Human contingency

Nature

A fundamental aspect of the human predicament is the dependency of life and social organization on accidents and chance. There is little, if anything, certain. One thing hangs on another in an invisible progression; and like a spider-web, if one skein is pulled, the whole network is distorted or even destroyed. Physical human life is unpredictable, open to disease, decay, death and pain. Emotional life knows no equanimity; happiness and suffering exchange places without plan. Societal life is filled with conflict, and economic life is always precarious. Peace is shattered by war, and in this century human existence is threatened in its entirety. The increasingly perceived contingency of life is a destructive influence amidst any hope or optimism that human problems can be solved.

Claim

People who are most aware of the associated problems of contingency and absurdity are inclined to filter the world through their thought and rob it of the meaning which it naturally possesses.

Counter-claim

Nature, of which humanity is part, shows in its evolutionary patterns, purposes and trends of development that can be summarized, from the human and animal point of views particularly, as the emergence of mind, or intelligent control. Nothing is contingent in the biological life of humans. All activity points to the ascendency of intelligence and the rise of human nature to the omega point of evolution and mankind's ultimate purpose.