no future

i don't usually do this sort of thing, but i'm going to bitch about something silly. there was a story in the news recently about a 10 year old girl who won a car through tim horton's "roll-up the rim to win" contest. for people who aren't aware of this contest, tim hortons is the canadian equivelant to krispy kreme, the donut chain. they have this contest every year, where if you buy a cup of coffee, you can roll up the rim of the cup and if you're lucky, there will be a prize.

the little girl found a cup in a garbage can but had problems rolling up the rim, so she enlisted the help of a 12 year old girl who rolled up the rim and found that the prize was a brand new car. there has been a dispute for weeks, because the parents of the girl who originally found the cup claim the prize as their own, while the parents of the girl who helped roll up the rim claimed that they deserved half the prize. (i'm assuming they were expecting half of what the car cost. however, it is amusing to think of the CEO of tim hortons pulling a king solomon and chopping the car in half).

on top of this, a man came forward with his lawyer, who wanted a dna test done on the cup to prove that his client was the one who threw out the cup to begin with. so this third guy is now putting a claim into ownership over the car. in the end, tim hortons felt it was a finders keepers sort of deal, and according to the rules of their contest, the 10 year old girl gets the prize.

now why am i writing about this? it's because of shit like this that really just tips the scales for me. with all the problems in the world today, with all the worries, why in hell are people fighting over a car? it's absurd. some people really need to get their priorities straight. go plant a tree. you know, do something useful for once. sometimes i think we all need lessons in sharing, from the two little girls right on up to the most powerful politicians and generals. you really have to ask yourself, whenever you fight over something, is it worth it? is the grief worth it? because if it is, then we probably don't deserve to live as a species. i swear, people and their property.

i know this is just a silly dispute over a car, but this is just indicative of a larger problem with people not being able to share anything and fighting over everything. there is this sense of entitlement that people have: entitled to lower interest rates, entitled to lower fees, entitled to tax exemptions, entitled to land, entitled to oil... it goes on and on. sure, sometimes there's a right to the claim, but seriously, what is this obsession with owning property? whether it's in the form of a car or actual land, it's all property. every war ever fought has been over property, whether for direct control or influence by proxy. i've always said that and i stand by that.

(source 1)

(source 2)