So, is hegemonic divinity a curse or punishment rather than a privilege?
Given reality, that seems at least possible and perhaps probable; well, assuming hegemonic divinity involving the five traditional attributes exists. The traditional attributes, at least to hegemonic, monotheistic Abrahamics are: eternal existence, without beginning or end; ubiquity, omnipresence, presence everywhere concurrently and permanently; omniscience, all knowingness; omnipotence, all powerful; and, the trickiest in light of the others, omnibenevolence, all good, perfectly so.
Imagine how incredibly boring eternal existence must be, especially eternal existence without peers or companions.
But perhaps it’s much worse than just boring.
In one postulate, the divine experiences everything that anything and anyone experiences and does so perpetually, over and over again time being inapplicable thus, every single experience is permanent: all the joy and all the pleasure, sure; but also all the pain and all the suffering, all the frustration, all the betrayal, all the injustice, all the blame, whether fair or not.
In a more scientifically sophisticated version, one predicated on string and quantic hypotheses, one where every possibility exists in an infinity of universes, that scenario is multiplied in infinite variations. Would it be possible to remain sane in that context while being omnibenevolent? If divinity were callous and indifferent, or even evil, perhaps. But being omnibenevolent, and eternally so, sanity would seem quantically improbable.
So, what sane omnipotent and omnibenevolent divinity would voluntarily tolerate such eternal punishment? It certainly seems as though the experience would be the ultimate punishment, the ultimate curse but if so, imposed by what?
Might it be that divinity, in addition to the five traditional hegemonic, monotheistic, Abrahamic attributes is a masochist?
That would seem the only answer and sort of explains the crucifixion of Yešu, assuming any of the foregoing is accurate.
I wonder how frustrated the foregoing would make masochists feel. _____
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television in both Colombia and abroad; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Abstract: Reflections on Professor Lisa Hilbink’s critique of Professor Ran Hirschl’s perspective on kritarchy (or kratocracy or dikastocracy, to which he refers as juristocracy; i.e., rule by judges); reflections on the reality that the concepts of democracy and rights are not coherent as currently understood, and that neither judges nor legislators possess the ethics and independence necessary to effectively exercise constitutional control; and, criticism of the misuse of linguistics to confuse issues such as democracy and rights and on the dubious nature of current concepts of constitutional control.
This year I ran across an article published by Professor Lisa Hilbink, PhD, entitled “Beyond Manicheanism: Assessing the New Constitutionalism”. It was published in the Maryland Law Review[1] over two decades ago. The version I ran across was an unfinished draft of the article which she shared on Academia.edu during 2005 and one sentence criticizing the now late professor Ran Hirschl, PhD, set me off in an unexpected direction. Dr. Hilbink wrote, at least in the February 2005 draft, that: “Hirschl’s central argument is based on a stark distinction between courts as insulated,…semi-autonomous, professional policy-making bodies on the one hand, and legislatures as faithful mirrors of popular will, on the other.”
While I tend to side strongly with critiques of what Dr. Hircshl referred to as “Juristocracy” in his lauded 2005 book, Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism;[2] the quote made me focus on the reality that if legislatures ever truly reflected the beliefs and goals of their electorates, that is certainly not the case today thus, “faithful mirrors of popular will” they certainly are not. Today, their constituents are not those who “vote” them into office but those who finance their campaigns and the political parties that post them. Of course, that’s also true of heads of state and chief executives. Thus, while unelected judges are all too frequently oligarchical and elitist, so too, for the most part, are legislators and the political heads of executive branches.
That should certainly not be the case but, as long as political campaigns are costly and privately financed by non-voters (as demanded by the United States Supreme Court[3]), then the possibility of elected officials acting in the interests of the voters who elect them rather than in the interest of the billionaires who fund them is, at best, improbable. Especially since so much of the expense of being elected eventually winds up in the coffers of the legacy media, a complex of simplistic organizations owned and controlled by the same billionaires who provide the bulk of the political contributions.
