This-essay is a7310041.htm which is available at the web-site www.essayz.com. See more notes at the bottom. Previous-Essay <== This-Essay ==> Following-Essay By-Months By-Years By-Words Webs of Like-&-Un-Like ESSAYS <==> Like-&-UN-Like This-One ========================================================== %HOPE AND MEANING 731004 The knowledge of a certain future is not the foundation for hope and meaning. One does not hope for certain events. Hope and meaning are not found in fulfilling trends according to the processes of cause and effect. The traditional techniques of the scientist and technocrat are impotent in the face of hopelessness and meaninglessness. The full understanding of the past and the power to accurately predict the future which is implicit therein---these are inadequate foundations for hope and meaning. Such foundations will crumble and fail to sustain life in the absence of the binding power of authentic meeting in the eternal present---in the presence of the essential uncertainties of the nature of true personal reality. The technocrat who has not in reality been liberally educated sees a mirage of hope and meaning. The image is, however, blurred and inverted by faith in the perfectibility of and accumulation of techniques to eliminate human problems---leading via unexamined assumptions to an implicit utopia. (It should be kept in mind that technocrats may be found in most academic departments.) Techniques are not the means to salvation, regardless of their dominant focus. Prophets should ask peddlers of means to salvation to point to the natural consequences of compulsively using the techniques which they peddle. Pointing to realities such as hope and meaning may most authoritatively be done by those who have become free and experience those realities. Shall the blind lead the blind? Those who excel in theory, but have little experience, may have lost contact with reality. They can not point to realities except by hearsay evidence. Where may one go to find some people who personally know hope and meaning? To authentic students who in their innocence have not yet lost hope and meaning. Yet, many of the young have, like their elders, through a lack of courage and humility lost faith, and participate in collusions which misinterpret the nature of reality in such a way that hope and meaning have been replaced by a certain future which is planned through the clever use of techniques. Viewing reality through red filters may make most plant-life appear as but unreal shadows. Likewise, viewing reality through analytic-reductionistic filters may make many essentially mysterious realities appear as but unreal shadows; yet, perhaps it is within those shadows that attractive scientists will find hope and meaning. (c) 1999 by Paul A. Smith in GO: essayz.com "Search for Integrity and Honesty" (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy) ==========================================================
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