Reply #19: Money

[tama]

is the greatest authority. The eye at the top of the pyramid, controlling everything. We are ruled by symbols. By the hypnotic gaze of eye of Sauron on the one dollar bill. I don't close my eyes, I stare back with both my eyes unblinking.

When I go to a supermarket, I realize how inhospitable places those are, how inhumane. All that food and this horrible artificial scarcity created by the authority of money. The horrible waste. Money destroys the unsold food, refuses to feed the hungry to have greater and greater power, control over everything. I go to dumpster diving and there food is free, otherwise wasted, there is hospitality, in the dark alley behind the supermarket. But money does not want to allow even that, it orders people who it controls to deny access even to wasted food that cannot be sold.

I've lived in the hobbit village, from gardening and gathering, where nature is hospitable and free, as we people are by our true nature. I am a hobbit. I am both weak and strong. I know how weak and tender the few hobbit villages are, those that remain from old times, those that are being recreated. They are part of this world that is ruled by Sauron, there is no escape from authority of the money. I am strong, I am not afraid to look Sauron in the eye, and when I do, it is not my eyes that blink first. When I look in the eye of Sauron and it blinks, I know that behind all that power of authority of money is nothing but fear. And I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid to walk to the land of Mordor. I am here in the Mordor of Wall Street, I'm here in the Shire of ecovillage, I'm in all the places I've lived and all that I've experienced, all that I've learned. I'm certainly not a messiah, a liberator, a leader to be followed - I'm now both too weak and too strong for taking that trip alone or with my pal Sam. I'm not alone, we are in the same boat and we sail together, the 99,999...% of us to unknown land. We don't need to worry for each other, I don't worry. When I'm strong with my strength I help others, when I'm weak I accept help from others.

I am a father and I know authority. I know how to use it when raising children when it is required, to let my voice boom and be obeyed so that my children don't hurt themselves or each other in unnecessary ways. And to my shame, of course I also know how to misuse authority, when it becomes about MEEE MEEE MEEE MY PRECIOUS EGO and not about children and their well being and what they need to learn. As we all grow, there is less and less need to use authority, because the purpose of raising children is to teach them to be independent and responsible, and that can be learned only by trusting them with freedom to grow and learn.

I am both father and child and I know authority. The less it needs to be used the better and the more you use it the greater the risk that it starts using you and you get trapped. I don't surrender to authority any more, because life has taught that all authority is based on fear, from fear of getting hurt to fear of children getting hurt. I love my children and so I surrender to love, because love is stronger than fear and all fear comes from love, even the most twisted forms of fear.