The Relative Positions of Dr. Hirschl and Dr. Hilbink:
Dr. Hirschl’s core argument with respect to kritarchy (or kratocracy or dikastocracy, to which he refers as juristocracy; i.e., rule by judges), is, as I understand it, that the post-World War II global trend of empowering courts and recognizing inviolable constitutionalizing rights as a means to limit “democratic abuse of democracy and social justice” (an ironic turn of phrase), is a ruse, and that the reality is that the expansion of John Marshall’s concept of judicial review and judicial constitutional control[4], which morphed in the twentieth century into the concept of judicial activism and the organic constitution, was instead driven by threatened political elites, economic stakeholders, and judicial leaders engaging in “hegemonic preservation” to protect their policy preferences from majoritarian politics.
Dr. Hilbink’s position, on the other hand, criticizes Dr. Hirschl’s “hegemonic preservation” theory which she describes as positing that the global expansion of judicial power is not a neutral victory for human rights but a strategic move by a tripartite coalition of threatened political elites, economic elites seeking to lock in neoliberal market policies and high-court judiciaries seeking to protect their interests from the “vicissitudes of democratic politics”, something accomplished by shifting decision-making from majoritarian legislatures to insulated courts. She does so although acknowledging the empirical weight of Dr. Hirschl’s case studies, by arguing that Dr. Hirschl fell victim to the exact same Manichean trap as the liberal “enthusiasts” he criticizes. According to her, where the legal scholars Dr. Hirschl criticizes romanticize judges as uniquely noble, principled actors operating entirely above the political fray, Dr. Hirschl swings to the opposite extreme asserting that he views judges and institutional design as uniquely self-interested and collusive. While admitting that a court’s origins may not always (or even usually) be pure, she asserts that that does not necessarily mean that long-term institutional impacts are malevolent. In conjunction with the foregoing she differentiates the mother of judicial activism, the United States Supreme Court, from constitutional courts and courts vested with constitutional authority as well as general oversight of legal systems in other countries, seeming to admit that Dr. Hirschl may be correct with respect to the former, but not necessarily with respect to the latter. In that regard, Dr. Hilbink argues that the judicial role in constitutional control is not monolithic and instead, involves massive structural variations such as how judges are appointed, their legal subcultures, and their professional norms, all of which dictate whether a court acts as an elite shield or a democratically responsive partner. Dr. Hilbink finally notes that Dr. Hirschl relies heavily on a rigid dichotomy between “law” and “politics”, implying that there are questions that are purely moral or political and that transferring them to a courtroom strips them of democratic legitimacy to which she counters by asserting that that judicial review and legislative policy-making can be interactive and mutually supportive rather than inherently adversarial.
Notwithstanding their differing perspectives, however, both challenge the romantic, mainstream view that the global expansion of judicial review is simply a natural, benevolent evolution toward human rights and social justice, both arguing that while constitutional courts are highly effective at handling procedural liberties, collective identity, or negative rights, they rarely advance economic equity or redistributive justice and both view the insulation of policy-making from direct popular democracy as a defining hallmark of modern constitutional frameworks.
An interesting debate and convincing performance by Dr. Hilbink. My perspective is somewhat different and more analytically pessimistic for different reasons. I see both centered on the impact of what purports to be democracy in governance and on which of two competing institutions can best reflect and protect it. But, to a great extent, I believe that democracy is and has always been, at least in its current incarnation, illusory and confusing. If the argument is better defined and more limited so as to involve only the concept of majority rule, then any delegation to a select group, whether unelected judges or elected legislators, in each case, where immunity for ignoring the will of the majority is immune from consequences (other than non-reelection or reappointment), has historically been doomed to failure. And the obverse, direct democracy, as Socrates is reputed to have observed and experienced, is not an answer.
