You live in a deranged age, more deranged that usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the existential confusion of humanity, despite advancements in science and technology.
Walker Percy articulates a profound concern about modern society's disconnection from self-awareness and purpose. He suggests that, although we have made remarkable progress in scientific and technological fields, we remain fundamentally lost regarding our identity and the meaning of our actions. This reflects a paradox where material advancements do not translate to an understanding of the human condition.
In practice
During a lecture on existential philosophy, this quote can be used to illustrate the dissonance between technology and human understanding.
They all think any minute I'm going to commit suicide. What a joke. The truth of course is the exact opposite: suicide is the only thing that keeps me alive. Whenever everything else fails, all I have to do is consider suicide and in two seconds I'm as cheerful as a nitwit. But if I could not kill myself -- ah then, I would. I can do without nembutal or murder mysteries but not without suicide.
It is possible, however, that the artist is both thin-skinned and prophetic and, like the canary lowered into the mine shaft to test the air, has caught a whiff of something lethal.
Why is it that one can look at a lion or a planet or an owl or at someone's finger as long as one pleases, but looking into the eyes of another person is, if prolonged past a second, a perilous affair?
We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their faces away.
Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.
Since grief only aggravates your loss, grieve not for what is past.
For you know only a heap of broken images
While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity, in which they ever did and ever will remain.
To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.
It is true that the grasping of truth is not possible without empirical basis. However, the deeper we penetrate and the more extensive and embracing our theories become the less empirical knowledge is needed to determine those theories.
Today it is becoming increasingly apparent to thoughtful Americans that we cannot fight the forces and ideas of imperialism abroad and maintain any form of imperialism at home. The war has done this to our thinking.
The arc of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn't bend on its own.
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