Nothing in particular

That is actually the title. I am playing around with writing a book about nothing drawing on the common theme of nothing, zero, and philosophy.

1

Everyone’s a writer or so it’s been said, time and time again, a tired old cliché of sorts. And so this is my feeble attempt at a novel. A novel, I like to think will be my ‘finis coronat opus’ so to speak. But perhaps that is not even the correct turn of phrase because it will hardly be my last work, as I haven’t even completed my first [ha-ha]. Now this book, I am attempting, is not about secret societies with hidden agendas. Nor does it contain any clever, vexing puzzles that would require a trained Harvard cryptologist to solve. It’s not a bodice ripping romance novel or contain anything about Mayan doomsday prophesy’s. In fact, it is about nothing in particular so strap yourself in dear reader and curl up with a mug of hot chocolate (or whichever beverage you prefer) and enjoy the ride. I promise not to bore you - well at least not too bad anyway.

At this point, you’re probably wondering ‘well what is about then?’ so let’s get started shall we. Nothing is a very abstract concept, the ancient Romans did not even include it in their numerical system,. It begins thus, I, II, III, IV, V …, and so on. This is most likely because they had thought why would one why to count something that isn’t there?

It was not until the advent of the Arab empire, a sort of renaissance that they had while the rest of Europe was still in the dark ages, that the concept of zero appears in the Arabic number system. It was so popular that the then, entire known world soon adopted it as well. Besides that, it beat that clunky Roman style of counting anyway.

Nothing, also figures prominently in an Eastern philosophy known simply as ‘The Tao’ or ‘The Way’ as translated for the West. As the following verse will illustrate:

 

‘We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being
but non-being is what we use…’

 

In other words, it is the emptiness or nothing-ness which is the integral part of what we use and not the thing itself. Keeping in line with Eastern thought on “nothing”, ideally it is what the mind strives to be focused on during meditation. Having attempted it myself on a few occasions already, it was basically impossible for me to achieve without the constant flow of thoughts coming and going incessantly. Although most books on the subject and the many people I have spoken to about it seem to concur that, even though the goal is to clear your mind of all thought, for one to become very proficient at it takes many years of practice and even then, at best the end result would be as close as one could possibly get to achieving it.

So far, even though we have been looking into nothing, we have touched on the ancient Romans, looked at early Arabian influence, and even seen how the Far East utilizes it. It would seem that “nothing” is a global phenomenon and the next stop on our world tour is ancient Greece.

Two philosophers who thought about nothing more than anyone would probably be Parmenides and Zeno

Author's Note

Any/all comments welcome

Reviews

[Lucy]

Very cool idea! It seems to speak with a voice of its own. :)

[snopadelic]

You learn something new everyday. I like the style actually. Its a very laid back style speaking directly to the reader, i like it. A book about nothing is an interesting concept