AI

Beware of Claude: A Cautionary Tale About AI

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Signs of danger ahead, Anthropic, Claude
Photo credit: Illustration by WhoWhatWhy from Krzysztof Golik / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) and Connor Martin / Pexels.

Technology

Russ Baker 07/20/26 (whowhatwhy.org)

Claude AI is pretty great, but it clearly has human foibles. And you could find out the hard way.

The promise and pitfalls of artificial intelligence are beginning to emerge quickly. 

I experienced one mixed-case consequence of relying on it after I recently met someone who is involved with an interesting initiative to try and get the AI companies talking to each other and agreeing on ways to cooperate that might benefit both the industry and society overall. 

That person decided to ask a popular AI chatbot, Anthropic’s Claude, whether his entity and mine might collaborate. He also asked two others, Microsoft’s Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Apparently the others thought that was fine, didn’t really have anything noteworthy to say about that idea. But Claude did: 

Worth flagging upfront: WhoWhatWhy is an investigative journalism nonprofit with a fairly hard edge — it’s known for digging into underreported issues affecting the democratic process, from voter fraud allegations to redistricting to extremism, and several board/advisory members come out of conspiracy-adjacent or deep-politics investigative traditions (JFK/Dulles history, election-machine-fraud research, etc.). That’s a different posture than _____’s coalition-building, institutional-partnership model. … It’s not disqualifying, but it’s a real fit question to think through before outreach, not after.

Wow. Let’s consider what that AI said. We have a “fairly hard edge.” I don’t know what that means or whether it’s bad, though, to be fair, I do understand why it might advise an organization seeking to build institutional partnerships that we might not be an automatic first choice. 

Then consider this: 

Several board/advisory members come out of conspiracy-adjacent or deep-politics investigative traditions (JFK/Dulles history, election-machine-fraud research, etc.).

First of all, most people know that board members and advisory board members typically have very limited involvement with the work and output of nonprofits. They are on boards for a variety of reasons, but it makes little sense to assess an organization by its boards — or to single out one or two as representative of some larger point. 

Furthermore, what is the purpose of adopting rhetorically loaded language like “conspiracy-adjacent” and “deep-politics investigative traditions”? What criteria informed the choice of this terminology?

***

I thought of our board of directors. There is no one who is “conspiracy-adjacent” or who comes from a “deep-politics investigative tradition” (except perhaps for me — more on that later). 

There is one person on our advisory board — advisory boards having no power or authority or really significant input — David Talbot, author of numerous highly regarded books, including The Kennedy Brothers: The Rise and Fall of Jack and Bobby; The Devil’s Chessboard, an impressive and insightful dig into the longest-serving CIA director, Allen Dulles; and such delights as Season of the Witch, described as “a narrative history of San Francisco from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, chronicling its cultural revolution, violent upheavals, and eventual rebirth.” 

David can be affixed with the toxic label “conspiracy-adjacent” because he, like me, has dug into major traumatic events in this country like the deaths of high-profile political leaders and been dissatisfied with the government investigations of them. But anyone not told that would assume from the label that we’re crackpots. 

Basically, Claude read some critique from some “trusted” establishment source that has a beef with a fact-driven, critical analysis of our country’s biggest cold cases. Ditto with “deep-politics investigative tradition” — which actually boils down to being interested in powerful elements and alliances and how they shape the country’s doings and history. 

Claude has been programmed to reject this kind of independent thinking and to discourage others from being “adjacent” to it. Which is especially troubling when the subject of AI is itself in urgent need of original and deep contextualized thinking. 

It also complained that someone on our board was connected with “election-machine-fraud research.” That makes it sound like Trump’s Big Lie — and no, no one involved, even tangentially with us, believes Trump’s claims about the 2020 election being stolen from him. However, one of our editors has spent years (long prior to joining us) looking into anomalous election vote shifts and investigating whether bad actors could theoretically alter electronic voting systems to influence election outcomes. His investigations made it clear that, in an era where multi-exabyte-scale data breaches across distributed systems occur almost monthly, vigilance toward electronic systems is not alarmism — it is crucial. 

