only certain and immutable truth. [3]

Palamas did not deny the value of theological science, but he understood its limitations. He wanted all who would engage it to be humble. Faith is important, and so if a person accepted, without experience, what others truly have experienced, they do a good thing. Nonetheless, if they try to add to it arguments from reason without first having an experience of the truth itself, their pride will have them stray from the truth. But because of their faith, they will not stay as far as those who would try to use reason as the sole foundation for their knowledge. Such people tend to apply it skeptically to all things, until at last, either all they have is nothing but pure skepticism, or they will have seen through the limitations of reason and so find themselves capable of using it properly, not expecting to prove all things through it, but rather to elucidate those things which they have come to know or believe. This connects with his greater theological enterprise, because Palamas tells us that what we come to believe is what we see and experience of the truth as it presents itself to us; that is, we know God, not through Gods essence, nor by what we can deduce about it through our reason, but by Gods activities, the uncreated energies of God. For it is those energies which reveal what we can apprehend of the truth for ourselves.

[1] St. Gregory Palamas: The Triads: Books One. Trans. Robin Amis (Wellington, Somerset: Praxis, 2002), 103 [This is from the complete translation of the first book, which is not otherwise found in in the Westerns of Spirituality Volume of the Triads that I normally use].

[2] St. Gregory Palamas: The Triads: Books One, 104.

[3] St. Gregory Palamas: The Triads: Books One, 104.

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Reason, Arguments, And Truth | Henry Karlson - Patheos

Rationalism is the belief that humans are rational creatures, capable of reason and logic.

The essentials:

The logical starting-point towards understanding any ideology concerns its view of human nature. In straight-forward terms, liberals share an optimistic attitude towards human nature. This is based upon an assumption that our behaviour is determined by rational interest rather than irrational emotions and prejudice. We are therefore governed by reason and should be entrusted with as much freedom as possible.

The liberal belief that humans are rational creatures holds several implications. Firstly, it promotes the view that we are free to choose our own path in life regardless of what society dictates as the norm. Liberals firmly believe that we should be allowed to express ourselves fully as guided by our own free will. There is a lengthy tradition amongst liberal figures and pressure groups of championing the rights of minority groups such as political dissidents and the LGBT community. Secondly, liberals instinctively welcome those fleeing from persecution and discrimination in their native homeland. Freedom of movement is a central tenant of liberalism, and the only logical conclusion amongst people who place reason above prejudice.

Another important implication derived from this rationalist perspective is the importance of human happiness. All liberals would concur with Aristotles observation that happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence. There are a number of practical illustrations of this liberal attitude. The right of all adults; regardless of their sexuality, to marry the person they love is a recent illustration of this line of argument. In addition, the liberal concept of utilitarianism seeks to maximise the level of human happiness. According to utilitarian philosophers like James Mill and Jeremy Bentham; society should be geared towards the greatest happiness for the greatest number.

Extension material and application:

On the basis of their optimistic outlook on human nature, liberals seek to empower the individual provided our actions do not undermine the freedom of others. As one of the most prominent liberal thinkers of all time (John Stuart Mill) argued the liberty of the individual must be this far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to other people. It is on this liberal cornerstone that laws exist in order to prevent incitement to racial and religious hatred. Targeting minority groups on the basis of bigotry is particularly abhorrent to any true liberal.

In all countries and throughout the ages, liberals refute the notion that human behaviour is shaped by the irrational forces of superstition and religion. Instead, they claim that adults are fully capable of making decisions based upon their own reasoning. As a consequence, liberalism is on a collision course with religious fundamentalists of all faiths. Whereas religious fundamentalists believe that our actions are shaped by forces beyond our reasoning, liberals assert that human beings are rational creatures. Indeed, it is the ability to reason that frees us from the outdated traditions and customs of the past. Moreover, no group of people are any less rational than any other. Human rights should therefore apply on a universal basis regardless of gender, ethnicity, social background or sexuality. Consistent with this view, contemporary liberals argue in favour of womens rights within countries that have traditionally imposed suppression (as in Saudi Arabia which now allows women to register to vote and stand for election).

