I'm going to tell you of the place in which I (Daniel Ferguson) live. Society is a disaster and the government isn't much better. People are divided into classes and sectors, all treated differently but harassed just the same. The poor have it just as bad as the rich; the rich have it just as good as the poor. Chaos in the systems of democracy is not uncommon as our rulers destroy where we live. The more ignorant our society becomes, the larger the hole we dig ourselves into.
Technology has ruled our lives for years now, always advancing in ways never foretold. Tracking locations isn't uncommon and the government can know exactly where everyone is, all day, every day. The people I'm surrounded by rely on said technology to live their lives; it is their family, their friends, their husbands, their wives. If you took a gander down the street it would not be uncommon to notice a piece of technology sprouting from a man or woman's pocket. No one realizes how far down we've dug ourselves.
People say freedom is free, and a blessing, but truly, it would be a blessing if it were free. I can't remember the last time I didn't live in fear that someone could murder who I am on the spot. I can't remember the last time I felt safe under the ever-arguing governmental system. We are being pushed under the print of a thumb against our will and cannot escape the pressure. Businesses strive under the pressure to steal everyone's earnings right from under them, making the rich become poor, in more ways than one. In what world would freedom be free, if being free means being caged?
As children we grow up believing there are no hoops to fly through in the world. Our parents look to us and show us how beautiful our society is, and show us how great life can be. But soon rumors surface and new hoops materialize for ourselves to conquer, soon our parents must show us these hoops, and soon we must watch them fall. We, all too soon, grow up and test the waters and jump the hoops, and in the end, fall with our parents are there, who must pick us up. And then we have children, these children follow we who were children, and act and respond in a similar manner to us. There is no change, this is the never-ending circle of a hoop; there is no freedom in that.
There is a tale of the circle of a hoop, one that no one will never fly through, but we all know too well. Disease is strong in the weak and the plentiful. Justice is as just as it can ever be by the standards of those who don't take time to notice. The world we live in is small, but large in the aspect that no one ever takes the time to open their eyes and see what is truly out there. The walls that our civilization are bound to seem passable, but wherever we venture past, there will always be the impossibilities of living a happy life; monotonous now, monotonous tomorrow, monotonous forever, monotonous for life, this is the answer to survival.
I live in a circus, but am not a clown. I make a fool of myself, but am not a clown. People fear of and for me, but I am not a clown. I live in a rural civilization surrounded by many others bordering our "freedoms" with their own set of "freedoms". Sometimes I look into the sky and wonder what it's like to live in a world not so strictly ruled by terrorism, for the only true order on this earth is made from fear. If there was no terrorism, there would be no order. No order, no laws. No laws, no justice. No justice, no pain. No pain, no loss. No loss, no freedom. No freedom, no order. This is the never-ending circle of a hoop, and we are all clowns who dive headfirst into one.
In this society in which I reside, there can only be freedom with order. People are cruel, sick, and inhumane, so much so that the world has turned ill and there can never be a true "free life". I live freely just how everyone else does, however. I have a great mother, father, sibling brother, and pet, though this makes me the same as everyone I know. Freedom of expression is gone; I cannot leave the tranquility of my home being different from the rest of society and then come back home the same way. This form of life that our society has created for ourselves is harsh, cruel, and unjust, and we can't even blame someone else; we're all the same person anyway.
I've grown up through a rough 16 years of living my life in a false haven which painted a hell to resemble a sunset. Education is what makes our generations thrive, and what for? After school is finished you get a nice shiny medal; then you go back and do it again, because everyone else is, so you should to. Then you get another shiny medal, and with that shiny medal you can trade it for a career that will turn you into a trophy clown. This clown will jump through their designated hoops to please the ringmasters. There is no way to change how we live our lives, for there are much worse ways to fly.
Diseases in this civilization rule our world; they're the only reason for business and no business. More and more illnesses are being brought to us and destroying our societies. We, as a people, may think that there are these people, like doctors or pharmaceutical personnel, who want to see us be cured, but that is false. Without illnesses, and without sickness or injury, they would have no business remaining. Their money relies on everyone else being hurt, and buying into the "medication" they sell. If there was a cure to every disease in the world, there would be no need for doctors to heal anyone, and they've all figured this out. It makes my head hurt to think about the number of times I've taken medicine and it only works for a short period of time, but guess what? The disease comes back! Everyone I know is literally continuously being infected by virus after virus, and each one puts them into a debt, and fills the medical workers' pockets with income. The government I live under is being run by sick people infecting other people to become even worse.
With the amount of technology we have, there is a vast amount of information being hidden directly under our noses, and right through the hoops of which we jump. Everyone is neglected of information, and any new information acquired comes a cost. It's hard to live a life surrounded by a source of vast information, but with nothing useful in it's interior. Then there are these people who plan to overthrow the world we know. These people live within the surface of the earth, and convene in the confines of electronics. No one has seen these members, nor are they blatantly obvious in the open; no action has been taken to overrule the government, and that may be because the government is just too strong. Where there is denial, there is revolt, and where there is revolt, there will be war.
