Crops And Robbers

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You may not know it, and you certainly won't want to admit it, but you are a crop.

See, crops are put in fields in nice neat rows.  They are coddled and watered until they mature to a certain point and produce something useful.  The useful part is then harvested and the rest tossed out - plowed under to fertilize the next year's crop.

Sound familiar?  It should.  That is most likely the life you lead right now.

Think of your school years as being in the greenhouse nursery.  You are in a carefully controlled environment where your growth and development can be directed in the direction that the Farmers want.

Once having obtained the qualities that the Farmers want, and having weeded out the bad seeds, you are planted in the corporate plantation where you are guided and directed until you bear fruit.  At that point, you are harvested by turning you into a consumer and taxpayer.  All the Farmers line up and pluck your fruit until you get to old to bear any more.

At that point, you are cast away and eventually plowed under to fertilize future crops.

The worst part of all this is that you are required to pay for all of it.  Your parents pay for your early schooling, which is part of their harvesting.  Taxes, fees, books, and tuition is carefully plucked from their pockets to ensure their fruit bears fruit.  The same is done to you for your seed.

During the majority of your adult life, you are expected to buy things and pay taxes.  This is the life-long process of harvesting you.  The bloodsucking Farmers stand around waiting for you to throw fruit.  As soon as you do, they run off to slurp it down in disgusting orgiastic feasts.  As soon as they finish, they are back at your branches ready to pluck more of your succulent fruit.

Eventually, your bearing years come to a close.  The quality and quantity of your fruit falls below the Farmers' standards and they uproot you and place you in the composting pile that we generally call the old folks' home.

At that point, everything you were and had is recycled back into the System to keep the process going the next season.

The Farmers do almost nothing.  They supply the field that the fruit of past generations paid for.  They plant the seeds that past generations provided.  They take the fruit that you work so hard to produce.  Then they cast your used and withered carcass away to focus on new fruit.  You and Nature do all the work, they get all the fruit.

Rules and regulations are the furrows in our fields.  If we grow a bit wild, we are trimmed and pruned back into shape.  Those who go wild and grow outside the bounds are sprayed with Round-Up to rid the field of their unwanted wildness.

If you are a Farmer, this System works beautifully.  You put forth a little effort then sit back on the porch sipping lemonade and watching the fruit roll in.  If you are the Crop, it pretty much sucks.  You do all the work, get none of the benefits and no one ever says thanks for all your efforts.

In fact, what us Crops are getting now is a bunch of Farmers frantically mechanizing the System so that they can get all the fruit with no effort.  I mean, gosh!  Right now they have to water and weed and prune.  Suppose they could make machines that bore fruit without any effort whatsoever on their parts?  It was only a matter of time before the Farmers figured out how to get the fruit without the Crops.

So what are us Crops going to do now?  It is quite obvious that the Farmers are looking to replace us.  Are we going to march willingly to the compost pile once they no longer need us?  We really have some deep questions to ponder.

Think of us as all working for the same corporation - which is not far from reality.  We've noticed the "efficiency experts" milling around and rumors are coming out of HR that pink slips will be going out.  Do we fight?  Do we start looking for new jobs?  Are we proactive?  Or do we wait, hoping that it won't be our head on the chopping block?

One thing is for sure - us Crops would be a whole lot better off if we kept all the fruit we produced.