Here’s the thing:
Even if you don’t believe
That the biblical narrative
Is real,
It speaks to something important,
That life under Egyptian rule
Was probably
Intolerable.
That’s what you really need
To take away
From that.
Somehow modern man
Struggles to comprehend
Building the pyramids;
I don’t know how to explain
To future generations,
Because even now
It seems,
Well,
Insane.
“Aliens did it!!!”
Well,
Slaves did it.
Just imagine.
That’s why we hate slavery,
By the way,
Forcing anyone
To lug all those heavy stones
To someone else’s
Eternal ego
That in a few thousand years
Is just a fancy tourist attraction…
And sure,
A hundred years or so ago
We all went crazy about Egyptians,
Started the whole,
Continuing,
Mummy craze,
Made King Tut
A celebrity
Just when the rest of the world’s
Royalty
Was fading
Into the past…
Well,
These Israelites,
These Jews,
They had a story
About a man named Moses
Who led his people
Out of bondage,
Into Freedom,
Into self-determination.
Moses,
Whom they saw
As an adopted son
Of the state,
Who somehow tricked himself
Into supporting his own people,
Who unleashed
A series of plagues
Until the pharaoh
Let his people go
Straight into the Red Sea,
Which parted
Thanks to God,
Straight into the desert,
Where these people
Still grumbled…
Look,
People like to complain,
But that’s the cost
Of Freedom.
6 comments:
Exploitation of labor - long legacy.
To today’s sweatshops, alas.
Yup. Not going anywhere anytime soon, either.
Still baffles me. But that’s kind of what makes it worse than slavery. Nobody talks about it. Nobody tries to end it.
And those of us with privilege benefit considerably. That's the trouble.
Just to stir up trouble: the older I get, the more I believe capitalism is a huge scam.
It’s the only thing that leads to innovation, everything you take for granted. If you eliminated capitalism and its influence on the world as you know it, to reiterate, you wouldn’t recognize anything about it. You would be leading a different life entirely. Complaining about elements you don’t like is one thing. But failing to understand its benefits is something else entirely.
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