Applied Metaphysics

That America and its way of life are ending, there is not the slightest doubt. But for what reason, and in what manner, and what can possibly come next? What happens in the gap between two worlds, when the new is only dimly glimpsed like a far shore in the night, and the old is disappearing so fast there seems to be no solid ground remaining? Questions of first things and of last things necessarily arise. This is the position of our generation. This is our position, along with our generation—at the very end of America, and the very beginning of something new. Everything is dissolving so quickly that nothing remains of the sea-foam dreams of our unhappy youth. What is happening to us—it is like our too-brief recollections of belonging are already being turned into crystalline reminiscences of a bygone world. So we are as Ancients, we, fingering our threadbare fragments of memory collected from this dying civilization. Is it gone, then, this whole shape of a world? We welcome its passing. Is this the future rushing towards us? We must ready ourselves. We are the only ones who have really started, because we are the only ones who have started to think. Everything begins in thought.