On the meaning of life, Will Durant -2

This book is so far one of the best ones that I have read in past several years, and I have to warn you, despite the thin look, it takes a long time to read it. I realized that sometimes I have stopped on a page for an hour and reflecting on the content. Some times it happens that I need a walk to think about the paragraph that I read and reflect on it. It is deep, touches your inner person, and makes you look at the problem from different glasses.
Will Durant was an agnostic scholar with a systemic mind and I have admired him since I was exposed to his Story of Civilization years ago. As a system's thinker, he organizes the book into two parts: Problem definition, and a collection of answers to the problem. Finally he states his own opinion on what could possibly be the meaning of life from his own perspective.

He breaks down the problem definition into several parts which provide various perspectives on the question. These divisions are:
1- The letter he wrote, problem definition from Will's point of view
2 -The problem and religion
3- The problem and science
4- The problem and history
5- The problem and Utopias
6- Suicide of the Intellect
As a writer and philosopher, he puts the questions in beautiful words. I will try to write some quotations from his books every now and then.

1- The letter

...Astronomers have told us that human affairs constitute but a moment in the trajectory of a star; geologist have told us that civilization is but a precarious interlude between ice ages; biologists have told us that all life is but war, a struggle for existence among individuals, groups, nations, alliances, and species; historians have told us that " progress" is a delusion, whose glory end in inevitable decay; psychologists have told us that the will and the self are the helpless instruments of heredity and environment, and once the incorruptible soul is but a transient incandescence of the brain...

Will goes on in this letter to present the problem of meaning from the other points of view such as religion, industrial revolution, etc. In other part, he writes:

...the greatest mistake in human history was the discovery of "truth." It has not made us free, except from delusions that comforted us and restraints that comforted us. It has not made us happy, for truth is not beautiful, and didn't deserved to be so passionately chased...

He continues to put the problem in perspective and then asks the recipients to write back to him and tell him where they find meaning, consolation and happiness and where in the last resort their treasure lies.

Personally I see lots of similarity between our current times and Will Durant's time (1930), however with a difference. His time was the golden age of science and modernism, science was providing explanations and answers to several of humanity's questions. At that time, we thought that science (vs. religion and as a replacement for religion) can also provide us with answers to our existential questions. When I was a younger person, I also thought with enough search in science and enough progress, we will eventually reach at the answer for the ultimate questions. That, was my major motivation for pursuing science and immersing myself in the boundless beauty of the science. But in the process of growing older, I realize that I haven't found a satisfying answer for my existential questions either. we are in the age of disillusionment from science; old religions are becoming stronger and new age faiths are flourishing. We keep ourselves extremely over-worked, and the technology at our service has made us its slave. We keep flipping channels late at night in front of TV to carry our half-dead brain and body alive to the next day. The architecture and structure of our current society that we live in, is not giving us any chance and time to think and pursue our vital questions.

(To be continued...)