Of Rats and Men

The police knocked on my door last night. Around midnight. Reported by our downstairs neighbor for the crime of watching a movie. (I'm sure many of you have had at some point to deal with such people, so this is not about a petty war I refuse to engage in.)
Fact is that while I was talking to the officer - who agreed that we weren't in fact committing any crime- the said neighbor showed up. Or rather, darted upstairs in an obvious fit of rage and let it all out:
“I wake up at 6 in the morning and you don't even work! I've been waking up at 6 for 40 years and you stay up till all hours, because you don't go to work”.
Guilty as charged! I did have a regular job for many years, but not anymore.
I have committed the ultimate sin:

I quit the rat-race.

I'm not sure if I am talented enough to describe the fury that woman had in her voice. The “I'll teach you a lesson you won't forget” kind of voice. It was full of indignation, my existence and my way of life were an insult. How dare I be different? Who the hell do I think I am to live outside the norm? I guess she was hoping the officers would look at me in horror and drag me in chains to some labor camp where I would wake at 6 o'clock for the rest of my miserable life. They didn't.
I've had almost 24 hours to think this incident over and I come to realize that the closest I can describe that woman's behavior is by comparison to a devout believer raging against the infidel, the blasphemer! 'You don't wake in the morning like us decent folks!'

Can you explain to such people like that you're not the cause of their problem? The system is.
My waking up early would not make her life better one bit. It's not for me that she's working, she's working for the system, while I'm doing my best to stay out of it and teach my kids to find their way outside of it, as well. (And I'm not even bitter about the 15 years I've spent going into the office, because I liked my job and I used to find it rewarding. I was a happy little rat!)
It's not even confined to work. The debate about homeschooling in our country was met with a similar outrage.
“Your kids are too good for our schools?” It's not about the kids, it's about schools that are bad. It's the system, once again.

Makes me think of those movies with slaves or prisoners trying to escape. Inevitably, some of their companions will help them, even if they don't have the guts to run away themselves. Others will rat them out! Have them punished for the sin of trying to break free!
Many posts here deal with changing the system, changing the world we live in, getting rid of the rich guys that use as 'free slaves'. The problem is we also need to change the minds of rats.
For now, people that got out of the system are still a minority – so the majority brands them as weird.
Homeschooler? Homesteader? Crypto-trader? Game-creator? Blogger? YouTuber? We are all dangerous lunatics and somebody ought to teach us a lesson we won't forget.

When I was a kid, in communist times, this poem was read as a sign of dissidence. It belongs to the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko and is called "Monologue Of A Polar Fox On An Alaskan Fur Farm”. The little fox gets one chance to escape, but...

“A child of captivity is too weak for freedom.

He who's conceived in a cage will weep for a cage.

Horrified, I understood how much I love

that cage, where they hide me behind a screen,

and the fur farm, my motherland.”

Thanks for reading

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