I stated below that:

This hedonistic consequentialism involves a closely-related individualism, at least in the United States, which states that no person can judge another person’s pleasure or pain, such that there is no objective standard for pleasure or pain (a utilitarian calculus, as it has been called).

I am reading an interesting book (don’t worry - I’ll get back to my point there…) by Tom Morris called, “Making Sense of it All: Pascal and the Meaning of Life.” In one interesting passage, Morris notes:

Something has meaning if and only if it is endowed with meaning or significance by a purposive personal agent or group of such agents.

And further:

Meaning is never intrinsic; it is always derivative….If my life is to have meaning (or a meaning), it thus must derive its meaning from some sort of purposive, intentional activity. It must be endowed with meaning.

Now, I suppose the question is, what if we are unable to endow our lives with meaning? That is, we are incapable of making a purposeful, intentional activity in relation to them? I think in this particular instance of the severely mentally handicapped, the aged with mental handicaps, the unborn, and the like - or even children, who are still unordered enough that meaning is fragmented. What of the meaning for their lives?

It seems to me that we, those who can direct our lives purposefully, are called to give meaning to them. To a mother, an unborn child should have meaning. She is the only one who can directly endow it with meaning, for she literally holds its life within her. But, this is only the most obvious example.

Of course, the question of meaning, of purpose, implies nothing of good or bad, simply direction or choice. The problem with the hedonistic individualistic consequentialist mode (told you I’d bring it back) in which we find ourselves in is that if someone has attached a purpose to their life that is wrong, misdirected, or, bluntly, evil, we are often powerless to do anything about it. I think most people have heard the response, to paraphrase, “So what if you think it’s wrong - who are you to say?”

And, the massive consequences of this statement, and all of its attendant attitudes, and all of its attendant philosophies, continue to rock our culture and will continue to do so. For, how could one ideologically oppose any evil, any wrongdoing, which is that which gives meaning to someone or some people, when ears are stopped before the argument begins…when speech itself is deafened by deliberate silence?