Less Than We Think, More Than We Realize

A terrible thing, is a name. It gives power. It changes the rules.

The more names it has, the more lives it has. Each name gives it a new head, a new disguise.

The only crime is theft.

Theft of life.

Theft of land.

Theft of time.

Theft of history.

Theft of identity.

Theft of integrity.

Theft of innocence.

Theft of knowledge.

Theft of ... things.

We steal from ourselves, we steal from each other. And nobody gains anything, so, the world cries, how can it be theft if it vanishes into nothingness? Surely somebody must gain when another loses? So inured are we to selfishness and capitalism, that we can scarcely comprehend a world where nobody wins.

It comes in so many shapes and sizes, genders, colours, creeds, clothes, and constitutions. The race who knows we're all different, but refuses to believe we're not the same. The 'race' that nobody can win. The ideas and ideals that define us.

You can never create or destroy an idea in its entirety unless you embrace it at its roots, knowing what and where and how it is. Things, like us, that think for themselves, can destroy themselves, with as little as a single word at the critical time - but not so for things that have no distinct corporeal form. Ideas have so many names, and we, with our insatiable compulsion to categorize everything, we give every idea a new life in every definition.

The institutions that we use to hurt each other will never go away as long as we give them different names, as long as we give them power. Racism, sexism, 'colorism', casteism, all the '-isms' that you can imagine. If we are all one species, then all of them are different ways of saying "you are different from me, and therefore I am apart from you." Far too often, it is "therefore I am better than you." Each time, the same idea with a different face, a different name, a different excuse, and different rules.

So much complexity, simply because we know too much.