Reply To An Alien

This was originally prompted by a post, Letter From An Alien, on poetry into the light

Dear Nonplussed,

I note from your letter that you are an alien. I presume this means you are from another planet.

For the last few years, we on Planet Earth have been going through a funny patch. We have an area which we call the United States of America. Although it is a great country with lots of terrific inhabitants, it is currently led by a number of men who have a lot of what we call money.

On Earth, the idea of money started off with an exchange of useful goods between people, especially surplus food: pigs, chickens, cows, vegetables and so on. Men were considered rich if they had more than they needed for themselves – they could pay poorer men, women and children to work for them by giving them excess food in return for their labour. It soon became apparant that excess meat and vegetables began to smell if they were not eaten in good time. So instead of the actual goods, people began to use coins made of rare metals as counters instead of the actual items being exchanged.

Some people became greedy and started to use the coins for bad purposes. They also looked for ways of taking coins from others. They guarded things which could be exchanged for coins – coal, oil, food, wood, clothes. They also looked for people who were not used to coins and would do lots of work for a small number of coins – or sometimes just for food. This continues up to this day.

The people with lots of coins to spare also use them to have other people clean their houses and streets. Sometimes they use the coins to pay people to just talk with them or copulate with them. Really sad people just like having more coins than anyone else for the sheer hell of it. They even print pieces of paper and call them coins so as to make out they have more money than they really have. This is why you have areas of Planet Earth which claim to be rich even though there are lots of people with not even enough coins to buy sufficient meat, bread or vegetables to eat.

People who live in the areas of Planet Earth which have fewer coins and not enough to eat often feel bad. Sometimes they just lie down and die, but some get very angry and want to fight. Sometimes they fight themselves. Sometimes they fight others – the people next door, people with a different coloured skin, or people who just behave differently from them. At times they get so angry they blow themselves up – and blow others up as well. There are times when we call these people soldiers though people who do not like them increasingly call them terrorists. When the terrorists or soldiers win we call them leaders or politicians. Some people do not like fighting, so they become leaders or politicians by using things called votes. A vote is bit like a token which a person allocates to someone else if they want him or her to be their leader.

For further information on money, there are a number of reputable sources including Guardian Money and the BBC’s Money Box programme. Reliable information on voting and the results of it is harder to come by as the sources of information are controlled by the people who have last been given the most votes. You should be aware there is no morning after pill for people who have used their vote incorrectly – it can take up to five years for a vote to wear off.