The blessed West is a badly mixed blessing, the greed gene is factory-fitted....and the hegemony Wars to come could easily result in Homo sapiens suicide

Here's something to ponder on: if you are born in the First World "West", in English I would say, "I am blessed by having more than enough to eat and - with luck and judgement - enough State support during a lifetime to enable me to save, invest and thus retain a good standard of living after retirement".

But if you translate the French word blessé into English, it means wounded.

Nobody should kid themselves into believing that French and English are two separate languages in any meaningful sense: since 1066, we have been invading each other on the grounds of everything from Sovereign succession and Papal power-grabs to mutual defence. I am fluent in both languages, and I know only too well that the separation of our tongues is based on little more than pronunciation most of the time.

What far too many people overlook is the shared Christian tradition of a religious belief in the broad idea that money doesn't bring happiness, and the the love of money for the power it brings is the root of all evil. [On the same basis, moderate Islam disapproves of charging interest on debt on the grounds that it gives power to the rich over the poor. Jesus said, "Throw the money-lenders out of the Temple". Spot the difference; I can't]

From the Third World perpective - and as a person living with West African reality on a daily basis, that's the main thing I have to offer - the average relatively 'comfortable' First World citizen has an outlook that is indeed wounded by the benefits he or she takes for granted. Indeed, one might even use the term 'disabled'. It presents in two forms: first, damaged insight into what it means in the Third World to be poor; and second, a mortally wounded observation of the speed at which various Western elites are removing citizen civil rights.

These two symptoms of ignorance and compliance are dangerously connected - and equally deadly for our species.

The Trumps, Putins, Von der Leyens, Musks and Xi Pings of his world simply don't grasp what the unintended micro-consequences of their macro policies will undoubtedly be in sub-Saharan Africa. Trying to enforce fair tariffs, cut incontinently corrupt Aid programmes, support devious Ukrainian stooges, harass Canada, Greenland or Taiwan and cut off hitech supply pipelines in retaliation sounds just great in the fantasy world of geopolitics.

But for the average proletarian Gambian worker - as energy, food and raw material prices rise - this means slipping below the poverty line into unbelievable squalor. That worker earns an average of $69US a month.

To move on from insight to observation, what keeps Americans, Brits and North Europeans coming to the West African ECOWAS Union is hot winter weather as a cheap break, a low cost of living for retirees and relatively stable Government.

However, energy geopolitics (and hegemony power bloc policies and diplomacy) are ensuring that (a) every one of those raison d'etres is disappearing and (b) the disposable income of potential wrinklies and tourists is being eroded by incontent First World sovereign spending alongside reduced social benefits.

In a nutshell, the blessed elites are dooming citizens everywhere to a blessé future. And worse still, they are playing brinkmanship with weapons that range from nuclear threats and weather control all the way through to insane mandated bioweapon genocide.

As we are now talking about things that could prove deadly for our species, there is of course the possibility that Homo sapiens isn't worth saving in the first place....a view held by the late Prince Philip. At times, Phil the Greek did behave in a manner suggesting he might be out to prove the thesis through his own actions; but the point is a valid one given the factory-fitted wiring of the human race.

If I had to plump for what is the most dangerous of the Seven Deadly Sins compiled by the fourth-century Christian monk Evagrius Ponticus, I'd opine that, without question, it would be greed.

Just as wilful blindness and bigoted ignorance are multidimensional, so too greed comes in all the sizes, colours and cultures imaginable. In politics, pharmaceuticals, energy prospecting, banking, marital divorce, bureaucracy, the secret State, defence industries, pandemic or climatic fearmongering and fundamentalist clerics, greed stands in the way of genuine progress.

Greed for power and the money it attracts, or greed for money and the power it donates....it makes little or no difference, the end result is the same: evil triumphs.

As Bill Clinton didn't say, "It's the species, stoopid".

I have a close Dutch friend who suggests that the Universe may not be teeming with life, because sooner or later the most intelligent species on every planet gets consumed with hegemonic control greed and complete war wipe-out results.

It's a fascinating hypothesis, although I'd far rather believe in divine intelligence in the Uni[meta]verse - having constructed the damn thing in the first place - keeping an eye on idiots doing their best to destroy it.

I have a short story - Stoppage Time - in the blender which I hope to release later this summer on this very topic.