Aquinas's Second Way

 Aquinas's Second Way to prove the existence of God (from newadvent.org):

The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.

A common way to interpret this passage is to claim that Aquinas is talking about per se causal series in this argument, not per accidens causal series. A per se causal series is one in which the later causes depend on the prior causes essentially; that is, the later causes stop causing when the prior causes stop causing. The standard example is an arm pushing a stick pushing a rock. When the arm stops pushing, the stick stops pushing the rock. 

This is contrasted with the per accidens causal series, in which the later causes can continue causing even when the prior causes cease. The example here is Abraham begetting Isaac. Isaac himself can beget even if Abraham dies. He doesn't cease being causal when his own cause ceases.

The reason Aquinas is generally interpreted as speaking of per se causal series in this argument is that he also famously held that per accidens efficient causal series could in fact be infinite. He thought the world in principle could be eternal, although he thought it in fact had a beginning because of Scripture. 

But I'm not sure we have to interpret Aquinas this way. Consider a series of dominos knocking themselves down. We can ask of any particular domino: What caused it to fall? And we answer: The domino prior to it in the series. And we can ask of that domino what caused it to fall, and again we get the answer: The domino prior to it in the series.

Suppose the row of dominos only consists of one domino. What is the answer to the question What caused the domino to fall? Since there is only one domino, the answer is: Something external to the row of dominos itself. Suppose the row of dominos consists of two dominos. The second domino falls as a consequence of the first domino falling, and with that first domino, we are left in exactly the same place as we were with the row consisting of a single domino. Something outside of the row of dominos itself must have caused it to fall. The only thing the additional domino did in the row of two dominos vs the single domino is simply to displace the question to another domino. It did nothing to answer the essential question.

Now consider a row of dominos of arbitrary length. What do all those extra dominos do as far as answering the essential causal question? They do nothing other than displace the question from one domino to the next. Even were the row of dominos infinite, all that would do is displace the question an infinite distance. It wouldn't get us one inch closer to answering the question of what caused the dominos to fall than we were with the one or two domino series. So the fact that a per accidens causal series might be infinite in length is irrelevant to the causal question asked in Aquinas's Second Way.

Suppose God created a world with an infinite series of dominos in it, that is in the process of falling. In the act of creation, he would have to pick one or more dominos somewhere in the series to get the falling process rolling. Call that domino D1. God creates D1 in the state of falling. Now God could create all dominos prior to D1 in the fallen state, and all dominos after D1 in the standing state. Were he to create all the dominos in a standing state, then the row of dominos would remain in the standing state eternally, whatever its length. Looking at the series after the fact of creation, we see an infinite series of fallen dominos disappearing in the distance in one direction, and an infinite series of standing dominos in the other direction, with the dominos in front of us in the process of falling. This might give us the illusion that the dominos were falling forever and therefore had no need of an exterior cause to get the process of falling going. But that is a distraction. Whether they were falling forever or not, something external to the row of dominos itself was the ultimate origin of the state of falling.

I think it is important to note that the "first efficient cause" in the series can't be just another efficient cause. If it were, then it would need the same prior causal explanation that all the other efficient causes did. The "first efficient cause" must be something over and beyond the causes in the series in question. The point of Aquinas's proofs, after all, is to show that nature points beyond itself to a supernatural origin. In this case, the series of efficient causes in nature points beyond itself to a "first efficient cause" that jumpstarts the efficient causal series that we experience in nature.

Doubting doubt

The thing about doubt is that it never stands alone. Doubt of one thing inevitably involves affirmation of something else. Often the doubter doesn't acknowledge the implied affirmation or is simply unaware of it.

Take solipsism for example. I can doubt that there is an external world and that I am the only thing in existence. No one can prove that I'm wrong because any evidence submitted might simply be a creation of my own mind. 

Instead of trying to prove the solipsist wrong, let's see what is implied in his view if taken seriously. I now know calculus, but there was a time when I didn't. I remember being a freshman in high school and looking through my elder brother's calculus book. It contained a lot of funny symbols and complicated math I didn't understand. A few years later, I took calculus myself and the symbols and math became clear.

