"By examining our lives, we may be able to wrest ourselves from inherited answers and hand-me-down values long enough to make contact--not with pipe dreams or idealizations--but with what is true and authentic about ourselves and the world. While we may not, ultimately, save ourselves, we can stand up to the disintegrating universe, our destroyer, and in the midst of our annihilation take stock of what is really going on before the world hurtles us and then itself into oblivion." Daniel Kolak and Raymond Martin, Wisdom Without Answers, (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1998), p. 98