Being Nothing
This is America’s proudest achievement, and in a way it should be – since this way of being (or way of not being, actually) has never existed before, and producing it was a tremendous effort.
It was the crowning achievement of my parents generation – roughly the WWII generation. Americans at the present are merely carrying on the tradition, and adding their own embellishments – mainly by making sure the young are complete nothings.
Before this, people were expected to amount to something – to be something, to be a success. My parents, for example, were obsessed with being respectable – and expected their children to go to college and have a successful (and of course a respectable) career.
But in my generation the ground was shifting beneath our feet, and we were hit with conflicting requirements. Those adept at abandoning the past, and identifying entirely with the new values (values that did not exist, bye the way) – did well – by those standards.
There was only one problem – the human body did not like this way of not living. It had to be doing something – and doing it right. I repeat – our minds, which can get used to anything, liked this new invention it came up with – but our bodies did not. The result was a huge increase of strange mental and physical illnesses – since the mind and the body are part of the same thing.
But people were not noticing anything – although the biggest change in history was going on right under their noses – or more exactly, behind their noses – in their minds.
Our decision not to be made this impossible – no being, no awareness. Which we thought was a tremendous advantage – because we could feel no pain – something we never had liked. What we did not realize, was this made it impossible to feel anything at all.
In our ignorance, which was complete, we felt we had conquered everything.
And here we are – the Great Nothings.
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