My Observations:
With reference to the foregoing, I have long felt that linguistic abuse as a means of obfuscating reality has, to some extent, been a weapon well-used by lawyers, politicians, journalists and academics to confuse the electorate. I have written concerning that as it applies to the term “democracy” which, rather than reflect the concept of majority rule, has been so loaded down with contradictory concepts and platitudes as to make it, as a concept, unworkable. That is especially true when democracy is defined as a concept melding majority rule with liberty and pluralism, each of which is at odds with the others. As opposed to majority rule, liberty is a purely individualistic concept grounded on individual autonomy and pluralism is grounded on the rights of minorities vis a vis both individual and majority rights. The term “rights” is as incoherent but for different reasons. Rights purport to involve something inherent rather than granted and thus subject to neither conditions nor limitations, no matter how reasonable. How unreasonable is that? Based on that definition, no rights exist, have ever existed and can never exist, as is demonstrated by the reality that rights are respected by governments only when convenient. The purported solution? Keep expanding their scope into even more improbable, albeit worthy areas (like the environment, peace and social welfare). That is not to imply that something aspirationally similar to rights, perhaps involving mandatory government spending priorities, would not be meritorious, but all we have, anywhere, are artfully phrased non-functional “guarantees”. I note that “guarantees” are generally unattainable oxymorons, at best implying reasonable efforts.
Conclusions: So, what was the question???
Well, I think the question relating to my diatribe concerning the nature of democracy and of rights was, or should have been, where does the concept of a constitution fit into the foregoing? Or perhaps, where should it fit in. Not in the organic sense of establishing and regulating the branches and organs of governance but in the more esoteric sense of seeking to create a just and workable balance between majority rule, liberty and pluralism and to create a mechanism to at least approach the concept of rights. And to determine just how calcified related decisions should be, calcified in the sense that a constitution seeks to impose current values on future generations while ignoring important aspects concerning the values of generations that preceded us. That would then bring us to the questions raised by Drs. Hirschl and Hilbink as to what kind of institution could most effectively act as the enforcement mechanism for constitutional goals, dictates and aspirations. At that point, their arguments would acquire significant relevance, although perhaps as starting points for evolution towards a truly efficient, just and objective means of constitutional control, something which may well prove as solely aspirational as the “rights” and respect for “democracy” that most constitutions purport to guarantee. At least so long as the humans involved remain so prone to elitist self-preservation and the cancerous quest for ever increasing control, regardless of their roles.
Calvo Mahé, Guillermo. “Sobre el control y la revisión constitucional: Un análisis comparativo centrado en las repúblicas”; XII Foro de Tendencias Contemporáneas de Derecho, Universidad de Caldas, Nov. 2017, Manizales.
Hilbink, Lisa (2006): “Beyond Manicheanism: Assessing the New Constitutionalism”; 65 Md. L. Rev. 15 (2006); University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, Baltimore.
Hirschl, Ran (2004): Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism; Harvard University Press; Cambridge.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television in both Colombia and abroad (e.g., NewsX World in India); and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
[1] Hilbink, Lisa (2006): “Beyond Manicheanism: Assessing the New Constitutionalism”, 65 Md. L. Rev. 15 (2006); University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, Baltimore.
[2] Harvard University Press; Cambridge. The book won the American Political Science Association’s Law & Courts Section 2021 Lasting Contribution Award.
[3] See, e.g., Buckley v. Valeo (1976); Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010); McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission (2014); Federal Election Commission v. Ted Cruz / Senator Ted Cruz Committee v. Federal Election Commission (2022); and Federal Election Commission v. NRSC (2026).
[4] Which I have criticized in diverse articles, some of which are listed at the conclusion of this article.
Kritarchy (or kritocracy) is the term for rule by judges or the judiciary. It seems the inevitable consequence of vesting the judiciary with the power to “interpret” constitutions and, when constitutions are deemed supreme, to effectively control government in the form once exercised by dictatorial political bureaus (politburos) and the central committees in one party states. Unless the “judges” charged with constitutional control (control being the end result of purported review) are democratically elected for fixed terms, something which only occurs in Mexico and Bolivia (but even there, the nomination process is controlled by traditional branches of government and, in Mexico, the term is long, 12 years) they are obviously antidemocratic elites. Kritarchy is thus a specialized form of antidemocratic oligarchy rather than an aspect of democracy which sort of makes sense, given that constitutions, by their nature, are inherently antidemocratic, in the sense that democracy requires majority rule. However, given the reality that in purported democracies popular apathy is more the rule than popular participation, democracy as such is more a fable than a reality. A majority is more than a plurality and when large segments of a population do not participate in democratic elections, real majorities (50% of the eligible electorate plus one) are rarely if ever attainable.
