I have a rather large yard, nearly an acre. With the house and some areas where the trees have shaded the grass and delivered it from growth, that still leaves a considerable amount of lawn to mow. The lawnmower I own is a self-propelled gas-powered walk-behind, needing 3 hyphens to describe it and 85 minutes on average for it to mow the entire yard.

My neighbor, my wife, my co-workers have all sung a similar tune in their inquiry.

“Why not get a riding mower?”

Riding mower. Sure is quicker to say, and probably would cut down considerably on the time needed to mow the lawn.

The quickest solution would indeed be to drop a grand or two on a riding mower. Quicker mow. Done and done. Swift sculpting of wide swaths of blank yard then back to the rest of my day.

I have instead taken the avenue of attack that has me reducing the amount of lawn needed to mow, rather than simply getting more mower. I have a deck planned, and some landscaping, and every bit I plan and install, cuts down my mowing time and builds to the curb-appeal and use-ability of the yard. A gazebo is planned, and a large deck, and a fire-pit swing-set.

This will certainly take longer, will not be easier, and will let me make a much better use of my yard. It’s design is specific to having more people use my lawn with me.

Because ultimately I’m a rich white guy. Not an “American rich white guy”. Oh no, nothing like that. I called a friend of mine a “rich white guy” a few weeks ago and he was quick to correct me that he wasn’t rich. I didn’t have a stack of pictures from Kibera, Karachi, or District 9 in order to disabuse him of the notion that he wasn’t well-off, at least in the global sense.

Yeah, you caught me. District 9 was a movie. But the filming was done in an actual Johannesburg slum. 

In the global village, in the earthly metropolis that is this planet hurtling through space, I am better off than the vast majority of people, and if inviting my friends and neighbors to share at my table is a component of The Galactivist, than that’s fine with me. And the tilted table we eat off of is an essay for another day.

So, what does this have to do with anything?

I find parallels for my views on my lawn with the current debate regarding guns. I think far too much argument has gone on with regard to the metaphorical need for a smaller or larger mower, and not enough on limiting the need for a mower at all.

I understand the Second Amendment and support it fully, because I don’t trust our government to do the right thing all the time. I don’t think that our leaders would be foolish enough to direct martial forces against We The People, their cash cow. We’re not Iraq, or Saudi Arabia, or Nigeria. We don’t get our money from resources pulled from the ground by slaves. Our power comes from the tax base, and the more citizens paying into the circus the better. Mowing down a few million of us would negatively affect their profit margin and that’s the last thing that they want. So, at this specific juncture in human evolution, there is still a need for a very real fear in the United States for armed insurrection and rich people being shot in their homes to keep the monsters in power a tad fearful of pushing the boundaries too far. The second Amendment, the separation of powers, and our ‘peaceful’ rebellions every four years keeps that further from us than the end-of-times depressives would have you believe.

So I fail to see the need for someone to need an assault style rifle to defend themselves or their home. The numbers for defense with rifles just don’t add up. I get that people feel ‘safer’, and I think it’s all driven by fear and money, the top two enemies of the Galactivist in practice. Preying on human fear and weakness for profit is the most American of art forms, right up there with jazz and comic books. And I do not find any progress in a debate where one side is afraid that their guns are going to be confiscated, and another side that wants them banned for all the wrong reasons.

Confiscate your gun? Gods forbid. It should never come to that. Instead, we should work on reducing the fear that drives us to clench these weapons tighter and tighter, like a steel placebo in the hands of the frightened.

I will strive to make my proverbial yard somewhere to relax and contemplate, and less of a burden of labor that needs to be tended to as quickly and easily as possible. My conviction is that we need to build the dialogue of this with a goal of community growth in mind, and without the goals of profit and threat.