Humans have an oath, a promise they make to the world when they are born:
I will Survive.
Survive out of spite. Survive as a witness. survive as a warning to the future. survive so these stories do not disappear.
I will survive or else. -- Anon Guest
Every living creature greets their first taste of life with a complaint. Brief or lengthy, living is worth making a fuss over. Humans, especially, enter their lives and rage at it. Fighting from the first moments of their existence. They are weak, helpless, covered in blood, and raging against the universe for daring to challenge them like that.
Humans are great survivors. They start by battling their Deathworld from day one. They fight the weather, they fight to eat, they fight disease, disaster, and deprivation. They fight their worst and eternal enemy - other Humans.
Some grow up and continue on their Deathworld. Others go out and fight the Universe. They fight the enemies of civilisation. They fight civilisations that are their enemies. They just... fight. Some, judged the most battle-ready of Humans, fight only their own circumstances.
Humans, living on a Class Four[1] Deathworld, invented the concept of penalising poverty by adding more economic stresses to the poor. To be economically disadvantaged on Earth is to be constantly fighting circumstances in which one bill can ruin an entire family's life. In the worst of the pre-Shattering Terran Polities, the poor, in low-value work that naturally exposed them to multiple pathogens, feared incidents of sickness because the bills from being made healthy would impair an entire family and send them into an economic death spiral where crime was the only opportunity for respite from the crushing pressure.
Then, of course, those with the easiest access to all the resources that could make every problem go away then blame those with no power or influence for using their last resort. The revolutions between the Shattering and the Reunion of Terran Worlds were regular and bloody, then ignored by the next generation of the super-wealthy.
The last case, before the Reunion, was known as the Revolt of Whispers. In an effort to control the Have-Nots, those who Had insisted on outlawing speech without a license. All that happened as a result of that particular bad law was that the poverty-stricken found was to talk without the listening devices picking them up. Whispers, as the name of the revolt suggests, were common. As was a form of sign language that the Have-Nots never used in sight of the Haves.
They organised in cells based around the households they served. Then came the Night of Knives. Two thousand wealthy families with the children taken from their mansions and given to families who lived in hovels, or had to travel for miles. With none in charge and none to control, the people left reverted to the true Human nature - sharing what they had and caring about others.
The children were not guilty of the sins of their greedy, amoral parents. The younger they were, the easier of a time they had with integrating into the remaining society. By the time the Reunion came, there were only a very few wealthy enough to influence any laws. The Revolt of Whispers was still fresh in history, so they welcomed the reforms that came from the Galactic Alliance.
At least... they have for now.
[1] Regions on Earth range from Class Three to Class Five (Australia) with periodic incidents into Class Six, which requires periodic bombardment by asteroids. There is some debate as to whether Earth should be classed as a Class four or a Class Four Point Five Deathworld because of this.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / Anna_Om]
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