Our True Nobility

In a book called “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” the author gives a fictional account of what happened when a strange disease invaded the Village of Macondo, Columbia. So powerful was the sickness — a form of insomnia — that every person in the village became infected. No one could sleep because the disease made it impossible for the body to feel fatigue. At first, villagers seemed to enjoy their situation. There was always plenty to do, so they did not mind working instead of sleeping. But they began to experience another symptom that presented a real problem: increasing loss of memory. As the disease progressed, they were unable to remember the names of simple, ordinary things around them. Then they forgot childhood memories and, eventually, they could not remember the names of even the persons closest to them. Finally, they lost all self-awareness and sank into a state of idiocy. During the course of these events, one of the townsmen thought of a way…