From Everything to Nothing, or Why America Collapsed

In the last essay, I said: “this period is the culmination of the bad choices Americans have been making for a very, very long time now.” I want to take a moment to explore that, so you can really understand what I mean by it.

You might contest this statement of mine. Many Americans certainly would. It’s never their fault, apparently. Donald Trump arrived on a silvery meteor. What’s interesting is just how differently the rest of the world sees it. The world has long been baffled and bewildered by Americans, and when it says that, what it means is: the choices Americans make and have made.

So this is a contentious subject. And I’m not a preacher or a fundamentalist or a zealot. I’m just talking to you about the way I see things. It’s OK to disagree, but let’s also speak like adults, which is to say, seriously. Not just from a place of dramatically insulted melodrama, Umair was mean to America! We’re talking the world and history, and America’s part of both.

You see, to the rest of the world, the choices Americans have made don’t make any sense. But they just don’t “not make any sense” in any normal way, which is to say, a grand logic is revealed later, or the protagonist makes good, or what have you, because this isn’t a mystery or a fairy tale.

America’s choices don’t make sense to the rest of the world because…this is hard to put into words…they’re off limits.

Above, you might think I was talking about political choices. And I am. Or economic choices. I am. Financial choices. I am, etcetera. But we are speaking at an even deeper level. Social choices. Moral choices. Existential choices.

The ones America’s made, and I mean for a very long time now, are off limits.

Let me explain.

To say that people shouldn’t have healthcare, that universal healthcare shouldn’t exist, is something that is off limits in every other rich country, and plenty of poorer ones, too. It is off limits in the sense that not even the furthest right parties would dare to broach or support it. Perhaps only the crackpot ones who never wanted to have chance at real political power. But anyone else? Such a belief would be…

What? Repellent, true. Disgusting, certainly. But more than that. Baffling. If people get sick, and nobody takes care of them, won’t the economy suffer, too? If people aren’t…healthy…won’t the economy be less prosperous, too? Are we just here to “make money”? And so forth.

So this belief, that people shouldn’t have universal healthcare, is in other countries not just morally wrong, nor even ethically wrong, nor even socially wrong. It is wrong on every level.

That is why everybody agrees on it. Left, right, center, old, young, rich, poor, whatever, doesn’t matter.

And in this way, other societies have pillars. Real foundations.

They have certain things that are widely agreed upon, which everyone should have.

America is the only society I can think of perhaps in human history where the opposite is true.

The only point of social discourse or politics or economics is to find some sort of agreement on what people should not have.

But you cannot build a foundation for a society out of nothing.

In this way, we have been speaking recently a great deal about “existential negation.” Or, as I put it more concisely sometimes, “nothings.” Do you understand what I mean now? And how important this concept really is?

You can’t build a foundation for anything out of nothing. Certainly not for a society.

Imagine we ran a business together. And I sat around you hectoring you about what we couldn’t do. What we couldn’t make. What our employees didn’t deserve. What we couldn’t give our customers. Would it ever…go anywhere?

Please, understand this, and not in a flimsy way. It isn’t just a moral judgment, I’m not trying to replace the Pope (I like him.) You cannot build a foundation for a society. Economically, financially, relationally, intellectually, spiritually, psychologically, and so on.

On nothing.

If all we are doing is “debating” what people shouldn’t have, which is what American politics, social discourse, and thinking are…then what are we really doing?

Nothing.

What are we really teaching people?

Nothing.

What are we really accomplishing?

Nothing.

What is the point of our “debates”? What thoughts are in our heads? What are we doing?

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Nothing can come from nothing.

We are just wasting our time. We are spinning our wheels, and turning the ground beneath us to dust.

Again, please understand this, because it matters a very great deal.

When I speak in and to the rest of the world, we can talk about something.

But in America, we can’t.

Literally, when I speak to Americans, I cannot talk about anything. We are speaking an alien language, even though we are both speaking English. We cannot understand each other. Why is that?

I cannot talk about anything because the only thing we can talk about is nothing. I mean that literally: first, we have to talk about how much nothing people should have, why people deserve nothing, what nothing is appropriate, how good for people and society nothing is, how noble and special nothing is.

So to get to the idea of anything—even in the smallest way—with Americans is an insurmountable struggle. I have to justify and plead and explain and argue. But should I have to? I mean, the state of nature is nothing. Shall we all just…go back to the Stone Age? Is this a sane place to be? Do I really have to litigate all of human history here?

So you can’t really talk about anything with Americans. First you have to cross the barrier of nothing, and to way too many of them, that is all there is and should be and needs to be. This is why the world struggles to talk to Americans, too, and doesn’t like to, because all this is pretty draining, but it’s also pointless.

So in all these proto-conversations, what are Americans talking about? Learning, thinking about, understanding, grasping?

Nothing.

This is why America goes nowhere. And it’s also why America makes no sense to the rest of the world.

It isn’t just the stereotype of the ugly American. The world is sophisticated and gentle and kind enough to look past that, and even regard with it a kind of affectionate humor, sometimes.