But Claude is very polite about things, and its answers often feel like an old Southern lawyer intervened. So, having impugned us, it continued:

That said, there’s a plausible thread: WhoWhatWhy’s mission around rigorous journalism that uncovers truth and puts it into context so the public can make informed decisions overlaps with ____’s “healing a divided nation” framing. 

Oh. So our mission is “rigorous journalism”; we “uncover truth,” and we “put it into context,” so “the public can make informed decisions.”

One important explanation for Claude’s current caution and use of guardrails on controversial material has to do with AI’s very early (yet recent) history. It frequently produced content that was either hallucinogenic or poisoned with false material, and stated as fact that which was not. 

AI isn’t intelligent in the human sense. Two of my colleagues explain: Tom Neuburger calls it “a dumb monger of words and recycled sentences that have the shape of ‘thought.’” And Sean Ogden says it’s “like a digital mouth that’s all teeth but no tongue; it eats everything and tastes almost nothing.” 

Whatever the precise reality of how these artificial intelligence products function, we still need human beings to read, think, ask questions, and decide for themselves. A working human brain is a beautiful thing, and I am not sure when or if AI will be able to truly replicate a brain at its finest.  

In the meantime, let’s use AI, but let’s also challenge it and do our own due diligence before accepting what it tells us. 

  • Russ BakerRuss Baker is Editor-in-Chief of WhoWhatWhy. He is an award-winning investigative journalist who specializes in exploring power dynamics behind major events.
Books

How to Help Someone Change: The Samurai Guide to Giving Feedback

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By Maria Popova (themarginalian.org)

Few things in life are more exasperating than seeing the potential in someone you love and seeing them continually fall short of it, stumbling again and again over the same self-erected roadblocks of character and conduct, comporting themselves in a manner painfully inferior to what you know them to be capable of.

What to do?

The problem of whether and how people change is the eternal problem of being alive. Changing our own ways of being is difficult enough, prey enough to paradox and peril; changing another is nigh impossible and, if attempted harshly or self-righteously, dangerous to both parties. But if an honorable and loving relationship between two people is rooted in “refining the truths they can tell each other,” then holding up a mirror for course-correction is an act of love. And though this may be the tenderest and most enduring gift we can give one another, given the wrong way the gift can feel like a grenade against which the other person mounts defenses so steely the relationship itself can shatter in the collision.

How to ensure that our feedback falls on receptive ears is what the Japanese samurai turned Zen priest Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659–1719) explores in a portion of his classic Hakagure (public library) — the posthumously published collection of his teachings, which also gave us his immortal guide to living fully by dying every day.

Art by Yoshitoshi from his series One Hundred Aspects of the Moon, 1885-1892. (Available as a print and more.)

Considering the necessity of this feedback loop, the urgency with which we need each other in it, he writes:

We cannot easily correct our defects and weak points as they are dyed deeply within us… To give a person one’s opinion and correct his faults is an important thing. It is compassionate and comes first in matters of service. But the way of doing this is extremely difficult.

An epoch before Joan Didion warned us not to mistake self-righteousness for morality, Tsunetomo cautions that it is not a kindness to flag faults with a stance of superiority:

To discover the good and bad points of a person is an easy thing, and to give an opinion concerning them is easy, too. For the most part, people think that they are being kind by saying the things that others find distasteful or difficult to say. But if it is not received well… [it] is completely worthless.

Observing that shaming is an especially ineffectual instrument of change, he offers a tactical field guide to fertile feedback:

To give a person an opinion you must first judge well whether that person is of the disposition to receive it or not. You must become close with them and earn their trust. Approaching subjects that are dear to them, seek the best way to speak and to be well understood. Judge the occasion, and determine whether it is better by letter or at the time of leave-taking. Praise their good qualities and use every device to encourage them, perhaps by talking about your faults in a way that allows them to reflect on their own. Have them receive this the way a thirsty person takes to water, and it will be an opinion that will correct faults.