Kritarchy is defended as essential to protect human and minority rights from democratic abuse, an obvious fallacy as that assumes judges who prioritize such concepts and that is no more likely in a judicial tribunal than it is in a popularly elected legislature or even, in a popularly elected autocracy. Since the Biden administration’s 2013 destruction of the selection of federal judges in the United States through political consensus via the filibuster (Murphy is still chuckling about that), federal judges in the United States have been more politically biased in their decisions than ever, making it clear, in the cradle of judicial review, just how wrong the infamous decision in Marbury versus Madison (really John Marshall versus his despised cousin, Thomas Jefferson) was. And an incoherent Kritarchy such as that which runs rampant in the United States today is, procedurally, as bad a form of government as currently exists.
Thus we find ourselves, politically and economically, where we do, rule by judges bought and paid for by plutocratic kleptocracies with merit a sort of pejorative, except in the Hobbesian sense of merit, i.e., merit being equated with brute power. It’s as ironic as is the reality that many, perhaps most, perhaps virtually all evangelical pastors are politically tied to Zionism which, when it involves religion at all, insists that the purported Christ, about whom such evangelical pastors incessantly preach, is deemed by their Zionist overseers as, at best, condemned to an eternity in Hell drowning in a pool of molten excrement. Seemingly, the blind leading the blind would be quite an improvement over the deaf, dumb and blind simians who “guide” us today.
We humans are a strange, incoherent and evolutionally counterintuitive species. _____
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television in both Colombia and abroad; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
«Ve’betarayin yehon qadmayin ve’qadmayin betarayin» («הָרִאשׁוֹנִים יִהְיוּ אַחֲרוֹנִים וְהָאַחֲרוֹנִים – רִאשׁוֹנִים» en hebreo); la primera frase estaba en arameo. «Los primeros serán los últimos y los últimos serán los primeros», según se dice, eso proclamó Jesús —o más exactamente, Yešu—. Pero ¿qué hay de los que están entre esos dos polos? ¿Existirá una relación inversa en toda la escala? ¿Y qué decir de los que ocupan el centro: los insípidos, los tibios o casi fríos, aquellos que, buscando mantener abiertas todas las opciones, se niegan a tomar partido? ¿Dónde se situarán y cuándo?
Por supuesto, están los hipócritas, los mentirosos, los manipuladores; aquellos que adoptan una postura sin intención alguna de actuar en consecuencia y que, de hecho, a menudo actúan de manera totalmente opuesta a lo que dicen defender. Suelen congregarse en la política, el derecho, el periodismo y entre el clero.
Hay quienes consideran que los que están en el medio son los peores de todos: los cobardes, los cómplices. Claro que en ese punto intermedio hay diversas variantes, y tal vez distintos olores. La ambivalencia. ¿En qué se diferencia de la indecisión? ¿O de la apatía? ¿Y cuál podría ser la relación entre la apatía y lo patético?
Hay quienes afirman que «es mejor haber amado y perdido que no nunca haber amado». ¿Cómo se traduce esto conceptualmente en el caso de quienes expresan su opinión y resultan estar equivocados, frente a aquellos que, por miedo a equivocarse, nunca opinan?
¿Dónde te situarías tú?
Es solo una pregunta.
Se atribuye a Albert Einstein la siguiente frase: «El mundo es un lugar peligroso para vivir, no por causa de los malvados, sino por aquellos que no hacen nada al respecto».
Guillermo Calvo Mahé es escritor, comentarista, analista político y académico residente en la República de Colombia. Aspira ser poeta y filósofo empírico y a veces se lo cree. Hasta el 2017 coordinaba los programas de Ciencia Política, Gobierno y Relaciones Internacionales de la Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. En la actualidad, participa en entrevistas radiales y televisadas, foros, seminarios y congresos cívicos tabto en Colombia como en el exterior y edita y publica la revista virtual, The Inannite Review disponible en Substack.com/. Tiene títulos académicos en ciencias políticas (del Citadel, la universidad militar de la Carolina del Sur), derecho (de la St. John’s University en la ciudad de Nueva York), estudios jurídicos internacionales (de la facultad posgrado de derecho de la New York University) y estudios posgrado de lingüística y traducción (del Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos de la Universidad de la Florida). Sin embargo, también es fascinado por la mitología, la religión, la física, la astronomía y las matemáticas, especialmente en lo relacionado con lo cuántico y la cosmogonía. Puede ser contactado en guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com y gran parte de su escritura está disponible a través de su blog en https://guillermocalvo.com/.
