Mood: It is said that when an baby elephant is born into the circus, they tether it’s leg with a chain. During its childhood the elephant struggles against the chain and is unable to break it until finally it breaks them. They give in – the chain is unbreakable. So much so that when they are grown (and can break the chain) they don’t even try.
It’s kind of hilarious if you think about it – did you think that freedom would be handed to you? Did you imagine that the world had it stored up somewhere? Perhaps some custom made boxes of freedom, delivered to the doorstep of everyone who… what?
What would be the bare minimum qualifications for freedom?
Would you begin to hand it out alphabetically? Perhaps by order of who has been waiting for longest – but how do you even judge that? There are lineages that have never known freedom. Would you give it to them first? Perhaps you would begin by those who were struck hardest by the great knowledge famine, brought about when the winds of change wiped the land clear of all fertility? But how would you justify this to the people they cannibalized in their desperation? So perhaps that’s whom you start with – the cannibalized – they must know the most of the pursuit of freedom. Or maybe you would start from the oldest. They they too, may taste the dream before they die.
Will you taste the dream before you die?
First you lost sight of the dream.
Then you destroyed the dreamers.
Now you clamour in the dark
in pursuit of vision.
The madness of cursing blindness,
after you gouged out your own eyes.
“Freedom is a multifaceted construct which extends beyond political ideology.”
Steve Hughes
But all you knew, of course, is that freedom was something that you could demand. Something that could be created outside you – breaking away of the chains that held you down. Without tethers, you thought you would fly.
You never thought that what was holding you down was gravity.
And that the escape velocity of the earth is 40,270 km/h.
All you knew was that, despite generating mass amounts of energy, you were still not free.
Which is why it is laughable – because what did you expect? That they were handing out rocket engines on the corner of Koinange street? And, even if they were, it takes 1,453,867 litres of liquid hydrogen to fuel a rocket. And, at 16 bob per litre that’s KES 23,261,872 for lift off alone. Who has that kind of money to fashion you a custom set of fancy wings?
And, with that amount of capital, how did you expect to find them on the ground – weighed down by trivial matters like the laws of physics?
As if newton’s laws would apply to a tree in a spherical vacuum.
(now, they’re just stringing you along)
Still, having spent time trying to understand the elements of a spaceship, you begin to scavenge.