Johnny D. Symon
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of ... you
By Johnny D. Symon
(First Published August 15, 2005)
Five year ago I lost an old friend whom the local Spanish called "Pedro el Americano." As the years rolled on he became more and more the double of John Wayne, although Pedro was in fact English. During the 40's and 50's he floated around with the Merchant Navy, learning Spanish from a captain who hailed from Argentina. South American Spanish is considerably different from Castilian, and Spaniards can tell a Spanish speaking foreigner a mile away.
Pedro was a close friend of his captain and grew to love the man's parrot too. The captain had taught it to speak English as well as Spanish, or at least a few choice words of both. But Pedro enjoyed one verbal outburst from that bird much more than the others, and it went like this: "Leave off my big red arse!" — "arse" being the English equivalent of a$$: different spelling, same device! For years Pedro asked the captain for a background to the bird's outcry and he never received it.
I guess Pedro's drinking was the major contributing factor to his sudden death five years back, though his drinking career began and carried on for more than half a century. Quite some time before he passed away I was invited to his New Year's party and just happened to have two quart bottles of Russian vodka stashed away (I truly hate the stuff). I arrived with the booze and watched as his wife, Jan, carried them off into the back room. When Pedro found them I reckon it took just half an hour from his lips hitting the quaff 'n trough till he started pretend-playing on the kitchen table, as if it was a piano, drummin' down with his big fingers. About two hours later and Mr Quaffamatic was flat out on the kitchen floor ... Now that was some night, a New Year's bash I'll never forget!
But something else I'll never forget, which Pedro conveyed to me several years before his departure: "There I was out on the lawn with the mower yesterday, and I noticed a Spaniard peering over the fence whom I didn't recognize. All the time I was out mowing the lawn he just kept peering at me. When I'd finished and put all the grass cuttings into the wheelbarrow he called out to me and said (in Spanish), 'If you've no use for the grass in that barrow can I have it for my "guarro"?'"
Now Pedro, as you remember, learned his Spanish from a South American and to him "guaro" (which sounds nearly the same as "guarro") meant a small parrot. So Pedro was confused. Before answering the guy he headed on up to the house and told his wife. He said, "You see that man down there at the bottom of the garden? Well he claims to need all my grass clippings to feed his little parrot! What would a parrot need all this grass for?" But Jan, his wife, asked him to repeat in Spanish what the guy had said, and as soon as he did Jan laughed and laughed with tears running down her face. She was Australian and had learned Castilian Spanish, so she explained to Pedro that the man wanted the clippings to feed his pig (guarro). This term is also used in Spain to call someone a pig, but Pedro had no idea; he knew the word "cerdo" meant pig.
During the twenty years or so that Pedro lived on the Spanish side of good old planet earth he took advantage of the cheap booze and drunk himself silly. It's a tradition in old Andalusia to have a hook placed high up to the side of your front door to hang your bags of trash. This makes it nigh on impossible for dogs, cats, or roaches to reach your discarded edibles. But with Pedro, and Jan too, their discarded edibles turned out to contain empty drinkables, so out he'd go with two or three big bags of trash, just as the truck turned the corner to enter the street about 10:30 p.m. each and every night. And up would go the bags, clinking and clanking like christmas bells, and off they'd fly.
But I knew some of the Spanish locals in his neighborhood and they told me that it became a tradition for them all to take out some chairs and wait for Pedro to come out of the house on hearing the truck — for they knew his bags were full of empty booze bottles, and he didn't want them to know that! One of them told me that it was great entertainment, especially when he was so drunk he couldn't find the hook, and sometimes he would fall flat on his back and goes to sleep.
But Pedro's grass-for-guarros tale forms the main gist of this week's editorial, for the simple reason that it's all about property. The pig owner desired Pedro's grass ...