“Ve’betarayin yehon qadmayin ve’qadmayin betarayin” (“הָרִאשׁוֹנִים יִהְיוּ אַחֲרוֹנִים וְהָאַחֲרוֹנִים – רִאשׁוֹנִים” in Hebrew), the first was in Aramaic.
“The first shall be last and the last shall be first” Jesus, more accurately Yešu, is reported to have declaimed. But, what about those in between? Will there be an inverse relationship all the way through? And what of those in the middle, the bland, the lukewarm or almost cool, those who, seeking to keep all options open, refuse to take a stand. Where will they stand and when?
Of course, there are the hypocrites, the liars, the manipulators, those who take a stand with no intention of acting on it, indeed, who frequently act in a manner totally opposed to that they claim to espouse. They tend to congregate in politics, and law, and journalism, and among the clergy.
There are those who feel that those in the middle are the worst of all, the cowardly, the enablers. Of course, there are a number of flavors in the middle, and perhaps odors. Ambivalence. How different is it than indecision? Or apathy? And what might the relationship between apathy and pathetic be?
There are those who assert that “it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”. How does that translate in the context of those who opine and turn out to have been wrong versus those, who, fearing to be wrong, never opine at all?
Where would you place yourself?
Just asking.
Albert Einstein is credited with saying: “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television in both Colombia and abroad; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Lugubriously lethargic lassitude is the art form the legacy media has perfected on behalf of its masters to keep us from realizing what has happened to the world we hoped to leave as a legacy for our descendants, the world we thought we’d be able to glimpse and, at times enjoy, the world we were promised if we would just work hard and behave.
It is the hopeless state that assails us when we seek to exercise our political duties and go to the polls with no real choice at all, all the available candidates having already been bought and paid for with our money but certainly not for our benefit.
It is the residue we’re left with when those who own and control us abuse us, and we’re left without recourse in the face of their immune impunity.
It is our reaction when we are forced to realize that Jeffrey Epsteins rule our world through their bought and paid for proxies and that we can, at best, sit and watch as children are abused and Palestinians are slaughtered for fun and profit, hoping that the vision of German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller’s “First They Came” will not apply to us, at least not in the near future.
It is what being inside a societal black hole’s event horizon feels like for those not among the Chosen. It is what being aware feels like in the Dystopia we live in, one where we sometimes envy those blissfully unaware among us, those who make it possible. It is what we feel when we’ve come to realize that the metaphorical sign atop the gates of mythic Hell joyfully proclaiming the death of hope already apply to us. _____
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
The last part of my education, long after I’d attained degrees in political science, law and international legal studies, involved, in part, linguistics and, to my surprise, it vastly enhanced my grasp of the other disciplines I’d studied, as well as of communication in general, as though I’d previously been intellectually two dimensional but after grasping essential aspects of linguistics, I’d attained the ability to perceive and to express myself in three or four. That led me to understand how Noam Chomsky had managed to attain such profound wisdom concerning both society and human nature although, perhaps, not with respect to all of his associates.
Something similar had occurred to me many decades earlier when, towards the end of my initial degree in law, I’d taken an elective course in jurisprudence, a course which should really have been a mandatory first semester course. Especially meaningful in that course was the section on Hohfeldian Terminology, a system of eight fundamental legal concepts created by American jurist Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld in 1913 to clarify ambiguous legal language, obviously an aspect of linguistics applied to law[2]. It is probably not very familiar to practicing attorneys today, although it should be.
