Zero Sum
December 13, 2019All has been leveled to equal meaninglessness. But it is not quite the same. It is not that all is “one,” but all is “zero.”
Everything adds up to zero. Indeed, even the state, in the end, is zero.
Freedom is then to live and die for zero. Is that I want: to be beaten, imprisoned, or shot for zero?
But to be shot for zero is not a matter of choice. It is not something one is required either to “want” or “not want.” It is not even something one is able to freeze.
Zero swallow shudders hundreds of thousands of victims every year, and the police take care of the details.
Suddenly, mysteriously, without reason, your time comes, and while you are still desperately trying to make up your own mind what you imagine you might possibly be dying for, you are stalled up by zero.
Perhaps, subjectively, you have tried to convince yourself and have not wasted time convincing others. Nobody else is interested.
What I have said so far concerns execution for a “political crime.” But death in war, in the same way, is a kind of execution for nothing, a meaningless extinction, a swallowing up zero.
The Society of Zero
Thomas Merton
All will come again into its strength:
the field undivided, the waters undimmed,
the trees towering and the walls built low.
And in the valleys, people as strong
and varied as the land.
And no churches where God
is imprisoned and lamented
like a trapped and wounded animal.
-Rilke
From the Book of Hours II, 25
#DirtbagDiaries
My passion has grown to encompass filmmaking, community storytelling and social media. The West’s mountains, deserts and forests are my office. My goal is to nurture, strengthen and empower connections with the natural world. Simply put, I want people to shut their laptops and turn off their iPhones and go live the life they daydream about.
Spirit Within Her Art
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