#minalism

How often I've heard people say the same old phrase that symbolizes all the absurdity, all the nothingness, all the verbalized ignorance of their lives. It's the phrase they use in reference to any material pleasure: 'This is what we take away from life...' Take where? take how? take why? Only a materialist can utter such a phrase, because everyone who utters such a phrase is, whether he knows it or not, a materialist. I can think of no phrase that's more tragic, or that reveals more about human humanity. That's what plants would say if they could know that they enjoy the sun. And perhaps even I, while writing these words with a vague impression that they might endure, imagine that my memory of having written them is what I 'take away from life'. A man's pork chops, his wine, his lady friend - who am I to make fun of them?