We live in a land where those with power and money do what they want, what will give them more power and more money. Trample the poor. Crush the weak. We are nothing but fodder for the cows of the rich. Even their cows are worth more than the everyday man. Freedom, they cry. It is all in the name of freedom. Of choice. We have the "freedom" to speak, and scream, and mourn, and fear, but to act is to put us all in danger. To act is to spur their fire. They do not take kindly to the prodding of their livestock. Fodder is easily disposed of with oil and fire. And there is little way out, no true escape. It is our burden. We all have far too many roots, too many ties. It's the ball at the end of our many chains. Until we find the key we can only drag ourselves so far. But here we stand, downtrodden, jaded, afraid and overwhelmed by the mountain of wrong keys.
"I’m worried that people do not understand precisely what I mean by a way out. I use the word in its most common and fullest sense. I am deliberately not saying freedom. I do not mean this great feeling of freedom on all sides. As an ape, I perhaps recognized it, and I have met human beings who yearn for it. But as far as I am concerned, I did not demand freedom either then or today. Incidentally, among human beings people all too often are deceived by freedom. And since freedom is reckoned among the most sublime feelings, the corresponding disappointment is also among the most sublime. In the variety shows, before my entrance, I have often watched a pair of artists busy on trapezes high up in the roof. They swung themselves, they rocked back and forth, they jumped, they hung in each other’s arms, one held the other by clenching the hair with his teeth. 'That, too, is human freedom,' I thought, 'self-controlled movement.' What a mockery of sacred nature! At such a sight, no structure would stand up to the laughter of the apes."
ReplyDelete- "A Report for an Academy" by Franz Kafka