In some movie recently, I heard the expression, “I’ve moved on.” The context was, as you might expect, somebody telling a former lover that he/she no longer matters. (That one should make such a remark to another rather proves the opposite, of course.) It isn’t we who “move on”; it’s whatever that does the moving. We ourselves stand still. We do not move. Often, we wish this were not so, but it is. One sits beside the bed of a dying loved one and is horrified by his own fervent wish that “it” should be “over.”

Where did this mobility illusion come from? Twentieth-century thought from John Dewey (“process” philosopher); the notion of speed and travel so titillated by cars, trains, planes, and finally, space travel; the popular (and inaccurate) view of Einstein’s space and time theories: Many historical and scientific elements provided psychic pillars for Dewey’s “process” view and for the illusion we have today that we, collectively, are on a “journey.” It’s a view that has become a religion. It is The Human Journey, there is no destination, no end, we are ever becoming greater and more wonderful and we always will; now we venture on to transhumanism—and the wheels turn round and round, faster and faster, but we are not afraid for we have faith in ourselves. There are those whose eyes glaze over as they speak thus.

But a journey without a destination is not a journey—it’s pointless movement. Right. So we announce that there is no longer a point to anything and that becomes an article of the faith. We digitalize our vision in order to disavow any dangerous “point” to anything. And we move on, collecting “been there’s” and “done that’s”. Our luggage is plastered over with travel stickers, and we keep “moving” like Bobby Gentry’s crystal bird lost in perpetual flight because its crystal legs are broken.

Addicted to the active (mobile) voice, we assert that life is what we “do” and deny that it’s something that happens to us. Because it does have an end, a destination, and that end is death—and that must be denied at all costs, even our sanity.