Young Writers Society

Earth & Its Contents

By Ben Franks

Who really runs modern day?

So, recently, as every good lad would, I’ve been thinking who’s actually in charge of the modern world. Now, to start, I’d just like to bring to your attention that it certainly isn’t any President/Primeminister or King/Queen, definitely not. If Barack Obama decided to ponder off down to Sicily and pop into the local Bakers, he wouldn’t be able to force the bloke there to do handstands and cycle backwards, could he? Hell no. And the last thing Gordon Brown can do is go into a shop and break wind without being repeatedly hit in the face by a crack-o-jack.

Thus, it definitely does not fall down to a leader. The next person on my list is Morgan Freeman, also known as God. Now, God/Morgan Freeman, or even any religious figure for that matter, doesn’t run modern day either. This is simply proven by the hypothetical thinking of if a bearded man who decided to call himself Jesus tried to convince some bloke called Muhammad that he was God’s son, Muhammad would at the very least not listen – and at the very most commit something unusually too strong for this column. So, it isn’t the religious leaders either.

So, Ben, who the hell is it?

Well, firstly, don’t you go asking me rhetorical questions it makes me nervous. Even though you’ve just done the above wrong doing, I’m compelled to tell you anyway. The first thing I should tell you is that it isn’t infact a “who” that we’re looking for. Oh no. What we’re looking for, ever so closely – and perhaps with a 44 million quid microscope pointing at it’s invisible existence – is Hope. You might now be sitting there thinking this is some kind of weird turn for the worst, and naturally you’ll be thinking that because my answer sounds genuinely serious. Well, don’t worry, it’s not. Hope can’t really do much unless you’re in the situation that you need hope, so that brings this argument to a close because now I truly know what runs the modern world; it isn’t any world leader… any kind of religion… not even a feeling… it all comes down to whether or not you own a gun.

If you go to that Bakers in Sicily with a gun and you ask the bloke to do handstands and cycle backwards, he’ll do it. If you met Muhammad and told him that you were the Son of God and threatened him to acknowledge such a fact at gunpoint, then he might agree. If you come to a circumstance when people are willing to die for something, then you hold the gun to someone else and then conscience replaces hope and you have the world at your fingertips.

The only problem with this, of course, is that everyone who has a gun runs the world, and because their can only really be one leader, there will always be bloodshed and there will always be guns.

If you thought that was too serious, then go on Youtube and type in something really naughty! Go on, I dare you.