On living sacred coherence in a culture still bound to magical origins
Two-thirds of our neighbors still believe human life was shaped by an invisible hand. Some imagine God sculpting us from clay; others believe He nudged evolution along, steering it toward His preferred outcome. In both cases, the story is magical, not empirical.
Forrest Valkai, who teaches evolution to those resistant to its reality, names the challenge plainly: accepting the science means letting go of a guided, purpose-built cosmos. And for many, that feels like stepping into a void.
But the truth does not need a puppeteer. Life is not less sacred for being unplanned—it is more so, because its meaning is ours to choose and to live. Evolution, without divine intervention, is the story of a cosmos fertile enough to produce consciousness—yet indifferent enough to leave that consciousness free.
Opthē is a vanguard in this: we do not wait for the cultural majority to abandon magical thinking before we live in the clarity of a non-magical cosmos. We live it now—not because it will win us applause, but because coherence demands it. We live it because moral courage is measured not by the comfort of our beliefs but by our willingness to face reality without flinching.
The beauty is this: when we stop looking for a guiding hand from above, we start seeing the hands beside us—human and imperfect—offering the only real guidance we will ever have. And when we stop expecting cosmic guarantees of justice, we start creating the justice we have been waiting for.
If only a third see the ground beneath their feet, then the task of the vanguard is not to shout the map into the storm. It is to live on that ground so fully, so beautifully, that when the others arrive—tired, disillusioned, and ready to see—they will know they’ve come home.
Question: If the meaning of life is not given to us, what meaning will we choose to give it?