Because the self in the twentieth century is a voracious nought which expands like the feeding vacuole of an amoeba seeking to nourish and inform its own nothingness by ingesting new objects in the world but, like a vacuole, only succeeds in emptying them out.
In the twentieth century, the concept of self has transformed into an insatiable entity, akin to an amoeba. This self continuously seeks new experiences and objects to fill what feels like a void. However, despite this effort to find meaning and substance, it ends up consuming these new elements without truly integrating or retaining them.
Walker Percy suggests that this dynamic leads to a cycle of emptiness, where the self remains unchanged, merely extracting rather than absorbing anything meaningful. The pursuit of external validation or fulfillment ultimately results in a superficial existence, leaving the self more vacuous than before.
