How are we to live our lives in a world where natural forces and human beings are hostile toward us?

The human condition may be accurately peceived philosophically and experientially as a mess and doom that is chararacterized by lived destructiveness and death.
Whether a person accepts the Fall of Man doctrine - that we are born in sin... and will die in sin - or considers man and the world as being good and evil, it is undeniably clear that humans, individually and collectively, are entrapped in a hostile and crucible-like environment from which they have not and cannot extricate themselves from no matter how hard they have tried. As a matter of fact, the harder they have tried to break free from their entrapment the greater the gap became between despair and hopefulness.
The essential question is: "How are we to live our lives in an environment where destuctiveness, danger and, as the Apostle Paul put it, "the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death," are certain? Death has not been destroyed. It is a destroyer...a predator constantly seeking who or what it, he or she may devour.
There is evidence from the beginning of the human race until this present moment that humans have been at the mercy of hostile forces, seen and unseen, that have not been merciful toward them and that they, possessed, if not constituted, by a bestial or demonic nature, are confined to a dimension or realm where only lower-consciousness people can exist. Higher- consciousness people cannot survive in the kind of Paradise Adam and Eve had in the Garden of Eden. They require a Paradise on a higher level than the original Paradise.
What are we humans to do?
1. Accept the true nature of humans and the world in which we live. A person needs only to open his eyes and see or just be alive to be aware of the human condition.
2. Embrace insecurity. There is no security. The American Dream is an illusion and National Security is a hoax. How often do we see not only our dreams shattered but our possessions, houses, land and wealth destroyed by either natural disasters or acts of man.
3. Acknowledge that we are in a mess that we cannot clean up or escape from because whereever we are at any given moment we are a part of that mess. That mess is a human condition Gestalt.
4. Doom. What are we to do when we realize that we are doomed? Wisdom dictates that we enjoy as much as we can and keep faith in ourselves, i. e., oneself.
5. Death. Be aware that death is a process that begins with birth and may come into fullness for a person at any time. Because death is timelessness it does not happen in time but in timelessness. "From dusk we came and to dusk we shall return."
This discourse is about the choice made by existential man. The choice a persom makes at any given moment is the only choice that he can make at that moment. The ultimate choice which is the only choice that really counts has been made for each of us and not by ourselves. Yet, individually, we made it. This is a paradox. We humans strut upon the stage of the world, parading and displaying our egoes while exercising paper tiger power. But in reality we are as helpless as dead or dying men.
In seeking to know the purpose and moral of this discourse consider a person experiencing a hurricane in which he is a victim.Only that person can give his life-witness answer to the meaning of his experience. Each other victim of that hurricane has his own answer or story. It is only self-validation that counts. If you experiencing, even vicariously, the matter presented here you will know the purpose and moral of this discourse.
Each human being has a "date with destiny." That date has already arrived. Ask not what does that mean? Your date with destiny has already asked you that question. What is your answer?

Copyright 2006 by Uriah J. Fields