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Rationalism (Liberalism) | tutor2u

Mr Yaw Boadu-Ayeboafoh - Chairman of the National Media Commission in Ghana

At a meeting with the expanded leadership of Parliament on Thursday (October 28, 2021), Mr Boadu-Ayeboafoh likened the situation to the fate of the NMC, where he said one of the most unfortunate developments was when people misread the provision in the 1992 constitution which says that the NMC shall take all appropriate measures to ensure the highest journalistic standards and professionalism in the media.

He noted that the assumption was that the commission has the power to do anything to ensure this, which was not the case.

He added that it was even more painful when members of parliament tend to resonate with this misunderstanding of the provision of the law.

When people speak this way, the intention is that the NMC is not cracking the whip but nobody has given the whip to the NMC to crack, he added.

He said this was a country of rule of law and the NMC could therefore not carry out mandates which it had not been empowered by law to do.

This is a country of the rule of law and anything that we do, must be founded in Law, he added.

LGBTQI+ debate example

Read also:Ghana's 'anti-LGBTQI+ draft bill' leaks on social media

It was when he was citing an example to buttress an appeal for Parliament to review and amend Act 445 of 1993, so as to empower the National Media Commission (NMC) to enforce its mandate that Mr Boadu-Ayeboafoh chipped in the LGBTQI+ example.

Related:Kasoa: 2 teenagers arrested for alleged 'money ritual' murder

Everybody then turned to the National Media Commission and everybody was berating us left and right to say that what are you doing? And they read this provision that says that you take appropriate measures and their conclusion is that we can close down the station and we are not closing down the station and we know that we do not have that power and authority to close down that station, he added.

The power of the NMC, he said was "circumscribed by law and the Commission can order a retraction of a story, the commission can order an apology, the commission can order a publication of a rejoinder or the commission can refer to a professional body over the conduct of a member of that professional body so that the professional body can use their code to discipline that individual. Beyond this, the National Media Commission cannot do anything."

He said sometimes it is not out of anything except that in the thinking of the framers of the 1992 constitution, we [NMC] needed to facilitate media pluralism, rather than control and that is why the NMC dont have the powers of closing down stations.

Mr Boadu-Ayeboafoh said if after working with the constitution for these number of years and we realise that the time has come for us to put in measures that will not just tolerate anything but we deal firmly with that situation, then the commission must be given that power and authority and that power can only come from Parliament otherwise the commission cannot take upon itself any obligation.

He reiterated that the NMC is of the view that the current law that established it only allows it to order irresponsible media houses to apologize and retract their publications.

It is therefore asking for more powers to be able to introduce stiffer punishment for media houses that publish false and inappropriate content.

The meeting with the parliamentarians, organized by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs with the NMC discussed issues about accelerating the enactment of laws affecting content delivery across platforms including the passage of the broadcasting law, enacting a new law on complaints settlement, a new law on the fairness doctrine for state-owned media and budgetary resources.

Read also: Give us more powers - NMC to Parliament

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Sentiments instead of rationalism taking over LGBTQI+ debate in Ghana Boadu-Ayeboafoh - Graphic Online - Graphic Online

A Germophobes Worst Nightmare: Flu Season

by Joe Kulesza 22

Dating back to ancient Mesopotamia, human civilizations have wrestled with great existential questions which are part of the human condition.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, in his novel Crime and Punishment, critiques the ideas of rationalism and utilitarianism through the main character, Raskolnikov, who struggles with an inner conflict fueled by his nihilistic view of the world.

And philosopher Soren Kierkegaard writes about constructing meaning in a seemingly meaningless and finite world through placing faith in things that transgress the material world.

Rivaling in salience to these topics of purpose, freedom, and mortality comes another set of great questions that relate not to the aforementioned subjects, but to flu season.

Every fall, not an existential crisis, but a sanitary crisis, takes hold of germaphobes, as the advent of flu season provokes the perennial fears of dirty door knobs, people coughing in public, and running low on hand sanitizer or Clorox wipes.

Being a germaphobe in college is an even more perilous endeavor, as several thousand students live in close proximity to one another.

The contrary to this fear of germs or uncovered coughs in public is the prospect that ones immune system will prevail.

Common convention holds that not washing hands is doing the body a favor, as a lack of hand washing acts essentially as a vaccine does, bolstering immunity against pathogens.

This is a tempting philosophy, but is one that should be avoided. Immunity from exposure to germs does in fact act similarly to a vaccine, but like a vaccine, exposing oneself to germs is only exposure to specific types and variants of germs.

