The Simple Life
by peet Monday, May 17 2010, 7:04am
international /
social/political /
literature
A story of us
As a child things were really simple, people said things u could believe and as a child everything seemed 'stable' or so we were led to believe.
Time went by, u grew up and became a grown-up. You dropped stuff on the street and a machine came along (or a man with a broom and trolley) and cleaned it up.
Life was simple; you drove a combustion engined car invented 200 years before (to keep things simple) and waited for the red or green pretty lights to change; you drove to work and shops, life was getting simpler.
People stood at the red, amber and green lights and waited for them to change, then they walked; red meant stop, amber hurry, and go meant gogo, people waited even when no cars were coming, simple!
The lights did it all for you, it was great!
Tall poles with wires supplied power to our homes, made by burning a thing called coal, dug out of the ground 150 years before, very simple.
When the poles started to deteriorate and lean over they just put in another pole to support the old pole; they lashed them both together with rope, simple.
'Newspapers' (daily stories) were produced by people who wanted you to buy things that u and your family 'needed;' everything was bright, shiny, new and of course, simple.
Nothing really bad happened to us because we had people who promised to look after u/us.
We had things called elections, where the people voted for men and a small number of women; because women weren't as 'good' as men at looking after us, simple!
These elected men and the small number of wo-men were looked after by an even smaller number of men who liked to look after 'things,' simple!
The small number of men printed money with numbers on it so we could trade and buy things we really needed, like water, shelter and food.
This money replaced tally sticks that we used for a long time. The small number of men decided money was easier, prettier, so after 700 years of using the tally sticks, the small number of men told our servants that we should use their pretty money instead, simple.
So now we had money; we worked hard to pay back the money the small number of men lent our servants, so we could have the good things in life -- life was simple.
After all, we wanted our lives to be simple; the small number of men supplied the money, so our lives would be simple; it is what everyone wanted, a simple life!
We worked harder and longer to have a simple life; the small number of men charged us more and more for the money they created so we could buy more and more pretty things!
Our servants continued promising to deliver a simpler life; we believed our servants because we didn't want life to be hard we wanted it to be simple!
We spent more to keep our life simple and borrowed more to keep it simple.
Suddenly, one day, somewhere, someone said, "life isn't simple anymore!"
to be continued...