Are nations and governments corrupt because they are poor, or are they poor because they are corrupt? Why are some nations ruled by law and others by the gun? Why do some people build skyscrapers and others thatch huts? Is there something in the DNA of different people that led them to establish different cultures, different ways of life, different ways of looking at the world? Why is there such a difference between the First world and the Third world? We’re all equal aren’t we? Aren’t we?

 

 

Archaeology, paleontology, each will have his say

But both insist that man came from one place

From Africa to Europe and from there along the way

To Asia and Pacific, filling space

That once was verdant plain or forest, ice or brutal heat

They tracked the game and gathered tree hung fruits

But by and by they found that plants gave more for them to eat

And so they built their huts and put down roots

Now if this story’s true then we are somehow all the same

Though clearly we have taken different paths

For some their lot was poverty with someone else to blame

While others built their temples and their baths

And with the baths came law and with the law came order too

And written constitutions and the like

And with consent of governed came society that’s new

Where wealth and freedom brought the golden spike

That ushered in a continent where free men could breathe free

And build a better world for kith and kin

While elsewhere people lived the life they lived back in BC

Who know not where they are or where they’ve been

Where clans and other big men rule the way the world is run

And all the words and deeds of first world men

Can’t change the fact that law for them is barrel of a gun

And nothing ever changes now or then