Page 82 - Liberating Liberals V2

The God-shaped Hole in the Soul
noises of sound and fury are very convincing. On the other hand, it may take some noisy, affirming cheerleading to stay in the meaning game.
There are of course many other intervals on the spectrum than those listed. As freethinking liberals we can choose any point on this spectrum at any time,
or choose different orientations at the same time. Selections range from fundamentalist Christianity to no-exception atheism; from New Age miraculous optimism to Buddhist pragmatic resignation; from U.S. Constitutional realism to socialist utopianism.
A problem with this flexibility is that existence sometimes becomes like Milan Kundera’s book title: The Incredible Lightness of Being. We float about with infinite choice and flexibility. Though our meaning choices may be arbitrary, they nonetheless can be absolute if we choose. Gandhi called it satyagraha — a heroically firm adherence to a chosen truth. It’s just that as freethinkers we know that our absolutes may be entirely personal meanings. Or we can interpret them as universal if we wish.
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We can also look at the world partly as a friendly witness, that is, not as one forcing us to be constantly worried about meaning or the future of civilization. We become a benevolent voyeur. This is somewhat the conception of the Deist God of our American
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