Of Suckers and Losers and the Value of the Unknown.

As a boy my grandfather took to me Washington, DC to see the important sites: the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, Treasury Dept and Pentagon. Two distinct memories remain: the Library of Congress and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier… here lies a soldier known only to God.

Some cannot understand the abstract or ideal. Their world is limited like a small child who when the toy is hidden thinks it has disappeared from existence entirely.

For such people there are no higher callings or aspirations, there is only a material scorecard of supposed gains or losses. No sacrifice or selfless purpose can be envisioned by such people for they are in the final analysis non-existent for them.

If they do exist, they are simply useful slogans or catchphrases with which to inveigle a victim or to identify new prey. The world is a contest in which they can never win enough.

It only follows that those who give of themselves will be viewed as “suckers” or “losers,” for the person who suffers this pathology: they cannot see the value in the invisible nor the power of the not fully known.

-Albert Turner Goins