If you spent your formative years within the institutions of the dominant culture, you will likely spend the rest of your life seeing the world through the bars of your cage. Divided, labeled, boxed, categorized. What context might you have, what vision, if you were never put in a cage to begin with?
Advertisements
What if you didn’t realize you were in a cage, couldn’t see the bars, and acted as if you were somehow free. If you’ve never known anything else, how could you know?
Maybe someone helps you to see. Maybe it’s the trees. Maybe it’s the condors. Maybe it’s the river that speaks to you, You are not isolated from the world, that’s illusion, right? Nor are you deaf to its language, tho you aren’t fluent, may not recognize it as a language, might not realize it’s speaking to you. But it is. That’s how you come to know the cage, from listening to the world outside of it.
Agreed. Many are not deaf to its language, but many growing up in the cities now are, I fear. They don’t see any difference between the cage bars and the world outside, and in fact might actually fear the world outside, to the extent it seems outside their control and the control of the dominant culture. http://howtosavetheworld.ca/images/prison-in-forest.jpg
Control is illusion, too. But yes, if we’re taught to fear what lies outside the cage, we’ll probably find ways to be okay within the cage. That’s how they get you.