A Road Agent keeps his eye to the ground looking for something useful.
Why buy it when you can steal it?
Why steal it when you can make it?
Why make it when you can find it?
Just keep looking.
Steal
You chose to steal every day.
You may not rob a bank, or shoplift something. But if you checked your Facebook at work, you were stealing time from your boss. If you read an article and said something out of it to your friends with our crediting the author, you stole that idea. There are a million little thefts perpetuated every day. Did you take an extra 30 seconds on break? Did you pocket some sugar packages? Did you...
Does it matter.
We are told from childhood that it does. That ripping somebody off is horrible. That it takes money from their pockets. The argument is always, "What if everyone did it?"
My rebuttal, "What if everyone did it?"
If people paid for nothing, and no body made any money would that be so bad. Who cares if you have a TV, or a mansion, or any of the big stuff. What if you just took what you needed when you needed. Not amassing surplus, not caring about having excess. Just what you need. No luxury.
If we all did that what happens?
Then we don't need a lot of things. Maybe not the huge house, maybe not the TV, maybe not even this internet connection that I'm typing on right now.
What if we all did it?
Make It
So we all do it.
You are out of food so you go steal a bag of rice from the store you work at. And you realize in that moment, that you can do this. This works for you. And you realize that you don't need money because everything is right there for the taking. So you quit your job.
And the refrain is, "What if everyone did that?"
So the whole world quits working. People begin to take whatever they want. So they take TV's and radios and computers. Sure it is mass chaos. But soon people begin to realize that no one works any more, so there is no more TV, no more radio, no more internet. The only entertainment is what you make. And the store shelves begin to go empty. There is no more food to just take, no clothes to just snatch up.
Our conditioning that a shirt is tossable once it has a hole in it goes out the window. Everything becomes worth while. Seeds, cloth, needles, thread. Suddenly these are the things that we desire. We can make clothes, grow food, entertainment is at our very fingertips. We can scratch the words of love poems in the rocks, or sing songs on broken guitars, watch puppet shows made by children with sticks, we can go back to interaction, to a real life.
We can make it all.
Everything that we need can be made.
Find It
And how do we make things.
We find the base materials. Find seed, find cloth, find knowledge.
Everything is right there. Either in the world, growing, waiting for us. Or in our hearts, that courage to step out and find a society that is different than this. That is different than any other in history. It is all right there inside of each of us. All we have to do is find it.
And once we have.
Nothing can stop a single one of us.
You just have to keep looking until you find what you need.
File under Agency.
2 comments:
Steal It - I was just thinking. How much trust do I steal from people when I lie to them. Hard to swallow. But as the great David Gilmour sings in Pink Floyd's "Dogs"; You have to be trusted by the people that you lie too. So that when they turn their backs on you, you'll get the chance to put the knife in. I heard that when I was 15. Words to live by. And that's how I live. That way, when I let you down, I still win.
Make It - This is why I love where I live. A big part of life here is still goods for goods. Service for service. I paint your house, you supply me with wood. I help you fix your car, you help me fix the water line on my trailer. I don't use the city's gas for heat. I saw down my own trees, seperate my own logs, and split my own wood. The ideal thing would be to go solar for energy and dig a well for water... give me time.
Find It - I was just explaining to a sunday school class this week. Solomon wrote, "The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all." The word he uses for time and chance is "Kara". Kara means, The Right Place at The Right Time. God has set me up to be in the Right Place at The Right Time everyday. For many things. All of us actually. Problem is, we are to busy being distracted to be actually looking.
**note** Just robbed my boss of 10 minutes.
Like you told me many many months ago. We are all at the right part of our story right now. I've been forgetting that this week. Re-reading your comment reminded me of that, and trust me I fucking needed it.
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