The Cage of Coin

Image by Petr Kratochvil

Imagine you are in a cage. A cage where the bars are perfectly stacked coins of your local currency. Through the bars you can see the world outside; the flora and fauna of nature, a beautiful yet wild world which stretches for as far as you can see.

Inside your prison all you have to do is abide by the rules of your gaoler. Almost everyday you wake up and play a game where you swap coins with other inmates. You might be good at the game and use your spare money to swap them at the Commissary for luxuries to make your incarceration more comfortable. Alternatively you might be bad at the game and your place of confinement becomes more claustrophobic and devoid of the luxuries of your neighbours. If you wanted to, you can try and cheat the game but woe betide you if you get caught and end up in the most constrictive of cells with just the basic needs.

From time to time you stare through the bars of currency and wonder what the outside world was really like. There is nothing stopping you from escaping, all you need to do is push over the precariously balanced stacks of coins and step outside.

On the outside though you leave behind all your comforts of prison. To a certain extent you are institutionalised, unable to imagine how you would cope on the other side. You might be naked and afraid, surrounded by the coinage that is worthless than the scrap metal left polluting the wilderness.

But you still have remnants of survival skills, hard wired into your body and mind by more primitive ancestors. And as you wander the world you will find others, with different skill sets from whom you can learn and exchange knowledge with. Undeniably it will be harder work, physical strain and require the shedding of blood, sweat and tears.

The uncertainty of the uncivilised wilderness keeps us from breaking out of the civilised cell in which we are so comfortable, stops us from hoping that we can find the others and rebuild without the monetary bars.

A world where we all work and share the fruits of our labours without the need for financial exchange. In this world, if we need temporary leaders in times of crisis, we will choose them based on skills, wisdom and moral merit rather than purely by birthright.

Yet everyday we turn away from the window to the outside world and go back to playing the game, again and again, day after day, year after year, knowing that we are trapped within an endless loop of our own confinement.