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Calvin, Mardra, and I are walking through the wilderness and are on our way to the village. The village consists of a huge pit inside of which most of the buildings and houses are built. The pit is the only thing that makes it possible for these people to live on the planet. The other villages on the planet are built in similar fashion.
Mardra tells us a bit about the people here and their culture. They live in families. They don't work in their free time but socialize instead. They are extremely friendly and welcoming once they get to know you. They don't seem to have any concept of violence. They don't even have a military. They are the only advanced species I know that has been discovered so far that has neither a government system nor a monetary system. They think very little about wealth.
They have their freedom, but they are violated and robbed by big corporations. Small businesses try to pay the corporations for the use of land. The corporations pay once, and later, when the small businesses can't pay anymore, they confiscate the land. The big corporations rent the land to the small businesses and the people don't know what's going on. The corporations claim that it was the small business owners who couldn't pay. They take advantage of the people. They withhold vital equipment. They raise prices. They provide bad services. They make people work for little pay and at high risks. And they manage to get away with everything.
The people have evolved a lot over time. They don't live in caves. They don't even have homes. Instead they live in communities. They form communities around empty planets in the outskirts of the galaxy. They use the industrial plants that they have built for themselves and they don't need factories anymore. They have a social system not defined by gender roles. They have found in each other what they haven't found in anyone else.
They have made plenty of mistakes during their existence and, unfortunately, most of these mistakes were due to harmful patterns developed by the families. Mardra says that the people are ready to change these patterns. She tells me that her own family was destroyed by a model that she started herself. She divorced her husband because he couldn't accept her. She started seeing another man, but when she asked him if they could have children together, he decided to divorce her as well.
He told her: "You'll say that the child is mine, but I don't want to have it because it will be a danger for me. If it's a boy, you'll send him to war when he grows up. If it's a girl, you'll make her a housewife. Men are never the ones to take care of this."
He also told her that she needed to decide for herself which planet she would like to live on and if she was ready to bet her whole existence on the planet, but she didn't have any choice. Thinking about this, Mardra realized that he was looking for a different future for himself. He was looking for a way to make his life easier. And an easy life for him is the same as a hard life for someone else. Mardra was sorry for his lack of sensitivity.