Survival is in Truth
Once upon a time there was a people who had to buy their survival. They worked 8-16 hours 5-6 days a week for their fellow citizens who sold the necessities for survival. But for many of the people all that work was not enough, they still could not afford survival. All this work and worry made the people sick. Sadness pervaded the people. As well and anger and desperation.
The Purveyors of Survival used up all the resources and polluted the land, air, and water. They took big profits, but did not share them with their fellow citizens. They shirked change and responsibility. So the people had to pay to clean up the Purveyors’ messes and their survival. The people became sicker. The planet became sick. Disasters abounded. The tenuousness of their survival became clear to the people—despite doing as the providers demanded—as millions of people died and millions more lost their homes.
Despite the nature of their existence, the people taught their children to share, that if they worked hard they could afford to survive. But this was not true, and by the time the children became adults, few shared anything. Movements of kindness, sharing, would sometimes pick up. But it was never enough to change the whole culture. Some of the children grew up to become Purveyors at the top of pyramid. Some people grew up to sell myths at the middle of the pyramid, that survival was a personal choice, that failure to survive was a personal failure: unhealthy behaviors, unacceptable bodies, moral weakness, laziness. Of course, these Purveyors said they had products that could save them. The people at all levels of the pyramid were too busy to stop and think, so they bought the diets and the pills and the self-hate, often on credit. No matter how much people bought, their survival remained tenuous. And they continued to feel ill and sad.
The sicker the people became the more expensive survival became. The cycle just got worse and worse. Some people took their anger and desperation out on their loved ones. Others took it out on strangers, shooting into crowds to make themselves feel better. The disasters became an everyday occurrence. Some came from the people, some from “accidents” in producing the things the Purveyors assured the people were necessities for survival, some of the disasters came from the earth herself. Many people died, many lost their homes, and many lost their means of buying survival. The remaining people continued to work hard. They blamed the Purveyors of Survival for the disasters in short quips and head-nodding conversations that only repeated what someone else had said.
One day, a virus stopped all the work, and the people finally had time to stop and think. They looked hard at their lives before the virus, and vowed to make changes. Not everything the Purveyors sold was necessary. Not all of the work had to be conducted they way the Purveyors said.
Some of the people began to see the deeper lies the Purveyors of Survival circulated. They realized they were good enough to survive, they were hard enough workers, they were pretty enough, their health problems were not their fault. But what could they do? They had to buy their survival. There was no other system. They would not go back to being cavemen.
This revelation inspired the people to go back to school, to change their work, or the way they worked. The Purveyors became nervous. They did not like change. Soon the Purveyors found themselves without the labor they needed. The began to pay more. Of course the cost of survival went up too. Over time, the reorganization settled. And the system returned to its previous state.
Many of the people who saw the deeper lies turned their insights into products, even though they had not found the solution, and sold those insights as the key to survival. Because the truth is, one must buy one’s survival.