The Problematic Quest for Meaning
Reading Bedil in Postmodern Times The most important problem today is how to find meaning in life. Failure is find meaning helps explain reckless addiction to drugs and drinking oneself to death, quiet despair, much of unwarranted violence and bitterness in relationships, irritability of almost everyone you meet, frenzied misadventures such as reckless driving, especially the youth driving bikes and Arab men driving cars too fast for life to enjoy the feast. Since most people live as if God/the Sacred has virtually no place in their lives and they have failed in the task of self creation – a problem that tormented Nietzsche – how will life become a sacrament again is the question. Anxiety to plainly – definitively – interpret, fix and impose meanings of canonical texts by ideologues/fundamentalists is a problematic reaction to the problem. Where is our refuge then? Postmodern thinkers living under the shadow of Nietzsche generally agree with the stateme...