Like all living organisms, germs evolve, and can do so rather quickly. With this said, the germs that someone is exposed to one day can differ from other variants they could encounter the next.

Additionally, while exposure to germs is similar to a vaccine, it is not a vaccine itself, as germs in vaccines have been altered to promote a certain immune response. The germs on a door knob have not.

While asking people to entirely convert to germaphobes is an unrealistic demand, it is in everyones best interest to be one for at least a few months, and now is not a bad time to start.

Manchin and Sinema: Disrupting the Democratic Agenda

by Gabriel Capella 25

When Joe Biden won his bid for the presidency in November of 2020 and the Democratic Party retained control of the House of Representatives, Democrats still had one more obstacle preventing them from full control of Washington: the highly competitive Senate races. The Senate elections were so close that in the state of Georgia, they went to a runoff. Ultimately, both Democrats won their Georgia runoff races, marking a 50-50 divide in the Senate. Immediately after these results, political analysts across the country predicted that while Democrats technically had control of the upper chamber of Congress, the Democratic Party would be almost unable to pass their long-desired big pieces of legislation because of obstruction from the two moderate senators of their caucus: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

Those analysts predictions have been exactly right in recent weeks.

These two senators are the cause of Democrats struggle to pass their $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, more commonly known as the Build Back Better Act. Reconciliation is a Senate procedural rule that allows for budget legislation to be passed evading a filibuster. The Senate is allowed to utilize this process only twice a year, and Democrats have only one more chance at it as the 2021 American Rescue Plan passed through reconciliation.

Just a month ago, Manchin reinstated his opposition to the Build Back Better Act when he said: I, for one, wont support a $3.5 trillion bill, or anywhere near that level of additional spending. Senators Sinema and Manchins number one reason to oppose the bill is its high cost. They worry that additional government spending will cause inflation in the economy. However, although the price tag of this bill may appear sky-high at first, the federal government does not have to immediately write a check to pay for it. In fact, the legislation was enacted so that we could pay for it over a period of 10 years.

It appears illogical that these two senators continue to obstruct this bill, especially considering the majority support that it holds in public opinion among voters. Ultimately, their lack of support shows discord among the Democratic Party and proves that there is little room for reconciliation among leaders of the same party. What this means for the future of the Build Back Better Bill is yet to be determined, but it does not bode well for the state of the countrys recovery.

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Tangents and Tirades The Cowl - PC The Cowl

The debate around critical race theory (CRT) can feel exceptionally stupid, reflexive, and marked by bad faith, even by the low standards of our era. Prominent Democrats have excused an assault on the liberal order and the embrace of racial reductionism, while too many Trumpy Republicans have responded to charges of racism and intolerance by seemingly doing their best to prove them true. The performative back and forth, aggravated by uncertainty as to just what CRT entails, can fuel a sense of a plague on both your houses. But that response, while understandable, is neither principled nor politic. In fact, this clash, seen rightly, is a huge opportunity for a serious conservatism.

Critical race theory, for all the quarrels about precisely what it is and whether its literally present in schools, really is an avowedly revolutionary and race-obsessed doctrine. As Education Weeks Stephen Sawchuk has observed, Critical race theory emerged out of postmodernist thought, which tends to be skeptical of the idea of universal values, objective knowledge, individual merit, Enlightenment rationalism, and liberalism. Proponents readily acknowledge such ambitions. As Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic unflinchingly explained in their book Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, Critical race theory questionsthe very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning,Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law.

In short, the CRT debate has never been about whether schools should teach kids about slavery. Rather, CRT is a toxic doctrine that encompasses an array of troubling practices, including race-based affinity groups (in which schools separate students or staff by race for instructional purposes); exercises like privilege walks (in which students or staff are told to catalog identities and circumstanceslike race, appearance, sexual preference, or number of books in the homefor hints of unearned privilege and white supremacy culture); or the insistence that schools reject colorblind norms (which the Biden administration supported by recommending resources explaining that such a mindset creates an unsafe environment for students).

When pushed to address these troubling practices, Democratic officials have opted for obfuscation. In the heat of Virginias gubernatorial campaign, Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe insisted, [CRT] is not taught in Virginia, its never been taught in Virginia. And as Ive said this a lot: Its a dogwhistle. Its racial, its division, and its used by Glenn Youngkin ... to divide people. American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten thundered, Let's be clear: Critical race theory is not taught in elementary schools or high schools. It's a method of examination taught in law school and college that helps analyze whether systemic racism exists."

Such responses are emphatic. Theyre also untrue. Indeed, internal documents show that, during McAuliffes previous tenure as governor, a Virginia Department of Education training program encouraged state public schools to embrace critical race theory and engage in race-conscious teaching and learning in order to advance Culturally-Responsive Teaching and Learning Principles.

Even this summer, in Virginias Loudoun County, a freedom of information request foundthat Loudouns schools anti-racist trainings taught teachers to reject color blindness," address their Whiteness (e.g., white privilege), and recognize that "independence and individual achievement" are racist hallmarks of "white individualism (as is a commitment to self-expression, individual thinking, personal choice").

It is neither racist nor unreasonable to reject such teachings as wholly at odds with widely shared American values. These dogmas display an educational vision thats one-part crude racial caricature and one-part half-baked campus Marxism. When confronted with the true face of CRT, rather than the sanitized we just want to discuss Jim Crow version favored by NPR and the New York Times, its one that most Americansof every racewould emphatically reject.

Rasmussen reported in July that 74 percent of black voters say its important to teach the traditional values of Western civilization, not too far off from the 78 percent of white voters who say the same. While the question is more than a little vague, such responses sure dont suggest much enthusiasm for CRTs frontal assault on the liberal order.Indeed, black and white Americans sound an awful lot alike when asked about values that have been deemed white supremacist by anti-racist trainers. Sixty-four percent of white Americans and 67 percent of black Americans say its important to teach persistence. On the virtue of hard work, the respective figures are 90 and 91 percent; on independence, theyre 76 and 81 percent.

Meanwhile, Latinos may be the nations most culturally conservative demographic. Pew has reported that 77 percent of Hispanics agree that most can get ahead with hard work(among other Americans, the figure is 62 percent). Ruy Teixeira, who two decades ago co-authored the The Emerging Democratic Majority, observed last month that three-fifths of Latinos believe life will be better for the next generation, that most think America is a fair society where everyone has a chance to get ahead, and that, by more than 3 to 1, theyd rather be a citizen of the United States than any other country. As he put it, Clearly, this constituency does not harbor particularly radical views on the nature of American society and its supposed intrinsic racism and white supremacy.

Results from a recent national AEI poll are similarly instructive. While just 58 percent of black Americans, 44 percent of Hispanics, and 42 percent of whites want schools to teach about white privilege, massive, broad-based majorities support teaching about the topics that are supposedly divisive. For instance, 74 percent of white Americans and 75 percent of black Americans favor teaching students that the dispute over slavery was the principal cause of the Civil War. Among Republicans and Democrats alike, more than 4 out of 5 say social studies textbooks should discuss that many Founders owned slaves, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the federal governments maltreatment of Native Americans. Ninety percent of the public thinks that schools should have students read works by a racially diverse set of authors. At the same time, 61 percent of respondents say that schools are not doing enough to teach students to love their country.

In short, the public is in a reasonable, inclusive place while CRTs toxic, illiberal, Marxist doctrines are wildly out of step with the values of most Americanswhatever their race or creed. Politico, for instance, interviewed left-leaning or moderate suburbanites in six states, five carried by Biden in 2020 and reports, They are up in arms over their school systems new equity initiatives, which they argue are costly and divisive, encouraging students to group themselves by race and take pro-activist stances. Politico profiled one Michigan mom who got interested in CRT when her daughter started arguing that rioters who looted stores during 2020s Black Lives Matter protests were justified. Shes slowly gotten involved in school board affairs and, while a lifelong Democrat, says, I cannot continue [voting for Democratic candidates] in good faith.

These issues hit parents where they live. Theyre about what values their kids are bringing home from school. Conservatives have the chance to defend shared values that resonate deeply with many who have not historically found themselves on the right. This creates an enormous opportunity for conservatism.

Unfortunately, what should be a simple, principled pitch for conservativesthose guys are embracing a toxic, race-based assault on shared values and the liberal order while we believe in rationality, independent thought, and constitutional equalityhas been undermined by right-wingers who have seemingly done what they can to inhabit left-wing caricatures.