If solipsism is true, then everything in this history is a creation of my own mind. The book with the symbols I didn't understand as a freshman was a creation of my mind. So were my later calculus teacher, my calculus homework, and my calculus tests. Indeed, calculus itself is a creation of my own mind. 

So at one point my mind created a book with funny symbols that I didn't understand, which I only later understood through calculus class. Yet the symbols only make sense in light of calculus, which I didn't understand at the time my mind (supposedly) created the calculus book. Was calculus then a creation of my subconscious mind, and calculus class but a devious way my mind tricks itself into thinking it learned something which it really knew all along? We have to believe something like this if we are to take solipsism seriously. 

Beyond the bizarre stories implied concerning personal history, there is the simple fact that solipsism implies that I was the creator of calculus. Calculus is among the greatest mathematical achievements in history and is generally credited to the geniuses Newton and Leibniz. But on the solipsistic hypothesis these gentlemen are fictions of my mind, and in fact I am the inventor of calculus.  

And it's not just his calculus that I'm claiming from Newton. I've got his physics as well. Also the electrodynamics of Maxwell, the relativity of Einstein, and the quantum mechanics of Heisenberg - even though I barely made it through QM in college.  They are all creations of my mind.

We don't need to stop with science, either. I also wrote the plays of Shakespeare, the symphonies of Bach and Beethoven, and painted the Sistine Chapel. Not really, of course, only in my mind, but it seems all the more impressive to execute a classical painting purely in the imagination. 

So what are we left with? Solipsism implies doubt of the external world, which means the external world is a creation of my mind, which means my mind is greater than the sum of all the geniuses in history.

Is that possible? Perhaps. Is it something we can doubt? I would hope so; in fact, any sane person should doubt it.  

Solipsism is doubt of the external world coupled with a titanic affirmation of the self.

All doubt operates like this. So when we consider doubting something, we should bring into consideration the affirmations implied in the doubt.

An Interpretation of John 8:1-11

This is the famous story of the woman caught in adultery.

Of enduring interest in the interpretation of this passage is what Jesus wrote on the ground in John 8:6 and 8:8. The verses only tell us that he wrote; they don't indicate what was written.

So then what was written? Ultimately we can only speculate. There are two popular suggestions (at least these are the most common I have heard).  The first is that Jesus wasn't writing anything in particular. He was doodling, an indication of his disinterest, even boredom, in the Pharisees' zeal to condemn the woman. The second is that Jesus was writing down the sins of the individual Pharisees present. With his challenge in John 8:7 ("He that is without sin among you, let him cast a stone at her"), and on seeing their sins manifest in the writing, they departed.

It occurs to me that there is another interpretation. I haven't read this interpretation anywhere, but I don't claim originality for it, as I'm sure some saint somewhere has already thought of it.

The Pharisees mention the Mosaic Law in John 8:5: "Now Moses in the law commanded us to stone such a one. But what sayest thou?" The Pharisees are referring to the written law of the Old Testament. It is immediately after this in John 8:6 that Jesus begins writing on the ground. We are not told what he is writing. The fact that we are not told what is written is a clue that what is important is the act of writing and not the physical product of the writing. In the act of writing, Jesus is indicating that He is writing the New Law that transcends the Old Law quoted by the Pharisees.

This New Law is not written in the manner of the Old Law. It is written in the Life and Acts of Jesus Christ Himself. This is why we are not told what Jesus wrote on the ground; it doesn't matter. What matters is what Jesus does, for that is the content of the New Law.  The New Law consists in conforming ourselves to the Person of Jesus Christ.

Jesus challenges the Pharisees in John 8:7 (and implicitly the Old Law) and in John 8:8 continues to write on the ground. This is an indication that His Act, His writing of the New Law, continues uninterrupted. In John 8:9, the Pharisees depart, leaving Jesus alone with the woman. John 8:10 then tells us that Jesus lifts Himself up. He is done writing as His Act in writing the New Law is finished and he has demonstrated the superiority of the New over the Old by the departure of the Pharisees. He then applies the New Law to the woman in John 8:11 in an act of mercy.

What we have here is a revolutionary approach to the Law. The Law is not a list of commands and proscriptions; at least, it is not primarily that. The Law is a Person; it is in uniting and conforming ourselves to that Person that we truly fulfill the Law. It is because we didn't know that Person that we needed the list of commands; in knowing Him, the list becomes unnecessary. If we conform ourselves to Jesus Christ, we will follow the Law more faithfully than any zealous adherence to a list of commandments could achieve. 

