WHY NOTHING? Why, you might ask, would anyone want to host a website promoting the virtue of nothing? What is the point? The best way to answer this question is with another one, namely: Why do you think the world is the way it is today? If you sort it and sift it, distill it to its finest essence, it essentially boils down to a matter of abstract beliefs. We're fighting a war in Iraq because of imagined ideals. That means that we are not fighting because of something real, except of course a very real imagination and a strong belief in what we imagine. Here is another question: Why are there rich and poor? Answer: Because of non-sensible (i.e., purely imagined) ideals. There are plenty enough resources (real stuff) for everyone to be properly housed, clothed and fed. So why isn't it happening? Because we worship freedom, an abstraction that permits us to access resources virtually unimpeded. When we are given the freedom to use resources in a laissez-faire manner, it cannot help but result in a set of circumsances in which some win and some lose, some gain and others go without. We justify economic inequality on the basis of an abstraction we call freedom. If more people could be persuaded that their cherished beliefs, which are founded upon nothing more than their imaginations, are actually impinging upon, even hurting, the very real lives of others, they might consider taking a closer look at their ideals and possibly even sacrificing them for the greater good of everyone. Time spent in the defense and/or pursuit of abstract ideals is time that is not being spent nurturing the real. Time spent debating the morality or immorality of gay marriage (or abortion) is time wasted. Same for all the uproar over prayer in public schools. But when you really think about it, I'm not doing anything different than what everyone else is doing. If everything (like all of our values) is based on nothing (other than pure imagination), then everyone is making a fuss over nothing. The main difference consists in the fact that I harbor no illusions about it. I recognize the nothing, even embrace it, while the masses ignore it, or at very least act as if they are oblivious to it, and posture as if it isn't there, as if something is there. I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover
|