Earlier in life I’d regretted not having studied higher mathematics as the little exposure I’d had in college to the field had led me to believe that most of us were largely blind, deaf and dumb with respect to the reality surrounding us. For some reason, however, philosophy did not impacted me in the same manner, probably because it is so premise driven; i.e., given a premise accepted as accurate, logic leads to conclusions that seem brilliant but which usually have little to do with reality. Indeed, the most important thing I learned of practical value while studying philosophy was that when predicted conclusions did not reflect reality, the premises were usually at fault.
I am now the sum of diverse currents having made many, many mistakes and learned from some of them, perhaps having gained at least a trace of wisdom in the process, especially, a willingness to accept that there is a great deal I don’t know and the ability to sometimes discern what it is that I don’t know. Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned is that an open mind is a wonderful thing but ought never to be confused with an absence of opinions and beliefs, all of which should be continuously put to the test; perhaps the test I learned from philosophy: if the expected results prove inaccurate, the drawing board needs to be revisited rather than ignored through a plethora of excuses.
Interestingly, the latter concept seems anathema in politics were an open mind is considered an indicia of the absence of principles, a trait popularly referred to as “waffling”. Hence, a politician willing to reconsider his or her positions in light of experience is looked down upon as untrustworthy, something which does a lot to explain where we find ourselves: easily manipulated and unwilling to accept reality, even when it smacks us in the face.
As opposed to politicians, great mathematicians and physicists are constantly testing their premises, something that seems a corollary to David Hume’s belief that absolute truth may be impossible to prove but that what he referred to as “conventions”, tools we use in lieu of truth for practical purposes, i.e., because they seem to work (until they cease to be reliable, at which point they are discarded), were good enough in the short term[3].
Socrates taught by feigning ignorance and pretending to seek knowledge from those he taught, among them Aristocles, who we know by his nickname, Plato. Or perhaps, Socrates really did have an open mind and was misinterpreted, kind of like the character Chauncey Gardiner so well played by the late, great, Peter Sellers in the film, Being There.
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
[1] Plato. (1997): Apology (H. Tarrant, Trans.) in J. M. Cooper (Ed.), Plato: Complete Works (Stephanus p. 21d). Hackett Publishing.
I apparently wrote the following in 2012, revisited it on June 1, 2017 for some reason, and am again revisiting it. Today is the 27th day of August, 2026. The time spanned is interesting but, perhaps even more, so is the relevance. The protagonists are, I assume, Citadel classmates, some of whose names have been changed to protect the guilty:
We were supposed to play softball against a group of local VMI alumni but the day which had started out under a bright golden sun set in a field of robin’s egg blue had made a drastic turn about ten minutes before game time and we’d retired to a local Irish pub where we’d had a dart tournament of sorts instead. After we’d split a few pitchers, a few of us wound up, a bit tipsy in the basement bar at Mike’s house.
We’d shot the shit for quite a while, getting a bit more buzzed as we watched Sunday afternoon football, then finding ourselves in that twilight waiting for the Sunday night game, buzzed enough to take on the world’s problems, … again. We’d all been political science or history majors but most of us had gravitated towards the business world after a sojourn exploring rice paddies of Southeast Asia.
I hadn’t been paying all that much attention, truth be told, I might have been snoozing, until a bit of acrimony crept into our discussions.
Bill had once explained his theory of legitimized violence to me in the context of what he referred to as our reverse Robin Hood socioeconomic system. “Since impunity is rampant”, he’d said, “new mechanisms need to evolve to create and police social justice and that, at least in a state of transition, must involve successful challenges to the state monopoly on legitimate use of violence. The bad guys now own all major states and most if not all minor states so the conditions that led to the implicit decision to surrender personalized use of violence no longer exist. But unlimited violence won’t work either.”
He was off on a similar vein again, this time, trying to put terrorism into some kind of ethical context. I think most of us acknowledged the problem but few saw terrorism as the answer. So Woody, I think, asked Bill if he had any kind of workable solution.
“Terrorism has no boundaries so while in the short term, it provides a kind of superficially reactive sense of justice, it in fact adds to injustice” Bill explained. “There is no accepted terrorist ethic, if there were, then it wouldn’t really be ‘terrorism’, it would be something else.
