An author, who is both a protagonist and a narrator, is trying to find the answer to the most important and intriguing question of the 20th century: why we feel so bad in the relatively good environment. Though we have almost everything to live a content and enjoyable life, we still haven’t built a harmonious and healthy society.
Technical progress that makes our lives easier fails to solve our main problems, such as an inability to coexist peacefully. According to the author, there is one reasonable explanation of this issue: the main problem of the 20th century society is that it has to live in the times when the old ideology hasn’t died yet and the new one hasn’t fully developed. This lack of solid foundation causes inner turmoil, evokes a feeling of loneliness, grief, and loss.
Religion that used to provide us with that necessary feeling of security loses its leading role in people’s lives. The old order is slowly decaying whilst the new ideas which appear with the speed of light seem to be too chaotic, too radical and absolutely unclear. Just like other great minds of the past, the author ponders who we are and what the difference between us and animals is.
For instance, if we are a part of the animal world, then why we behave so irrationally, why our instincts don’t work properly. After a careful consideration, he comes to the conclusion that we have to look for an answer in our language and symbols we use to convey the ideas. The language is the dark chest full of wondrous discoveries about us and the way our thinking works. The writer investigates the nature and the role of a language from a point of view of different branches of science.
When he fails to get a satisfying answer, the man decides that the most reasonable thing one could do is to look at the language as if we haven’t met this concept before.
