“We are meaning-seeking creatures,” I wrote, “who must deal with the inconvenience of being hurled into a universe that intrinsically has no meaning.” And then to avoid nihilism, I explained, we must embark on a double task. First, we invent or discover a life-meaning project sturdy enough to support a life. Next, we must contrive to forget our act of invention and persuade ourselves that we have not invented but discovered the life-meaning project—that it has an independent “out there” existence.
