My CMS The View from a New City

I recently heard an audio book claim that in the 1600s, 20% of the residence of Florence Italy died of the plague in spite of prayers. Thinking about this, I realized that 100% of the people alive in Florence in the 1600s died. For me, this changed the book’s claim from a disturbing one about the efficacy of prayers to a boring fact about life during the Middle Ages.

Further on, the book claimed that recently, three times as many people died of obesity than died of hunger in the world. I would add that all these people died, and they all died in spite of the book’s claim of amazing modern scientific progress. Yes, amazing scientific progress since the 1600s but 100% percent of people still die, and science shows no signs of solving that problem. Maybe prayer should make a comeback?

Listening to this may be helpful:

Nibley Lectures: Time Vindicates the Prophets — Two Ways to Remember the Dead | The Interpreter Foundation

With all due respect to Sartre and Nietzsche, it is a mistake to spend one’s life seeking to be authentic. You are unique already. Rather, one should seek to find and achieve the very purpose for which one exists. Many lifestyles lead to dead ends and there are few road signs to warn those who go there. If a person had an infinity of lives to explore them all and still find the purpose of life, it might not matter. Think the movie, Groundhog Day. But life is short. Just ask anyone as old as I am. ‘Trial and error’ is not the key to success here. There is a better way.