As we commence a new century let us reflect on the task before us. Those who have rendered this planet almost uninhabitable have used their wealth to seek out other planets to destroy, along with their robot slaves to do any work that needs doing. They left behind a load of useless metal in a place called Fort Knox. They would’ve taken it with them if they could but it was too much for them to load onto spaceships.

Those of us who have survived their disastrous policies are left to scavenge through the debris of their so called “civilisation”. There’s a lot of sky junk orbiting our planet if we can find a way to recycle it, but we first need to look closer to home.

There are still pockets of indigenous peoples untouched by civilisation, we need to learn from them before they too are gone.

There’s a biblical story that those of us who are not Christian might reflect upon. I’ld like to restate it in secular terms.

The Master was going away but knew that each of his servants had a particular talent and trusted them to use them wisely, so he endowed each of them with a sum of money to enable them to fulfill their dream.

When he returned he asked each of them how they had used the money.

“I’m a painter,” said the first. “I used the money to paint a giant mural on a vacant block of land to raise awareness of all the poor people living misery.”

“You’ve done well,” said the Master.

“I’m a musician,” said the second servant. “I’ve written a song about poor people and engaged some musicians to perform it. I hope we might raise some money to help them.”

“You’ve done well,” said the Master.

“My talent is investing money,” said the third servant. “I couldn’t find an investment that would pay a good return so I’ve retained the money in case you should require of me again.”

“I suspect you have misused your talent in order to enrich yourself,” said the Master. “That with which I endowed you is stripped from you and divided between my faithful servants. Depart now from my household 😠”