All I Want & Peeing on an Electric Fence

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As I drove my kids to school today, they were happily singing along to the following words -




I don't want your millions, Mister,
I don't want your diamond ring.
All I want is the right to live, Mister,
Give me back my job again.

Now, I don't want your Rolls-Royce, Mister,
I don't want your pleasure yacht.
All I want's just food for my babies,
Give to me my old job back.

We worked to build this country, Mister,
While you enjoyed a life of ease.
You've stolen all that we built, Mister,
Now our children starve and freeze.

So, I don't want your millions, Mister,
I don't want your diamond ring.
All I want is the right to live, Mister,
Give me back my job again.

Think me dumb if you wish, Mister,
Call me green, or blue, or red.
This one thing I sure know, Mister,
My hungry babies must be fed.

Take the two old parties, Mister,
No difference in them I can see.
But with a Farmer-Labor Party
We could set the people free.

So, I don't want your millions, Mister,
I don't want your diamond ring.
All I want is the right to live, Mister,
Give me back my job again.

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So, we are in a new era requiring change, say you? 

Think again.

How many of our current problems and "crises" have we encountered before?  How many do we encounter today, yet those who follow us will painfully encounter again?

I learned long ago, that at times you just have to let some folks pee on the fence.  The meaning behind this is embodied in a Western saying:

"There are three kinds of men, The one that learns by reading, The few who learn by observation, and the rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves."

What I have learned, teaching and mentoring younger minds on occassion, is that many of them just have to pee on that fence themselves to get it.  Often, entire cultures and/or societies also just have to pee on that fence.

Then there are those few, who learn by observing.  They observe past, present, future - and the entire Kosmos.

The problem, I think, is that we neglect to include as we transcend; we are too arrogant to include, to embody, the lessons of others around us and those who came before us.

Such sad, such devastating, arrogance.

Take a look at the lyrics that start this blog. 

Does, perhaps, "We worked to build this country, Mister,
While you enjoyed a life of ease. You've stolen all that we built, Mister, Now our children starve and freeze. " resonate with the Wall Street (now, for your enjoyment, expanded to world markets) fiasco? 

Does, perhaps, "Take the two old parties, Mister, No difference in them I can see" resonate with the two parties in the US?

Does, perhaps, "Think me dumb if you wish, Mister, Call me green, or blue, or red." resonate with such seemingly arrogant, if not blatantly ethnocentrically convenient, classification systems?  Does it smack specifically of SDi (Spiral Dynamics Integral)?

Indeed, this could easily reflect the society of today.

Yet, it was written in 1931.  Woodie Guthrie wrote this about Jim Garland, the song's author, and the song itself -

"Jim Garland was here in Leadbelly's house, and Jim's wife and their three children. Jim's children were sick lots of the time, and his wife took down with the fogs of TB. Then Jim got down with it, and for a long time he walked and fought it....

Jim got up the strength to play his guitar here, and he tried to tell us with his songs and ballads the stories of the ones that went down fighting. Half a song would be a clear story..., and the other half of the song would be Jim's slogans, his sermons, his plea, his newspaper editorial, his whole appeal for you to come over onto the union side and fight. Jim made up several pieces, I never knew the exact number, I never tried to find out, I never tried to call a verse good or bad, I never had the energy to say that one of his lines needed to be rewritten, another line rubbed out, another one skipped, another one added. I found something bigger and better than all of this is the war that Jim Garland was fighting."
 
~ Woodie Guthrie, "Leadbelly is a Hard Name", American Folksong, New York, 1961, page 11 (originally published in 1947)

Like those that came before me,

"So, I don't want your millions, Mister,
I don't want your diamond ring.
All I want is the right to live, Mister,"

and All I Want, is for all of us to include, transcend, and know - the lessons we have learned, are learning, and will learn in the future will be the same lesson, time and again, as the Kosmos unfolds.

All I Want, beyond what is embodied for me in that song, is to not be the one peeing on the electric fence.


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