Couple with pioneering psychologist Carl Rogers on how to bridge breakdowns in communication, then revisit this paragon of constructive criticism in Margaret Fuller’s letter of rejection to the young Thoreau.

Art from An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days. (Available as a print and as stationery cards, benefitting the Audubon Society.)

Mind

20 Ways of Surfacing from the Blues: Sydney Smith’s 200-year-old Strategies for Raising Low Spirits in a Letter of Advice to a 13-year-old Girl

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By Maria Popova (themarginalian.org)

Elizabeth Bishop’s memorial service opened with a reflection by her partner Alice — whose near-loss inspired one of the greatest poems ever written — that included what Elizabeth had always told her was “the only sensible advice she ever heard,” from a man she never met — one of her two favorite authors.

Sydney Smith

By the time a friend’s teenage daughter begged his advice on how to cope with a visitation of the darkness we now call depression, the Anglican clergyman Sydney Smith (June 3, 1771–February 22, 1845) had established himself as one of England’s wisest and wittiest writers.

It is no small thing that a famous man of letters took time to comfort a young woman born into a world in which she would be denied education, that elemental torchlight for the mind: Epochs ahead of his time, Smith believed that knowledge is power and resented “the ignorance in which women are kept” by men “exclaiming against every species of power, because it is connected with danger.” But he also knew that the danger within can often outmenace the danger without. “The truly happy man,” he believed, “is he, who has early discovered, that he carries within his own bosom his worst enemies.” Although he was born into the preferred chromosomal arrangement and social station, Smith himself had grown up with the darkness as his constant companion as he helplessly watched his mother agonize with epilepsy.

In the final year of his fifties, Smith offered the 13-year-old girl his tips for combating the inner darkness — perhaps the advice he wished he had received when he was her age — entwining the playful and the poignant, the ironic and the earnest. Two centuries ahead of what modern science knows about nature and the default mode network of the brain, he urged her to spend time outdoors. Against the conventions of Victorian society, which made an art of repression and dissociation, he advocated for expressing feelings openly and unselfconsciously. In a country whose national sport remains self-deprecation, he encouraged her to be kind to herself. Even his signature — written in the style of Victorian epistolary etiquette — is numbered as one of his twenty prescriptions, this subtle insistence that reciprocity is part of what keeps us alive through the darkness, that to reach out for a friend and have them reach back is an act of light.

Art from An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days — a book of cards. Also available as a stand-alone print and as stationery cards. More divinations here.

The letter, published in the 1956 volume Selected writings of Sydney Smith (public library) edited by W.H. Auden, reads:

Feb. 16th, 1820

Dear Georgiana,

Nobody has suffered more from low spirits than I have — so I feel for you. Here are my prescriptions.

  1. Live as well as you dare.
  2. Go into the shower-bath with a small quantity of water at a temperature low enough to give you a slight sensation of cold.
  3. Amusing books.
  4. Short views of human life — not further than dinner or tea.
  5. Be as busy as you can.
  6. See as much as you can of those friends who respect and like you.
  7. And of those acquaintances who amuse you.
  8. Make no secret of low spirits to your friends, but talk of them freely — they are always worse for dignified concealment.
  9. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.
  10. Compare your lot with that of other people.
  11. Don’t expect too much from human life — a sorry business at the best.
  12. Avoid poetry, dramatic representations (except comedy), music, serious novels, melancholy sentimental people, and every thing likely to excite feeling or emotion not ending in active benevolence.
  13. Do good, and endeavour to please everybody of every degree.
  14. Be as much as you can in the open air without fatigue.
  15. Make the room where you commonly sit, gay and pleasant.
  16. Struggle by little and little against idleness.
  17. Don’t be too severe upon yourself, or underrate yourself, but do yourself justice.
  18. Keep good blazing fires.
  19. Be firm and constant in the exercise of rational religion.
  20. Believe me, dear Georgiana, your devoted servant, Sydney Smith

But Smith’s mightiest antidote to unhappiness was something far simpler yet more difficult than all these pragmatisms combined.

