The words of the famed...
The words of the famed French intellectual Blaise Pascal well describe the sense of meaninglessness many Americans feel: "I see the terrifying spaces of the universe hemming me in, and I find myself attached to one corner of this vast experience without knowing why I have been put in this place rather than that, or why the brief span of life allotted to me should be assigned to one moment rather than another of all the eternity which went before me and will come after me. I see only infinity on every side hemming me in like an atom or like the shadow of a fleeting instant.