Paul Valent

“It was a fire of conscience, and meanings that made up packages of hell which seared into the mind. And what could we do? Supply a variety of survival strategies that made sense of the cacophony of survival?”

“Humans need their lives to make sense and to have meaning and purpose. Lack of meaning and purpose can override both the natural pace of progression to death and the instinctive struggle for life. People may sacrifice their lives in order to achieve meaning and purpose, or they may commit suicide in order to avoid meaninglessness. The role of medicine here is to expose false beliefs for which people may sacrifice themselves, and to help find realistic meanings that make life worthwhile.”

“And yet, a fissure, a split world, whose significance was yet obscure, had revealed itself to me. in the dark split were seeds of dim, unknown knowledge, without labels, a neuronal web of pre-thinking.”