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# Never Knowing Where You Come From - Commonplaces
- URL: https://mereorthodoxy.com/jake-never-knowing-come/
- Published: 2016-12-16T00:55:15.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-20T20:12:32.000Z
- Description: Berry at his absolute best:
- Author: Mere Orthodoxy
- Tags: Jake Meador

Berry at his absolute best:

> Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,  
> for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake  
> of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.  
> Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.  
> I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned  
> at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories  
> where the machines were made that would drive ever forward  
> toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw  
> the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;  
> I came to the city that nobody recognized because it looked like every other city.  
> I saw the passages worn by the unnumbered  
> footfalls of those whose eyes were fixed upon the objective.  
> Their passing had obliterated the graves and the monuments  
> of those who had died in pursuit of the objective  
> and who had long ago forever been forgotten, according  
> to the inevitable rule that those who have forgotten forget  
> that they have forgotten. Men, women, and children now pursued the objective  
> as if nobody ever had pursued it before.  
> The races and the sexes now intermingled perfectly in pursuit of the objective.  
> the once-enslaved, the once-oppressed were now free  
> to sell themselves to the highest bidder  
> and to enter the best paying prisons  
> in pursuit of the objective, which was the destruction of all enemies,  
> which was the destruction of all obstacles, which was the destruction of all objects,  
> which was to clear the way to victory, which was to clear the way to promotion, to salvation, to progress,  
> to the completed sale, to the signature  
> on the contract, which was to clear the way  
> to self-realization, to self-creation, from which nobody who ever wanted to go home  
> would ever get there now, for every remembered place  
> had been displaced; the signposts had been bent to the ground and covered over.  
> Every place had been displaced, every love  
> unloved, every vow unsworn, every word unmeant  
> to make way for the passage of the crowd  
> of the individuated, the autonomous, the self-actuated, the homeless  
> with their many eyes opened toward the objective  
> which they did not yet perceive in the far distance,  
> having never known where they were going,  
> having never known where they came from.