In his popular sermons, published in two volumes a decade earlier, he had observed that “gratuitous happiness is never conceded to man at any period of life,” but we can cultivate it with our habits of being — though, paradoxically, the more we strive for it, the more it eludes us. “In seeking to be more than righteous,” he wrote, “we become less [in our] rash vows, over-strained, and heated resolutions, needless self-affliction, dread of happiness, and all that innumerable train of evils.” Over and over, he admonished against the grandiosity with which we approach the notion, the dream, the hallucination of happiness: “The causes of great happiness, and misery, rarely occur,” he wrote, but it is the “little circumstances, and events that appear trifling, singly considered, makeup the sum of human enjoyment, or misery.” Over and over, he insisted that the “great ingredient for the increase of happiness, and the proper use of life, is the cultivation of kindness and benevolence”; that mercy — for others, for the world, and perhaps for ourselves — is the only path to “rapturous happiness.”

Art from An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days

This elemental truth is contoured most clearly by the negative space around it as we look back on our own lives. “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness,” George Saunders would rue two centuries later in his tender meditation on kindness. In the rearview mirror, Smith knew, we come to realize “that the greatest misfortune we have suffered, is the sum total of useless vexation inflicted on ourselves, and others” by failing to incline toward benevolence. To be seen as benevolent — by others, but especially in the mirror of our own conscience — “is a firm barrier against the waves of chance, a lasting, solid happiness, which we bear about us, like strength, and health.”

Two hundred years hence, in a culture that has trained us to prefer being right over being kind, a culture perhaps not coincidentally menaced by a pervasive undercurrent of melancholy, Smith’s perspective is a lovely reminder that our greatest antidote to helplessness is always to help someone, that our strongest stay against despair is the simple knowledge that kindness is always within reach, that it is not a whim of our ethics but our evolutionary inheritance.

Meditation

“Awakening” from “The Divine Name” by Jonathan Goldman

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Jonathan Goldman Premiered Dec 18, 2023 “Awakening” from the “The Divine Name: Sounds of the God Code” September 2023 Sound Satsang. This video utilizes Jonathan’s sonic discovery in conjunction with visual images in order to enable participates to experience this remarkable sacred sound. Images from Timothy Helgeson

(Contributed by John Atwater, H.W.)

Books

Book: “The Genie in Your Genes: Epigenetic Medicine and the New Biology of Intention”

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The Genie in Your Genes: Epigenetic Medicine and the New Biology of Intention

Dawson Church

Author Dawson Church applies the insights of the new field of Epigenetics (epi=above, i.e. control above the level of the gene) to healing. Citing hundreds of scientific studies, he shows how beliefs and emotions can trigger the expression of DNA strands. He focuses on a class of genes called Immediate Early Genes or IEGs. These genes turn on within a few seconds of a stimulus. They can be triggered by thoughts or emotions (“I loved that unexpected gift of roses Bill gave me” or “I’m so mad about what Uncle John said at the Christmas party”). Many IEGs are regulatory genes turn on other genes that affect specific aspects of our immune system, such as the production of white blood cells that destroy attacking bacteria and viruses. Epigenetics thus influences our health every day. He coins the new term “Epigenetic Medicine” to describe healing techniques with epigenetic effects. He also summarizes the science behind the infant fields of Energy Psychology and Energy Medicine, both of which offer promising epigenetic medical therapies, and describes a few of the thousands of powerful personal breakthroughs that are being achieved by therapists, doctors and lay people praticing these techniques. The Genie in Your Genes shows that there is a sound theoretical framework, based on credible experiments, for understanding these astonishing results, and predicts that the insights of Epigenetic Medicine will dramatically advance the fields of both medicine and psychology in the coming decade. Best of all, The Genie in Your Genes demonstrates that, by taking control of our consciousness and using it to influence our genetic expression, we can sometimes bypass years of therapy, as well as harmful drugs and invasive surgeries, to, in effect, do continuous genetic engineering on our own bodies. This can produce both immediate relief from long-standing anxieties and neuroses, as well as “miraculous” healing of persistent physical conditions, especially autoimmune diseases. Among a new crop of books that chart the way to a positive health future, The Genie in Your Genes stands out as a solidly grounded and exciting pointer to the future possibilities of a medicine that links soul to body and mind.

