The Meaning of History and Life, Part VI

So, then, we find ourselves in a bit of bind, adrift with our meager intellects in a sea of uncertainty, a fog of confusion, a culture and society deeply fragmented and divided over why we are here, let along how to live and act.  This is the classic existentialist dilemma.

History can help.  What we must do, after all, is to live many lives, to draw from other people's experiences enough knowledge and wisdom to be able to construct--individually and collectively--a workable world view.  What better way to understand what humans are--and are not--capable of than to study what they have done?  To study history is to study the human condition.  What we are left with is not exactly a road map to or dictionary of life.  But certain patterns emerge, certain broad truths become manifest.  Experience, travel, study all have the capacity to get us outside our narrow perspectives, to season and broaden our outlooks and sensibilities.

This intellectual process is demanding, to be sure.  But the alternative, to live thoughtlessly, pushed and pulled by the whimsies of mass culture, is hardly viable.  The way out of the pain, as they say, is through the pain.