Meditations On the Meaning of Life

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Authors: William Alkhoury, M.A., LPC

Category: Joshua Wong Scholarship Winners

Pages: 7

IJEPP Issue: Vol. 12 no. 1

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Description

Meditations On the Meaning of Life is an exploration of the problems and questions about ultimate meaning and a critical evaluation of the importance of helping people to find meaning in life through the viewpoint of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis. Given the state of the world today with rising neurosis including widespread addiction, violence, and suicide at all-time highs, this paper seeks to examine the existential quest for a meaning in life and the negative effects of the unfulfilled need for meaning on contemporary Western culture and the mental health of society. Modern civilization is in a state of chaos and is disintegrating because it has no workable knowledge of the meaning and true end of human life. In an age of meaninglessness, the present condition of Western civilization threatens the world with dangers that far outweigh its achievements. The paper examines the neurosis of normalcy with emphasis on the neurosis of contemporary Western society and how modern civilization fails to satisfy profound human needs. Data showing a society that is increasingly less stable, healthy, and unified raises the question as to whether there is not something fundamentally wrong with Western society’s way of life and its strivings