The Big Historical Cycle George Friedman Misses

A big problem with The Storm Before the Calm is that it ignores the most significant historical cycle driving the current crisis: The monetary cycle.

The monetary cycle consists of the transition from sound to unsound money, eventually resulting in a monetary crisis and a reset of the system. The transition is sometimes driven by external events like a war, other times by the seemingly irresistable temptation of governments to fund themselves through the printing press.

The current monetary cycle is unprecedented insofar as every currency in the world has been a pure fiat currency since 1971. Historically, monetary cycles end and begin when the market displaces a debased currency with a sound one. The two World Wars, for example, put a severe strain on the British Pound, which had been the world's reserve currency for more than one hundred years. The debt accumulated, and the fact that Britain had sent all its gold to the United States in payment for food and arms, made the Pound an unsound currency by the end of WW2. At the Bretton Woods Conference held in 1944, based on the fact that the United States at that point owned 70% of the world's gold, it was agreed that the U.S. Dollar would replace the Pound as the world's reserve currency. Furthermore, all other currencies would peg themselves to the dollar rather than be backed by gold. The Dollar remained the sole currency redeemable for gold.

This system persisted into the 1960s, by which time the U.S. could not resist printing more money than it could back with gold to fund the Vietnam War and the Great Society programs. Foreigners were trading in their dollars for gold, at the rate that the 20,000 tons of gold owned by the U.S. at the end of WW2 had been reduced to 8,000 tons. To prevent the rest of U.S. gold reserves from fleeing the country, Nixon "temporarily" suspended the redemption of dollars for gold on August 15, 1971, a suspension that persists to this day. 

This has resulted in the unprecedented fiat monetary system noted above. The dollar continues to be the world's reserve currency, if for no other reason than that there is no suitable alternative. Furthermore, since 1980 we have been in a debt bull market of falling interest rates. See below.

Federal Funds Rate since 1950

The falling interest rate regime is not an accident or a result of the free market, but has been a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. This isn't a conspiracy theory; it is part of the Fed's charter to manage interest rates. Falling interest rates support the dollar (and the accumulation of dollar debt) because it makes the purchase of debt more attractive. If I anticipate that the interest rate on the U.S. 10 year treasury bond will drop, then if I buy a 10 year treasury carrying a 5% interest, I will be able to sell it at a profit when the interest rate on new 10 year treasuries drops to 4%, since the higher interest rate on my bond represents greater value.

So the increased printing of dollars did not cause a crisis in the dollar as long as interest rates have had room to drop. The accumulation of debt in response to lowering interest rates happened accordingly.

U.S. Debt to GDP ratio

But notice that since 2008 interest rates have been close to 0. What happens when there is no more room for interest rates to drop? Then the debt cycle would naturally reverse, interest rates rise, and there is a major financial crisis, likely much worse than 2008 and on a global basis (since most other countries are running up debt and printing currency as fast as we are).

But that hasn't happened. Debt is still being bought despite tiny interest rates. Who is buying debt now that interest rates aren't going lower? The answer is the Federal Reserve:

Federal Reserve Balance Sheet in Millions

This has gone into hyperdrive since the COVID crisis hit. Since we were already running a deficit before the COVID pandemic, all the trillion dollar "stimulus packages" since then are financed purely through Federal Reserve money printing - that is the spike at the far right. Just in the last couple of months the Federal Reserve has bought up $3 trillion in government debt. This signals the end phase of the monetary cycle, which will result in the demise of the dollar and its replacement as the worlds reserve currency.

Friedman misses all this. He interprets the drop in interest rates over the last 30 years as an indication of capital accumulation. It would be in a regime of free market interest rates. But we don't have that: Interest rates are manipulated through Fed policy. As debt increased over the years, interest rates should have risen as well, incentivizing savings as a balance to debt accumulation. By forcing interest rates lower, the Fed has short-circuited these market forces and put us in a situation where a catastrophic financial crisis can only be put off by ever more furious money printing.

