Karmic Pirates

The other night I had a dream about pirates. It was like one of the Future First Man's dreams, just continued, like a movie, for what seemed like hours. A lot happened in the dream. I told him when I woke up, that I was a pirate in the dream, and we the pirates were doing things to get through the waters at the head of my hometown of Norway, Maine, and in and around Norway Lake. What were we doing?

Well, one of our actions was to pick through some roasted chickens that appeared from somewhere and to decide whether or not they had enough meat on the bones to be given to foreign students who needed stuff to get by here in the States: food, clothing, furniture... So, a bunch of pirates, complete with pirate do-rags and eye patches and knives held between their teeth, were picking through these chickens, opening them up, looking inside to be sure they had meat on them and weren't just shells that had been picked over and consumed, so we could give some food to these foreign students. (When I was growing up in Norway, there weren't many foreign students kicking around, and I suspect that hasn't changed much to this day.)

Orlando told me that didn't sound much like piracy. What were we stealing? Had we stolen the chickens? (I don't know.) Why were pirates giving good meaty chickens away? I explained I must be living out, in the dream world, an instance of karmic piracy, something like Robin Hood would have done back in Sherwood Forest, only right there on the Little Androscoggin River and Lake Pennesseewassee.

I've done my share of taking things, and I've done some giving. I suspect I haven't given as much as I have received, or blatantly stolen, so maybe this dream was a reminder. Aside from the humorous images that stick with me now, the whole concept reminds me of my political-philosophical convictions, which I recognize are not feasibly realistic at this point in human existence.

Saturday evening we were sitting on the back deck at Joy's house enjoying a beer and the late spring weather, and she mentioned a discussion that had cropped up at work about tragedy of commons. Her overwhelming impression of the concept is that it applies outside of land use management, and I agreed with her in an exchange this morning, that this is true. Tragedy of commons, for those of you who don't know, can be found with a simple "google" search; try it out. Before you do that, think about what the words together imply; common sense will get you through the rest of this blog entry.

"I know, the tragedy of commons thing is really interesting, not just from a land use perspective but from a philosophical one as well. It's a crucial piece of anarchist thought, in my book, and it bugs me that so many people think of anarchy as a chaotic bunch of people running around in black berets with bombs, wanting to annihilate everyone around them, and forget, or don't even know about or consider, the symbol and therefore the entire course of the philosophy, which is 'out of chaos, order.' Anarchy is the ultimate people taking responsibility for themselves and their community, and for some reason people, really smart people, seem afraid of that concept. My own personal theory is that we are so reliant on our ability to pass things off as someone else's responsibility, pass blame, even to the government, that taking responsibility for our own actions is a distasteful thought- too much work, not just physically and mentally, but morally as well. There. You just heard my political rant for the day."

Karmic pirates would not overfish the waters. And they would share any roast chicken they "found."