High Horse

Please excuse me for this post as I rewind back to my sixth form days. I’m once again sitting in the common room surrounded by plundered sociology texts and daydreaming about a day when the sun will shine a little brighter…

- So let us assume that globalisation is a process in which, through the ever more efficient exploitation of the earths resources, all nations become richer. Let us also assume that this process widens the gulf within nations between the haves and have nots.

Add to this an assumption that there will be a revival of religious bigotry as working classes under stress reach for their opium and middle classes under false allusions grasp for a social reforming tool.

In addition we have Islamic terrorism, which to my increasingly cynical mind simply is a clash of cultures. ‘They’ are traditional and conservative. ‘We’ are modern but decadent. Lets also accept that the real danger lies not in how many deaths Mohammed inspires but more in the degree to which the democracies of the world resort to Orwellian police state tactics in response.

Further we have the rise of China and India, which will forever reshape global geo-politics, and to underline it all we have the environmental clock ticking down to oblivion. Those Antarctic ice sheets are approaching critical mass boys and girls. Now would be a good time to learn how to swim.

So these seem to be the broad waves of the future (ha.), the rules by which the next fifty years must be lived – and probably fought.

So, as an armchair general, what must be done? Well fear not, I will put the world to right for you all:

1. Welfare states must do more to distribute opportunity equally, a large mass of poor whites in the US and EU will lead to xenophobia and fascism, this must not be allowed to happen.

2. Secular education must improve across the globe and laws must be reinforced to deny religious dogma a place in free societies. Yet, pray as I might, religion will never disappear and hence we would do best to engage with it at every level, it can not be sidelined and allowed to radicalise. If people insist on being shallow enough to base their life on what was originally an anti-Semitic pamphlet then we must ensure they at least do it where we can see them.

3. Fight Islamic terrorism with dollars, politics and love – not ID cards and detention camps.

4. Invite India and China (and possibly Brazil) into a cartel of super powers and together squash-small states with destabilising ambitions. E.g. Iran and North Korea.

5. Spend on alternative and nuclear energies like our lives depended upon it. Then spend some more. Also we need to make provision now for the inevitable environmental catastrophes to come. Unless your American - in which case you clearly enjoy watching democrats drown in republican cities.

6. Like it or not mankind is a parasite on the planet. Our rapacious feasting has left our host looking a little worse for wear. Lets find a new one.

So there you have it. The next fifty years summed up and guidelines on how to save mankind. All in a nutshell.

Onwards high horse, onwards…