When I took the picture at left, I was struck by the look of the macaw as it looked beyond the cage surrounding it. I wanted to humanize it, make the picture some metaphor of imprisonment - my father detested birds in cages, as do I, and yet there is always the problem these days of something being set free only to be caught and imprisoned by another - be it an animal or a copyright or patent. We live in an era where ownership seems to mean capture, control, imprisonment - a sort of slavery in it's own right. As many people know, I'm a Free Software/Open Source advocate though I no longer belong to either camp - but the reason why I am is for much the same reason that the photograph struck me.

It isn't that I believe that things should be without cost. But consider the birds that I feed: they do not belong to me, but what I see of them and what I capture of them pleases me, and I share it. Yet none of those birds exists in a cage; I do not own any of those birds. Some will fly into the house demanding their daily bananas and paw paw (papaya), as they have grown to expect me to rise and give them their food. Others will not. And still, we have a form of relationship where we both benefit to some degree - all without laws, without cages, without imprisonment. One could argue that I may be causing the birds to be dependent, but I am wary of that and do not feed them as much when the fruit trees nearby are in season. They must keep to their wildness so that they can always eat should something happen to me. They must not every be completely dependent on me.

But what happens when a person with birds in cages dies? If no one finds the person and rescues the birds, the birds, too, die. And is that fair? And if the birds are rescued and placed in cages elsewhere, is there fairness in their being unable to be assured that the next person may treat them as well or better? So there are animal rights groups, activists, and all manner of interesting ways to assure animals are treated properly - but is this a fix to a flawed system?

Why is it that humanity feels the need to put things in cages? Is it that we do not lose them?

Or is it that we fear losing things we never really have anyway?