Click here to access a poem by Ghada Chehade from her website.
For me this poem by a Palestinian Canadian expresses what many experience currently living in capitalist societies. We are trained to relate to things instead of each other. Our masters in the capitalist ruling classes are obsessed with things of wealth and power, and try to inculcate this same obsession in us to better exploit us.
Consequently we devalue each other in preference to
things; and being socialized in this culture, we often model their behavior by treating each other as things
that we can use to accumulate more wealth and control of others. It's all a game in the sense that we feel our lives are being played out by some alien rules instead of living lives centered in our human experience and being creators of our own lives. Those who succumb completely to this experience lose their humanity and end up as sociopaths who inflict unfathomable harm on others.