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That
is the question! Perhaps the only one still capable of making people
think a little, that is, of course, if they can find time to do so.
Then,
what is the purpose of life?
“It is to enjoy it, to take
advantage of it as much as possible!” shout out in chorus, the members
of the cheerful hedonists’ club, made up not only of convict
materialists (founding members), but also of believers in the theology
of prosperity who are evermore fervent and numerous - evermore
universal and prosperous.
“Well,
what a simplistic and shallow view!” protest, the angry
representatives of the scientific body that constitute the most
intransigent group. “The only mission of the human species is to
stimulate progress, develop the intellect and to demystify all the
secrets of the Universe!”
“Poor
blind men! Why don’t you want to see? You are on Earth to free your
souls!” the spokesmen of the countless mystic-occult trends and the
leaders of the quiet not so numerous doctrines that demand blind
faith, cry out in one voice like a mantra. The members of this vast
group that is best personified by vanity and self-presumption, only
differ from one another in the method of obtaining illumination: as
one part wants to find it by unveiling the mystery, the other only
manages to do so by precisely following the guidelines imposed by a
given religion.
With
the exception of a few differences in the methods, these three basic
groups accommodate the convictions of the majority of the human race
in respect to this crucial question concerning the meaning of life.
For
the time being let us leave the superficiality of the first group and
the fantasy of the third group to one side. Let us see what the
members of the second group have to say.
Once
again it is to the scientists that the expressive portion of the
population turn to, who inwardly seek a clear answer that is free from
superstitious manipulation and handcuffed dogmas.
“Progress! Progress at all cost!” Through this axiom the severe
exhortation of life is summarized that drives us to science.
This
answer could even be considered as right, if by it real human progress
were considered and not just the increment of its living material
conditions. If mankind actually used the same fervor to perfect its
spiritual condition as it did to develop its technical one. And if
only people eventually looked upon themselves as the spiritual beings
that they are, and not just as programmed machines to execute bodily
and mental functions.
For
what worth is it to exclusively spend our entire existence in the
accumulation and use of the modern comforts of life and how can the
conquests of science be justifiably credited, if none of them can
liberate the human creature of the anguish and the feeling of
emptiness that assault it now? Are they the smothered screams of the
imprisoned spirit? For none of the cybernetic marvels, neither the
great feats in space, nor the most recent technical miracles and the
state of the art antidepressants provide the present day human being
with the slightest glimmer of true happiness.
Not
that any of these things are not useful, but they are not enough for
the evolution of a spiritual being. They are not enough, for many of
them give little more pleasure than a sneeze, and all this is very far
from the true joy and infinitely more distant away from real
happiness.
In
fact, today happiness is a word that is getting more and more
difficult to define. How do you argue over something that does not
exist anymore? The whole of mankind has renounced itself of happiness,
through its feeble propensity for the merely terrestrial, by wearing
intellectual blinkers and through its tragic illusion for power and
self-sufficiency. Worse: it has tirelessly fought towards its own
radical extinction!
And
there are still those who stubbornly insist in finding it again
through scientific products... All are modern Sisyphus.
If it
were to depend on the much idolized science, the search of the
happiness which everybody is entitled to, as proclaimed by the UN in
its Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man, will continue to be
exactly that: an eternal and hopeless search, or, as the members of
the scientific group would prefer to call it a continuous motion of
debate.
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