“Like what” Woody had asked? He and Bill, for the time being, seemingly engaged in a somewhat too serious albeit hypothetical soliloquy. Bill’s vocabulary was a bit too sophisticated for a lot of people but you get used to it after a few decades.
“We’d need to invent a new term I guess” Bill had replied, “but first we’d need to carefully consider what applicable parameters could maximize effectiveness while minimizing harm to the innocent, and in the context of the kind of class-based abuse that we have, determining who is innocent is a fundamental problem.”
“Suppose”, he’d continued “a financier manipulates the law to cheat a million people of their retirement savings but because he then has so much money, he buys protection, not only from prosecution or even civil legal claims, but buys enough security to assure his personal welfare can’t be threatened. Then suppose a victim, in order to exact some kind of compensation, kills the man’s brother; an innocent person who did not benefit directly from the financier’s wrongdoing. Does that involve terrorism? Does that involve justice? Or suppose the victims hire someone to bomb a facility owned by the financier, one undoubtedly insured, and a number of employees and customers are injured there. Does that involve terrorism? Does that involve justice? Probably not, in either case. But what else can victims do? How can they make the costs of wrongful conduct so high that despite the unwillingness of the state to see justice done, such conduct will be made too risky?”
“That’s the million dollar question” Chuck chimed in (so he wasn’t asleep after all). Woody poked him, laughing. “Remember when questions were cheaper? Groucho Marx and the $64,000 question?”
“You mean Karl Marx don’t you” grumbled Frank. Frank was a completely honest guy but a dyed in the wool Republican for whom the state could do no wrong.
Bill glanced at his friends, worried that perhaps he was being a bit too open. They’d all studied political science together decades before but the others had wandered into different fields. He had too but after his divorce he’d returned to academia and a very different world view. Still, while they frequently disagreed, there was a lot of respect shared so he opened up. “Cute, guys, if only this wasn’t so serious. Desperate people take desperate actions, and way too much of the world is full of desperate people. A bit of ethical guidance could save a lot of lives.
“Ethics? Terrorist ethics, you’ve got to be kidding” chided Frank.
“Well financiers’ ethics sure aren’t about to make a surprise appearance” responded Bill. “The fact is, an analogy to ethical and legal norms involving the concept of self-defense might alleviate the collateral damage. Maybe there is a basis for resort to violence that can at least be tied to standards so that suffering by the innocent can be minimized, but it’s a tough call. One argument I’ve heard involves concentric zones of responsibility-benefit with the victimizers in the middle, kind of like bulls’ eyes, and the purely innocent on the outside.
Huh (from several of the people present)?
“Well” answered Bill, the innermost circle has those most directly responsible with each next circle including a proximate prioritization of blame or responsibility. It’s a nexus based chain. Let me give you an example. The person responsible is in the central circle, following circles might include that person’s accomplices, then that person’s guards, then people who benefit directly from that persons improper actions, then persons who benefit indirectly. After a series of circles like that you arrive at the mass of people who have no links. Only action involving the latter would be pure terrorism while only action against the person responsible would be fully justified. As one gets further away from the center, justification decreases while the label of terrorism becomes more apt. Of course, defining who merits occupying the center is the rub.
Woody thought for a bit and then asked, “Well; how does that affect tax payers? Many of us support activities that might be considered culpable while others don’t, but we all have to pay them.
Bill seemed prepared for the question and replied fairly quickly “The problem there involves the ability to implement the ethical paradigm. How to tell which taxpayers are more blameworthy and which are more innocent, and even harder, how to act separately in such a general context. Obviously the supporters of the policies that are blameworthy are less innocent than the opponents, but the group is too homogenous to differentiate.”
“Tom, you’re the lawyer” said Chuck. “I know law and ethics have all too little in common, but what do you think of Bill’s observations?”
Tom kind of grinned. “That depends on whether he can pay the legal fees. I’m pretty sure he’ll be needing a lawyer, soon.”
“Fuck all of you” shouted Frank, apparently a bit more buzzed than the rest. “And God bless America.”
Realizing he may have talked a bit more openly than was healthy in the current climate, Bill glanced at his watch and exclaimed “Where the Hell has the time gone, we need to do this again sometime but as for me, I’m out ‘a here.”