(Goodreads.com)

(Contributed by John Atwater, H.W.)

History

What was the Pope’s 1452 declaration?

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By Mike Zonta, BB editor

Me:

What was the Pope’s 1452 declaration?

ChatGPT:

You’re probably referring to the papal bull Dum Diversas, issued by Pope Nicholas V on June 18, 1452.

This document has become one of the most controversial papal decrees in history because it authorized the Portuguese crown to wage war against certain non-Christian peoples and to enslave captives.

The key passage granted King Afonso V of Portugal the authority:

“…to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever… and to reduce their persons to perpetual servitude…”

In modern English, “perpetual servitude” means permanent slavery.

Why was it issued?

The historical context was the expansion of Portugal along the west coast of Africa and conflict with Muslim powers following the fall of Constantinople’s predecessor conflicts. The papacy was encouraging Portugal’s military campaigns against Muslims and supporting exploration and territorial expansion.

Three years later, in 1455, Nicholas V issued another bull, Romanus Pontifex, which expanded Portugal’s exclusive rights over lands it discovered along the African coast. That document reinforced Portuguese claims to trade, conquest, and enslavement in those regions.

Was this the “Doctrine of Discovery”?

Partly.

The so-called Doctrine of Discovery is not a single document but a collection of papal bulls and later legal principles. Among the most important are:

  • 1452 – Dum Diversas (authorized conquest and perpetual servitude of certain non-Christians)
  • 1455 – Romanus Pontifex (expanded Portuguese rights of conquest and trade)
  • 1493 – Inter Caetera, issued by Pope Alexander VI after Columbus’s first voyage, which divided newly claimed lands between Spain and Portugal.

Together, these documents were later cited by European colonial powers to justify territorial claims over lands inhabited by non-Christian peoples.

How is it viewed today?

Today, these bulls are widely criticized as providing religious justification for colonialism, conquest, and slavery.

In recent decades, many Christian denominations and Indigenous organizations have called for repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery. In 2023, the Vatican issued a joint statement rejecting the legal and political use of the “Doctrine of Discovery.” The statement said that these papal documents “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples” and that the doctrine “is not part of the teaching of the Catholic Church.”

One interesting philosophical observation, given our previous conversations, is that Dum Diversas illustrates a distinction you’ve often explored in your Translations: the difference between authority and Truth. Historically, a pope possessed immense institutional authority within the Church. But your first step asks a different question:

Does institutional authority, by itself, establish Truth?

That question allows one to distinguish between an institution’s historical actions and the metaphysical question of what is ultimately true. It’s one reason these fifteenth-century documents continue to be discussed—not only as historical artifacts but as examples of how claims of authority can shape history in ways later generations may judge very differently.

Tulpas

What does the Bible say about tulpas or angels?

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By Mike Zonta, BB editor

Me:

What does the Bible say about tulpas or angels?

ChatGPT:

That’s an interesting pairing because the Bible speaks a great deal about angels but nothing explicitly about tulpas. The concept of a tulpa comes from a different historical and religious context.

Angels in the Bible

In the Bible, angels are generally understood as created spiritual beings who serve God. The Hebrew word mal’akh and the Greek word angelos both mean “messenger.”

Angels perform many roles:

  • Deliver messages (for example, Gabriel announcing Jesus’ birth in Luke 1).
  • Protect people (Psalm 91:11 speaks poetically of God commanding angels concerning the faithful).
  • Guide and strengthen individuals.
  • Carry out divine judgments.
  • Worship God.

Importantly, angels are not portrayed as independent powers acting on their own authority. Their authority derives from God.

There are also fallen angels in some biblical texts and later Christian interpretation, though the Bible says less about them than many people assume.

Tulpas

A tulpa is a concept associated with Tibetan Buddhist traditions, though its modern use has changed considerably. In contemporary internet culture, a tulpa is often described as a thought-form or an apparently autonomous mental companion created through sustained imagination and attention.

