Incomplete Questions

Let me remind you of the pilgrim
Who asked for an audience with the Dalai Lama
He was told he must first spend five years in contemplation
After the five years
He was ushered into the Dalai Lama's presence, who said
'Well, my son, what do you wish to know?'
So the pilgrim said
'I wish to know the meaning of life, father.'
So the Dalai Lama smiled and said
'Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?'

[ Procol Harum ]

     This morning, we have a provocative question:

What if the meaning of life is obvious, but nobody likes the answer?

— XCosmos (@XCosmosOfficial) November 3, 2026

     We’ve been here before, of course:

     I’ve known a fair number of reasonably intelligent people in my sixty-six years. Many of them were atheists. But they were no happier than the theists around them. In many cases they were less happy. One complained to me privately about the sense that his life was meaningless. As bright as he was – IQ around 145, by my informal estimate – he hadn’t grasped that meaning requires an interpreter.

     “The meaning of life,” as XCosmos has put it, must be completed to be of use: “The meaning of life” to whom? To God? To history? To some federally nominated Board of Life Interpreters? Or to the asker himself?

     The completions vary; thus, the possible answers vary.

* * *

     Long ago I was told about a philosophy professor who, weary of the bickering among his students, posed them an incisive question: “Why was it wrong for Cain to kill Abel?”

     The students tossed it back and forth. Many claimed that for one human to kill another is always wrong. Others took the position that it “wasn’t necessarily wrong,” that “we don’t have all the facts.” And of course there were participants between those two poles.

     The professor allowed it to go on for awhile before he hauled the class up short. He gave the only answer that the tale of Cain and Abel in Genesis will support: “Because it was.”

     When the conditions surrounding an event have been fully specified, and the moral-ethical standards are agreed upon, questions of morality and ethics are answerable. It was wrong for Cain to kill Abel because Abel was an innocent who didn’t deserve to die. Willfully killing an innocent man is murder, which is wrong. That’s an absolute upon which Western societies agree. To question it is to question the basis of Christian-Enlightenment society.

     Yes, there are lands whose denizens don’t hew to Christian-Enlightenment moral-ethical standards. We’re having a spot of trouble with nations of that sort. Worse, individuals and groups within our own nation are disdaining those standards, some for political purposes. Consider the Left’s attitude toward the murder of Charlie Kirk. Those cleavages are causing more horror and grief than any other abstract disagreement could.

* * *

     At the base of all of what Robert Burns called “Man’s inhumanity to man” one will always find divergences from moral-ethical standards. But we’re aware that there are other lands than those of the Christian Enlightenment. They cannot trouble us unless we permit it… and by and large, we don’t.

     The divergences from Christian-Enlightenment moral-ethical standards among Americans are more troubling. They force an uncomfortable question upon us: What do we mean by ‘an American?’ What are the qualifications? Contemporary realities compel us to include those standards among the qualifications. That implies something many people would rather not face.

     Just as one cannot inquire about meaning without specifying an interpreter, one cannot inquire about membership of any kind without specifying the qualifications for membership. Aristotle told us so many centuries ago. The question must be complete to be meaningful… which brings us full-circle to the nature of meaning yet again. Sorry about that.