Sunday 18 March 2012

Which of the Three Wise Monkeys?

Which of the Three Wise Monkeys?

As I understand it there are several versions of the three wise monkeys. You maybe able to add to my list, the usual one every school child knows is : see no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil. Well it's a nice trick if you can live your life on such a plateau. I'm afraid I have never been able to quite manage the trick.

My entry today is actually concerned with three much more flawed monkeys. Leaders of the future to take us into the solutions of this century, which of the three will get the task? The one who has been born to it? Or perhaps the one who aspires to it? Or the one who has the job thrust upon them?

Leaders, at least political leaders have been getting younger and younger. So do they hold the key?

Perhaps there would be some profit in examining this question in some depth as it is obvious to many that an ever decreasing age for leadership is not necessarily an acceptable outcome. There is also the obvious contradiction in the fact of past leaders who were often flawed in many ways but still brought a vast amount of tried and tested expertise to their responsibilities as the leaders of their nations or nation groups in dire times.

Of recent years there has been a rise in the number of young leaders whose track record has been untested, or relatively so due to their youth. Perhaps it could be that we are entering the hitherto unacknowledged event of allowing a leader who is not young or old or even human. The concept of a civilisation being in thrall to a machine or a series of machines has been advanced by many thinkers, science-writers, and devotees of the science-fiction genre for many years. Has the time arrived when this concept will be rationally and maturely considered? When thought about it is not really such a big step, only one of degree.

Fifty or sixty years ago when this idea was put on film in: 'The Day the Earth Stood Still,' it was treated as a childish, fantasy dreamt up by the wishy washy thinkers of the sandals and peace brigade. But the theme cannot be so easily dismissed even by the scoffers, humorists or testosterone driven. Any rational and mature adult, in fact anyone who has experience with human nature and the shades of grey that arise when considering the conflicts and compromises that can develop to influence and at times skewer judgement, needs to seriously consider such a solution as perhaps the only practical advance to assist the beleaguered forces of law and order.