In June, Moms for Liberty, a group that purports to stand up for parental rights at all levels of government, filed a complaint claiming that the Civil Rights Heroes module of Williamson Countys second-grade curriculum violated Tennessees new anti-CRT law. The source of the complaint? A picture book about Ruby Bridges and an second grade-level autobiography of the civil rights icon, a Penguin Young Reader book on Martin Luther Kings March on Washington, and a picture book titled Separate Is Never Equal (complainants were particularly irate that the Ruby Bridges books noted that young Ruby had been harassed by crowds of angry white people). Hard to occupy the moral high ground while countenancing complaints like this.

Just this week, it wasreportedthat Utahs Davis School District, north of Salt Lake City, has ignored racial harassment for years. The Justice Department found that peers taunted Black students by making monkey noises at them, touching and pulling their hair without permission, repeatedly referencing slavery and lynching and telling Black students go pick cotton and you are my slave. Imagine being a black parent sending your child to such a school each day. Principled conservatives need to speak out against this disgrace with the same fury and frustration that they target on the excesses of CRT. Thats an essential first step in reassuring black and brown parents that we have their childrens needs at heart.

It also becomes more difficult to insist that the fight is about principle when prominent CRT critics are spending their time firing off tweets that say, We have successfully frozen their brandcritical race theoryinto the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions or touting CRT as the perfect villain.

For what its worth, its tougher to find outrageous examples than one might expect. And some prominent Republicans have taken pains to sound some sensible notes. Former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has said, "Of course we need to teach history. We need to teach about slavery and schools need curriculum that embraces all of the parts of our history. Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted, OF COURSE we should teach about slavery & racism.

But much more is needed. On issues as fraught as these, its crucial to make a case thats principled, precise, and welcoming. Needless to say, thats not how these things tend to play out today. Indeed, the NPR and New York Times are eagerly waiting to insist that each untoward incident shows whats really in the conservative heart. Therein lies the challenge. And provisions in anti-CRT laws that seem intent on banning particular topics or concepts, rather than restricting unconstitutional or illegal practices, dont help. Feeding the narrative that the right wants to ban discussions of slavery is not only wrong-headed but also a regrettable unforced error, given that Republicans overwhelmingly say they support teaching the very topics supposedly in dispute.

Theres an extraordinary opportunity here if conservatives can clearly distinguish between blasting the toxic sludge that is CRT and embracing the deeply American ideal that every student should feel valued, welcome, and seen. After all, past all the arguments about test scores, virtual learning, and policy, parents want to know that schools are places where their children feel safe and affirmed, and are learning to respect the values that they hold dear.

Its not hard to imagine conservatives convincing patriotic black and brown parents who believe in the promise of America to make common cause against wild-eyed zealots who believe that America is a slavocracy (as the 1619 Projects Nikole Hannah-Jones puts it) or that respect for hard work is a legacy of white supremacy culture (as KIPP charter schools have said). But its impossible to imagine conservatives convincing those same parents to join a fight that seems marked by hostility to black and brown kids and families.

For decades, Democrats have enjoyed a sizable advantage on education, fueled by support for ever-more school spending and the perception that they like teachers more than Republicans do. Now, the progressive base has aggressively staked out radical, unpopular ground in an emotional debate, and establishment Democrats have decided not to triangulate off the craziness but to rally to the cause. This presents the right, as weve seen this fall in the Virginia gubernatorial contest, a remarkable opportunity to do well by doing good. But only if conservatives can seize it.

Frederick M. Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

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The Right Way to Reject Critical Race Theory - The Dispatch

When Jessica Dore was growing up, her mother had a tarot deck from which shed pull cards much to the mounting mortification of her daughter. As a child, Dore went along with it as fortune-telling fun. But as an adolescent, it was sort of like Mind your own business, she says wryly.

It meant Dore was at least familiar with tarot. The deck of 78 cards, split between major arcana and minor arcana (greater and lesser secrets), is used with varying degrees of sincerity to divine past, present and future. But I never had any sense that it could be something that would be of value for me in my life, Dore says.

Then, a decade later, Dore threw a dinner party to which two friends brought along a tarot deck. They gave her an amazing reading, she says, that cast new light on a hard time she was going through. The cards made me feel seen and understood in a way that I wasnt used to. The experience opened her mind to the potential of tarot to shift perspectives and illuminate possibility. She acquired a deck of her own, and started pulling cards after work each night.

