A short play scene
- Locked due to inactivity on Aug 4, '16 4:27pm
Thread Topic: A short play scene
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It's written in a play style, sort of.
First, some background. It takes place in modern America (because that's the only place and time I really know how to write things in), with someone named Ardor Lee. Ardor Lee is a sophomore in high school, who supports the "American way" (capitalism and all that jazz).
Chiniro is an alien, a Kanagari. Kanagari have no genders, but Ardor Lee calls Chiniro a "she."
Chiniro does not understand most human customs, and certainly doesn't pick up on unspoken rules or euphemisms.
Kanagari have a completely different social system than humans, but you may recognize it as being similar to a certain theoretical system. -
Chiniro, the Kanagari, has just landed and has met Ardor Lee. Ardor Lee explains Earth's customs to Chiniro.
A television program comes on describing a charity for the impoverished, offering to donate 50 cents for food.
Ardor Lee: I don't have 50 cents and can't send it to them.
Chiniro: Why do you need 50 cents?
Ardor Lee: To send to the hungry children.
Chiniro: That's foolish, isn't it? They can't eat money.
Ardor Lee: You're being foolish as well! It's to buy food.
Chiniro: You have to buy food?
Ardor Lee: Of course we have to buy food! We have to pay the workers which supply the food, and the corporations which pay the workers!
Chiniro: Do your workers not have access to food unless they are given these coins?
Ardor Lee: Um, yes. The corporations lose profit otherwise. If they just paid the workers and the workers didn't buy food, the corporation would lose money and not be able to stay afloat, and it would die out.
Chiniro: That sounds like a good thing to me.
Ardor Lee: GOOD?! The workers would lose their jobs and the economy would crash!
Chiniro: It sounds like the corporation leeches off the workers, not the other way around.
Ardor Lee: The owners of these corporations provide jobs for millions! All they're doing is honest business!
Chiniro: If you didn't have this stupid system, you wouldn't need corporations to provide jobs for you.
Ardor Lee: Stupid system. Stupid system, free-market capitalism? How is the freedom to conduct business the way you like a stupid system?!
Chiniro: Think of that television program about the charity. In Kanagari society, if someone has a thing and doesn't need it, and someone else needs it, the one who needs the thing gets it.
Ardor Lee: But that's unfair! The person who had the thing earned it and the person who needed it didn't! That's their problem!
Chiniro: It is true that the thing was "earned" by the first person, but Kanagari have different priorities than humans. We invest in the community, not in the ruling class. Your corporation has a relationship with the working class. We just have different economic relationships. There are no parasitic "corporations."
Ardor Lee: I've said it eighty six times, the corporations are perfectly honest!
Chiniro: That's what capitalist propaganda has led you to think.
Ardor Lee: Oh tripe, capitalist propaganda. Next you'll be saying we have a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie or that I'm a "counter-revolutionary" and a "class traitor."
Chiniro: Uh.
Ardor Lee: That's it, isn't it? You're one of those radical leftists.
Chiniro: Maybe? Let me explain further. Kanagari have different priorities. We place need as the highest priority for distribution of resources. Some do work harder and produce more than others- in Kanagari society, we work to the best of our ability. We recieve according to need. It's like if ten of your workers harvested eggs. Some would pick more than others, but in the end all of the eggs were gathered in one place. One needs five eggs, another needs one. The distribution is, in fact, unequal, but everyone gets what they need.
Ardor Lee: We have a saying, don't put all of your eggs in one basket.
Chiniro: We'll put our darned eggs where we want!
Ardor Lee: Not literally. It means to not put all of your trust in one source.
Chiniro: Oh. As in, don't give all the eggs to one person, share them instead?
Ardor Lee: I...never thought of it that way. I was referring to how you said gather all the eggs in one place.
Chiniro: So you took it literally, not me.
Ardor Lee: I guess so. Continue explaining your system. How can I be motivated to gather so many eggs, when it doesn't affect me in the slightest to gather eggs for other people?
Chiniro: Invest in the community. The system works for you, too. You'll see great returns on your investment, and the more you put in, the greater your return. It is in fact more in your interest to follow the Kanagari system than it is to follow the human system.
Ardor Lee: How?
Chiniro: In the human system, the corporation keeps most of the product to itself. It gives the illusion of ownership when you buy from them, when they really own the product. In the Kanagari system, you have constant access to all things.
Ardor Lee: But you said things are distributed according to need.
Chiniro: Yes, and we share them amongst ourselves! Need is a priority. You don't usually want more than you can use, do you?
Ardor Lee: Well, no.
Chiniro: Even if you did, the system does not allow an excess to accumulate in any individual or group of individuals' hands. Therefore, if you wanted more than you needed, and everyone's needs were satisfied, you could use it until someone needed it.
Ardor Lee: What about greed?
Chiniro: If greed were to penetrate the system, which it shouldn't considering everyone can get what they need or want at any time, the community would take care of the problem. We'd just take the stuff they were hoarding. But that's only if it were genuine greed for the sake of greed.
Ardor Lee: It just sounds like such a fragile system. A few people could break it easily, with enough greed.
Chiniro: Quite a criticism coming from someone who practices our system on a small-scale level.
Ardor Lee: What?!
Chiniro: Your family works somewhat like the Kanagari system. Of course, we don't have silly gender roles or anything like what you have, but the economics are quite similar. If someone in your family needs something and the other doesn't, the one who needs it gets the thing. You hold most things in common ownership. The difference is that we don't have stupid hierarchies as a factor in distribution like your family does.
Ardor Lee: Interesting.
Chiniro: I guess it would be better for me to say everyone owns everything, rather than no one owns anything, even though they're pretty much the same thing in practice.
Ardor Lee: I'd like to try your system.
Chiniro: It is a most wonderful and beneficial system. I don't understand why humans don't do it worldwide, it would solve the problem of the hungry children fully- unlike simply tossing them chunks of metal. -
yay it all posted
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IHLAOY NewbieMeh, seems too straw man-ey to me. Like Ardor is intentionally asking stupid or uniformed questions to support Chiniro's case.
Who decides how the eggs are distributed? If I decided that I needed all the eggs, who's there to claim I don't need them? How do they decide if I don't? Who enforces it? If I put the effort into raising, feeding and caring for the chickens that lay the eggs, why am I not entitled to ownership over the eggs? If I don't own the eggs, where is the incentive to work at all? Why work if I gain no benefit from it?
Also, and this has no effect on my actual questions, but the hungry children is not a case of kids not having access to food; but rather a problem of there not being food for them to eat. I suppose if the tools to grow food was provided to them, then the problem would be solved, but to claim that the only way to achieve that is the removal of private property is ignoring the simpler solutions. -
IHLAOY NewbieHeavy handed, that was the word I was looking for. There are ways to preach a certain ideology without coming across so blatant. Themes, metaphors and, of course, the characters themselves can all be used create an interesting story without coming across as preachy or pretentious. I'm putting this here because this website has no edit button (why?).
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It's a small scene. Kind of hard to put a lot of dimension into a small scene.
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