FREEDOM
AND THE PURPOSE OF LIFE
by Oscar W. Cooley
"The decisive element in the predicament of Western man in our period is his loss of the dimension of depth," wrote Paul Tillich in the Saturday Evening Post of June 14. This means, said Tillich, "that man has lost an answer to the questions: What is the meaning of life? Where do we come from; where do we go to? What shall we do; what should we become in the short stretch between birth and death?"
Not only has modern man no answers to these questions but, said the Harvard divine, he does not even ask them! He is too busy trying to control nature. His life is in the horizontal dimension. Size and number, not depth, preoccupy him.
This can be seen in the routine of people's lives. We all live by schedule, and it is a schedule of activity; there is no place in it for thought. Like water striders on the surface of a pool, we skitter about in the horizontal plane. Lacking a philosophy of life, we just exist from day to day. Life to us is a mere spending of time, and our ambition is to spend it comfortably.
Mr. Cooley is Associate Professor of Economics at Ohio Northern University.
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