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I was sitting naked on the porch today when my son finally arrived from Ohio. A long flight, he rented a car, got here and cut my grass, fired up the electric weed whacker and trimmed, then took a shower, turned on the sprinkler, then grabbed a beer and came out to sit with me.
"See dad, I love you so much I did all the yard work for you." he said with a smile.
I took a puff of my cigar and replied "You don't love me, you want to freaking kill me you worthless pile of excrement."
He looked stunned. "What the hell are you talking about??"
"You took a plane here, which polluted the air I am breathing. Then you used a gasoline powered mower to do the same - hello asswipe they make mowers you can push that require no motor, then you used an electric weed eater - electric from any source other than the sun is harming me personally, then you wasted water on a shower and the yard. Not to mention the noise pollution, I could hardly hear myself think nasty thoughts about my wife."
"EVERYTHING you do is affecting me, and what is WORSE is you had two children. HELLO! Added to the population and strain on our resources. But then, you should not get an abortion either - takes electricity to do that and drives up my costs. And you are drinking beer - which will drive up my health care costs. You are wearing clothes, probably made in China which pollutes worse than we do AND it had to get to the US using ships and planes."
"But, uh, Dad. You are sitting there smoking a cigar. YOU are killing yourself!" He smiled.
"Son - I figure if you are working your ass off to kill me I might as well enjoy the ride. Now help me to get power over the rest of the people and we can make them obey us and not do anything at all. We can sterilize, penalize, ridicule, and eventually remove those fucking freedoms that are killing us. No eating food either - it takes energy and tractors w/gas to even get veggies. We have to stop the madness. All your actions and those of others drive up MY health costs actually, we need to get a handle on this."
"You win dad, now give me a cigar."
"You can't smoke around me either, that's a sin. Now go hand wash my Nazi flag."
(and NO this was not poking fun of global warming, I just used that as a device to convey an idea.)
Fear sells. From terrorism to driving up health care costs more and more some want to control how others live. There is a fine line between being a collective society and an individual, when that line is gone, you are left with no freedoms. If you have both a sense of society and individual freedoms things are in balance.
We don't need to just look at how we affect society, but how it affects us. Without balance, you fall.
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