Tuesday 16th February

We are all monkeys really, rather clever monkeys; or actually monkeys who think they are cleverer than all the other monkeys.  And we are all so wrapped up in our little concerns, our loves, our lives, our hopes and our dreams, the daily grind of finding food, and then finding a bit more than we really need.  And we fail to notice that it is our own greed (and everyone else’s) that is making our lives so hard.  Small tribes or troupes of monkeys tend to work collectively, making sure that every monkey has enough food, even if the patriarch (or sometimes matriarch) monkey has a few more privileges.  But as we have grown into City life the competitive element has come to the fore, and now it is dog eat dog and monkey eat monkey.  And if a few monkeys fall by the wayside, starve or are killed in selfish wars, well that is okay – because there are seven billion more monkeys to be made use of.

I am not saying that Capitalism in itself is wrong, but the scale it has achieved in this Twenty-First Century is colossal, a self-sustaining entity that has no moral values, no humanity left in it, it is simply a money-making machine driven by greed alone.  And it is killing us, or has the potential to.  The Oxford Research Centre, which looks at trends and extrapolates them into the future is predicting that in as little as 20 years time possibly 50% of the monkeys in the world will be unemployed.  Computer technology and Artificial Intelligence is galloping ahead and indeed cannot be stopped; they predict that machines will soon be able to do almost every task currently completed by monkeys faster and better than those monkeys can ever achieve.  And the wonderful future of leisure hours and intellectual pursuits filling our days while robots cater for our every needs is never going to happen while Capitalism reigns supreme.  All that will transpire is that the few rich monkeys at the top of the tree will replace stupid lesser monkeys with smart machines to make even more stuff for the few monkeys with any money to buy.

What will happen to the three and a half billion and possibly more monkeys who have no work is impossible to predict.  At the moment Capitalism sees no value in them unless they work and produce more money for the rich monkeys.  Welcome to the monkey house, welcome to the future…