THE WORLD IS FLAT…
Did you ever buy a book because of its cover?
Well, I did. And now that I’m finished with reading I have to say I don’t regret it.
Friedman’s book is just a great read if you want to get prepared for what’s going to happen to us in the not so very far future.
But what I really wanted to write about here is something I remembered from my childhood and that came to my mind, once I put the book away.
Once a year an amusement-park came to our town and one of the more interesting attractions consisted of the following:
You got a round arena with seatings like in a circus and in the middle of this arena you had a wooden disk, about 20 meters wide and going a bit upwards towards its centre, let’s say like an umbrella.
Now what we paid for is this:
With a whistle blow the start signal was given and whoever wanted could run to this disk and take position on it, lying on it, standing, sitting, grapping at each other, whatever. .. the disk started to rotate, slowly in the beginning, and even at that slow rate people that couldn’t have made it to the center were thrown from the disk by the centrifuge power. .. faster and faster at the end you only got 1 or 2 people left, lying in the center quite safely for the moment…and when you thought you could stay there forever, a huge leather-bag like they use in boxing was thrown at you to push you from the disk. There was always a lot of crying and shouting and I liked this attraction a lot because you could get a grip at girls quite innocently…
This disk reminded me of our flat world, with countrys at the outer side being thrown out of the game and some fat and rich ones in the centre believing they could stay there forever, but beware of the huge leather-bag that will be thrown at you at least once in your life.