The Bible does not mention tulpas or anything directly equivalent.

If someone wanted to compare the two, they would have to do so cautiously:

  • Angels are presented as beings created by God who exist independently of human imagination.
  • Tulpas, as commonly understood today, are generally described as arising through human mental processes or contemplative practice.

These are very different concepts.

A metaphysical comparison

Knowing the direction of our conversations, I suspect the question behind your question may be something like:

Can consciousness give rise to apparently independent beings?

Different traditions answer differently.

  • Biblical Judaism and Christianity generally say that spiritual beings such as angels exist because God created them, not because humans imagined them.
  • Some Buddhist traditions discuss the mind’s capacity to generate appearances and forms in ways that differ significantly from the biblical worldview.
  • Modern psychology often interprets experiences of autonomous inner figures symbolically or as aspects of the psyche rather than as separate beings.

From the perspective of your Translation

If we approached the subject using your first step, we might ask:

If Truth is all that is, and Truth is One, what authority does any appearance—whether called an angel, a tulpa, a vision, or a voice—possess?

Your method would not begin by asking whether the experience is “real” in the ordinary sense. It would begin by asking:

  • Does this appearance have authority over Truth?
  • Does it define Being?
  • Or is it an appearance within consciousness?

That doesn’t deny the possibility of profound spiritual experiences. It simply refuses to let any experience become the ultimate authority. In your framework, the touchstone remains the same:

Truth alone has authority.

That principle would apply equally whether someone believed they had encountered an angel, experienced a vision, or met what they called a tulpa. The experience could be meaningful, but its significance would be interpreted in light of Truth rather than allowing the experience itself to define Truth.

Biography

Was Spinoza expelled from his temple?

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By Mike Zonta, BB editor (and ChatGPT)

Me:

Was Spinoza expelled from his temple?

ChatGPT:

Yes, although not from a temple in the usual sense.

Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated (placed under herem) by the Portuguese-Jewish community in Amsterdam in 1656, when he was only 23 years old.

He was expelled from the synagogue community, not from a temple building as such. The ban was exceptionally severe. It prohibited members of the community from:

  • speaking with him,
  • doing business with him,
  • reading his writings,
  • or coming within a prescribed distance of him.

The text of the herem denounced him for “abominable heresies” and “monstrous deeds,” although it never specifies exactly what those heresies were.

Why was he expelled?

Scholars believe it was because Spinoza had begun expressing ideas that challenged fundamental Jewish doctrines, including:

  • questioning whether the Hebrew Bible was literally dictated by God;
  • rejecting the idea of a personal God who intervenes in history;
  • denying that the Jewish people were uniquely chosen in a supernatural sense;
  • questioning the immortality of the individual soul in the traditional way.

His mature philosophy identified God with Nature (Deus sive Natura—”God, or Nature”), not in the sense that God is merely the physical universe, but that there is one infinite substance of which everything is an expression. This was radically at odds with both Jewish and Christian orthodoxy of his time.

Did he regret it?

There is no evidence that he sought readmission to the Jewish community. Instead, he lived quietly, supported himself by grinding optical lenses, and wrote works that would profoundly influence later philosophy.

Knowing the metaphysical questions you’ve been exploring, I suspect you’ll find an interesting resonance between your own reasoning and Spinoza’s. Both begin with the intuition that Reality is One. But there is also an important difference.

Spinoza argues that there is one infinite Substance, and everything that exists is a mode or expression of that Substance.

Your first step begins:

Truth is all that is.

Truth being all is therefore only.

Truth being only is therefore one.

From there, however, you emphasize that Truth is consciousness (Mind). Spinoza was more cautious. He held that Thought and Extension (mind and body) are two attributes of the one Substance, rather than reducing all reality to consciousness.

So while there is a family resemblance between your metaphysics and Spinoza’s—especially the emphasis on Oneness—they are not identical. Your system gives a more central role to consciousness than Spinoza’s does, and that would make for a fascinating philosophical comparison.

