“I should like to say to the young people disoriented by the absence of faith: to make the world rime with something is up to you alone!
It is up to man, and man is the starting point. The world, this absurd world, will stop being absurd; it is up to you alone. The world will be what you make it.
The more you tell me and insist there is nothing absolute in this world and in our sky, that truth, justice and beauty are man’s creations, the more I insist that it is then up to man to maintain them, that his honor demands it. Man is responsible to God”
— André Gide, Autumn Leaves

Gide took on the existentialists with this quote. In the aftermath of World War II, as an old man looking around at disoriented youth in France and beyond, he stood for faith and a higher power. In a book that often felt like a rambling conversation to this point, he shook the room with this chapter entitled “Literary Memories and Present-Day Problems” from a lecture he’d done in 1946. The world was licking its wounds then, and in many ways we still haven’t recovered.

Just who created truth, justice and beauty? Was it man or God? If it was the former, can it not simply be undone by mankind? Do we not see that happening in the world today? To put our faith in humanity to find its way back to the pillars of truth, justice and beauty relies on humanity being inclined to ascend to higher ground in the first place. Have you seen what people focus on?

I write, perhaps too frequently, about arete or personal excellence as the standard. The fact is, most people are just trying to get through the day, never considering their own agency. To aspire to excellence for all of humanity seems naive at best. And so people turn towards God as the logical creator.

I’m not here to challenge your faith, or to advocate for it either. I believe what I believe, you believe what you believe, and we may coexist peacefully to the end of our days and find out who was right on the back end. But even writing that sentence would have been deemed too radical in some points in history, and in some places in the world today. So how are we to reach consensus on raising the standard for all of humanity? It seems beyond our collective ability to even try.

Perhaps we may agree that the world is absurd. It surely is for those who pay attention to such things. And what are we to do with this absurdity but maintain our stance, that we aren’t knocked over in the tumultuous days that inevitably follow? We must be resilient, and build resiliency into our lives, that we may survive the ineptitude and carelessness of others. That we may dare to thrive in a fractured world.

In order to maintain our stance, we must find solid ground on which to make our stand. For many, this is religion and faith. For others, it’s philosophy, nature, science, and law and order. One may of course believe in both, but those aren’t the people screaming for heads to roll. People become radicalized when they feel that their very foundation is being eroded by the whims of others. Nobody likes to have their foundations torn away by the non-believers of their particular belief.

So where do we go from here? Honor demands more of us, if we are to ever be—what’s the word?—Great. But one person’s great is another’s chaos. No matter which “side” we fall on, we may agree that we have a long way to go. But agreeing requires consensus, not sides. There’s still so much work to do in our fight for truth, justice and beauty. And the world will be what we make it.