If you think of prison as a form of punishment, you may be inclined to deny my frustration and dismiss it as spoiled, privileged, middle class griping.
But I see imprisonment as a more broad state of being, as a sort of reality in which one is perpetually stuck in an enclosure that one does not condone, a place that offends every sensibility one has. This is a place that puts a very real constraint on a human being's natural inclinations.
A strange moral dilemma, to say the least, seeing as how I was raised to believe that you must work a job of convention to make a living in modern society. I'm being paid. Is that not enough? Should I not shut my mouth and do as I'm told?
Unfortunately, this code of ethics is wearing off with every new generation born into modern capitalism. We are overdosing on objects. On consumerism. You can't work an honest job when you no longer believe in the ends that you work towards.
What is my award for bowing my head and committing to hard work? A big house? A luxury SUV? A swimming pool? What are we working towards? Where is our moral justification for trudging on when we have our dirty fat hands violently groping the Middle East?
Our society needs to consume, consume, consume in order to sustain itself. We must devour oil in increasingly incomprehensible amounts to stay alive. How long can this go on? News headlines of bipartisan compromise and pragmatic governing mean nothing to me. We need radical change, but this country's sordid inertia is far too powerful.
Yes, as a Native American or Inuit-sounding speaker so eloquently says on Godspeed's first studio album: we are trapped in the belly of a terrible machine, and it is bleeding to death. What foresight! This fatal bleeding has been underway for some time now. How they must be holding their breath, waiting for the collapse.
Trapped. That is how I arrive at my prison complaint. Our cultural values and aspirations have become bankrupt, they have expired. It is time for something new.
But I stand conflicted! Today I came home to a package. A large package that was almost as tall as me, a package that my brother wrote, "Fuck Yes" in pen on the front to greet me as I stepped through the front door. It was touching. And when I opened the box and flicked open the catches on the hard case, one of the most beautiful human creations I have ever seen was revealed to me.
A cherry red Gibson SG was facing me, an undeniable work of compound art. Everything about the instrument was perfect: the machining, the shape, the colors, the finish, the electronics, the instrument's function! Every component was its own micro masterpiece, closely fit together to create a tool envisioned to create the most divine sounds.
And it screamed out its electric perfection like I knew it would. What an incredible instrument. And all because of a corporation. A benign corporation. And maybe that's key.
Do we have to throw the baby out with the bath water? I resent the modern corporate power hold to the point of enduring sustained physical pain, but there are some creations worth having, worth spending on.
How tragic that the most beautiful objects to behold in this society are the most expensive! The best craftsmanship, the most wonderful works of art, the most magnificent views to behold, all retaining the more value as they are desired by more men. And so the unfortunate, the poor, are left to fight for scraps. There must be a better way.
There is a better way. Hopefully the noble side of the species finds it.
