Life is much easier than it was 500 years ago.

Thanks to the scientific and technological advancement today, the life now seems to be much easier to live than the old days. But I am afraid that is not true at all.

What is essential element to make our life easier? Sometimes it might be something very concrete such as the transportation system, or communication system, or basic infrastructure to support the society from the base. In this sense life is really becoming much easier.

Today public transportation system is almost almighty that it could take us to almost any place we would like to go. The Internet service has enabled us to have an immediate contact with the people living in the opposite side of the earth.

The news from different countries instantly arrives to our study and office. We are supposed to respond to them as soon as possible. That situation seems to have broken the physical distance which separated the people on the earth in the former days.

The superficial availability and convenience seem to have made the life quite easier. But a man live not for food, but for the "meaning" of life as well. Even if the superficial convenience seems to be enough, it does not give us the basic meaning we need to live our life.

Then what will give us the basic meaning of our life?

There seem to be so many answers to this questions. But the thing common in those answers is the real existence that gives us the ultimate answer to our life is something "beyond" the life. Something like religion, thought, new way of thinking would make it worth while to live a life.

Five hundred years ago, in the last phase of medieval period, and at the dawn of Renaissance time, the life was quite under control of church in the western countries. The dominance of the Church of course had many disadvantages but at the same time the Church gave us the ultimate and very vivid meaning toward life.

Like Dr Frankl's  experience in the concentration camp of Nazi, at the Auschwitz, we cannot live life without meaning and the meaning makes even the most fruitless life worth living. In this perspective the life now cannot always be said easier that it was 500 years ago.