Let’s Get Eschatological

I find some small consolation in knowing that greater minds that mine have wrestled with the purpose—the meaning—of human life. Are we here simply to procreate? And if that is our reason for being, it seems that we are quite near the end of it because we have propogated our species to the point of no value; war is an instrument of determining the worthy and the worthless. In her essay, Kaitlin Flanagan asks, “Or is marriage an institution that still hews to its old intention and function—to raise the next generation, to protect and teach it, to instill in it the habits of conduct and character that will ensure the generation’s own safe passage into adulthood?” I would then ask, raise the next generation to what; to protect and teach it to what? What conduct and character ensures safe passage into adulthood? The Socratic axiom that the unexamined life is not worth living abides throughout the ages, and I suppose it will continue to do so until the end of time.