Paul VanderKlay offered an interesting, and, I believe, illuminating analogy to compare and contrast two worldviews – the religious (“eyes up”) and the scientific {“eyes down”).  I made the following comment at his site:

Your example of a hike to a mountain, and contrasting the purpose of eyes up vs. eyes down was quite helpful.  Eyes up: one must know, ultimately, where one is going.  Call it an end, a purpose, a telos.  Eyes down: try to not stumble too much along the way.

What is the point of not stumbling if you can never, by definition, reach your objective (your purpose or telos) because you are not even looking for it?  Yet, we have grown so “eyes down” that all we care about is physical safety, in other words, not stumbling.

Not dying has become our sole aim – a perfect aim for an “eyes down” society.  And we were all finally and fully forced – even at the cost of ignoring science – into that “eyes down” church in March of 2020.  Every institution fully proclaims “safety is our number one priority.”  A pretty pathetic aim for a university, a church, even a government – to say nothing of a father.

Yet…we all die, sooner or later.  So, we live every day knowing that we will fail at the only purpose the “eyes down” society has left us.  Might even result in a meaning crisis.

Conclusion

A choice: This, from CS Lewis?

Medieval man looked up at a sky not only melodious, sunlit, and splendidly inhabited, but also incessantly active; he looked at agents to which he, and the whole earth, were patients.

 Or this, from prisoner 24601:

Look down! Look down!

You’ll always be a slave.

One of these two offers the possibility of liberty – liberty to live according to man’s proper purpose.

Reprinted with permission from Bionic Mosquito.

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