Black Gold

black must be the most popular and coveted colour in this day and age. it is the colour of oil.

i have already written about how much modern civilisation depends on oil, when we no longer have oil, no electricity, all the vestiges of modern civilisation will crumble.

this thus means that those who control the supply of oil weild immense power. and yes. with great power comes great responsibility. or rather, as XH pointed out on his blog, the great need to be responsible with how one with that much power exercises that power.

alas, power corrupts.

so you get idiots like Bush (sorry... just insulted idiots...) who are not only irresponsible with the power he has, but also abuses the power he has.

and then you have companies like Exxon Mobil. their third quarter profits were USD 9.9 billion. to put that in perspective, the entire UN budget for 2004-2005 is USD2.9 billion.

the world has more than enough resources to end poverty, to eradicate hunger, to teach every single child to read and write. sadly, we lack the heart to do so.

we'd rather refuse to give other people a chance to live, just so that we can hoard our wealth. how different are we then from animals? not much.

we are but pigs. capitalist pigs. like those in Orwell's animal farm. but we are worse than animals, because we delude ourselves into thinking that we are, in some ways, superior.

but we are superior only in our ability to bring death and carnage, to inflict pain and distress.

humanity, if it doesn't evolve, is doomed to fail. our 6000 year reign will not last much longer.