Was Spinoza expelled from his temple?

Yes, although not from a temple in the usual sense.

Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated (placed under herem) by the Portuguese-Jewish community in Amsterdam in 1656, when he was only 23 years old.

He was expelled from the synagogue community, not from a temple building as such. The ban was exceptionally severe. It prohibited members of the community from:

  • speaking with him,
  • doing business with him,
  • reading his writings,
  • or coming within a prescribed distance of him.

The text of the herem denounced him for “abominable heresies” and “monstrous deeds,” although it never specifies exactly what those heresies were.

Why was he expelled?

Scholars believe it was because Spinoza had begun expressing ideas that challenged fundamental Jewish doctrines, including:

  • questioning whether the Hebrew Bible was literally dictated by God;
  • rejecting the idea of a personal God who intervenes in history;
  • denying that the Jewish people were uniquely chosen in a supernatural sense;
  • questioning the immortality of the individual soul in the traditional way.

His mature philosophy identified God with Nature (Deus sive Natura—”God, or Nature”), not in the sense that God is merely the physical universe, but that there is one infinite substance of which everything is an expression. This was radically at odds with both Jewish and Christian orthodoxy of his time.

Did he regret it?

There is no evidence that he sought readmission to the Jewish community. Instead, he lived quietly, supported himself by grinding optical lenses, and wrote works that would profoundly influence later philosophy.

Knowing the metaphysical questions you’ve been exploring, I suspect you’ll find an interesting resonance between your own reasoning and Spinoza’s. Both begin with the intuition that Reality is One. But there is also an important difference.

Spinoza argues that there is one infinite Substance, and everything that exists is a mode or expression of that Substance.

Your first step begins:

Truth is all that is.

Truth being all is therefore only.

Truth being only is therefore one.

From there, however, you emphasize that Truth is consciousness (Mind). Spinoza was more cautious. He held that Thought and Extension (mind and body) are two attributes of the one Substance, rather than reducing all reality to consciousness.

So while there is a family resemblance between your metaphysics and Spinoza’s—especially the emphasis on Oneness—they are not identical. Your system gives a more central role to consciousness than Spinoza’s does, and that would make for a fascinating philosophical comparison.

New Thought

The Melchizedek Priesthood

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  • Google AI Overview

The Melchizedek Priesthood is not viewed as an office that mortal men can hold or be ordained into. Instead, mainstream Christianity, Judaism, and esoteric groups view it as a unique, divine authority belongs strictly to Jesus Christ or serves as a profound spiritual archetype. [1, 2, 4]

Here is how the Melchizedek Priesthood is understood across different major faiths and traditions:

1. Mainstream Protestantism

Protestant denominations view the Melchizedek Priesthood as exclusive to Jesus Christ alone. [1]

  • The “Priesthood of All Believers”: Protestant theology rejects the idea of a specialized, multi-tiered human priesthood. Because Jesus acts as the ultimate High Priest, Christians do not need human mediators to access God. [1, 2, 3, 4]
  • An Untransferable Office: They interpret Hebrews 7:24 literally, noting that Christ holds his priesthood permanently and untransferably because He lives forever. Any attempt by a church to ordain regular men into this specific order is considered unbiblical. [1, 3]

2. Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy

The Catholic and Orthodox Churches teach that the sacramental priesthood is a participation in the unique Melchizedek priesthood of Jesus. [1, 2]

  • Sacramental Succession: When a Catholic priest is ordained, he is said to be ordained “after the order of Melchizedek”. However, he does not hold a separate priesthood; rather, he acts in persona Christi (in the person of Christ) to administer the sacraments. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
  • The Eucharist Connection: Because Melchizedek offered bread and wine to Abraham in Genesis, Catholicism views this as an ancient prophetic foreshadowing of the Holy Mass and the Eucharist. [1, 2]

3. Judaism

In Jewish tradition, Melchizedek is not associated with Christ, but his story serves as a critical historical transition point. [1, 2]

