There’s a saying on the old world, on Earth, that says that “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. But that masks some underlying element of the nature of the statement. Why are we confronting this thought unless something is wrong? It supposes itself to be a negator, a stopper that makes you rethink whether it is worth changing something. But if we’ve identified a problem, surely something then must be broken, and therefore need fixing? I’ve thought about this and the state of Home, of the task we have laid out ahead of us.
And you know what? I’m just tired. Bone tired. It aches through the numbness of unfeeling, though the desire to put things right makes me try to address the pain. But it ain’t broke, so I won’t fix it. But something is broke. It’s always been broke. People die on the scrapheap from exhaustion, people succumb in mine collapses. There’s poverty amongst the people that produce such vast amounts of wealth for the republic. Poverty! There is an entire planet at our fingertips, rich with resources, with food, water, energy. Yet there are people now dying of hunger in the few pockets of civilisation that we ourselves created at the behest of the republic.
Who is letting these people starve? Why can’t the administrator feed his children? Why can’t the miner feed herself? You are here today, taken from your homes for having witnessed just a fraction of the misgivings of the republic. Forced to remove yourself from your friends and family, to move halfway across the world so that your brain will remain untampered with. There is something broken, friends, and we are the only ones trying to fix it.
Today's prompt: bone tired
If you'd like to participate too, the contest/prompts can be found here: @mariannewest/day-1996-5-minute-freewrite-monday-prompt-bone-tired
