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dafremen
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"These days it's hard enough just to survive", she said to me; and really believed it. She really believed that fighting her way through a daily dose of unnecessary stress, strain and self abuse demonstrated her ability to survive.
True to my nature...I interrupted.
"Well it may seem like survival. We may have been told and cajoled into believing that this is survival, but we're not surviving. No way. We're being taken care of. It just seem like we're surviving because we're still alive.
"Farmers don't usually have an interest in letting their livestock die." - The American Medical Association
"But this is the REALITY of the situation", she chides. I pinch back a tear, feeling so strongly the injustice of her spirit's incarceration. The traitorous exploitation of her life by the so-called "winners" of this charade.
"We've been told that a man-made reality is real..and that makes it so?" I shot, and felt indignation welling up in my throat. Although she probably thinks that my ire is directed at her...it isn't.
"See that treehouse over there?" I practically bristle at this point, pointing toward a blank wall, "Well I built that, and THAT is the 'reality of the situation.' Screw the grass. Screw the sky. Screw the very tree that the damned thing sits in. They are NOT the reality of the situation. They are incidental, exploitable and expendable. The 'reality of this situation' exists inside of my treehouse. You're crazy if you don't think so."
Pausing for a moment while she quizzically cocks her head to one side...I then continue:
"Now..do you believe any of that?"
She shakes her head.
"You think that getting a job and paying bills constitutes 'survival training?'
If everything hit the fan tomorrow and the system blew away, who are you gonna go to for a job? The trees? A squirrel?
Who will you give your worthless paper to in exchange for heat and shelter?
Where will you fill your shopping cart to feed your children?
Those aren't survival skills any more than cattle maintaining their space in a slaughterhouse stockyard is a survival skill."
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081023
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