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This Shirt
This shirt
Your shirt
Any shirt
Any thing,
but take my shirt for instance:
100% cotton
5am in a foreign land
the most beautiful sunrise ever
a farmer behind the wheel of a cotton harvesting machine
in the employ of the industrial machine
a full day of work in the hot sun
makes
bushels of cotton
all trucked down the road
then spun into thread in the textile mills
in the city where his sons work
next
run through sewing machines
by his daughters in the sweatshops
all these machines
are metal
mined in deep dark holes
by men with black lungs
filling
train cars with unrefined
iron, nickel, and lead
turned into steel
melded to copper wires
coated in plastic rubber
created in laboratory factories
and all these mills, shops, and factories
pull their power from plants
burning black lumps
and black sludge
composed of decomposed living matter
drawn from even deeper and darker holes than the metal
it's an oily muck on the surface of the ocean
and splashing against the penguins and the seals resting on the beaches
it's a chemical smog accumulating in the air
and changing the atmosphere
so that each day we have the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets in recorded history!
pink, blue, and orange sherbet swirling in the sky with ever increasing intensity!
and it's really nice and all
but I wonder if the farmer and his family who made my shirt appreciate the pretty skies as much as I do
I wonder if the miners and the penguins are happy to live in filth so that we can wear such stylish clothing
and if you want to know how you can help the impoverished people of the world and save the environment at the same time,
well you could start
by taking off your shirt...
but I don't see you doing that
and you don't see me doing that
and all I'm saying
is that if we really cared about all that shit
we'd be willing to sacrifice our lives of luxury
because all this material wealth we have,
our cars, our clothing, our computers,
was gained and is maintained,
at the expense of others.
the economic system in place today is indentured servitude on a global scale,
and just because we can't see our slaves toiling in the fields and factories,
and aren't ordering them around and beating them directly,
that doesn't make it right.
So who cares?