EVER DECREASING CIRCLES

There exists, somewhere in the annals of time, a quite apocryphal story that even before a white man set foot upon the African continent (and started messing it up by bringing ‘western civilisation’), there existed a thriving but dubious inter-dependent economy. This was based on tribal trading – each tribe did the washing for another tribe so that they exchanged “value” with each other but no single tribe ever became powerful enough to rule the total ‘patch’.  It was a precarious way of life – running ever faster to stay in the same place (the hamster syndrome) – with no way out or upwards. Naturally, the system broke down eventually and they were all carted off to become slaves – an even more dubious occupation.

Funny how history repeats itself; this third small rock from a local sun, with six billion sheeple doing more or less the same thing.  OK, we’re not doing washing but what we are doing is the 21^st century equivalent; we’re all busy buying (doing) things we don’t really need (to do) with money we don’t really have just so that we can say “we are making progress”.

                            

There is no-one out there who is going to make us slaves – we have done that for ourselves VERY successfully - and it will all end in tears, believe me.

On a global scale, the Chinese won’t bring down the ‘American dream’; Hugo Chavez won’t stop the march of progress and North Korea will eventually stop posturing and join the “real” world. But at a local level, an individual level, we as people need to stop and think about what we need (rather than want), the optimum way of getting it in an equitable and ethical manner and generally set our sights lower. Failure to do this will encourage the end - like the snake that eats itself, we will end up going around in ever-decreasing circles until we finally end up in the universal sphincter movement of evolution.

Until the next time,

P.S.