Human beings have been domesticating animals for thousands of years. In the process we too, became another domesticated animal. As our understanding of the process and each species became clearer, it also became more efficient and we learned how to maximize our ability to control both livestock and companion animals with greater ease as they became genetically easier to be manipulated.

Due to our extreme form of self-deception--catered to by things like religion and commerce--so too did our ability to be farmed by those human beings who recognized this set of traits in their own species.

You are a form of livestock. Because you (and you know I don’t mean you) are not harvested for meat you wear a set of blinders that makes it inconceivable to recognize that you serve other purposes, like a house cat or a race horse. In the same way we use cattle dogs to control the herds and protect us when we work with much larger animals, these farm managers (of humans) use police and intelligence agencies to keep an eye on us and keep us in line. And much like we can lead our flocks wherever we like with a bucket of grain, so too can social leaders use promises or goods to move humans to wherever they like mentally and emotionally, if you catch my drift.

Every single year I learn this lesson over and over and see it work reliably, day in and day out. Humans are not exempt from the laws of Nature simply because we have a soul or an intellect. If we lived in closer accord to our true nature and in an environment better suited to our benefit rather than to our managers it would be far more obvious, but that was part of their plan too.

Cities are a form of CAFO--Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations--that make recognizing our enclosure much harder to discern. People living in a state of independence and self-sufficiency are almost universally able to see that urbanity is the exact opposite of free and open. It is a giant pen designed to enclose us in a place where they can better exercise their dominion and control.

Author

More essays by this author may be read at HardscrabbleFarmer.com

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