WRY, WITTY AND WISE

The question: What’s the Meaning of Life? has nagged at us since Eve took a bite from that fateful apple. It’s a question endlessly asked of philosophers, sages, and mountaintop gurus with answers that are often trite and frequently obscure. Some think the answer is a number, with 42, 137, and 9 as leading contenders. Others think there’s no answer to be gotten, life just is. And others think that’s the wrong question. Maybe so, but the quest for a better question has been hard and elusive. Until now. The other big question: Is There a God? was probably first articulated in the grunts of one of our ancient ancestors, awestruck and quaking in fear as a meteor flashed across the star-strewn heavens. People have found conflicting answers to that question and haven’t always been very tolerant of those who don’t share their view. Others of us have concluded the answer is “no” or “maybe.” And others think God is a verb not a noun. There’s no consensus on the answer. And in our modern smartphone-dominated lives, less philosophical but urgent questions badger us incessantly and unsettle our minds: Am I really so inept and out-of-touch? Should I fear Artificial Intelligence? Are climate doomsayers right? Is democracy in peril? Do you need to keep ketchup in the refrigerator? It’s a struggle just to cope. Taylor’s essays are illuminating and provocative. His off-beat cartoons are clever, but on his own admission, not worthy of The New Yorker.

Early in his career, Robert J. Taylor was a hospital administrator, working in public and private hospitals in Minneapolis. After several years living in Karachi, Pakistan, where he was Director General for Commissioning of the then-under-construction Aga Khan University Hospital, he went on to serve as an advisor to USAID, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, and other international aid agencies on assignments in over thirty developing countries. He’s authored four earlier books and was senior editor for a tome on hospital management for Aspen Publishers. A native of Minneapolis, he currently lives in Colorado with his wife Susan.