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| Nature-the cowbird feeding off insects in the bison's fur. |
Since the beginning of the world every life
has been part of a system of interdependence
and support with other life forms.
In nature's hierarchy many animals find parasitism
productive as a part of their system.
Such that it is vital for mutual survival.
Only humans talk about 'equality'.
Humans are also the only creatures
to create mass social systems
including slavery and capitalism.
With their attendant concepts
of outright ownership, where so few are 'hosts'
and so many are made out to be 'parasites',
in a blindness to nature so compound
in character, it is beyond perversity.
It's such a trial living 100 kms from a city - I have to drive for an hour to get my shoes shined ;-)
ReplyDeleteActually, shoe-shining is NOT capitalism. It requires almost no capital. Indeed you can borrow the brushes and so on for a week, then buy your own. One must not confuse capitalism (which is a system in which money makes money for people who lend it at interest) with business, which was largely benign until about 1750, and has gone on for hundreds of thousands of years.
ReplyDeleteI have no problem with the shoe shiner, my difficulty is with the compound wealth and power of the person getting their shoes shined, whom I assume to be white, as compared with the low cost and impermanence of the shoe shining business. My problem is squaring the actual social inequality with rhetoric of 'towards equality' and never getting nearer comensality. If I were to see a photograph of a black businessman (assuming we saw his face) in an expensive well cut suit having his shoes buffed to a polish by a white man in which he could see his face the inequality would still be the same, but the picture more shocking to White America, which started first with the Pilgrim Fathers and proceeded apace with independence 1776, not long after capitalism ceased to be benign. I have yet to see that picture. But you are right the inequality, which is between healthy business and destructive capitalism-which has to claim 'to be fair' to justify it's practices, particularly when it is unfair.
ReplyDelete