Opinions are divided as to what it means to be a human being. Here are several perspectives that are of special interest and value to me:

“The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy. They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on. Boasting is what a boy does, who has no real effect in the world. But craftsmanship must reckon with the infallible judgment of reality, where one’s failures or shortcomings cannot be interpreted away.” Matthew Crawford, “Shop Class as Soulcraft,” The New Atlantis (2006)

“To achieve the kind of world we consider human, some people had to dare to break the thrall of tradition, Next, they had to find ways of recording those new ideas or procedures that improved on what went on before. Finally, they had to find ways of transmitting the new knowledge to generations to come. Those who were involved in this process we call creative. What we call culture, or those parts of ourselves that we internalized from the social environment, is their creation.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity (2006)

“Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him his instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. As a human being, he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is a ‘man’ in a higher sense — he is ‘collective man’ — one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic life of mankind.” Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul (2005)

“Man is not fully conditioned and determined but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment.” Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (2006)

I continue to think about issues such as these, especially when another example of “man’s inhumanity to man” dominates media news attention, ay least for a few days. There is so much goodness in the world but also, with daily reminders, we realize that there is also so much evil in the world.

In Voltaire’s classic, Candide, Dr. Pangloss suggests that each of us cultivate our own garden as best we can. He referred to the portion of the universe in which we live and work. That is “the best of all possible worlds.” My struggles continue to develop a green thumb.