Page 16 - Introducing The Gratitudes

16 no hope for a better world, and they work primarily for an Ayn-
INTRODUCING
THE GRATITUDES
Field Guides to Learning and Living Everyday Values
Randish vision of ego-driven dominance, energized by monetary reward, because they have no other or a viable faith to lift them out of their miserable materialistic lives. They are not Gods, they are machines and, worse, machine tenders, slaves of the technopolis.
■ Examining the Meaning of Life
Henry David Thoreau reminded us: “All our inventions are but improved means to an unimproved end.” Goethe reminded us: “One should, each day, try to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it is possible, speak a few reasonable words.” And Socrates reminded us: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” And the prophet Micah reminded us: “What does the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God?” And Confucius, Isaiah, Jesus, Mo- hammed, the Buddha, Spinoza, Erasmus and Shakespeare re- minded us of similar things we need pay attention to because they
As religious beliefs have fadedinWesternsocieties, so too has the meaning which they once provided. Meanwhile, science has stood up to fill the void by telling us that existence emerged from a random interplay of chemicals and gases in a cold, uncaring universe.
too were wise in the way of things, and had done a thing or two to give proof to their ideas, and theirwonders.Asreligiousbeliefshavefaded in Western societies, so too has the meaning which they once provided. Meanwhile, science has stood up to fill the void by telling us that ex- istence emerged from a random interplay of chemicals and gases in a cold, uncaring uni- verse, okay. Live with that. If there is meaning in the strict sociobiological sense, it is in sur- vival of the species, and not much else.
The English atheiest philosopher A.C. Gray- ling takes the scientist, emptyist, postmodern approach to its limit: life, intrinsically, has no meaning and is therefore absurd. Grayling says that Albert Camus’s “Sisyphus”, a man condemned for eternity to a push a boulder up a hill again and again, can, however, live a meaningful life. Even an essentially meaningless task can have meaning if we think it does. It’s our attitude that counts, but it’s not clear what kind of attitude allows
any kind of hope in the life thus proposed.
Fellow English writer Terence Eagleton takes a different
stance. He accepts that if you asked people what gives their life meaning the answer will be a mix of different things. Family, love, home, sports, nationalism and religion, for example. Those who once saw their reason on Earth as fixed by a group or society are today adrift on a sea of modern diversity. “A great many educated people,” he writes, “believe that life is an accidental evolutionary phenomenon that has no more intrinsic meaning than a fluctua- tion in the breeze or a rumble in the gut. If our lives have meaning it is something with which we manage to invest them, not some- thing with which they come ready equipped.”
For many people nowadays spectator sports and digital gam- ing stands in for the previous causes and issues people such as