A pot of coffee is brewing on a chilly 3° C (38° F) morning. Sunlight weaves through the canopy of trees along the border of the crop field. Dew sparkles in the grass and on a scattering of leaves. The autumnal palette of colors is subtle beneath a cloudless sky. This mosaic of a new day will beguile me with its unfolding mystery. Nature’s beauty, the wonder of our natural environment, is deceptive, as it must contend not with what lies within itself, but with the conflicted human spirit.

Regretfully, the human spirit can be as destructive as the tonality in dodecaphony, the serialism of the Darmstadt School, and aleatoric music. It can be as confusing as the paintings of Frank Bowling, Josef Albers, Anish Kapoor, and Bridget Riley. The human spirit has the capacity to reduce anything to noise, emptiness, and commercialism. Edvard Munch’s The Scream is an example of commercialism. The Scream was first painted in 1893. Munch repeatedly painted it with variations. What was the artist saying (or screaming about)? Was it his commentary on the human condition? His angst over what? Then there is the commercialism. Brands of The Scream are available for purchase. These include socks, vodka, ketchup, cookies, political buttons, among other items. What is its cultural significance, and why do so many people relate to the paintings? What does our identifying with Munch’s painting tell us about ourselves?

Recently, I came across an old Writer’s Digest article about writing prompts. Personally, I find AI-generated (or human-generated) prompts unnecessary in the creative process. Prompts for ideas surround us every day when we pay attention. Every artist, writer, or composer has dry spells. Dry spells are those periods when the mind needs a rest and nourishment. They are comparable to taking a vacation without your cell phone or laptop. Despite my attitude, and for fun, I accepted a prompt to write a piece describing a complete stranger on a bus. My imagination took me back to my daily commutes to lower Manhattan. You can observe interesting characters on the bus in the early mornings and late afternoons as they enter and depart the Port Authority.  The story is about a lawyer who becomes enchanted by the woman he watches reading an Isaac Bashevis Singer novel. The first rough draft was relatively decent. Then, for entertainment, I ran it through an AI program for revision. For the record, I do not write with AI. Any illusion that AI improved the story soon faded. I began revising the story, but without thinking, I had forgotten to turn the AI program off. This led to a struggle between the writing program and myself. AI kept jumping out of its sandbox, revising the story even after I shut it off.  The plot line was now stuck in my thoughts. This experience taught me that wrestling with AI is akin to Jacob wrestling with the angelic (or demonic imp in a Singer story) being. I don’t need a broken thigh, mentally speaking.

I was flabbergasted the other evening when I heard Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff say to Russian President Vladimir Putin, “You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian. You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that, I commend you, and I thank you again.” On hearing this, I began to better understand Munch’s The Scream and the destruction of tonality by dodecaphonism. As Alexandra Petri writes in The Atlantic:

“If Putin is a humanitarian, then Dolly Parton was an axe murderer. Who else gets to be filed under humanitarian if Putin makes the cut? Stalin? The iceberg that sunk the Titanic? Calling Putin a humanitarian is like calling Hannibal Lecter a humanitarian, although there is more of a case to be made for Hannibal because he does, at least, subsist on people.” https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/2026/10/congratulations-great-humanitarian-vladimir-putin/689111/

While watching Witkoff, I expected him to extend an invitation for Putin to come to the White House for a State Dinner. This would provide Trump the opportunity to show off the new helipad. The two humanitarians could discuss Ukraine over hamburgers, vodka, and Diet Coke in what was the Rose Garden. No doubt Putin would enjoy touring Washington. He may have suggestions for further beautification of the capital.  If the weather were good, Trump and Putin could play golf in East Potomac Park, once a trash golf course. The press would, of course, be welcomed into the Oval Office to watch the two altruistic men jokingly arm wrestle at the Resolute Desk for the 2027 Nobel Peace Prize.

Those of my generation are referred to as “Baby Boomers.” Though born either during or in the shadowy wake of the Second World War and the Holocaust, we entered the world in the bright flash of nuclear bombs. For this reason, I prefer to think of us as the “duck and dive” generation. When the fire sirens blared, we ducked and dove under our desks or raced into the hallway, facing the walls with our coats pulled over our heads. In the atmosphere of the Cold War, nuclear fallout from above-ground tests rained (and snowed) on us. In an article for the Irish Star, Daniel Smith writes that between 1958 and 2001-02 the world stood on the edge of nuclear Armageddon 11 times. https://www.irishstar.com/news/world-news/11-times-world-stood-brink-36886781.

Smith should have included the Korean War, when General Douglas MacArthur wanted to drop a nuclear bomb on North Korea. According to the Bulletin of Nuclear Scientists, the hands of the nuclear clock are set at 85 seconds to midnight. The clock symbolizes how close humanity is to nuclear and other existential (including environmental) apocalyptic threats.

With this in mind, I am disturbed by and deplore the enthusiasm for the apocalypse. I have often heard sermons and discussions, and I admit to reading theological literature concerning “the end times” with its various interpretations of biblical text, including misinterpretations of the TaNaKh (Old Testament). There are those who believe they and the Church will be “raptured”—taken up to heaven—and will escape the “wrath” of the end days. Today, publishers and the entertainment business grind out stories about the apocalypse—space aliens, zombies, environmental catastrophes, plagues, and nuclear weapons. Billionaire AI developers seek refuge in isolated places, constructing bunker palaces for their personal survival. Others invest their own and taxpayers’ money to escape to Mars. These individuals ignore the crises of poverty, hunger, unemployment, inadequate or no healthcare, environmental deterioration, homelessness, and inadequate housing, to name but a few of the critical issues. 

I wish those who enthusiastically anticipate the apocalypse would recall how COVID-19 affected their lives. They should visit Kyiv or any city in Ukraine; La Guaira, Venezuela; Gaza; Sudan; Somalia; or the other places in the States struck by, and struggling to recover from, natural disasters. There, they will see what an apocalypse looks like and hear the music’s absence of tonality.

As I nurse a cup of coffee and watch the day gracefully unfold, I find myself thinking about Albert Einstein’s comment, “God does not play dice.” Dr. Elisabetta Canetta, a senior Lecturer in Physics at St. Mary’s University, Twickenham, England, writes:

Einstein was not an atheist, as he said himself in an interview in 1929. Einstein had his personal views about religion, and he believed in what he called “cosmic religion,” where God’s presence was evident in the order and rationality of nature and the universe in all its aspects and expressions. Chaos and randomness are, therefore, not part of nature (“God does not play dice”).

According to Einstein, ‛cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.’ In his opinion, the goal of a scientist should be to try to begin to understand the universe. Einstein had a deep feeling of awe in front of nature and the universe, and he believed that ‛strenuous intellectual work and the study of God’s Nature are the angels that will lead me through all the troubles of this life with consolation, strength, and uncompromising rigor’ (letter to Pauline Winteler, 1897). https://www.stmarys.ac.uk/news/2014/physics-and-beyond-god-does-not-play-dice-what-did-einstein-mean

Though I share Einstein’s awe of nature and the universe, my faith is in a God who is both personal and relational, and a Mystery above mysteries. I am increasingly convinced, however, that humanity does play dice. This may explain Munch’s The Scream. But I remain convinced we human beings can do the spiritual and intellectual work to be true humanitarians who transform lives.

Image:

The Back Pasture (in memory of Raymond Nelson Bunt) ©2026 Charles van Heck

Random Thoughts: The Scream and Dodecaphony ©2026 Charles van Heck