*****
Back in the 80's an English/German couple (two more of my friends) bought some land in Southern Spain from an old Spaniard. The house that was on the land was basic, but in good condition. Adrian (the English part) set his mind on restoring the property. The land surrounding the house was an old citrus tree orchard but all the trees were near death, not having been fed or watered for some time before they took possession of the plot.
They set about dealing with the fungus problem, pruned, fed and watered the trees on a regular basis, and then three years later, when the orchard was fully revived and bearing fruit, the old owner arrived and requested further payment. They told him that he'd received the market price three years back, so how could he ask for more? He said it was for the trees, to which they replied: "The trees are on our land, and besides they were all near death anyway. We put in a lot of work and expense to make them what they are today!" He replied by saying, "You bought the house and land, not the trees. So I require payment."
That particular story brings me to the crux of the matter: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness — all three things are actually one and the same, but the origin is Life itself:
Almost 25 years ago now, I set off on a journey to determine the true meaning and nature of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Pretty soon I came to the conclusion that until that point in time, I didn't own them. I realized that Life — my life in this case — was not solely my own. For some strange reason, and without my consent, something else had elected itself as my "business partner," and that was Big Brother himself.
Now, normally when folks set out to start a new business they decide who takes part, who'll be co-director, etc. You lay out your plan of action, set up your structure and your base, then open shop. The quality and originality of your project, and the keenness through which you perform to bring your intellectual property to the market generally determines the nature of its success or failure.
All business projects begin with a product otherwise known as "Intellectual Property." It's something like the above mentioned citrus orchard, that starts with a mental spark and a dead space, and hopefully ends with salable items. And also with reference to the above situation, unfortunately ends with an uninvited guest demanding his cut! In our case he's called the taxman.
Ideas can be visualized with integrity only in the mind. However, as long as they remain in that abstract domain, they never behave as property in the sense of keeping accounts and making social history. Since we can observe that "property" in some form or other does make creative social history, we are encouraged to believe that property has an intellectual component that is not altogether abstract, where abstract means having an existence apart from the senses.
That's when, all these years ago, I reconsidered the term "Liberty" and realized that if I did not control my life, first and foremost, liberty was out of my grasp too ...
I realized that if my life and its inner intellectual workings were not 100 percent my own, how could I be free? I was losing property and liberty without due process.
Recently I rattled on concerning the writing off of Third World debt, which is another example of taxpayers seeing their hard-earned cash claimed by a political cuckoo to be earmarked for another nation's nest egg. And all this without the consent of its owners! Were you asked permission for this harebrained scheme? No? But if you were, would you give it? Whether the answer is yes or no, at least it would be your decision.
During the Live 8 concerts last month, the occasional slogan popped up above the stage, saying, "We don't want your money, we want you." I have several things to say about this, but first and foremost, it's a damn lie, because your money goes wherever the political cuckoo plants it — and you have no choice in the matter. The Live 8 lowlife organizers and supporters were attempting to pressurize G8 to give even more of your money away to the biggest lost cause in history. Somehow the Live 8'ers — or should I say Life-haters? — believe that the wealth of the eight richest countries in the world belongs to its leaders. That's why they assured the average man and woman in the street that they didn't want their money, they wanted them.
The "want you" bit is the most sinister part of the slogan. They want your Life, then your Liberty, and ultimately your Happiness. All three things are "property," and all property begins with life itself, the primary property of all thinking individuals. But the Life-haters believe "all property is theft." Once they have all three, they have the world itself, then the U.N. will realize its long-awaited dream of a One-World Government, and they'll be at the helm, and we will be relegated as unpaid oarsmen and little more than slaves.
"To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything." — F. A. Hayek
So, to conclude this week's chapter, I believe that I now know the meaning of my friend Pedro's little parrot's screech, "Leave off my big red arse!" If Pedro were here today, I'd proudly tell him my theory, and it goes like this: "Now lookee here, you political cuckoo! It's my nest, and my hard-laid eggs. So lay off my a$$, and go plant yours somewhere else, okay?"
