Soon he will not know what he wants to do

"Modern humans are caught in an “existential vacuum,” writes the psychologist Viktor Frankl. We are struck with the total meaninglessness of our lives. Increasingly we find nothing worth living for. There is an inner emptiness within us all. We can understand this spiritual void, for it has two sources that have emerged since we began to be human beings. The first was the loss of our instincts, that set of instruc- tions that we, along with all the other animals, carried embedded in our very natures. That was an ancient loss. A more recent trauma to our souls happened when we lost the binding myths and traditions that secured our behavior. Modern man is there- fore lost, Frankl writes, for “no instinct tells him what to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; soon he will not know what he wants to do.”"