Playful Creatures

homo sapiens
has
always been

imaginative
intelligent
playful

seems bizarre
that for 10,000-plus years
people painted on cave walls

bizarre
during 10,000 years
no one anywhere on earth

experimented with
alternative forms of
social organization

what are the odds

capacity to experiment
with social organization
is quintessentially human

some suggest
our species’ future
hinges

on our capacity
to create
something different

(perhaps a system
where wealth
cannot

be freely
transformed
into power

or where some peoples
needs are seen as
unimportant

or their
lives have no
intrinsic worth)

a system in which
what ultimately
matters

is whether
we can
rediscover freedoms

that make us
human
in the first place

in the beginning

our species
didn’t fall
suddenly

from some
idyllic state of
utopian equality

humans
have
always been

imaginative
intelligent
playful creatures

instead of believing
myths folktales
legends about

loss of innocence
falls from the grace
(of brutish infantile deities)

let’s treat ourselves
as imaginative intelligent
playful creatures

who deserve to be
understood
as such

why not ask
how we became
trapped in

such tight
conceptual
shackles

that we
cannot imagine
reinventing ourselves

the only ‘laws’ are those
we make up
ourselves

we
have
always been

imaginative
intelligent
playful creatures

we are beings
of collective self-creation
let’s start acting like it

(C)2022 Raibeart Bruis