The Discovery Channel is fertile soil for metaphors about existence. What is nature but competition for existence? We plant gardens, demanding that the soil produce fruit for us. Otherwise harmless rodents compete for our food, and thus become sworn enemies. What is life but competition and struggle?
Yet watching herd animals being slaughtered by lions remains beyond my comprehension. "Don't they realize," I think to myself, "that they outnumber the lions?" Collectively, more gazelles will die because they won't turn on the lions. If the gazelles agreed to attack the lions, their predators would be slain, and the gazelles would be free to establish a society suited to their needs.
"If only gazelles had consciousness," I used to tell myself, "then they'd realize their inferior strategy."
Yet here were all are, bitching about Wall Street rather than stringing those mother fuckers up from nooses. We complain about special interests. Yet the very phrase - special interest - indicates their smallness in number. The masses hate the special interests because special interests pass legislation harmful to the many, and beneficial for the few.
Unlike the gazelles, we don't lack consciousness. We don't lack awareness. We know what is happening. It's happening right in front of us. We can see it. We are aware of it. We know it.
Every day I wonder how much longer people will live as gazelles...
