A Bedrock Philosophy

Many people can only live their lives happily by subscribing to a bedrock philosophy. Such a philosophy is something that you can ground your life on, a kind of meta-narrative. For example, some people believe that life is a story of good versus evil, a continual battle between God and the devil, with human beings as the prize. For others, life is about progress, where human beings are a part of an ongoing evolution, the end of which is absolute perfection. Another example is the meta-narrative of happiness. In this case, human life is about increasing felicity and decreasing sadness, usually by pursuing hedonistic or spiritual goods. What all of these bedrock philosophies have in common is that they provide people with a sense of why they are alive. It makes them a part of a comprehensible story, one which they can follow from birth and until death, a tale which orients them to reality.

In demanding a work claim, it is usually better to have one than otherwise. In fact, I think it is to help people cope up with stressful situations that bedrock philosophies were invented in the first place. For some reason, it seems to me as if people just cannot accept a reality where there is no visible order. In a world where innocent people are punished, just as culpable people are exonerated, people, too aghast to think that this is the nature of the world, conjured different systems to justify the apparent lack of justice in the world. Think about it. For the religious point of view, an imperfect world is justified because it is not the “real” world, but only a preparation for the “real” one, which comes after death. For the Enlightenment thinkers, imperfection in the world springs from lack of scientific and psychological knowledge, the obtaining of which can lead to its perfection. For the Epicureans, the world is imperfect so as to dare us to make our inner worlds, our appetites and desires, more perfect. The general premise is that the imperfection, the evil, the corruptibility of the world, is there for a good reason.

Thus, in processing your work claim, clinging to such a philosophy can never be wrong. Whether or not the particular one you may be believing in is true or false does not matter so much as whether or not it can help you survive your ordeal.