Man's dissatisfaction is a sign of his capacity to transcend concrete situations. He is above any situation and thus able to say no, as a sign of protest, conquest and transcendence. In a certain parallelism with the condemnations of the crisis, especially in the West, articles abound with proposals of a better culture for man's future on the threshold of the year 2000. The project of the open society is suggested, the quest to be rather than to have, the achievement of integral humanism. The philosopher Abbagnano found John Paul lI's project more satisfactory for the man of the future than those of science or Marxism, which were then in vogue.
Culture is a highly complex totality.
But not all the components are at the same level. If culture is the spiritual form society takes, its values are its basis. And this is the crux of the problem of culture's consistency and humanity. The religious value ranks first among these values, and associated with it is the moral value which by its nature embraces all human activity. Man builds his own house on the rock of moral and religious values or he builds it, according to the Gospel parable, on the sands of power, possession or mere scientific knowledge.