Displacement

A little literary criticism goes a long way in displacing familiar ideas, rolling back the curtains on the mechanics behind settled landscapes. Wouldn't the uncomfortable familiar have made more sense long ago had E.P. Thompson and Raymond Williams been part of a required summer reading list? There really was a time when private property didn't exist the way it does today. Who would have thought it? I never understood the importance of the commons, the implications, the independence they offered, the absence of yokes for all members of the population. And they weren't obscure traditions in hamlets over yonder. Even famous poets like Wordsworth relied on those common laws that made hedging possible for firewood in the cold, and wrote little poems to bemoan the losses of those small freedoms. Little by little, over centuries, we've eliminated every possible road to freedom for all but the most privileged.