The essay, What is Everything?, gives you a feel for what is behind this question.
Fundamentally it is a version of the question we all have to answer about how we understand the world we live in and about how we seek to order our lives and about how we seek to order that part of the world over which we (rightly or wrongly) think we have some level of influence or control.

People have attempted to answer this basic question in many different ways throughout history - by myth, by religion, by observing the physical world, by constructing rational systems of thought.
Today (2009) many people deny the importance or even the possibility of answering or even addressing such a question. This makes addressing and offering answers to this question a bold and risky action that runs counter to much of the current culture. Just beginning the inquiry will put off some people. The versions of answers we find and the source for many of those answers may put off even more people.

Regardless whether the pendulum of current thought is moving towards or away from cynicism I believe it is a fact that each of us has a desire to answer this question well. I don’t think any of us is well served by being told “There is no answer” or “The question is meaningless.”
Each of us does give our own answer to this question every day by the way we live. I do think it is best to give thought to our ways. The material on this web site is my way of doing that.

I do not offer this from a sense that I know it all. Writing this is a big part of my search, my own efforts to understand.
I am offering this direction for our search for answers. I will work from (as well as work to support) the premise that a really good way to answer the question, “What is everything?” is to say, “Everybody wants to live in a Good Place.”

One thing I like about offering this statement as the answer to the question is that it doesn’t really seem like a direct answer. It should make us
go back and re-evaluate our understanding of the question.
We can also call to mind other attempts from history to answer this or similar what-is-it-all-about questions and see that this one is very different. Maybe that’s a good thing and we will find something that others have missed. Maybe it is a bad thing to depart from the standard approach worked out by so many people over such a long time. Or maybe this really isn’t a different approach than the others. You can form your own opinion about that.

I do think this is a correct response and indicates a productive direction to pursue as we continue to address this question, because
1. I think it is a true statement. I believe that everybody does want to live in a Good Place.
2. I think this provides a good path by which to discover more of the answer - or, by which to discover the answer more fully.

Will you go with me on this journey?

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