One of the basic questions every worldview tries to answer (thank you, James Sire) concerns the nature of humanity.  In class we often talk about whether man is good or evil by nature, how much choice we actually have in the decisions we make.  And yet there is more to the discussion that that, really.

One of the terms that Jedidiah Purdy uses in For Common Things, almost as an aside, really, is the quantum self.  It only shows up a couple of times by name, yet one gets the feeling that it is also key to understanding the contemporary situation (perhaps more now than we Purdy was writing in 1999).  Purdy contrasts the quantum self with the self that is a soul.  A souled self seems to be one whose identity is in some way fixed or declared by a source beyond the self.  The quantum self is changeable, extremely malleable, ready to recreate itself at a whim.  It’s very much an American idea, this rootless self.

I’m near the end of G. K. Chesterton’s What’s Wrong with the World, which is a fascinating point/counter-point to For Common Things.  While they may be a century apart, they have much in common.  Both realize (and I’ll get to GKC sometime soon) that how we understand and see the self has real implications for the way the world works (good and bad).  It’s a version of the question “what is the chief end of man,” as if man had a purpose, an end-design from the mind of God.  Just how quantum are we, really?

(image from godlife.com)