Striving for meaning and purpose in a post-truth society

‘All the vast complexity of the natural world was built into the potentiality of the singularity 13.7 billion years ago and the wildflower is as much the outworking of this potentiality as are human beings. The process is the reverse of blind chance — affirmation of Eternity is an affirmation of meaning, purpose, creativity, hope, love and order which underlies the whole of reality.’

‘Plato was right,’ says theologian Peter Christian Vardy, quoted above. ‘Most people live in a world of shadows and do not want to confront anything that challenges the shadow world which they take to be so real.’

The title of Vardy’s latest book, Beyond the Cave: a philosopher’s quest for truth (Iff Books, UK £16.99 / US $27.95, May 2020), comes from Plato’s allegory of the cave, in which a group of people have lived all their lives chained to the rocks in a cave, facing a blank wall. They watch shadows thrown on the wall by puppets passed in front of a fire behind them, and ascribe forms to these shadows, which are as close as they get to viewing reality. They mistake appearance for reality.

It’s then explained how the philosopher is like a prisoner freed from the cave who realises the shadows do not represent reality because he can perceive its true form outside, and not just the mere shadows seen by the prisoners…