Value Gradient

What is it that you control,
When your visual field is stimulated,
With impulses designed to invoke a behavioural response?

When your muscle contracts,
Due to an electric shock.

What is it that you control,
When you cannot control yourself?

And who would return it to you,
When there are entire industries to take it away.

And say, that you could not speak, until given words.
You could not act, until we gave you actions.
Thereby every moment brings you further into debt,
How on Earth can you afford to speak of self-determination and self-creation?

It must be paid off with a bold and curious interest in reality, agency,
responsibility for our own lives and relationships,
and the future of our species.