What can a breakpoint, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging

truth? For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. Much has been written about the crisis of meaning,

especially among young adults. Back in 2023, Harvard's On Edge report found that 58% of 18 to 25-year-olds

experience little or no meaning or purpose during the previous month.

50% reported that their mental health suffered from, and I quote, not knowing what to do with my life.

And then just this year, Talker Research reported that 32% of Americans are suffering an existential crisis,

and that includes 52% of Gen Z. And it's no

accident that this crisis of meaning has coincided with the rise of transgender ideology. This

idea that the internal perception and projection of oneself is what's really true, and that biology,

family, culture, religion, and everyone else should be made to align with it.

That's the ultimate social experiment.

Specifically, it's the attempt to make meaning, as if there were no meaning to who we are.

Now, the many contributing factors to these phenomena, a primary intellectual source is the thought of John Paul Sartra,

who was born 121 years ago

this month. Sartre was a central figure in the philosophical movement called existentialism.

In fact, the term existentialism is derived from Sartre's most famous statement, that existence

precedes essence. With this saying, Sartra inverse, the traditional understanding of the relationship between essence, which refers to a thing's nature or purpose and existence.

See, historically, across most times and cultures, essence was considered logically prior to existence.

Thus, there's a fixed human nature or essence within which people participate or exist.

Sartre rejected the notion of a fixed human nature. Instead, he argued that the individual has to decide their nature.

Without a fixed nature, humans were then radically free to choose their value and their identity.

And though this idea of so-called radical freedom sounds liberating, for Sartra, it was not a gift.

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