What really baffles the world about America is that it is about nothing. Why do Americans care so intensely about…nothing? Why is the central focus of everything in America…nothing? So much so that politics is about nothing, and not “tricks and hype and spin,” but existentially: that people should have nothing. That the economy is about nothing, or how much we are to deny each other. That finance is about nothing, or why Americans can never have a functioning social contract, yet meanwhile, are somehow always to be able to afford endless consumption and shopping, and corporations bank endless profits made of funny money.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. What can grow from this? Where does this road lead? The world looks at America, and sees America entranced, seduced, obsessed, staring lovingly at nothing. It shudders and recoils, because even Narcissus was looking at something. But this? This is on another level. What sense can be made of it? Why the hell is America in love with nothing?

Please see this clearly with me, and you will really understand what really went wrong with America.

Let us do another example. When the world wonders, why do Americans allow guns everywhere, so much so that shooting are a part of everyday life, it isn’t just an idle question. It isn’t even a moral question. It’s an existential one.

Why do Americans give each other the power to kill one another, but not the power to grant each other life? Why in America is it OK for me to make anyone nothing, but not to make everyone something? So: guns are OK, but healthcare isn’t. Guns are cool, but an affordable education, forget it. And so on.

Let me say it again. Why in America is it OK for me to make anyone nothing, but not to make everyone something? In what universe can this hold as a sane principle, whether moral, ethical, logical, financial, whatever?

The absolute devotion to nothing is what is different about America. And again, not in the sense of “emptiness,” but of annihilation.

And the rest of the world cannot understand this.

Let’s do another example, this time, the one that really baffles the world.

Why are Americans willing to enslave themselves to money, for the sake of…nothing? Why begin with with having, being, deserving nothing, and then have to waste your life…imposing that sentence on everyone else…what’s the point of…such a foolish game?

Why don’t we just make the game about somethings instead of nothings? Everyone has this, and that, and guess what, we all get to live decently, instead of trying, over and over again, to bring each other right back to nothing, in some kind of insane, infernal Kafkaesque-Nietzschean doom loop?

The world cannot understand why anyone would want to spend their days “debating” how much nothing someone else is to have, or why anyone should want to make anyone else nothing, or why everything should be about nothing, instead of everything and something. All of that is debasement. Humiliation. Shouldn’t life be better than that?

This attachment to nothing isn’t really something that can be understood. It can be felt as contempt, but as a thought? It make no sense whatseover. It’s just rage, in the end. Annihilation is an instinct in the death drive, not a form of logic.

When I put it that way, maybe it makes more sense to you. Or maybe it doesn’t, I don’t know. What I do know is this.

When I say that this is the culmination of a long, long stretch of bad choices Americans have made, for decades now, I mean that Americans have prioritized nothing over something and everything. How much nothing you, they, we, are to have, be, deserve, end up with, begin with, be limited to. They’ve made this the axis around which their society turns, and America now under Trump is trying to make it a rule for the world, too.

And in the end, you know what does? It leaves an absence, just as nothings do. An absence of intelligence, of curiosity, of empathy, of concern, of care, of love, of truth, of grace. Nothing is corrosive to the human spirit. But you see, getting to anything from nothing, like I said above, is almost impossible, conceptually, and so Americans aren’t able to really talk about it, understand it, or contextualize it: why their society is collapsing.

Europe, in particular, eschews nothing. This is because existentialism is one of Europe’s greatest creations. But what it means in practice is that the European way of thinking is centrally about somethings and everythings. What are we all to have? What everything do we all enjoy in common? Can we have healthcare and education as everythings? And what somethings, too, are people to have? Shall this town be a something, or a nothing? What about this life? Can this life be a something and a someone, too?

Nothing and nobody should be nothing and nobody.

This is the way of thinking of more sophisticated societies. And they grow precisely because they are not sitting around entranced and seduced by nothing in the first place. Discussing and debating nothing like fools as if it can ever lead to something at all. If I say to you, no, this person deserves half of nothing, and that one, three quarters of nothing, is there any sense in it? Nothing is nothing! Half of nothing is…nothing. Surely this is elementary, but in America, this passes for intelligent and thoughtful discourse. In this way, America leaves the world baffled and bewildered, and makes a fool of itself, too.

There is a lesson here. I hesitate to call the above nihilism, because even nihilism is deeper than this. This is something…else. It is a cult of annihilation, maybe, which sees negation as noble and wonderful and pure. Having, being, becoming, nothing is to make people stronger, tougher, truer. But this isn’t just foolish, we can all see it’s wrong.

Not just morally wrong, which it is, but wrong as in false. Being obsessed with nothing didn’t make America better. It didn’t make anything of it at all, because…nothing leads to nothing,…because it is nothing. You cannot make something out of nothing. The alchemists tried for centuries, and failed, and in that sense, America has been trapped in a medieval place of thinking for decades now.

In America, everything is nothing, and nothing is everything. This is the place the world begins to shudder. Because it understands that this road cannot lead anywhere at all. The question now is whether Americans, looking around at their society, will ever learn this lesson, too.

I’m dubious, which of course is why I counsel you to be very careful with your wealth. Because, in the end, when a society believes that nothing is what matters most, what will be left?

Love,

Umair (and Snowy!)