I have a story, or a tale more aptly, to make your brain's gears turn, and for some, all the way into recognition to not allow a world such as this happen. I sit at home and relax on the sofa, entertaining myself with my handy hand-held device. A news alert comes across my screen and takes me to watch an "important broadcast" about a current event (of which is required to be knowledgeable of). A man is standing in the center of my screen, a six-foot man shrunk down to six inches. He clears his throat as he realigns the papers in his hands, tapping them on the desk to secure the alignment.
He speaks in a rough, baritone voice, "More news has spread over the mass disease outbreak covering the nation (let's name this disease X for simplicity's sake). X has sprouted several cases across several surrounding cities, and is extremely contagious. Doctors and nurses and scientists are all working toward a cure to this abominational outbreak." And with that his speech was over, he was once again dead and nonexistent to the rest of the world.
He said that many people are working to create a cure, and many of these people seemed to have graduated successfully out of the Hoop System, though aren't they the ones who are making the system harder for everyone else? These scientists have found cures to many diseases, but these diseases cause death, and death is crucial for our survival as a civilization. These deaths that they create allow for overpopulation to be a concern of the past (overpopulation is always scary because then resources will run out, but if there's too many diseases killing one person for every new person born, our population will become stabilized. These philosophies are not far from the right track, though if we aren't careful, there will be a war of bloodshed.). We can all live happy lives if there's no one else to get in our way right? Wrong.
Think about in the end of all of this - murdering should we call it? - who actually comes up on top? The poor people who have nothing left to live for? No, they've already been marked dead by all the new diseases researchers are making thanks to a bad antibody. How hard could it be to purposefully "forget" to add a certain aspect of a cure to an antibody? In other words, isn't it completely possible for anyone just to add poison to a so-called medicine? We would never know the difference because doctors are telling us it will make us feel better. Why do we trust doctors anyways? Well I'll tell you why, we trust them because they obviously know how to work the Hoop System; if they can figure out how to make tons of money, and be ahead of everyone else in academics, that makes them that much more trustworthy. These people, though, are the ones who actually make the messed up systems that rule the civilization I live in, because now the rich people only survive thanks to half of our society being lost in a pile of debt that our government makes them pay.
Everyone owes money to someone else, and this is the same for how I live my life as a clown for the circus of hoops. Our population is widely ruled by people who carry a fairly large fortune with their name. These people are the people whom everyone looks up to, and these higher-class people have special privileges in life. The poor people love-hate these rich men and women for they are to thank for the world we have now. These people with more money than the poor give less to our society than everyone else combined. But these people are responsible for making our "City of Living" money to carry on for another day, so is it truly fair to make them pay even more money than they already made? Well everyone else does it ten fold, so no matter who you ask, someone is always going to want something else out of someone than what they're getting in return. The moral of this digression is that we, the people, are selfish, stuck-up, and stubborn children who want more people to dig us out of the hole we refuse to climb out of.
After hearing of a disease outbreak in different places can lead to chaos, and then everyone loses their own sense of order. Once more and more diseases break out, it will just be common and we all live in our sick little world, revolving around sick people treating the sick. All order is lost to the world, and that's what everyone I know is looking for. Everyone wants a place to live that isn't bound to a pole of ordering authority figures. Everyone wants that true taste of freedom, but really, who can smoke a pack of cigars and not call themselves addicted by the end of the day? Once people finally feel what it's like to have freedom, no one will ever go back to order, and at that point there will only be insanity, because everyone has a different idea on what freedom should be like.
Meanwhile, I live in this world of hoops and cages; with people afraid of rulers, but even more afraid to wear the shoes. The people who rule where we live have the "impossible job", for it is impossible to do something that pleases everyone. Everyone I know makes the point that no one ever gets what they want out of this world, and that the government does everything against them, for that, the rulers are hated. No one looks up at the person leading this gigantic population of ours and says, "I totally agree with everything you're doing," mainly because perfection is such a sketchy idea to begin with. No one would ever be able to comprehend the abillity to be perfect to everyone. Everyone promises something that they want to change about the world, but when they finally get the power to do so, it's not possible. Once promises are made, but shortly broken, hatred follows soon afterward, and then there is another impossibility: to run the uncivilized children/citizens of our country.
This world, the world that I live in, has chewed me up and spat me out, as it is anything but the perfect society it had aimed to become. The hoops in this world are suspended by great expectations, some seemingly-impossible, some even more so. This world I have described is cynical, and it seems that anyone can turn their back on anyone at any given time, and depressingly, this is all true. These tales of harsh reactions and treatments may seem over exaggerated, but if looked at from a certain light, the blinding light, all of this is completely true. A life of struggle and hatred and distrust, all intertwined and tangled up by this abomination we call society. Though throughout this struggle, there is an answer for why I've decided to thread this yarn into a quilt of a tale, and the reason is simple, though it may pose as a warning. You and I are the acrobats in the circus of the United States of America, for it is 2015 and freedom is not free, and everything comes at a cost . . . is it already too late to change the world we've created?
