The crushed beer can of the soul

It's interesting how much Walker Percy identifies Western capitalism, in his book, "Lost in the Cosmos (1983), as being at least partly responsible for the emptiness most of us are feeling.

I hadn't remembered how much until I started reading Percy's book again yesterday. Or that he'd subtitled the book, 'The Last Self-Help Book.'

The notion's updated Kierkegaard: that not only is the self essentially unknowable, but that the value system offered by our social-cultural construct either poses as self-knowledge or acts in lieu of it, and is actually an assault on the very concept of self.

No wonder then, Percy explains, that we are left feeling so unfulfilled.

Of course this pertains only to people who think about such things and not to others.