© Johnny D. Symon
(First Published August 15, 2005)
Five year ago I lost an old friend whom the local Spanish called "Pedro el Americano." As the years rolled on he became more and more the double of John Wayne, although Pedro was in fact English. During the 40's and 50's he floated around with the Merchant Navy, learning Spanish from a captain who hailed from Argentina. South American Spanish is considerably different from Castilian, and Spaniards can tell a Spanish speaking foreigner a mile away.
Pedro was a close friend of his captain and grew to love the man's parrot too. The captain had taught it to speak English as well as Spanish, or at least a few choice words of both. But Pedro enjoyed one verbal outburst from that bird much more than the others, and it went like this: "Leave off my big red arse!" — "arse" being the English equivalent of a$$: different spelling, same device! For years Pedro asked the captain for a background to the bird's outcry and he never received it.
I guess Pedro's drinking was the major contributing factor to his sudden death five years back, though his drinking career began and carried on for more than half a century. Quite some time before he passed away I was invited to his New Year's party and just happened to have two quart bottles of Russian vodka stashed away (I truly hate the stuff). I arrived with the booze and watched as his wife, Jan, carried them off into the back room. When Pedro found them I reckon it took just half an hour from his lips hitting the quaff 'n trough till he started pretend-playing on the kitchen table, as if it was a piano, drummin' down with his big fingers. About two hours later and Mr Quaffamatic was flat out on the kitchen floor ... Now that was some night, a New Year's bash I'll never forget!
But something else I'll never forget, which Pedro conveyed to me several years before his departure: "There I was out on the lawn with the mower yesterday, and I noticed a Spaniard peering over the fence whom I didn't recognize. All the time I was out mowing the lawn he just kept peering at me. When I'd finished and put all the grass cuttings into the wheelbarrow he called out to me and said (in Spanish), 'If you've no use for the grass in that barrow can I have it for my "guarro"?'"
Now Pedro, as you remember, learned his Spanish from a South American and to him "guaro" (which sounds nearly the same as "guarro") meant a small parrot. So Pedro was confused. Before answering the guy he headed on up to the house and told his wife. He said, "You see that man down there at the bottom of the garden? Well he claims to need all my grass clippings to feed his little parrot! What would a parrot need all this grass for?" But Jan, his wife, asked him to repeat in Spanish what the guy had said, and as soon as he did Jan laughed and laughed with tears running down her face. She was Australian and had learned Castilian Spanish, so she explained to Pedro that the man wanted the clippings to feed his pig (guarro). This term is also used in Spain to call someone a pig, but Pedro had no idea; he knew the word "cerdo" meant pig.
During the twenty years or so that Pedro lived on the Spanish side of good old planet earth he took advantage of the cheap booze and drunk himself silly. It's a tradition in old Andalusia to have a hook placed high up to the side of your front door to hang your bags of trash. This makes it nigh on impossible for dogs, cats, or roaches to reach your discarded edibles. But with Pedro, and Jan too, their discarded edibles turned out to contain empty drinkables, so out he'd go with two or three big bags of trash, just as the truck turned the corner to enter the street about 10:30 p.m. each and every night. And up would go the bags, clinking and clanking like christmas bells, and off they'd fly.
But I knew some of the Spanish locals in his neighborhood and they told me that it became a tradition for them all to take out some chairs and wait for Pedro to come out of the house on hearing the truck — for they knew his bags were full of empty booze bottles, and he didn't want them to know that! One of them told me that it was great entertainment, especially when he was so drunk he couldn't find the hook, and sometimes he would fall flat on his back and goes to sleep.
But Pedro's grass-for-guarros tale forms the main gist of this week's editorial, for the simple reason that it's all about property. The pig owner desired Pedro's grass ...
Back in the 80's an English/German couple (two more of my friends) bought some land in Southern Spain from an old Spaniard. The house that was on the land was basic, but in good condition. Adrian (the English part) set his mind on restoring the property. The land surrounding the house was an old citrus tree orchard but all the trees were near death, not having been fed or watered for some time before they took possession of the plot.
