What does nothing mean
“When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose,” a Bob Dylan lyric doesn’t mean what it says. He meant to say: When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. But that isn’t true. It sounds good, but the truth is when you have nothing, we have nothing. There is nothing positive about it. It made me think about Joe Biden, who constantly shows empathy for suffering Americans but less so for people not so lucky to be an American. I read an article about how drought and lack of funds from the international community caused many children in Afghanistan to experience severe malnutrition. The US. had started a war and eventually pulled out its troops and funds, leaving the country in a dire situation. We are all human beings; therefore, we all have a common identity. I wrote that a long time ago, but the truth is most people are very provincial regarding their fellow humans. They make distinctions about who is who. And the distinctions have nuances and are infinite in number. We divide into categories and subcategories and more and more subcategories. How we feel about a fellow human is defined by national and regional interest, and some argue our very survival depends on it.
When Joe Biden decided to leave Afghanistan, it wasn’t as much about blood as treasure. He repeatedly emphasized how much money it cost to stay there. The US. spent trillions of dollars over time, government officials were corrupt, but it takes ‘ two to tango’. What about American contractors? Are they also corrupt? The bottom line is it was too costly to stay, so we left. Provincialism is another word for self-interest, which means what benefits me comes first, you second. So when Bob Dylan said, “when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose,” sounds true, but it’s not.
[1] Like a Rolling Stone
[2] Id. P.3.