Most people don’t know it, but the Earth is free. Mankind is the only creature that pays money to live on this Earth. No other creature--plant or animal--does this. No other creature asks permission to be born. No other creature wonders whether it should or should not reproduce, whether or not it can afford to do so. No other creature comes into this world on trial to see whether or not it “deserves” a living. No other creature saves its money so it can die properly. Only humans do this.
Animals build houses from the materials they find. They forage for food and usually find enough
to eat. They eat when they’re hungry and
sleep when they’re tired. They don’t
build elaborate social systems where one group of creatures considers itself to
be better or more deserving than another group.
Sometimes they do vie for limited resources, but they take what they
need and do not hoard what little there might be. They would never starve another creature out
of spite or envy or cruelty. That honor
is reserved for human beings.
Animals usually don’t live as long as we do. When they get sick, they have no doctor to go
to, no hospital to help them. They
either heal or they die. They often
spend a good portion of their day foraging for food, and when they’re not doing
that, they’re trying to avoid being food for something else. They have to deal with all the natural
elements as they come. There’s no
sitting in front of a cozy fire for them.
 |
| Born free. |
But they’re free.
It’s a trade-off, but they’re free.
No one tells them what they must eat and how they must eat it. No one tells them when they may or may not
sleep. They have no “busy work” to keep
them occupied, exhausted, and impotent.
They don’t have to tow the line.
They have nothing to prove. There
is no mockery and no jealousy. They
simply live. The only time they ever
have problems outside of where they are on the food chain is when they
encounter human beings.
The Earth is free. It
has always been free and always will be.
It is free to us, too, if we choose to open our eyes and see that. One person can’t shake his or her fist at
society and demand changes, demand that people come to their senses. But a very large group of people can do this. Someday every person will walk out of their
house or their shop or their school and stand in the street. They’ll simply say, “We’re not going to do
this anymore. We’re just not.” There they’ll stay--in the street, looking at
one another, maybe for the first time.
And that huge wheel that turns endlessly in the sky, the imaginary
one planted there by humans, will come to a screeching halt. There will be no less work or cares for
people, but they will be free, the way they were when they were born. The jobs they do will be done for themselves
and their immediate communities, for their own lives and their own comfort.
It is a dream I have.
