THE PARABLE OF THE FIG TREE

 

For three years the owner of the Fig tree has waited. For three years he was patient. For three years he longed for one thing, fruit from his tree. Three years pass and there were none. So, he orders his gardener to chop it down. Waste of good soil. His gardener pleads, "Give it another year. I will dig around it and put manure." Give it another year.

We call them people with "green thumbs." People who love plants. People who sing and talk to them like they were people. People like the gardener who pleads, "Give it another year." People who celebrate the inter-connectedness of all life. People who believe in second chances for everyone and everything. People who know the magic properties of manure.

Then there are people who treat everyone and everything as property, as commodity, as disposable, as opportunities for extraction and exploration. And every single day they acquire square kilometers of prime agricultural land, ancestral domain, and public lands for profit.

There's a term for this insatiable greed: development aggression.

And everything and everyone in the way--everything that does not produce profit--is chopped down; is told, "May no one ever eat fruit from you ever!" Not just Fig trees.

*Art, "Children eating Figs" (M365 copilot generated image). https://a.co/d/6IdSfim