I went to the grandchildren's nativity play this afternoon, and while it was delightful to see the kids perform and show their families what they have been working towards for the last few weeks, it struck me that they are all being prepared to take their places on the treadmill. Ok they have a few years to go yet, but they will be taught to compete, to value property and to fit into the machine that is our society. They will strive to succeed in jumping through whatever hoops are fashionable and hope to find employment that pays them enough to afford a mortgage, which they will spend the rest of their lives paying back. They will then build homes which they will spend very little time in because they are too busy working to make money, and then at the end of it all their accumulated things will end up in black plastic bags and landfill. Their houses of course will be taken over by the next cohort coming through who will have to raise even more money because the prices of properties has gone up, and so it goes on. Welcome to the machine.
We own nothing. Property is a myth but it is a powerful one that the capitalist system depends upon; in the words used at most funerals, we bring nothing into the world and we sure as hell can take nothing out of it. We are stardust - all of us and simply passing through. Maybe we should think less about ownership and and more about sharing of what we have. You cannot own the land, the land owns you, and to it you will return.
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