[b]Naomi Alderman
We’re only pretending everything is normal because we don’t know what else to do.[/b]
How’s that working for you?
[b]The thing about the Lexington International Bank ladder was that it was very long, and climbing it was very exhausting, and so Andrew Brown didn’t have a lot of time to think about whether he really wanted to get to the top of it—and besides, since so many other people were climbing too, the view from the top must be worth it.
So he kept going. He worked hard. He put his heart and mind and soul into it. There was an opening for a position half a rung higher than he already was. With a promotion, he might get two hours a week of a secretary’s time. He’d go to more important meetings, with more senior people, and have the opportunity to impress them, and if he did he might be promoted again and then… well, of course eventually he’d be running the whole office. It’s important to have a dream: otherwise you might notice where you really are.[/b]
How’s that working for you?
It follows that there are two ways for the nature and use of human power to change. One is that an order might issue from the palace, a command unto the people saying “It is thus.” But the other, the more certain, the more inevitable, is that those thousand points of light should each send a new message. When the people change, the palace cannot hold.
Anyway, don’t forget to vote.
The world is the way it is now because of five thousand years of ingrained structures of power based on darker times when things were much more violent…But we don’t have to act that way now. We can think and imagine ourselves differently once we understand what we’ve based our ideas on.
Cue the fucking idealists. One or another cure being worse than one or another disease.
It’s enough for her to know, sitting in there in the dark, that if she really wanted to she could get out. The knowledge is as good as freedom.
Next think you know they’re dumping her in a hospice.
Just like a man, she says. Does not know how to be silent, thinks we always want to hear what he has to say, always talking talking talking, interrupting his betters.
Just like a woman in other words. Only more of them.