Most of the others agreed, called for their tabs and got up, all except for Frank and Tom, who decided they needed to talk a bit more.
“Shit” Bill whispered to Woody as he left, “I forgot just what Frank has been doing during the past few years”.
“You can’t be serious Bill” Woody whispered back.
“Then why are we whispering” observed Bill? “Why are we whispering?” _______
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
Is the following a heretical hypothesis, is it anathema and blasphemy or is it, well, … common sense?
First Postulate: That one single anthropomorphic, omnipotent, eternal, ubiquitous, omniscient and omnibenevolent divinity exists is extremely unlikely given, in mundane terms, the proof of the pudding, i.e., the history of humans on earth.
Second Postulate: That multiple non corporeal entities superior to us exist, limited as to when they came to be and that they are neither omnipotent, nor eternal, nor ubiquitous, nor omniscient nor omnibenevolent seems as likely as life existing or having existed outside of the earth, which is not to say that such entities or such life exists.
Third Postulate: The foregoing is something on which it is worth speculating, on which it is worth reflecting and concepts concerning such “possibility” seem worth putting to the test, even if the principal postulate of the scientific method makes proof the existence of superior non-corporeal beings difficult, but not as impossible as proof of their non-existence.
Fourth Postulate: The Third Postulate almost applies to the much less likely proof of a single anthropomorphic, omnipotent, eternal, ubiquitous, omniscient and omnibenevolent divinity, the difference involving proof of its purported distinctiveness.
A mission statement for a society of seekers sending out an S-O-S to the multiverse?
I wonder how Richard Dawkins, the atheist prince and putative father of memes would react to the foregoing; memes, in a sense, being incorporeal beings possibly meeting quite a few of the requirements set forth above, as may be the case, in the future, with human created artificial intelligence. As to the Dalia Llama; the Pope or the leaders of the thirty three million bickering variants of Abrahamic creeds (or are those Hindu gods, the one equals thirty three million avatars version), I’m pretty sure I know how they would react, although Pope Francis I might have found it interesting. _____
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
If he or she or it or even they exist, the divine, they and I are, I think, friends. Mainly because I dare to interact with them as a sort of equal. Not in terms of power of course, but in sensitivities and concerns and perceptions, seeing in divinity those same traits, albeit not easily admitted, especially to “believers” who insist that divinity is perfect: eternal, omniscient, ubiquitous, omnipotent and omnibenevolent, when the divine has or have, in all probability (assuming probability is relevant), doubts of his, her, its’ or their own, and perhaps quite a bit of guilt and remorse.
The divine, if the concept exists, desperately need someone with whom to communicate and not in prayer (which probably generates divine migraines) or devotion, but openly and honestly, without fear of being judged, but rather, hoping for empathy, in much the same way as humans should hope to relate with whatever concept of divinity they individually have.
Of course, the likelihood that divinity exists is rather slight but, all the same, even if imagined, it can be comforting.
Or, terrifying.
Terrifying if he, she, it or they are really, to any extent, omniscient, ubiquitous, and omnipotent but not omnibenevolent (eternal is irrelevant). Given the world as it is and as it has seemingly always been, omnibenevolence obviously cannot coexist with the other attributes traditionally associated with divinity by purportedly modern humans. The ancients, even the purported descendants of Abraham, knew that. Their divinities were selfish, self-centered, prone to outbursts and as frequently wrong as they were right, regardless of what their sycophants wrote. Which explains why they were terrified of their divinities and sought to appease them, rather than to understand them. Interestingly, similar fear seems to infest most Abrahamic religions, despite the love on which they are purportedly premised.
But I like my concept much more. Ours is a hubris free relationship involving imperfect, perhaps insecure divinities that need us as much as we need them. It is more comforting, more reflective of the best in us as humans (or is it we?). Thus, I cater to the divine generously, open to whatever they need to get off of their metaphorical shoulders without expecting all that much in return, other than a bit of reciprocity.
Hmm, reciprocity.
Isn’t that the essence of the so called “Golden Rule”? _____
Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.