At the time Dore was in her early 20s, a poet with a communications degree working as a publicist at a publisher of self-help and psychology textbooks. She had been struck by how the research she encountered through her job could help people to gain new insight into their thoughts, feelings and behaviours if only they knew to seek it out.

Tarot, she thought, could be a similar conduit to awareness and introspection. These two strands barriers to self-help, and tarot as a path to it travelled together in Dores mind, culminating in a strange and unlikely marriage: she became a licensed social worker and full-time tarot reader.

On Twitter, more than 130,000 people (along with 52,000 on Instagram) follow Dores daily draw of a card, which she then connects to psychological concepts, legends, myths and miscellanea as a prompt for introspection.

She links the five of cups, for example, to cognitive flexibility training, proposing expanding ones thinking as a path away from triggering thoughts; while the sun card could illuminate healthy responses to rejection.

Now Dore has expanded on her cerebral writing on the human experience through tarot in a book, Tarot For Change: Using the Cards for Self-Care, Acceptance and Growth. With this practical, carefully referenced guide, Dore brings together the scientific and the arcane, two spheres long believed to be antithetical but increasingly less so.

Tarot is among a range of mystic practices to have seen a mainstream resurgence in recent years. Most obvious is astrology, now almost adjacent to psychoanalysis in our shared lexicon but theres also psychics, reincarnation, supportive spiritual energies (such as with manifesting), and even witchcraft.

In 2018, the Pew Research Centre found that six in 10 Americans (both with religious affiliations and not) held at least one new age belief. Among the explanations given have been the internet connecting subcultures and people with alternative views, fashion houses bringing their imagery to the fore, and the decline in Christianity and community in the west.

Above all, this new dawn of the new age has been framed as a response to widespread anxiety and sociopolitical instability; as an attempt to find meaning in an impervious, chaotic world.

It is now possible to book tarot readings directly over Instagram @thehoodwitch Bri Luna (who has 470,000 followers) and @thelionnessoracle Alejandra Luisa Leon each charge around $140 an hour or learn to read the cards yourself, with free resources such as Brigit Esselmonts @biddytarot community, or the Labyrinthos online school and app.

On TikTok, tarot cards are drawn by algorithms. Even the Sun newspaper recently published its own guide to major and minor arcana, a surefire sign of steady online search traffic for spiritual guidance.

But tarot as practiced by Dore does not so much provide answers as it generates more questions. Youre not predicting the future youre really just exploring, looking at the images and activating the imagination, she says over Zoom from her home in Philadelphia.

Dore likens drawing cards to yoga: a daily discipline of self-care, containing profound spiritual data to be experienced rather than intellectualised. I came to tarot needing to figure out how to take better care of myself, how to check in with myself, to show up for myself, she says. (Indeed, Dore does two hours of Ashtanga yoga each morning, after 45 minutes journalling if the unexamined life is not worth living, hers is hard-won.)

When she started her nightly ritual of drawing cards, Dore found that what emerged gave shape to her thoughts and feelings in the same way as a writing prompt might. The eight of swords communicating a sense of feeling victimised, or trapped for instance, might cause Dore to reflect on whether she was avoiding any difficult emotions.

As well as serving as a prompt for introspection, the cards storied past made Dore think of history repeating circular narratives and mirror images through literature, folklore and legends. It felt very nourishing for me, just to be like: Someone drew this illustration; someone created these various interpretations that means that Im not alone.

Considered in this light, tarot has more in common than one might think with therapy. As Dore points out, Carl Jung studied archetypes, symbols and synchronicity in seeking to understand the human psyche.

Today, cognitive behavioural therapy widely used as a treatment for depression and anxiety focuses on changing the way you think in order to support your wellbeing. And other evidence-based models lean heavily on metaphors to bring about change (acceptance and commitment therapy).

As a set of images and ideas derived from ancient wisdom, tarot has similar potential for transformation and growth, says Dore. She refers to the American psychologist James Hillmans definition of psychologizing: whenever reflection takes place in terms other than those presented.

Dore is clear about the limits to this: tarot is not therapy, just as she is not a therapist (though she received clinical training as part of her masters degree). But that is not to say there is no therapeutic benefit to projecting our inner lives on to a card.