Comments on "The Storm Before the Calm" by George Friedman

In this book George Friedman argues that we are experiencing the convergence of two historical cycles: A socioeconomic cycle and an institutional cycle. The present time is unusual insofar as the two cycles are coming into crisis at the same time, and will result in an unusual period of upheaval, disorder and, in Friedman's optimistic view, the reinvention of the American experiment in an as yet unidentified form that will nonetheless be a positive development and represent civilizational advancement.

I broadly agree with Friedman's thesis on the cyclical nature of history, and that the present moment represents an unusual convergence of cycles. I don't agree with him completely on the nature of the cycles, and think that he doesn't appreciate a historical cycle that is more significant that the ones he identifies. I will say more about that in another post.

Here I would like to make a skeptical argument concerning Friedman's optimistic view of the future, and argue why the present crisis is different than prior American crises. I am not necessarily pessimistic, but I imagine the future very differently than Friedman does.

The basis of my skepticism is the role natural resources, and in particular energy, play in American history. It is only recently that the United States has come to fully exploit the natural resources of the continent it claimed in Manifest Destiny. The North American continent and the exploitation of its resources shaped the history of the United States.

Consider the Civil War. At the time of the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution was just getting underway. The Industrial Revolution embodied a transition from a civilization founded on wood based energy to a civilization founded on coal based energy. Coal is a more dense form of energy than wood; it is essentially wood energy compacted over thousands of years into a much smaller space. This makes the use of coal more cost effective to gather as energy and more efficient as an energy source: A coal-fired train can travel farther than a wood-fired train before it has to restock its coal car, and coal burns hotter. It also costs less energy to harvest energy, in terms of the "energy return on investment." The consequence is that a wood-based energy civilization can never achieve the complexity or technological sophistication of a coal-based civilization. Its low efficiency energy limits its development. This is precisely the reason why major civilizational transformations are accompanied by a change in the energy foundation of the civilization.

Also at the time of the Civil War, large-scale Western migration was just beginning. In fact it was stalled prior to the war as the North and the South squabbled about the legal status of slavery in the new territories.

With the secession of the Southern states, the political roadblocks to full-scale Western migration disappeared and the migration West accelerated even during the war. The demands of the war accelerated the already nascent industrial revolution, fueled by the new energy, cheap and abundant coal, to transform the nation into a continental and industrial power very different from the nation that existed just a few years before. By 1870 the United States was a major industrial world power and had steam locomotives running from coast to coast.

Now consider the Second World War. Like the Civil War, this crisis occurred as the world was transitioning from a less dense to a more dense source of energy: From coal to oil. The United States was just beginning to exploit its oil resources in the 1930s. Those were the days when a Jed Clampett, in Beverly Hillbillies style, could shoot his gun and up from the ground came a bubbling crude. The war accelerated this change, especially as the U.S. industrial base and energy sources were not subject to attack like the rest of the world's were. As the war went on, it became clear that access to oil was the crucial factor. We sank Japan's merchant fleet denying them oil, and destroyed Germany's oil refineries through bombing, grounding the Luftwaffe.

The crucial factor about the current crisis is that it does not occur during an ongoing transition from a less dense to a more dense energy source. So-called "green energy" may or not be feasible, and perhaps is even necessary, but one thing it definitely is not is a more dense source of energy than oil. If it were, the transition would occur on its own rather than being subsidized by governments and forced through regulation. Towards the end of the book, Friedman speculates about space-based solar power. If possible, such power will require a massive infrastructure development and it is hard to believe it would be a more dense source of energy than oil. Coal and oil fueled their respective civilization transformations because they were sitting there, ready to hand, waiting to be exploited. There is no such new energy source available.

This is a misunderstanding people sometimes have concerning technology and energy. They believe our technology will solve the energy crisis. This gets the causality backwards. It is the energy that fuels the technological revolution, not technology that drives the energy revolution. It's true that civilization must be advanced to a certain point before it can exploit coal and then oil usefully. We didn't jump directly from wood-based energy to oil-based energy; it took a period of coal-based energy to develop the technology to exploit oil usefully. The key point is that the technology necessary is the technology to exploit the energy, not to harvest the energy. Civilization was capable of mining coal for thousands of years; it just had no special use for it until industrial civilization advanced enough. Similarly, early oil exploitation involved no special technological breakthroughs as the oil was near the surface. Doing not much more than poking a hole in the ground was good enough.

