A culture built upon the ideology of individual choice will be a culture of alienation, loneliness, and violence. In this book, A. J. Conyers shows that Western culture was once informed by a sense of vocation ,that men understood life as a response to a call from outside and above themselves. Beginning in the sixteenth century, however, the sense of vocation began to fade, to be replaced by the modern celebration of the unfettered human will. In such a society, Conyers argues, where relations among men are based on force, true community is impossible. --From publisher's description.