The Need for Transcendance in the Postmodern World

This speech given by former Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel on July 4, 1994 speaks to the timeless reality that we ignore God at our peril. The value in this can be seen in that it is nearly 15 years old, yet it speaks directly to the current state of affairs in America and around the globe.

And thus today we find ourselves in a paradoxical situation. We enjoy all the achievements of modern civilization that have made our physical existence on this earth easier so in many important ways. Yet we do not know exactly what to do with ourselves, where to turn. The world of our experiences seems chaotic, disconnected, confusing. There appear to be no integrating forces, no unified meaning, no true inner understanding of phenomena in our experience of the world. Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less. In short, we live in the postmodern world, where everything is possible and almost nothing is certain.