The difference today is people are imagining technological breakthroughs to harvest the energy, not exploit it. The energy harvested - electricity in the case of space-based solar power - we already exploit. The energy it takes to develop and use additional technology to harvest energy is an energy cost, not a gain. This is the Achilles heel of shale oil; exploiting technology to harvest these heretofore unreachable reserves is an energy cost that makes shale oil more expensive than conventional oil.

In any case, shale oil is rapidly depleting, and conventional oil has also peaked. What's going to happen in the next crisis is something that hasn't happened before: The transition to a civilization based on a less dense form of energy than the last. Whether it is "green" or not, this energy will not have the density of oil.

The United States is fortunate that we still have unexploited natural resources, in particular massive coal reserves that can fuel our nation for many decades. I suspect that as things start to get truly difficult, all the "climate change" rhetoric and "green energy" initiatives will be rapidly forgotten as people see their civilization crumbling around them (as might even be starting now). We will be happy to turn back to coal.

But the result must be a simpler civilization than the one now, not a more complex civilization as after the Civil War and WW2. We will still have our iPhones and Netflix, but you won't be able to get fresh vegetables in the supermarket year round. The oil-based civilization that can grow vegetables in California's Central Valley, then truck them all over the country at any time, will be gone. Instead, food will be more locally grown. People will not take as many or as exotic vacations as they once did, maybe going camping instead of Disney World. People will get used to living in some heat rather than blasting air conditioning anytime it gets warm. We will miss some of the things that are gone, like always available air conditioning, but appreciate some things that are rediscovered, like playing board games with the family or playing outside if you are a kid. They hyper-scheduled childhood of the recent past of carting kids from soccer to piano lessons to boy scouts will be gone. Childhood will be simpler and, as far as that goes, more healthy.

Wisdom 7:7-11 and Philosophy

 "Therefore I prayed, and understanding was given me; I called upon God, and the spirit of wisdom came to me. 

I preferred her to scepters and thrones, and I accounted wealth as nothing in comparison with her. 

Neither did I liken to her any priceless gem, because all gold is but a little sand in her sight, and silver will be accounted as clay before her. 

I loved her more than health and beauty, and I chose to have her rather than light, because her radiance never ceases. 

All good things came to me along with her, and in her hands uncounted wealth."

Our modern understanding of morality sees it as a matter of figuring out abstract rules of behavior. A philosophy class in ethics might devote its time to pondering artificial circumstances as a way to tease out such rules: What should one do, for example, if you happen to be standing next to a railway switch with a train bearing down which will run over 5 people, and you could switch it onto a side track where it will only run over 1 person? Do you do nothing and allow the five to die? Or do you switch the track and condemn to death the one, who would have survived without your intervention?

This approach is quite foreign to the ancient approach to morality. The ancient approach did not concern itself with rules so much, as with describing and creating the character of a man who would show good judgment in any circumstance. Good judgment was known as the virtue of phronesis to the Greeks and we understand it under the name of prudence or wisdom, although our understanding of prudence is a more timid version of what the Greeks meant by phronesis. Our prudent man is the sort of man who avoids taking chances, whereas the Greek wiseman was fully prepared to take chances if the situation truly called for it.

The quote from Wisdom that starts this post summarizes the ancient view of wisdom nicely. Wisdom is more valuable than gold, silver, scepters or thrones, because the man who is not wise (i.e. the fool) will not use such wealth in a manner that is truly to his advantage. On the other hand, the wise man who is not rich will nonetheless possess the character virtues that will allow him to become rich; or, better yet, acquire those things that truly make a fulfilled life (which might be other than thrones or riches). So wisdom is a far more valuable thing to have than any earthly possession or title.

The author of the Book of Wisdom would not be surprised by modern studies that show that the lives of winners of large lottery prizes are, after a few years, indistinguishable from what they were before they got lucky. They may now have a rusting snowmobile in their backyard and drive a 10 year old Mercedes, and have travelled to Vegas a few times, but as the years go by they end up pretty much where they would have otherwise. The reason, according to ancient wisdom, is that their original circumstances had more to do with their character than luck; and without a change of character, a little luck will not make a lasting difference. Instead of saving and investing the money they've won, they buy a boat and a trip to the Caymans. Instead of spending the money on more education, they spend it on buying Cristal for their friends at the bar. In a few years, the money is gone and they are back where they were.

