INTRODUCTION

“The Last Why: the essay” is my answer to the question, “What’s happening?” In fact, until I set up this website in June 2005 to publish my answer, the title of my essay was “What’s Happening: a view of life”. I didn’t think too long about using this title for my website because I was beginning to think “What’s Happening: a view of life” was even too prosaic for my essay; and when I set up my website I didn’t even publish it. I first published my analysis of life on my website in the form of a poem I created along with a précis, both of which I submitted to a writing contest in 2000 hoping to draw attention to my essay. I gave these pieces the title “The Law of Human Nature”. I considered using this title for my website but it just didn’t seem to light it up. Another title I thought of using and did initially use as a subtitle is “The Essence of Life”. However, though it better implies a concentration of essential elements, in the phrase “The Essence of Life” there is also the misleading connotation that explaining what’s happening is akin to defining a fragrance. 1

When I eventually decided to call my website “The Last Why” and its initial main component, “The Last Why: the poem”, I did not choose this title from a list of novel phrases. “The last why” is a phrase that I used right at the very center of “Our Nature”. I chose “Why am I?” as “the last why” and suggest this question was our metaphysical “big bang”. Though this implies “Why am I?” gave birth to humanity and is thus responsible for all that has happened since and for what is now happening, I suggest it remains and will remain, unanswered and consequently will be “the last why”. A few months ago I rewrote and published my précis. I called it “The Last Why: the précis”. Now that I am getting around to publishing the source of my poem and my précis, I present “The Last Why: the essay”, the long explanation of what’s happening. 2

I did not plan to write this essay. I neither aspired to be a writer nor to explain life. The truth is this essay resulted from a complete lack of aspiration compounded by what was worse, the absence of expected inspiration. I grew up hearing about “God’s Plan” and in my youth I had no reason to question “the plan”. However, I became puzzled when my teenage plans to become a hockey player or a football player were both dashed. As I neared the end of secondary school I was advised to become a doctor or a lawyer or a dentist, but a year of pre-dental science left me unmoved. By default I decided to prepare for a teaching career and had I not chosen to combine a physical education program with an arts program I would not have graduated. I was devoid of inspiration. For the first time in my life I wondered why. 3

After this first question blew a hole in the wall of my being ‘millions’ more flooded my mind. Chief among them, why is there so much conflict in our lives that it is the dominant characteristic of our existence? Attached to this question is, why does the intensity of conflict vary from a slight difference of opinion to violence causing death? Then, why are we on opposite sides of life and death issues? In contrast, why do we more often than not fight over the same objective, money for example? Tagging along with this question, why do most of us live at different levels of poverty while the rest live at different levels of wealth? Furthermore, while it is obvious those at any level below the “poverty line” need commensurately more money to survive, why is it that those at any level above the “line” never seem to have enough. In another aspect of life are the questions like why do we seem to live somewhere on spectrums between senses of hope and hopelessness, meaning and meaninglessness, having spirit and being dispirited? Why do our senses of responsibility seem to range from encompassing all of life to feeling responsible for just “me”? Then there are the questions like, “Why bother?”, “Who cares?”, “Does it matter?” I could go on for there are a few more questions that come to mind but this list is sufficient. It is appropriate though, to end it with, why do we try to answer the ultimate “why?” of our existence in so many different ways? 4

I do not know why I didn’t ignore these questions completely or at least accept the ‘answers’ I was given. I just could not. For a reason that is beyond me I needed to know at least the answers to the questions about process. Certainly, I needed to know, but I could also see being in a situation where a desperate student asked me “What’s happening?”, perhaps even their whys up to and including their “last why”; and I believed I should have the answers before I was asked the questions. As I began to consider all questions we generate with our existence I started to record my thoughts and thus by the first definition of the word in my dictionary I became a “writer”. However, because I was not aspiring to be a successful writer I did not heed the long established advice on how to succeed and began to write about not only what, given the evidence, we can not know but also about what no one seems the least bit anxious to talk. 5

Finding and presenting my answer to “what’s happening?” was not going to be a thirty-six year long preoccupation. I know I didn’t give my supportive parents a date but my plan was to get it done and get on with life. After an attempt to have my ‘answer’ published about four years later, I decided to get on with “real life”. Having said being devoid of inspiration was the reason I began writing, I would say ‘expiration’ was the reason I returned to it after five years of “real life”. I had never thought trying to explain life was breathing spirit into me until I experienced “real life” sucking spirit out of me. Having had both experiences I will say becoming a carpenter was inspiring. The seasonal work allowed me time to perfect my explanation of life. I didn’t know it would be, but inviting my parents to live with me in 2001 so I could support them as they began a new and frightening period in their lives, has become inspiring. There is no denying that watching my father die for three years sucked the spirit out of me. However, my mother continued to need my companionship; and her support has given me the freedom to buy a computer, learn to type, set up my website and for the first time in my life, publish and publicize my answer to “ What’s happening?” My mother continues to be my greatest source of inspiration. 6

This presentation of my essay is the third. When I began recording my thoughts I gave my writing the title “A Systematic Anthropology” two thirds of which I borrowed from “A Systematic Theology”, another title I had encountered. This first essay consisted of two parts, a short definition of “Our Nature” in which I defined what we are and thus why we do what we do. The second part was a long description of how we inherited our present activities that I called “Our Evolution”. In my second presentation, the one I called “What’s Happening: a view of life”, I greatly expanded the definition of “Our Nature”. In this revised definition, how we inherited our present activities was inherently obvious so I omitted any reference to our evolution and simply drew a “Conclusion”, an assessment of where we are in relation to where, given our present activities, we could be heading. 7

The structure of this third presentation is the same as the second. However, I have rewritten it entirely, mostly because my ability to write has improved with all the practice I have had during the last three years and I couldn't justify presenting my analysis with less than my best writing. In addition I had to rewrite some of  the content to accommodate insights I have had since I ‘completed’ my essay nine years ago. This introduction for example is completely new.  The introduction to my previous presentation was the single paragraph in which I listed examples of the questions I was going to answer. In this introduction I wanted to include the insights into why I have written this essay and explain how it has appeared in its present form. Then of course, I had to rewrite my introduction to reconcile it with its third new title, “The Last Why: the essay”. 8

I have written steadily in an effort to publicize my website. My mother often asks me when I will be finished. It is October 2007. On December 28 she will be 92. A couple months ago I saw a foreshadowing of the time I will be without my “greatest source of inspiration”. However, I don’t tell Mom that I may be finished at that time. I just keep telling her I will be finished when I find out for sure I was a fool to start. Then she asks me, “Why?” 9