Feel Less and Think More
The affluent youth of the nineteen-sixties felt guilty when they peered over their suburban hedges and discovered poverty in America.
Frantically, they gathered on college campuses, used drugs to induce a state of “heightened awareness,” and demanded that others—those who worked for a living, earned income, and paid taxes—foot the bill for placing the poor on the dole.
What was there to think about when something felt so right?
Armed with rhetoric gleaned from their introductory courses in philosophy, political science, and metaphysics, they pressed the bewildered generation that gave them birth with all manner of tantrums until they prevailed.
The sobering and tragic outcome of their endeavor was to institutionalize poverty in America.
One lesson in all this, of course, is beware of anyone in a drug induced state of “heightened awareness,” especially guilt-ridden and tantrum-prone youth. Another is feel less and think more.
Copyright © 2002 Frank Zahn. Published in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Number 87, February 23, 2026, https://adelaidemagazine.org/feel-less-and-think-more.