At what point are you gonna tell yourselves that being lorded over isn’t something you really want to change, it just gives you something to digitally rail against? A common cause existing in a screen. The work is too hard you see, and the solution too dark.

There’s comfort in knowing what holds you down rather than fighting (actually fighting) for a future we scream we want. While the enclosure is unpleasant it’s familiar and outside the hated fence is a world of potential effort and self accountability.

The pain of the brand fades over time and we feel a kinship grazing with the kin who share your particular brand. While the others with the different brand are viewed with all the hostility that should be aimed at who does the branding.

Again, that requires effort and the possibility of losing the resented security of the enclosure. There’s stories of those who broke the enclosure before, told to the calves to keep them in line while they await their branding at maturity.

While you’ve never seen the actual “rebellious” ones for yourself, the stories of their tragic downfalls have become behavioral enforcement hidden as legend. They were called horrible things and presented as broken or dangerous monsters.

Sometimes, when the pasture is silent and you look at the stars you can’t help but think, that maybe they were dangerous because they were “free”. You’re raised to believe that you are already “free” they just never let you see the corresponding word “range”.

There were once stories of “free” creatures. They were considered noble and proud. Before your birth however, the branders had made wicked what was noble and had corrupted what proud meant. The concepts are a dim shadow. Wisps of an idea.

The branders inherited what the founding “free” creatures had carved out with their blood, sweat, and toil and had twisted it so only they remained “free” and saddled you with the forced obligations that let these branders remain “free”.

Sometimes while working in the field to produce the revenue to keep the branders and their small circle of beneficiaries comfortable and “free” you wonder how so many of your kin go along with it. Do you not outnumber the branders?

Do you not choose who holds the brand periodically? Didn’t they promise time and again to make the labor easier and the cost of maintaining the enclosure not so costly?

For decades now the same branders have been blindly chosen, leaving the fields of labor and living in the manor houses next to the enclosure. They’ll spend their whole lives in the comfort of the manor house where they claim to work on your branded behalf.

You look around daily and wish your kin would come to the same realization. Some give a knowing nod as they pass you in the field of labor. Most just look forward to the digital salt lick that comes when the labor is finished.

There never seems to be enough of you to rush the branders. Though you outnumber them so greatly. To be a “free” creature is a dangerous thing as stated before, as is the effort too much of a hassle for most of your kin. So head down you “free range” branded creature.

The enclosure is all the freedom you need.
End Thread.