There is an excellent book, The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations, that details the faults of the bureaucratic systems we are leaving behind and the flexibility of the dispersed systems ahead of us.
As a book review: the spider dies when it it’s central command module dies — each severed leg increases its weakness. The star fish regrows its severed limbs, and is a much more resilient system. The authors reveal many fine insights, some day I’ll read it again.
To expand to todays topic, they say creativity is combining two unrelated facts to reach a new conclusion. Keeping in mind the starfish, we will consider the stories of wolves caught in a trap and chewing off a leg to escape.
I knew a family that had a cat that had lost a rear leg, cause unknown. They called it Tripod, and it hobbled about for years as an outdoor pet. If it had been a starfish, it would have regrown the leg.
Here is where we stretch the analogy and our credulity. We’ll call it a creative exercise.
The country where your parents had their citizenship, or where you were born owns you. As a convenience to them you carry their ownership papers with you. If not already, soon your bio information as well as your health records and finger prints will all display on a terminal close to your location as you are tracked. There are already iris scanners that will place you walking down the street if the system in your car, ID, cell-phone, or drivers license fails to report you regularly. You are in a trap. You didn’t set it, it’s grown around you while you weren’t looking, but it’s still a trap.
You will have to sacrifice some things to escape. There will be some painful work, for a time you will be confused and have difficulty adapting. But you will be out of the trap. If that is too graphic, consider it breaking a rule by removing your shock collar. You will still wince when you step past a previous painful border. Rules are made to limit you, not to help you develop.
Like the Starfish you will regrow what was lost. You are human, concentrate on the future and embrace it. Leave the trap. Chew off any physical bondage that restrains you. Go where you can be nurtured and refreshed. Align yourself in whatever society you currently reside, leave the past where it belongs.
The wolf held in a five foot by five foot pen may be fed occasionally, may have a small house, but he was born to run. You are caged, you were born to create and explore, instead you are restrained by regulation and limit — a wolf pen of decreasing size.
I’ve rambled, but you get the point.
You are human.
If you have to get passports, it won’t be that painful. If you have to leave home and travel, you will learn and have fun — along with some embarrassing moments and uncomfortable realizations. When you are ready to move you will experience regrets and have occasional homesickness. But you will own yourself. It is worth it to escape being a mistreated pet — to become self-owned.
Your future should be yours to determine. If you want to sacrifice half your wages for humanity’s sake, go ahead, Don’t live where someone takes half your food supposedly for humanity’s sake and then passes a few morsels on. Live your own life by your own principles.
You may have to chew off a leg. It will grow back stronger where it will be exercised in freedom and opportunity.
Be the wolf, be the starfish, leave the spiders behind.
Bill Freeman