In ancient Rome, men and women who had been liberated from slavery wore a red “liberty” cap as a sign of their newfound rights as citizens of Rome. Over the centuries the memory of the red cap became a powerful symbol of freedom and equality for all people; it inspired revolution after revolution as free-thinking people united to adorn their hearts with this red hat and proclaim tyranny and oppression an enemy to all. These people gave their lives for the many freedoms we take for granted, and despite all their best efforts can we the sons and daughters of liberty truly consider ourselves free? I don’ think so.
Today we live in spite of the efforts of our timeless heroes as slaves to what appears to be a nameless tyrant. Before when oppression had a name, a face and a crown, it was easy for people to identify and unite against a common enemy. In modern times, tyranny has become more advanced by relying on the same impregnable power of ideas that have afforded us our freedoms through symbols like the red cap – how ironic.
Of Queens and Carrots
Believe it or not there are still kings and queens prancing around the nation forcing their will on free citizens. And no, they aren’t beheading people or snatching their first born to do it all, — that’s way too much work and totally not worth the effort — plus a dead body is a non-gold-producing body. There’s a much easier, more cash-increasing way to get all the gold they can lay their grubby hands – it involves an ass and a carrot…
So, guess who’s the ass… … …. Now guess what they do with the carrot! (Get your mind out of the gutter please)
That’s right you, and well, me. Sadly, we are the asses. The carrot is gleefully dangled over our shoulders, a harness is placed over our back and we mill along chasing that carrot and dragging some plow behind leaving milk and honey as we pass. We don’t care about the milk and honey because we are asses and we need carrots. In fact we don’t even notice that while we sweat, and cry, and strain over reaching that carrot and we pull and tug and struggle that plow holding us down, the kings and queens are behind us scooping up all that precious milk and honey. To make matters worse, the carrot dangling over our shoulders is not even a real carrot!
They call it cutting their expenses, of course – after all, why use a real carrot when a picture does the same job?
You are an ass.
So why do you chase this imaginary carrot wearing that heavy plow? Because you’re an ass, your mother and father were asses, and your grandparents – all asses. From the day you were born you were destined to wear that plow harness and make money for those kings and queens, and neither you nor your family could do anything about it. You like your family were taught to chase the carrot. You were taught that the carrot was good, and that it was something to aspire towards and that anything else was unacceptable.
In fact, everything you’ve done from your childhood until now is part of a cleverly developed plan to make you believe that you are an ass and that you cannot live one day without your beloved carrot (although unbeknownst to you, you will never actually have a carrot). You were trained, manipulated and coerced to love carrots and sadly you had no say in the matter, but neither did you care — You love freaking carrots.
From your teacher to your boss, your lover and your friends — no matter where you look, asses and a desire for carrots abound — apparently the royal plan is working.
The plan is so deeply embedded into everything in our lives that has become the standard of living — the standard of the carrot. And you are the ass, chasing that carrot.
You are such an ass that you think the people who don’t have carrots as nice or as big or as orange as yours were less of an ass than you. And to this day you aspire to be an even bigger ass than you are chasing even more “promising” carrots.
Clearly, you are an ass. But are you a free ass? Or are you a slave of your own ignorance, or possibly something worse?
To be continued.
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:43 am
The way you write is quite colorful and engaging. Of course, the article itself was good, but I was blown away by your writing skills.
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:25 am
I found your site while Googling for stats on American consumer credit card debt (I’m doing a speech on Consumers Gone Wild at my Toastmasters meeting tomorrow).
I agree with you wholeheartedly about being a lifelong ass. All our lives it’s been, “Go to college. Get a good job. Go to college. Get a good job.” And we went to college and got not-so-good jobs. A lot of us were laid off for a year or more, despite the piece of paper we strove for.
And now, with college costs out of sight, we’re willing to sink ourselves–and our children–into debt (or, as you so rightly put it, slavery) for this education, after which our children will work like asses to please a corporation that will probably lay them off two weeks before Christmas.
Thanks for telling it like it is.
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:14 am
@Vixen - I’m so blushing lol. That was a very nice thing of you to say — really it made my day. I spent a lot of time last night trying to figure out what I wanted to write since my previous post for some reason or another was offensive to some people. Looking back at this article you can see that I started to taper off at the end, (so you know I had to go and clean that up a bit… lol) . It was already 1am and I had plenty more I wanted to write but the bed was calling my name and I needed to end it. I’m happy that you liked it so much. I’m not really done with this theme of Middle-classness yet as I’m trying to illustrate the whole “Middlester” vs. “Millionster” thing so hopefully you’ll see some more colorful posts from me
Thanks for coming by Vixen!
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:30 am
@Terry - I heart Google — it brings some of the coolest people my way! But let me just say I’ve struggled with this topic a lot because there is so much to be said and I really can’t get too into details without hurting people’s feelings.
The first thing I come across is “why do you think my life is so bad?” — people are disappointed by the “truths” that I’m trying to unveil in illustrating my philosophy on wealth. For some people it’s “Go to college, get a good job”, for other people it’s “making a living wage, feed my babies” — but no matter where we are in the spectrum the fact remains that we have been “tricked” into accepting this ass-life.
Another question I have yet to answer is, is this whole carrot chasing thing a good or bad thing — and well that would depend entirely on where you want to be in life.
For some people it’s enough just to be chasing a carrot.
Hopefully readers here will agree with me in saying that this is not acceptable. I wanted to point out to people that if you want to be this wealthy successful person you have to go above and beyond and stop accepting things as they are. We all strive to get ahead by one method or another, but we have to first challenge these so-called norms.
BTW — That “lay them off 2 weeks before Christmas” is very Scrooge-like haha, gave me a laugh … good luck with your speech tomorrow you’ll have to tell me all about it. I’ve been wanting to check toastmasters out =)
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:01 am
Once again, excellent article Juan. You really should write more!
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:08 am
@Frank — Thank you sir for the encouragement! I’ll try to write more — well at least you should expect some more articles from me on this topic…
October 28th, 2007 at 9:57 am
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October 29th, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Clever article! Good title. I sure do wish I wasn’t an ass, though. That’s not an encouraging thought. It’s a good way to describe it, because some of the gentler descriptions sometimes don’t shake people enough. I’ll be on the lookout for the ‘to be continued’ continuation…
October 30th, 2007 at 10:37 am
@Brip Blap - Thanks for coming by! I’ve not had the pleasure of seeing your blog before… welcome! This article is in some ways the culmination of my own frustration — I have the other half of this article in a word doc waiting to be edited. I’ll post it soon enough!
October 30th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
[…] Juan Millon (1mil) presents Clearly, You Are An Ass. posted at Millionster.com, saying, “Chasing the imaginary carrot — all the while a slave to someone else.” […]
October 31st, 2007 at 5:29 am
[…] Make People Feel Important: This is something I don’t do enough of in my day to day life. Giving people a sense of importance is a great way to build relationships. Who doesn’t like feeling important? Having children really feeds this need sometimes - my son looks at me sometimes like I’m a combination of Batman, Santa Claus and George Carlin - i.e. protective, generous and incredibly funny. It’s a nice feeling. It should be shared. (@ How I Will Be Rich) […]
November 3rd, 2007 at 12:49 am
great article! Of course there is always something fun about reading “your an ass” again and again…
November 3rd, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Great post. You’ve got a new (ass) subscriber.
November 5th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
@Kim - You can imagine I had just as much fun writing “ass” over and over again.
@Shadox - Oh whoa hehe, thanks Shadox! I don’t promise all my posts are going to be this fun but I’ll do my best. Just let me know how Im going haha.