They set about dealing with the fungus problem, pruned, fed and watered the trees on a regular basis, and then three years later, when the orchard was fully revived and bearing fruit, the old owner arrived and requested further payment. They told him that he'd received the market price three years back, so how could he ask for more? He said it was for the trees, to which they replied: "The trees are on our land, and besides they were all near death anyway. We put in a lot of work and expense to make them what they are today!" He replied by saying, "You bought the house and land, not the trees. So I require payment."
That particular story brings me to the crux of the matter: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness — all three things are actually one and the same, but the origin is Life itself:
Almost 25 years ago now, I set off on a journey to determine the true meaning and nature of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Pretty soon I came to the conclusion that until that point in time, I didn't own them. I realized that Life — my life in this case — was not solely my own. For some strange reason, and without my consent, something else had elected itself as my "business partner," and that was Big Brother himself.
Now, normally when folks set out to start a new business they decide who takes part, who'll be co-director, etc. You lay out your plan of action, set up your structure and your base, then open shop. The quality and originality of your project, and the keenness through which you perform to bring your intellectual property to the market generally determines the nature of its success or failure.
All business projects begin with a product otherwise known as "Intellectual Property." It's something like the above mentioned citrus orchard, that starts with a mental spark and a dead space, and hopefully ends with salable items. And also with reference to the above situation, unfortunately ends with an uninvited guest demanding his cut! In our case he's called the taxman.
Ideas can be visualized with integrity only in the mind. However, as long as they remain in that abstract domain, they never behave as property in the sense of keeping accounts and making social history. Since we can observe that "property" in some form or other does make creative social history, we are encouraged to believe that property has an intellectual component that is not altogether abstract, where abstract means having an existence apart from the senses.
-
"On Andrew Galambos and His Primary Property Ideas,"
Alvin Lowi, Jr.
That's when, all these years ago, I reconsidered the term "Liberty" and realized that if I did not control my life, first and foremost, liberty was out of my grasp too ...
I realized that if my life and its inner intellectual workings were not 100 percent my own, how could I be free? I was losing property and liberty without due process.
Recently I rattled on concerning the writing off of Third World debt, which is another example of taxpayers seeing their hard-earned cash claimed by a political cuckoo to be earmarked for another nation's nest egg. And all this without the consent of its owners! Were you asked permission for this harebrained scheme? No? But if you were, would you give it? Whether the answer is yes or no, at least it would be your decision.
During the Live 8 concerts last month, the occasional slogan popped up above the stage, saying, "We don't want your money, we want you." I have several things to say about this, but first and foremost, it's a damn lie, because your money goes wherever the political cuckoo plants it — and you have no choice in the matter. The Live 8 lowlife organizers and supporters were attempting to pressurize G8 to give even more of your money away to the biggest lost cause in history. Somehow the Live 8'ers — or should I say Life-haters? — believe that the wealth of the eight richest countries in the world belongs to its leaders. That's why they assured the average man and woman in the street that they didn't want their money, they wanted them.
The "want you" bit is the most sinister part of the slogan. They want your Life, then your Liberty, and ultimately your Happiness. All three things are "property," and all property begins with life itself, the primary property of all thinking individuals. But the Life-haters believe "all property is theft." Once they have all three, they have the world itself, then the U.N. will realize its long-awaited dream of a One-World Government, and they'll be at the helm, and we will be relegated as unpaid oarsmen and little more than slaves.
"To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything." — F. A. Hayek
So, to conclude this week's chapter, I believe that I now know the meaning of my friend Pedro's little parrot's screech, "Leave off my big red arse!" If Pedro were here today, I'd proudly tell him my theory, and it goes like this: "Now lookee here, you political cuckoo! It's my nest, and my hard-laid eggs. So lay off my a$$, and go plant yours somewhere else, okay?"
© Johnny D. Symon
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