A Meaningless Life

In Dr. Mattias Desmet’s insightful book The Psychology of Totalitarianism he posits that one of the primary problems of today’s culture is that many people believe they are living meaningless lives. He also cites rampant materialism as the reason. A quote from his book:

Man may not realize it, but his humanity does not really matter, it is nothing essential. His whole existence, his longing and his lust, his romantic lamentations and his most superficial needs, his joy and his sorrow, his doubt and his choices, his anger and unreasonableness, his pleasure and his suffering, his deepest aversion and his most lofty aesthetic appreciations, in short, the entire drama of his existence, can ultimately be reduced to elementary particles that interact according to the laws of mechanics.

This is what materialism does. A material-only universe means that matter is king, and matter is made up of tiny particles that bounce off of each other in a random way and basically are responsible for everything. EVERYTHING. And through their random and mindless bouncing they mean nothing. If you live a life where everything that “matters” to you is matter, then you are probably missing the point of life.

I agree with Desmet, and he goes into quite a bit of detail about this idea in his book. I will expound on this concept a bit and say there are basically three things that make human beings believe their life is ultimately, on the whole, meaningless.

1.     Materialism

2.     Instant Gratification

3.     Secularism (or atheism)