Letters to the Editor

My previous post cited C.S. Lewis' discussion of "a desire which no natural happiness will satisfy". He claims that all men suffer this longing, a longing which nothing in life can satiate. He looks beyond himself for evidence, I'm sure. And it's not difficult to do. Anyone with a keen eye might find this strain running undaunted throughout the history of civilization. Dissatisfaction of one sort or another has driven men to do all sorts of things. These things are written in books. Those who come after attribute their current state of existence to the chain of actions that preceded them, actions fueled by this dissatisfaction. And so it continues until we are the ones reading the books, and I, for one, cannot help but question the trajectory they suggest.

War, the deftest instrument of civil metamorphosis, thrives upon this longing. Even ideological feuds have, at their root, dissatisfaction. Our immense libraries monument this immense human condition, a condition that has driven us across the millennia and across the oceans in search for that piece of knowledge or plot of land which might, perhaps, satisfy us. The vast complexity of religious forms powerfully suggests that men from all cultures, during the entirety of recorded history, have longed for something that they do not, in themselves, possess. This simplification might be extrapolated: The Hindu prays to Vishnu because he cannot control the coming or going of the rain. If the rain doesn't come, or (as in India) if the rain comes too much, the harvest will fail. If the harvest fails, the people will starve. And, to be ridiculously obvious, in starving, they cease to be living.

But I cannot escape the next question: why is living the better route? Any arguments made by the living of themselves are questionable, if not inherently circular. Man's desire to survive cannot explain why he should desire to survive. The fruits of our exploits fail to rationalize themselves. And now for something of my point...hopefully.

Ah, letters. A dying art-form:

Dear Mankind,

I am among your ranks. So this is, if you will excuse me, of a somewhat personal interest.

We've been trudging along for quite some time now. Our plans, actions, ideas, successes, failures, reasons, idiosyncrasies, and--foremost--our desires all sum together into what we label humanity--or so you say. However, it seems you've left out something--something, I might add, that I'd rather like to know. You see; our desires, our reasons, and therefore actions are solely based, it seems, on what we find ourselves to be. That is to say, we measure the rod against itself, then, finding a match, proceed to measure out the foundations, walls, and windows. In part, I can understand. My nature suggest that I should build. Naturally, in looking around for some standard of measure, one will first notice himself. For the other part, perhaps I simply misunderstand the finer details. It seems, however, that you act upon the assumption of fixed things, while your presuppositions about the way of things excludes the possibility of objectivity. You claim to value life, freedom, etc. But how as these things perch upon that which tosses about like the sea, namely humanity, can these "values" represent any sort of fixed morality? And who's to tell you, with any more authority than the next objecting voice, that life, freedom, or whatever is valuable. Moreover, to whom will you look for a definition of what "value" actually is. If man is your measure, then to have any sort of objectivity, all men in all times must agree on each particular. Furthermore, you must possess some universal way of communicating this assent with utter clarity and freedom from doubt. You can hardly presume this unanimity. You've taken this great bowl of spaghetti noodles, that is mankind, called it a coordinate system, then proceeded to measure out meatball displacements with the confidence that only a god should possess.

In short, your method of testing the rod against itself is unsatisfactory. It seems that you should all be asking, along with that great sage of yours, "What is 'is'?" Absurd, the question may be. But your system of measure demands it! So I must question that system.

These considerations drive me to the conclusion that either something external, something greater than ourselves, injects meaning into life (that would explain our desire to preserve it), or meaning at all points fails to exist and our desires are nothing more than great flukes. If no such external being exists, we've trudged about on false pretenses. That must be very unfortunate and silly of us.

I await your rebuke, may it be immediate and deft.

Sincerely,
a man; one of many

Excuse the utter strangeness, ambiguity, and length of this post.