There is an assumption lurking behind the modern understanding of morality that is not always acknowledged. The assumption is that the difficult part of morality is finding out exactly what the moral rules are; once they are known, it is assumed, following them is not such a difficult thing. The ancients had the opposite view: The basics of morality are not difficult to know - don't lie, cheat or steal, kill your neighbor or covet his wife. The hard part was following morality once it was known. 

Even more difficult from the ancient view was how, beyond merely avoiding doing evil, to construct your life so that it is as fulfilling as possible. This is something that requires much more than just rule following. It means discovering what human life is really about, and acquiring the virtues necessary to attain it.

Modern morality has nothing to say about this. It views "freedom" as the greatest good, and is indifferent to what one does with that freedom, as long those abstract moral rules are followed. The great modern moral crusades, then, concern themselves with defending the rights of individuals to be or to do what they want with their freedom- change from a boy to a girl, for instance, or call themselves a girl when they look exactly like a boy.

For the average person, who is basically of good character and is wondering what to do with his life, the modern answer of "whatever you want" is disappointingly empty. For those so disappointed, the ancients stand ready to listen and answer.

Living in the Present

The present is the point at which the past is recollected and the future anticipated.

It is often urged on us to live in the now. That is, to live in the present. It is thought that this involves forgetting the past and avoiding paying attention to the future, for both the past and the future make us anxious. Instead, it is advised that one exist in the moment, what is happening right now.

This is a misunderstanding. For someone who does not recollect himself in the moment, or anticipate the future in the moment, is living nowhere rather than in the moment. It is true that he may be free of anxiety because he is not remembering the past or anticipating the future, but then animals live this sort of anxiety-free life. But to live as a human being means to live in relation to the past and the future.

And even when, for a time, he has this sort of anxiety-free existence (as, for instance, when he loses himself in a hobby in his basement, or becomes lost in the excitement of a championship game) he is not really experiencing the anxiety-free life of the animal; for, at any moment, the spell might be broken and his distinctively human recollection of the past and anticipation of the future will come rushing back in. He will suddenly find himself existing somewhere rather than nowhere, with all the anxiety that entails.

Truly living in the present is the most difficult of art forms. It means recollecting the past and anticipating the future in such a way that it has immediate decisive significance. Man acts in the now, but only as a bridge uniting his recollection of the past with his anticipation of the future. It is an art form because no science of living in such a manner is possible; for science of its nature abstracts from the decisive significance of the present in relation to the past and future.

Kierkegaard, in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, takes monks to task for their distinctive dress.  The mistake, according to Kierkegaard, is that it is a false attempt to represent the inner determination of the spirit via an outward material sign. But the "knight of the spirit" is not so easily recognized; in fact, he is not immediately recognizable at all, for the inner determination of spirit may be married to any outward material circumstance.

SK is wrong, I think, in his understanding of the meaning of the monk's simple robe. For us, the robe is simply a witness to the vow the monk has made to a life of simplicity in the following of Christ. The inner state of his spirit is something else entirely; it may wax and wane in its dedication to that vow. It is similar to the ring of the married man, which symbolizes a vow the man has made, not the state of his success in living up to it.

More to the point of this post, for the monk the robe is a continual reminder of his vow, and his uniting of the past with the future in his vow of the simple life for Christ. It is an aid to the art of living in the moment, of giving every moment its due not by forgetting the past and the future, but by a unification of the past with the future in a blossoming of immediate decisive action.

For most of us, such immediately decisive action occurs only rarely. We make a decision on which college to attend, or to propose to our girlfriend, or to move to another city. In such moments we feel truly alive, as we see our past come together in a decisive determination of our future. And we are right, for in such moments we are truly living as distinctively human beings.

The task for our lives is to make more of the unfolding present alive with such decisiveness. This does not mean continually making the decision to move to another city; for that would only rob any particular decision of its decisiveness for the future. No, like the monk, we must find a way to unite all our actions, even the small ones, in the present and in light of the past and in anticipation of the future.