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Gatekeepers
NMB, Florida January 17, 2001 A.H. Schectman
THINKING ALLOWED
Essays on Issues, Ideas and Reflections on the Times. Published Now and
Then. Opinions Pro or Con Are Welcome.
GATEKEEPERS
This is a parable about gatekeepers. It is unseemly that the entrances of
imposing cities have no gates through which visitors or citizen wanabees
must pass. Many years ago it was pronounced that major entrances be provided
and the biggest gate of the City must have a gatekeeper.
The first gatekeeper who was installed and is still on the job goes back
many administrations. His first instructions were that all should pass
except those who carried with them large bags of destructive material. This
was easy since most that entered were lightly encumbered. A new
administration came into being headed by "Libros the Fair". His
pronouncements declared that no restrictions were to be imposed on any one
and there would be free food, lodging and monthly payments to those who
could not pay the prices to live in the city which everyone knew was an
expensive place in which to live. The gatekeeper just waved everyone
through. The City grew enormously filled with mostly harried and unhappy
inhabitants.
A new administration came into being some years later. It opposed
everything that Libros and his officers had done. They instructed the
gatekeeper to keep everyone out except those with luggage bearing the name
of very expensive, exclusive manufacturers. The gatekeeper found that this
was not hard except for having to hear the crying and wailing of the others
who were thus excluded. Several other administrators of this type were
brought to power but the most severe was "Guilio the First". He made it easy
for the wealthy to live and hard for those who could not afford to live
there in the first place. The gatekeeper found that he had to be on the
lookout for malcontents of many different stripes who felt that the high and
mighty City needed a lesson. They brought weapons of destruction with them
in the dark of the night and the gatekeeper never saw them.
While filtering the humans, many of whom were unwashed, tempest tossed and
yearning to be free, there were other gatekeepers who were supposed to make
sure that the investments of the City and its chief citizens were steady,
ever upward - never lower and certainly protected from calamity. These were
called "auditors" and spent their time looking at books of figures provided
by people called accountants who did the work of tracking investments, of
the rich naturally.
Two devastations were visited upon the City. One was by people called
terrorists who came in broad daylight and flew over the head of the
gatekeeper. Their planes, used as bombs, destroyed two imposing towers at
the center of the part of the City where auditors did their work. Another
destruction was the fall of a huge corporation that was to keep the wealthy
richer and give minimal protections to the people who worked for it. The
auditor-gatekeepers of the work of corporations did not keep this huge one
to its limits. The first calamity shook the foundations of the City and
alerted some suspicious types to look closely at the auditors.
This parable is about gatekeepers. The one that keeps people out and lets
munitions in failed because that gatekeeper studiously avoided looking at
people's skin color and facial hair. We should all be reassured that this
will be corrected. The gatekeepers who let huge corporations do whatever
they wanted never looked into the methods or the manners of the rich who
were robbing the poor. This most likely will never happen again unless there
are two new destructions planned for the same time.
Carol's Evaluation: 10 out of 10.
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