To Sell Is To Steal

 "God reveals himself in the middle of conflict and contradiction --
and we want to find him outside all contradiction." ~ Thomas Merton


I don't really believe in the concept of "earned income". At least, not while anyone is starving in the world, without so much as access to clean water.

What are these so-called benefits and services we provide, and then purchase, with our labor, anyway? More poisons for the body and soul? More wasted resources, which divert us for a while, then require more care before they can infest the earth, or be recycled into other diversions? So we can pamper ourselves while others cannot even sustain themselves? So we can supplement our diets while others starve? So we can cripple our goodwill; stupefy our consciences and the consciences of others; spoil everyone into mutual complacency? All the while, priding ourselves on the sweat of our brows?

I feel that anything more than what is necessary is stolen. So what if we "work for it"; even a pick-pocket has to pick pockets! The most industrious thief is only the one who picks the most pockets. His laziness would be almost a virtue. We might even call it a kind of charity, when a man accumulates less than he could. At least the petty thief and the welfare addict, who live on a relative pittance, are doing nothing to create new markets, and little to sustain old ones; vortexes of excess and indulgence, to draw money and resources away from the places where they are truly needed. These brave new products and trusted old ones only multiply and strengthen our wants. We breed more mouths to feed, and more hearts to fill, while, already, orphans are starving for food and affection.

The world is so full of superfluous goods and services now, -- who among us is not a swindler by trade? Anyone who advertises is just another confidence man. Necessity requires no persuasion. What do we honestly need which God (or Nature, if you prefer) does not sufficiently provide and offer freely; that is, until some scoundrel intercepts it, fences it in, and charges admission? If everything belongs to God, then nothing is man's. Everything that exists is charity, and our place is to receive what we require, and then to pass on what is left. To have is to hoard. To sell is to steal. What could be more plain?

Even the most seemingly blameless efforts in our society, you will find, exist only to combat corresponding imbalances in the society, so that, if the system as a whole were to be dissolved, such efforts would be seen to be without purpose or sense; their utility is not absolute, but relative, consisting entirely within the context of a radically warped cultural paradigm. We employ unnatural remedies to treat unnatural disturbances, while the underlying problem -- that is, our alienation from the natural world -- is never addressed.

But now we are all caught up in this madness together. The whole world is upside down, and what good would it do to shame anyone, but to set an upside down world on his poor shoulders? In truth, we are shoulder to shoulder here; there is a world of shame to go around, and who can, or should, bare more than the smallest share? Only God can make a saint, and lift him out, individually, from under this burden; grant him wings so as to draw it up from above. The rest of us must find a solution below. I only know that, first, we must overthrow the mutual deception which imprisons us, as defenders of our own captivity; of a system which robs us of our dignity as children of God, and attempts to sell it back to us,-- even when calling it "grace".