A good friend of mine emailed me the
following qoute and I had to start off my
post with it to set the tone. So, with that in mind, I shall
begin.
Pigs. Pigs live for free; they are not
free. They don't pay rent. Nor do they pay for their food. Nor do the
pay for anything else. Well, until the day they're slaughtered that
is. Then they pay with their life. They live in comfort and are
comfortably numb. They eat, drink and generally be merry (even in
their own filth). All that is expected of them is that they get fat;
and that's what they do. They aren't the customer to the farmer. They
aren't the consumer (though they do eat a lot). They are the
commodity; the product to be sold for profit.
Enough about pigs; now onto humans.
Throughout human history, there have been those very special types of
people that only saw their fellow neighbors as commodities. As beings
that are either bought and sold; or suckers to sell things to. This
is the dark side of capitalism. Not to say that capitalism, in and of
itself is bad. Rather, that human nature, being what it is, can (and
does) corrupt it. Using it for devious and nefarious purposes for
their own greedy end. That everything has a dark side (or a dark
passenger). That capitalism is neither good nor bad; but how the
human uses it is what dictates its nature.
To view other humans as a commodity is
what leads to slavery. To view another human as potential property
(and therefore, less human) is what slavery is. It is disgusting.
They see a free market as a means to freely do whatever they want.
They ignore the fact that there are consequences to actions. They
lose their soul in a vain attempt to gain the world. This is why it
is so, that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a
needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
This is materialism (or consumerism) to
buy things, to seek things, to treat things as an idol. The alter for
this, of course, is the shopping mall. To buy (or consume) any of a
wide assortment of things to the point of worshiping the dollar and
what it can buy. What would you like? Whatever it is, there is a
store for it. How many people pay $60 for a pair of jeans? How many
of them care where it came from? How many would care if they knew it
was stitched together by someone making a quarter an hour to be
shipped halfway across the world for their comfort? Remember the
clothing factory in Bangladesh back in April?
But wait, aren't those factory workers
getting paid? Does it matter? They're being treated to lives and
working conditions that many in 1st world countries
wouldn't tolerate for wages many would take unemployment welfare
over.
1st world country. If that
term isn't indicative of the “rat race”, “bigger is better”,
“latest-greatest”, entitlement culture of secular materialism,
then I don't know what is. Not only is our country amongst the elite
of the most developed and advanced technology, but we need a “1st”
label so everybody knows it. We need a “3rd” label so those less
fortunate (“least of these” anyone?) know their place. (Has
anyone ever heard or read which countries constitute as “2nd
world”?).
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