#humanpurpose

Naturally, as humans, we don’t like feeling used, yet we are created to serve a purpose with dignity and respect, which feels more like contributing than being a mere means to an end. A key challenge in being used is our deep need to be defined, for meaning and clarity come through definition.

A god's worth is determined only by the behavior that it inspires us to manifest in our lives.

Divine love seems inexplicably tied to divine judgment at times. With even a cursory search online the subsequent finding of so many articles and images depicting people of otherwise benign feelings supporting hatred and irrational judgment, the only seeming constant in a species devoted to exhibiting the divine in their lives is divisiveness and cruelty. There is assuredly much to be questioned…

What we ask of our service-members is a burden we all should share.

Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori – it is sweet and right to die for your country. The first section, the Latin for “it is sweet and right” served as title for one of the best known poems from the First World War by Wilfred Owen. Posed as a question, Owen’s prose describes military service in terms similar to Smith’s (2010) description of war as “mangled bodies and shattered minds.” What is…

We are not bound to only one way of expressing our lives

All activity demands two forms of projection from us: intention and endowment. Picture someone pushing a large empty barrel up a hill. At each step a mechanism fills the barrel with an increasing amount of water. If the person were to stop, the water would cease flowing but the barrel wouldn’t reach the goal. Consider intention as the desire to reach that goal, with endowment (the water) being…

There is more to us than our gods sometimes allow

Civilizational struggle is often based on the notion that one or another group doesn’t share in the other’s values and thus warfare or other forms of struggle are about one value overcoming another. This way of looking at civilizational conflict is far more about self-promotion than providing any analytical power. Values do not demand a particular action, they are identifiers for actions already…

Active exploration of life means joining with others

Whether sitting down for coffee, watching a form of media or engaging in an online discussion, the shared experience is being felt and thought about in quite different ways. My perspective of the world is both inevitable and a limitation. There are innumerable other possible lenses for viewing my experiences through, an observation born out each and every time I enter into dialogue with another…

We do not act in a void, but live within a relational world

Apathy is mostly believed to reside solely in individual people, considered as some kind of disease to be dealt with. The prescription given takes the form of some immediate action. Get the person involved in an activity and the apathy will go away. The insidiousness of apathy is how easy it is to mistake mere movement with engagement. Movement is a linear process from one point to another;…