Parable of the Grass Plot

Before I tell my parable about the grass plot, look at this image that I found on a package of latex gloves:

Dear diary,

If you care about big problems, like the tyranny of those two or three corporations that rule the world, you get scolded by your betters. Your betters say: “You should not concern yourself with such things; instead, seek out something that pleases you, and give your energies to that.” So you take up a hobby — a simple pleasure, like tending a plot of grass. You water your grass daily, and the grass kinda grows, and you are both happy: you and your grass. Or at least you yourself are feigning happiness (whether or not the grass is happy, nobody knows; not even the grass itself, because its brain is too tiny and green to be able to think). The point is that now you’ve blocked out the world’s big problems from your care, because your attention is focused on your hobby. Moving forward, your only concern is that the locusts don’t invade your plot of ground and start to pillage the grass’s leaves.

OK, but now recall those corporate tyrants that rule the world, which your betters scolded you for worrying about in the beginning. Lo, these corporations now release armies of locusts upon the earth, because it boosts their profits to do so; and these locusts land on your plot of grass and pillage it. — Doesn’t it therefore seem like you were right after all, to initially concern yourself with the tyranny of these corporations? I mean, haven’t you been proven correct, since you took your betters’ advice and learned to dedicate your talents to tending your plot of grass, but then the locusts came & destroyed it?

If you could have your day in court, and state your case honestly in front of a jury of your peers, I believe your peers would side with you, and they would oppose the stance of your betters. This jury might even turn in a verdict that demands that your betters award you a lump sum of money, to compensate you for your pains, so that you might try again to build up your grass plot, which the corporate locusts ruined.

If everything worked out as above, you could take your billions of dollars, which you received from the court settlement, and regrow your land from scratch: plain and simple.

But, in reality, you never get a fair trial. Instead, you’re left to fend for yourself. So you lie facedown on the dirt for forty days, mourning your loss. Then you arise, dust yourself off, and walk down the block to the local shop whose sign says “Gardening Supplies”; and you ask the clerk at the register if you can have some grass seed, because some locusts ravaged your estate. And the clerk informs you that everything in the store costs money, and there’s no such thing as a free lunch. So you leave empty-handed.

Then you schedule a meeting with your priest, and you ask him “Dear priest, what can I do to earn a buck? I mean, an honest buck? Because grass seed costs money, and I would like to renew, to rejuvenate, to RESURRECT the leaves of grass in my plot, which got annihilated about a month ago.”

And the priest says, “Get a job at that local shop whose sign says ‘Corporate Tyrant Bookstore’ — I hear they sell Bibles there.”

So you get a job working as a clerk at the register of the Corporate Tyrant Bookstore, selling Bibles to little children. And after six months, you receive your first paycheck in the mail. You hasten to open up an account at the Bank of Spacetime, so that you can cash in on your success. You then use your hard-earned money to purchase two bags of grass seed from the Gardening Supplies shop. Now, after finalizing this transaction, you notice that you have a few dollars remaining in your purse, so you decide to buy yourself some necessities: one square meal, a new coat, a new cloke, and a plastic wheelbarrow. (Much depends upon this plastic wheelbarrow.) So you place the bags of seed and all the other supplies that you bought into the wheelbarrow and…

Alright, now fast-forward to the day when the congregation of your church comes to visit you. The occasion is a holiday that celebrates the vanquishing of your nation’s former inhabitants. So everyone shows up at your hut wearing their finest attire. You greet them. You motion towards your grass plot, which is now fifteen percent replenished. You tell the story of how, several years ago, the locusts from the Corporate Tyrant Bookstore came and raped and pillaged your masterwork. But now you’ve almost finished re-seeding the entire area. And when the congregation of the righteous hears this tale, they nod. So this is a great reward, which you will remember for many moments.

But I don’t wanna end this by saying “And everyone lived happily ever after”, because that’s a lie: nothing ever comes to a halt for good or pleases anyone: all goes onward and outward, and to terminate one’s existence is different from what any author implies, and much unluckier. So I’ll relay a couple of the events that transpired directly after the above “Final Judgment”:

• First, one of the members of the congregation sued you at the law, and took away your coat as well as your cloke. (I don’t remember what the reason was that they couldn’t settle with you out-of-court, but they had a pretty strong case.)
• Next some Sabeans fell upon your fresh-growing sprouts, and took them away; and they slew your manager at the bookstore with the edge of the sword.

That’s all. So that latter event was a mixed bag; it was even sort of a blessing, cuz you always disliked your manager. (Most of the people who work in administration are assholes.)