Every dream has been crushed, and there’s no hope, but we all keep drifting.
A newborn squirrel is informed by its parents: “Dear little one, you are in debt; therefore you must do as your creditors say.” The baby squirrel answers: “But, I was just born, this instant — how can I owe anyone anything?” The parental squirrels explain: “Food costs money; shelter costs money; clothing costs money.” The newborn answers: “But food grows freely on trees; and so do these leaves that our nest is made of. And this fur coat that I’m wearing is part of my own body.” —On hearing these shocking truths from their offspring, the squirrel-parents are astonished; they spend several moments in thot, trying to devise a line of attack that might win the argument, but ultimately admit that their infant has intellectually defeated them. “You certainly chose to get born into the land of freedom,” they say. Then they run out into the street and get hit by a car.
Humans are more advanced than squirrels. Humans enter school as children and are immediately taught how to manage their debt.
Credit card companies like Discover and Visa distribute materials purporting to teach financial literacy to kids of all grades. Discover’s materials are geared for middle school through high school. Visa’s materials span Pre-K through twelfth grade and on through college.
[—from Who’s Raising the Kids? by Susan Linn]
If this alone is not evidence enough to convince you that humans are far superior to squirrels, then consider also that humans are known to inter their deceased loved-ones in the earth, as opposed to leaving roadkill exposed at the curbside.
. . . the pious giants who settled in the mountains must have noticed the stench which arose from the corpses of their dead as they rotted on the ground nearby, and must have begun to bury their dead.
[—from Giambattista Vico’s New Science; Sec. 4, Ch. 1]
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OFFICER DUKE: Who smells like bad fish — is that you?
OFFICER SUNSHINE’S WIFE: No, it’s not. I think it’s you.
OFFICER DUKE: Wow, what a gross, horrible stench.
[—from the film Wrong Cops (2013) by Quentin Dupiuex]
It’s Christmastime. So here’s the real question: How important was the death of Jesus, and why did we not leave him buried? — To answer this, take a look at his life, and compare it to his legacy: The man went around telling everyone to forgive all debts.
“Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”
—Matthew 6:12 (The Lord’s Prayer)
One might expect that Jesus’ followers would forgive at least some debts; but instead they build war machines and forgive NO debts. That’s called: surpassing the enlightened one’s teachings by means of brute force.
Let’s say you live in a nunnery. Everyone inside your nunnery is your sister or your mother, for you are one big family, and all non-nuns are considered strangers. These women outside of your nunnery are not necessarily enemies or dangerous; you just don’t know them as well because you don’t share daily life together. So when a fellow nun grows famished and cries out in prayer asking for a serving of minestrone, you simply meet this need: you share from your stockpile of soup, because you’re all family; and you know that when you yourself are hungered, your sisters and mothers in the nunnery will share their foodstuffs with you likewise. But when a strange woman is in need, instead of offering freely from the nunnery’s stores, the nunnery trades with the foreigner; there is an attempt at a fair exchange: quid pro quo, tit for tat. This system of barter is engaged in with any stranger who does not share daily life with the community, for the nunnery cannot trust a foreign woman to return the favors that the nunnery bestows upon her.
Now imagine a nunnery whose members charge each other U.S. dollars for goods and services — not only outsiders but fellow nuns are expected to pay. Does that sound perverse, to treat one’s family as strangers and foreigners? It is perverse. And this is the world that we live in at present. (I write in the worst year yet: 2023.)
But now imagine an alternate nunnery that freely offers goods and services to strange women without expecting any recompense. This is the world that I wish we all lived in: one where everyone treats everyone as family, and there is no concern about payback, because the reward is in the doing. Think how friendly such a place would be.
“Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand offereth.”
—Jesus (Matthew 6:3)
Yet now a heckler comes to my show and interrupts my sermon to say: “God must have given you baloney for brains, Father Bryan, for your idea about folks laboring voluntarily and expecting no pay is pure undiluted hogwash. I, for one, am a very hard worker. I’ve worked my whole life long. But I would never do what I do unless somebody pays me.”
“Why not?” I ask.
“Because I hate my job.”
“Then why not quit?”
“Because I have a family to support. You see, I come from that great generation known as the Baby Boomers: we all brought forth a large number of children; and having all those mouths to feed is expensive. And that’s not even mentioning all the medical bills we’ve racked up. Or our children’s school debt . . .”
“Yes,” I say, “but you’re citing examples of what happens in a system where everything is financialized. I was talking about the polar opposite.”
“Oh, you mean Fantasy Land?” my heckler scoffs. “Sure, in Heaven, everything is fine: you’ve got your good things, and I’ve got mine — but that’s a stupid way to think, because only the real world exists, and this indentured servitude is the system that we have. And, let me add: it’s the best system ever.”
“Best ever!” I laugh: “Why say that? For even the squirrels seem to have found a better way to live: they don’t toil and complain and pay bills and support an arms industry that sucks up trillions in taxes unaccountably; no, squirrels just frisk around in the sunlight and chance upon treasures, which they dig up and snack on.”
“Wrong again,” says my heckler. “Of course you focus on your furry friends’ fun-filled follies, but you conveniently leave out all the times they must cower trembling in their rickety nests high in the trees during tornadic thunderstorms, and all through the months of ice-cold winter. Moreover, the bible story that you cited at the beginning of your lecture depicted the ‘Adam and Eve’ of squirrel-kind dying in agony, right on the street in front of their home, because their only begotten sinned against the financial system: Don’t you remember? — The lad’s parents got run over by their own God’s chariot.”
“Jeesh,” I say, “you have a point. . . . I’m at a loss for words now. . . . Allow me to apologize for disagreeing with you: Can we shake hands and become comrades instead of continuing to argue?”
“It depends on how many home-cooked meals you are willing to serve me.”
“Alright — tho admittedly my left hand wants to slap you for even asking, here is what my right hand is willing to offer: I will make the best French toast that you’ve ever tasted. I will then make meatloaf. I will then make Salisbury steak. I will then make Tuscan chicken. Then I will pickle some red onions, and you can eat them in 24 hours. I will make a large frittata. I will make so much tomato soup that you can freeze the leftovers (that will give you something to look forward to). I will also make chicken piccata. And, for dessert, I’ll prepare from scratch a dark chocolate Kahlua cheesecake.”
My heckler is wide-eyed, and his fingers are wiggling in anticipation: “All those dishes sound AMAZING,” he says: “You have a deal.” —He extends his arm, and we shake hands.
We then climb into the golden chariot that was mentioned above, and it drops us off inside my kitchen studio. I make each dish while the multi-camera setup records all my words and actions. I explain in detail every step of the preparation, so that future ages can benefit from my expertise. It turns out that I am a master chef who used to own and run a two-star restaurant. I only started writing essays and filming my lectures after the pandemic lockdowns forced me to close the doors of my business. When I first came to America in 1977, I couldn’t speak a lick of English. (I still can’t!) I was born in the heart of Europe. My father was French, and my mother was Italian.
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