Since I am going to collect the rent, I will not be able to come. (9) He said to him: ‘I have bought a village. (8) He came up to another (and) said to him: ‘My master invites you.’ (7) He said to him: ‘My friend is going to marry, and I am the one who is going to prepare the meal. (6) He went to another (and) said to him: ‘My master invites you.’ (5) He said to him: ‘I have bought a house, and I have been called (away) for a day. (4) He came to another (and) said to him: ‘My master has invited you.’ I will go (and) give instructions to them. (3) He said: ‘I have bills for some merchants. (2) He came to the first (and) said to him: ‘My master invites you.’ And when he had prepared the dinner, he sent his servant, so that he might invite the guests. If we can't arrange our own happiness, it's a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us.(1) “A person had guests. Was the child happy while he lived? That is a proper question, the only question. The death of a child has no more meaning than the death of armies, of nations. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature's highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we're expected! But there is no such place, that's why it's called utopia. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own the future, too. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. “Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so.
A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others-while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity-so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?ĭepending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough-and even miraculous enough if you insist-I attract pitying looks and anxious questions.
“About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings.