A reader suggested this topic as being the natural followup to last week’s essay, titled Living Offline. After considering it for a while, I realized that I agreed, and while it is a heady topic, and one can easily get lost within the corridors of the questions it opens up, it might be time to tackle it. Now, there are two ways we could ask ourselves about this question of purpose: one would take us towards a cosmogony of the world, and whatever Gods or Angels presided over it, and how that would obviously inform us as we live our lives in the present, aimed towards the future; the second would be to view it more personally, and due to the nature of what ‘personally’ means, that would largely make us take a more agnostic position towards the world at-large. It would seem, if the Christian God is the true and right one, it would not demand for me to write an essay in defense of Catholicism. More to the point, I find myself unable to say, as some do, with an irritating amount of hubris and conceit, go to Church. If I were to direct you to your local parish, and simply tell you to go through the RCIA (the rites to become a baptized Christian), and if I assured you that this is all a man or woman needs, I would feel that I would have led you astray, if not blatantly lied to your face (or eyes, in our case). I have been to RCIA, I have sat down with many parishioners and lay scholars; I have never once felt that my doubt was assuaged. I would sooner recommend you read Augustine than I would simply tell you to go to church. No, unfortunately, for us, we live in a secular society, in a secular world, and the question of purpose cannot be outsourced to a rotting institution, no matter how grand and beautiful it may still be. In terms of philosophy, literature, art, and the natural world, and how you, as an individual, are situated within it—that I can speak on. I take it to be more or less true that the question of our time is indeed an inherited nihilism, and so by speaking about personal purpose, I will very much so have to speak about and around nihilism. What is the point of an audacious article if it does not try to kill a dragon or two?
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