Ego & Soul - John Carroll

I'm enamoured with this book by an Australian sociology professor, John Carroll.

It looks at the meaning we attempt to create in our always uncertain modern life, somewhere amidst the liberal left which tell us that we're suckers for capitalism, and the conservative right that says the demise of the nuclear family will be the nuclear holocaust of our society.

He proposes five theses as to the way our modern active life can be construed as a search for meaning:

Thesis One - Unconsciously, all humans know the true and the good, and are inwardly compelled to find what they know, through their lives and what they see. They sense that there is a higher order framing their existence. The West continues to grope for the frayed metaphysical tissues.

Thesis Two - Culture is those myths, stories, images, rhythms and conversations that voice the enternal and difficult truths on which deep knowing, and therefore wellbeing, is dependent.

Thesis Three - Cultures are singular. Fundamental moral laws and human rights are universal. The crisis of meaning in the modern West is an issue of culture, not of morals.

Thesis Four - A triple neo-Calvinist logic drives through modernity: individual conscience, worldly vocation and anima mundi.

Thesis Five - Western progress has been through ego, sometimes at the expense of soul. While the East emphasises soul at the expense of ego, the West was founded on a balance of the two that was formulated by Greek tragedy and revitalised in Protestantism.