  • The Shem Lineage: In Rabbinic literature (such as the Talmud), Melchizedek is widely identified as Shem, the son of Noah, who survived the flood and kept the knowledge of God alive.
  • Transfer to Abraham: According to Jewish commentary, because Melchizedek praised Abraham before praising God in Genesis 14, God transferred the priesthood from Melchizedek’s lineage directly to Abraham and his future descendants (eventually standardizing into the Levitical priesthood). [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

4. Esoteric and New Age Traditions

Outside of conventional religion, Melchizedek is viewed as a cosmic, mystical archetype of spiritual mastery. [1]

  • The “Order of Melchizedek”: Various esoteric, Gnostic, and New Age groups claim to belong to an ethereal spiritual fraternity called the Order of Melchizedek. They do not view it as a church office, but rather as an energetic alignment dedicated to teaching ancient wisdom, sacred geometry, and spiritual ascension. [1, 2]

Comparison of Main Perspectives

TraditionWho holds the Melchizedek Priesthood?Purpose / Function
Latter-day SaintWorthy mortal men (ordained Elders/High Priests)Administer church ordinances and govern
ProtestantJesus Christ exclusivelyDirect, unmediated salvation for all believers
Catholic / OrthodoxJesus, shared sacramentally through ordained clergyAdministering the Eucharist (Bread and Wine)
JewishHistorically Shem (son of Noah); transferred to AbrahamHistorical precursor to the Levitical line
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Loss

How to Bear Your Sorrows: Nick Cave on Integrating the Darkness of Loss with the Bright Ongoingness of Life

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By Maria Popova (themarginalian.org)

Few things in our culture are more wounding than the concept of healing — as if the pains and losses that we suffer are an illness, a malfunction of the psyche to be cut out like a tumor, rather than a natural function of being alive, of feeling life deeply and living it fully. All our sorrows have been wasted if we have not learned to suffer and to be surprised by the door at the end of our suffering, on the other wide of which is simply the world, which keeps on worlding. It is not healing that allows us to go on but integration, allowing our losses to live right alongside our joys for either to mean something, to jolt us from the stupor of indifference that is worse than death.

Nick Cave

No one has articulated this more plainly and profoundly than Nick Cave in reflecting on the anniversary of his young son’s death:

It is early morning in Nîmes. I am waiting for coffee while looking out of the window of the small hotel where Susie and I are staying. The square below is waking up. There are a few cars, a woman walking a dog, a kid on a scooter, an old man smoking on a bench. Today, Susie and I plan to walk around the town for a bit, maybe visit a church, and maybe find the river that people say runs clean and cold. Later, I’ll play a show at the amphitheatre.

I am not saying this just to offer comfort to those who have lost someone, as if to say that in time everything will be all right, because even though it will be, it won’t be. Rather, I am acknowledging that although this day marks the 11th anniversary of the worst day of our lives, it is also a beautiful day, with the sun shining, a child playing, a man enjoying a cigarette, a world quietly waking and moving forward.

This may be the most discomposing aspect of loss — how impartially the world goes on when your world has been shattered. And yet the great paradox is that it is precisely by surrendering to this ongoingness, both dispassionate and rife with wonder, that we are returned to life.

Card from An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days.. Available as a print and more.

Nick paints a gorgeous still life of this bright ongoingness:

Susie wakes now, and I sit beside her. She says she dreamt about Arthur. Arthur often comes to her in that way. The dreams are simple, poetic. She tells me she dreamt she was in a dark place, perhaps a wood, calling for him. But it was too dim, and she couldn’t find him.

These feelings of loss drift through our bodies like ghosts. They settle in our cells, in our blood, gathering around days like this like weather patterns, shaping us in ways we cannot understand. It is a sad day. I can see it in my wife’s eyes. But it is an ordinary day too, a beautiful day. The best day. Susie is already at the window, pulling back the curtain, looking out over the town, the sun shining on her face.

Couple with Hemingway’s moving letter of consolation to a couple who lost their son, then revisit Nick Cave on how to use your suffering, the two pillars of a meaningful life, and the antidote to our existential helplessness.

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