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Each person seeks an understanding of reality ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯ Humans are "meaning-seeking creatures," and enigmas of large magnitude face every thinking human. These are lifetime concerns and sources of anxiety. They involve weighty matters. Expressed in the form of queries, here are some examples of ongoing human concerns:
Such troubling issues exist for the individual before, during, and after material challenges relating to food, clothing and shelter, and some measure of sexual satisfaction, have been achieved. Philosophers and sociologists have delineated these ultimate human concerns in many ways. Here is one listing that gives rather strong emphasis to the internal angst of being human (from a handout developed by Rich Ownby, philosophy instructor at Sacramento City College, 1999): Death—There is tension between our awareness of our pending death and our wish for continued consciousness. Freedom—There is a clash between our desire for objective and external guidance in the choices of life and our awareness that, ultimately, we have to make choices on less than rational grounds. Disaffection—There is a head-on collision between the collectivist demands for conformity and the everyday reality of social rituals used to cover up selfishness and a deep-down lack of concern for others. Isolation—There is mismatch between our awareness of solitariness and our all-too-human desire for contact and protection (we want to avoid loneliness and be part of a larger whole) Oneupmanship—There is conflict between our desire for unique self-assertion and control and our need for human love and friendship (tradeoffs necessitated) Self-deception—There is disparity between our imaginative and self-serving self-concept and the more detached and accurate reports of others (prompts us to patch up apparent flaws and inconsistencies with a network of excuses, buck passing, and hard to prove fabrications Meaninglessness—Along with our growing scientific understanding of cosmology, there comes a dilemma of our meaning-seeking and our awaking in the middle of nowhere in a universe that has no apparent purpose or meaning we can know Such concerns as these appear to be universal—not so much culturally-imparted as "givens" of human existence. Each thinking individual seeks an understanding of reality and meaning that satisfies the heart and mind. Some individuals find their satisfaction in the answers provided by some form of religion. For others, keeping to a nonreligious worldview is satisfying. Corrections and comments invited. [last modified:
4/30/01]
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