Our thinking and the actions that arise from it are shaped by our image of man, which, in response to the urgent question of who or what we are, is simply accepted arbitrarily like a dogma for lack of clear knowledge as a way out of this dilemma. In contrast, we perceive fellow human beings as such without being able to describe them definitively as such according to certain criteria. We simply know how to recognise our fellow species without any scientific aid. A strange contrast!

Characteristic of humans is human language. Linguistic terms are definite. If they were not, communication among ourselves would not be possible. Language accustoms us to define what we perceive, i.e. to assign it to a delimited meaning. It is therefore not surprising that human beings also try to do this with themselves. But is this purposeful? Where does it lead to? To a desired goal or to an undesired one? And why does he do it at all? Why does he limit himself or allow other people to limit him in this way? Why doesn’t he take the freedom neither to define himself nor to let other people define him? Does he seek security in self-definition?

We have made a painful experience: every definition of man by man sooner or later leads to a repressive, totalitarian system and entails the loss of human dignity in the administration’s dealings with the population. This creates conditions that make a humane life very difficult. This is historically observable, this is what has been spreading in a new form over the entire globe for some time now and can be experienced by just about everyone in some way.

What is meant by such a definition in the context of this social development? It is a purely materialistic or „naturalistic“ view of man, the denial of any transcendence of the human spirit. The consequences of this in the social context are putting an almost epidemic strain on large parts of the population psychologically in the most severe way, which subsequently also inexorably undermines their physical health.

A self-definition of the human being is always a self-deception. Ultimately, it is always the individual human being who does this to himself, even when he is persuaded by more or less scientific preachers of a naturalistically – formerly: materialistically – determined worldview to adopt such an image of man. One can say: Man defines himself when he has forgotten that he is a human being. Thus he is much less of a victim than he is inclined to think with regard to his own fate.

Personal freedom is a quality within the individual. Those who recognise this open the door to it. But whether he then steps through it proves to be a second matter. Not everyone does what they have recognised as right and true.

Naturalism knows only a material world, and a dead material world at that. For naturalism, life is only a temporary phenomenon of a dead world. Consequently, we must bring this into focus if the realisation of a world meaning is to be achieved at all: According to this view, death is not only the cosmic goal but also the origin of all existence – and this is ontological nonsense, that is: this view contains no meaning. Ontological statements on the premise of such a worldview cannot claim to contain meaning. Ontology is the teaching about that which exists, precisely that what is real. However, that spiritual knowledge is the basis of a definition of human being, which is what we are talking about here. Because of its inner contradictoriness, this definition lacks any foundation of meaning and thus excludes the possibility of cognition; for cognition places us in a meaningful position vis-à-vis our environment. This is the process of cognition without which we cannot experience meaning.

Other than materialistically, man cannot define himself, and if he does, he presupposes that the universe is a closed system. From this, precisely, no meaning can be derived, and this view inevitably puts us in the spiritual fairway of existentialist and nihilistic meaninglessness, which systematically undermines a basic life-friendly attitude and ultimately becomes so intolerable to man himself that he resists uncompromisingly drawing the consequences from such a worldview. We therefore prefer to think of the universe as an open system and recognise that only on this basis can we find a life that is suitable for human beings.