If they do not you're shut out in the cold
They have almost all the food inside
They open slots to feed those outside
You have some information, some truth, to share
The people outside need it more than the corporados
But the corporados control the loudspeaker
And they don't answer the door for truth.
So where do you go? Undermine the walls?
One by one, speak to those waiting for the feed slots to open?
Something's rotten inside
When it's bad enough the corporados will come out looking for food
They will find truth to eat
When we don't understand or face the real structure of society and its methods, delusions reign. It's more comforting that way, for a time. Everyone who can afford it can still consume a sumptuous feast, but the calories are getting emptier and there's the taint of petroleum oil.
I wrote the above poem July 15 after an unusual diet of television news and the Washington Post for two months, after being spared for years. The BP oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico has sharpened the distinction between the dominating corporate news-feed and the wilderness beyond -- that of imagination and reflection.
Lately I've had "new" thoughts about attempts to reform a system rotten to the core that may have no consciousness of where it is headed (i.e., toward inescapable collapse).
Much of a modern person's activity is obsolete, but in our high-energy, high-population interdependence we continue to feed off one another however unsatisfactorily.
It must be foolish to devise reforms that depend upon including the participation and approval of the rulers and masters of wealth -- when a whole vision of a better society isn't even articulated. The occasional outrage allowed to slip through, usually served up by a progressive internet news source, does not critique the system so as to advocate abolishing it and replacing it with something functional and lasting.
Many reasonable proposals for policy change, or innovations to raise awareness, would have to be approved by the powers that be. And they can ignore anything. Freedom does not come from asking for it from the oppressors. But the oppressed can try to go on pretending they are hardly oppressed.
People seem to have to fool themselves that there can be reform. (Change, Hope, and other vague election promises.) They can barely see or admit that the powers that be cannot grant freedom; freedom must be taken. It can only be with freedom and equality that ideas for true reform or a vision can come to pass.
Up against the corporate monolith, with the governmental mouthpiece speaking quasi relevance down to us, change can only come from the bottom up. This is not the late 18th century or the early 20th century, when upheaval rocked societies that resisted reasonable change. Vast change will surely come, but if we can manage one form of preparation before being hit by falling chunks of the corporate state, it would be to start facing the right direction and prepare for an unauthorized future.
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