“…Of course my analogy is flawed: The world we live in is even more absurd and satanic. In this world, the stuff that actually is lying all over the ground — dirt and straw and rocks and even shit — is useful for building houses and gardens. And the stuff that is extracted from the earth with great effort is much less valuable than dirt.

With enough effort, a civilization can produce iron, which doesn’t cut nearly as well as chipped obsidian, but is especially useful in making weapons that can be used to wound and kill other people to compel them to work for you making more iron. Next we can produce steel, which is useless for warm, comfortable houses for people to live in, but indispensable for giant office buildings from which the manufacture of more steel and the compulsion of more workers can be managed.

We can drill for oil, which, when spread on plants, does not help them grow, but which can power iron and steel contraptions that pretend to save labor while multiplying the demand for labor-consuming materials and practices.

Lately, with unfathomable effort, we have produced the highest thing yet: plutonium, a substance so valuable that it kills any living thing it touches and its only use is making bombs that can kill a million people at once who refuse to work for you.”

-Ran Prieur
From Superweed 3, Part 1, which I read at http://ranprieur.com/zines/sw3p1.html