Waiting for Godot to Leave

This is from Eric Voegelin's lecture "In Search of the Ground". One should be aware that we always act as if we had an ultimate purpose in fact, as if our life made some sort of sense. I find students frequently are flabbergasted, especially those who are agnostics, when I tell them that they all act, whether agnostics or not, as if they were immortal! Only under the assumption of immortality, of a fulfillment beyond life, is the seriousness of action intelligible that they actually put into their work and that has a fulfillment nowhere in this life however long they may live. They all act as if their lives made sense immortally, even if they deny immortality, deny the existence of a psyche, deny the existence of a Divinity—in brief, if they are just the sort of fairly corrupt average agnostics that you find among college students today. One shouldn’t take their agnosticism too seriously, because in fact they act as if they were not agnostics!

To explain why we can't communicate requires some skill in communication. I'm going to try to paraphrase an essay by Eric Voegelin.  But every time I enthusiastically share Eric Voegelin quotes with a friend, I lose that friend.  There seems to be something intimidating in the way Voegelin writes that makes people's eyes gloss over.  So here, in essence, is what Voegelin says in his essay "Necessary Moral Bases for Communication in a Democracy", with as few direct Voegelin quotes as possible. Voegelin says that there are three types of Communication - Substantive, Pragmatic and Intoxicant. Intoxicant communication is communication used as a drug.  Bad TV shows, most pop music, pornography - any kind of communication that people use not only as diversions, but as pain killers to plug the holes of their misery. Pragmatic communication is any kind of communication that tries to get another person to do something.  Propaganda is the most obvious example...