What do you think?
Rate this book
Lost and Found: How Meaningless Living is Destroying Us and Three Keys to Fix It
224 pages, Paperback
Published September 3, 2024
4 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 16, 2024
D’Souza is a Canadian physician who specializes in managing addiction and chronic pain. A friend of mine, who is a friend of the author, tipped me off about this newly-published book he thought I might appreciate.
Despite the West’s unprecedented wealth and comfort, its people are suffering—rates of depression, anxiety, drug overdoses and suicide continue to climb. Dr D’Souza regards these as symptoms of a lack of meaning in people’s lives. He contends that our postmodern society fosters nihilism and atheism which lead to depression, and that free will without a sense of purpose ultimately leads to destruction. Humans will naturally seek out meaning for their lives, and if this is not provided by religion then substitutes will be sought out. He discusses a number of ideologies or “replacement religions” that are commonly tried but fail to fill this void of meaninglessness.
D’Souza guides the reader on a quick tour through philosophy and culture using illustrations from great works of literature and his own medical practice. It’s more broad than deep, but he has a great deal of ground to cover. His eventual prescription for a meaningful life can be summarized as the triad of free speech, traditional religion, and personal responsibility.
It seems that he and I have read many of the same books and I found that I already agree with him about most of this content. I did have a couple of quibbles however.
I appreciate that for the sake of balance he tries to include some pathologies from the political right, but I think that being skeptical about some of the government’s claims about the effectiveness and safety of COVID vaccines hardly qualifies as a type of replacement religion. Given the numerous instances of misinformation, half-truths, and evasions that came from the CDC, a healthy skepticism seems entirely warranted. But that’s a subject for a different book.
Another issue is that you can’t simply choose a religion to believe in order to develop a sense of purpose. Religions are not interchangeable commodities. A sense of meaning will only result if you believe your faith is actually based on something true. Which obviously is more likely if your religion is actually based on truth. My beliefs should conform to what is actually true, as best as I can determine it. D’Souza may disagree with me here, but I think the object of my faith is much more important than my faith itself.
Despite the West’s unprecedented wealth and comfort, its people are suffering—rates of depression, anxiety, drug overdoses and suicide continue to climb. Dr D’Souza regards these as symptoms of a lack of meaning in people’s lives. He contends that our postmodern society fosters nihilism and atheism which lead to depression, and that free will without a sense of purpose ultimately leads to destruction. Humans will naturally seek out meaning for their lives, and if this is not provided by religion then substitutes will be sought out. He discusses a number of ideologies or “replacement religions” that are commonly tried but fail to fill this void of meaninglessness.
D’Souza guides the reader on a quick tour through philosophy and culture using illustrations from great works of literature and his own medical practice. It’s more broad than deep, but he has a great deal of ground to cover. His eventual prescription for a meaningful life can be summarized as the triad of free speech, traditional religion, and personal responsibility.
It seems that he and I have read many of the same books and I found that I already agree with him about most of this content. I did have a couple of quibbles however.
I appreciate that for the sake of balance he tries to include some pathologies from the political right, but I think that being skeptical about some of the government’s claims about the effectiveness and safety of COVID vaccines hardly qualifies as a type of replacement religion. Given the numerous instances of misinformation, half-truths, and evasions that came from the CDC, a healthy skepticism seems entirely warranted. But that’s a subject for a different book.
Another issue is that you can’t simply choose a religion to believe in order to develop a sense of purpose. Religions are not interchangeable commodities. A sense of meaning will only result if you believe your faith is actually based on something true. Which obviously is more likely if your religion is actually based on truth. My beliefs should conform to what is actually true, as best as I can determine it. D’Souza may disagree with me here, but I think the object of my faith is much more important than my faith itself.
Displaying 1 of 1 review