Language can get you stuck, and it can get you unstuck, says Dore. Tarot is a set of metaphors that can help somebody understand something: I could just say it to you, or you could look at an image and it might really sink in.

After nearly 100 years of work to ground psychology in evidence and empirical studies, we might see such idiosyncratic influences as outside the scientific scope. But all through human history, spirituality has factored into concepts of mental health and wellbeing not necessarily reductively.

One upshot of the 21st-century embrace of wellness is mounting awareness and acceptance of the real benefits of non-clinical practices such as meditation, yoga, spending time in nature, journalling and mind-altering drugs.

Tarot might be seen in kind, says Dore as an intervention rooted in a mystic tradition, like mindfulness. It is possible to accept other ways of knowing, she suggests, without denying or undermining science.

Certainly, the care and palpable sense of responsibility with which Dore approaches her work might surprise those who see tarot as essentially exploitative, the pastime of the cretinous and the credulous. The dismissal of tarot and likewise astrology, another interest popular among young women is often suggestive of whose suffering is taken seriously.

Dore does not see herself as working within an explicitly feminist context. But she suggests that people who dont feel represented in accepted paradigms, or included in clinical settings, could benefit the most from alternative approaches to healing. (Dore completed a year-long internship at an eating disorder clinic, where the cards were used to amazing effect.)

For those people who dont feel spoken to by some of the interventions that are evidenced-based, tarot makes a doorway for people to show up and say: Heres what I need, instead of telling them: Heres what you need, she says.

The goal is not to throw out facts, truth or science, says Dore but to make room for magic, long relegated to the edges. Her preferred definition is from the anonymous Christian author of the Meditations on the Tarot: using the subtle to influence the dense.

In psychological terms, that could simply mean greater awareness of how our thoughts and emotions (the subtle) shape our actions and behaviours (the dense).

In a world that did not draw so hard a line between science and spirituality, Dore suggests, maybe we would better understand our behaviours as consumers, as activists; the jobs that we choose, the things that we spend our time doing. What are these things serving? At what altars are we worshipping? It seems very idealistic but thats the way I think about it.

As it is, the current trend for tarot has seen it absorbed and repackaged by the mindless forces of capitalism it aims to counter. Where Pamela Colman Smith the illustrator of the ubiquitous Rider-Waite tarot deck died penniless and uncelebrated, there are now tarot decks themed from everything from cats to Disney villains.

Urban Outfitters sells a tarot-themed colouring book (or personal growth colouring journey), and a spiritually uplifting cocktail set, with tequila-inspired meanings for all 78 cards. At the higher end, Dior debuted tarot dresses for its spring 2021 couture line. You can even have your cards read at Selfridges of London.

As the German philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote in 1953, of the popularity of astrology: the kind of retrogression highly characteristic of persons who do not any longer feel to be the self-determining subjects of their fate, is concomitant with a fetishistic attitude towards the very same conditions which tend to be dehumanizing them.

Dore, too, writes of the chariot card and the limits to willpower: Capitalism isnt built to teach pathfinding; its built to teach compliance within a preset path. But she suggests that tarot could reveal another way as stories and symbols have always done, separate from any question of whether they are rooted in fact.

I would challenge you to consider that this set of images that are derived straight from mythology and folktales and fairytales in many cases, and even religion and spirituality might also have meaning too, if you can step out of the rigid mindset.

Even if magic is a leap too far, in reclaiming the imagination from the grips of doubt and rationalism, tarot may at least allow us to imagine a better world: the first step to creating it.

An ideal of tarot is to experience the totality of things, says Dore: where nothing is black and white, even seeming opposites are identical in nature, and all things, no matter how seemingly conflicted, can exist together. This bears striking resemblance to many Indigenous world-views increasingly being recognised as vital in the fight against the climate crisis.

The Extinction Rebellion co-founder Gail Bradbrook and feminist scholar Angela Davis have likewise spoken of something akin to Dores definition of magic in their activism: the possibility of achieving what seems impossible now.

Tarot simply asks that we hold ourselves open to it, says Dore. The beautiful thing about tarot is that you will meet the card where youre ready to go.

Tarot for Change: Using the Cards for Self-Care, Acceptance and Growth by Jessica Dore is published by Penguin Life/Viking for $27.00 US / 14.99 from October 26, 2021

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When the mystical goes mainstream: how tarot became a self-care phenomenon - The Guardian