A BAKER’S DOZEN OF FIVE-YEAR-OLDS COULD DO A BETTER JOB…
A modest proposal for replacing the Governments of Planet Earth
I got to thinking.
Which, as regular readers will know, is generally where the trouble starts.
I was watching the world recently—governments arguing, politicians shouting, nations threatening one another, billionaires accumulating another billion because apparently the first few were insufficient, and ordinary people wondering whether they can afford groceries on Thursday—and a rather ridiculous thought wandered into my head.
What if we fired the lot of them?
Not one government.
Every Government on the Planet.
Presidents.
Prime Ministers.
Cabinets.
Ministers.
Senators.
Congressmen.
Parliamentarians.
Dictators.
Supreme Leaders.
Deputy Assistant Undersecretaries for the Department of Things Nobody Knew Needed a Department.
Out.
All of them.
Thank you for your service.
Please leave your security pass at reception.
And then, instead of replacing them with another collection of ambitious adults promising to be completely different from the previous collection of ambitious adults, we did something truly radical.
We put Thirteen five-year-olds in charge.
A Baker’s Dozen.
Why Thirteen?
Because twelve sounds like a committee.
Thirteen sounds like trouble.
And I rather like trouble.
Besides, after several thousand years of adult government, warfare, conquest, taxation, revolution, counter-revolution, corruption, bureaucracy and men standing behind podiums announcing that everything is going extremely well when everyone can plainly see smoke coming out of the windows…
Could Thirteen Five-year-olds really do much worse?
I’m beginning to suspect they might do considerably better.
⸻
THE FIRST MEETING OF THE NEW WORLD GOVERNMENT
Picture it.
The great chamber of government has been cleared.
The enormous polished table remains.
Flags stand behind thirteen little chairs.
In walks the new administration.
One is carrying a teddy bear.
Another has a dinosaur.
Someone has lost a shoe.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs wants apple juice.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer has discovered that the microphone makes a funny noise when you breathe into it.
The Defence Minister is underneath the table.
The Prime Minister has announced that everyone must wear purple on Fridays.
International markets immediately panic.
Which is rather reassuring because international markets panic about practically everything.
Eventually somebody calls the meeting to order.
The first question concerns war.
Two countries have been fighting for decades.
The adults explain the history.
Territory.
Religion.
Borders.
Ancient grievances.
Treaties.
Counter-treaties.
Ethnic tensions.
Strategic interests.
Economic interests.
Military alliances.
Historical injustices.
The Five-year-olds listen patiently.
Eventually one raises her hand.
“Why are they fighting?”
The adults explain again.
She frowns.
“But people are dying?”
Yes.
“And children?”
Yes.
“And everybody is sad?”
Well… yes.
“And both sides want the other side to stop hurting them?”
Essentially, yes.
She thinks about this.
“Then why don’t they both stop?”
Silence.
Two thousand years of geopolitics have just been mugged by a five-year-old.
⸻
THE TERRIFYING POWER OF “WHY?”
There is one weapon possessed by almost every small child which governments would find absolutely terrifying.
Why?
Why are people hungry when supermarkets throw food away?
Why do people sleep on streets when buildings are empty?
Why do we spend enormous amounts of money preparing to kill people we claim we would prefer not to fight?
Why does somebody need ten houses when somebody else doesn’t have one?
Why do we poison rivers and then spend money cleaning the water?
Why do companies make things that break deliberately?
Why do countries borrow money that doesn’t exist from institutions that created it electronically and then spend generations paying interest on it?
Why are medicines sometimes available to people with money but unavailable to people without it?
Why does where you happen to be born determine so much of what you are allowed to do?
Why do we call some people “illegal”?
How can a person be illegal?
Why do politicians shout at one another instead of talking?
Why does everybody say they want peace while buying more weapons?
Why?
Why?
WHY?
Eventually the adults would be hiding behind the curtains.
Because children possess a dangerous quality.
They have not yet learned which absurdities they are supposed to pretend make sense.
⸻
THEY HAVEN’T LEARNED TO HATE YET
Perhaps this is the most important point.
A Five-year-old does not arrive on Earth carrying a political manifesto.
He does not crawl from the womb demanding to know whether the obstetrician is conservative or liberal.
A baby does not refuse milk because the cow held unacceptable theological opinions.
Children notice differences, certainly.
Skin.
Hair.
Language.
Clothing.
Bodies.
Accents.
But noticing difference is not the same thing as hating difference.
Hatred generally requires instruction.
Somebody has to explain who “they” are.
Somebody has to teach the child which group cannot be trusted.
Somebody has to hand them an old grievance and say:
“This happened before you were born, but I would like you to be angry about it.”
And remarkably, humanity has become extremely efficient at this.
We inherit hatred like antique furniture.
Nobody remembers who originally bought the bloody thing, it doesn’t fit the house, everybody keeps tripping over it, but apparently we cannot possibly throw it away because it has been in the family for generations.
Our thirteen Five-year-olds might look at this differently.
“This is Ahmed.”
“This is Joshua.”
“This is Priya.”
“This is Mei.”
“This is Maria.”
“This is Daniel.”
Adults might immediately see nationalities, religions, races, social classes and political identities.
The children may see something rather simpler.
“Do you want to play?”
Civilisation might have taken a very strange turn when those became four of the most revolutionary words imaginable.
⸻
THE MINISTRY OF SHARING
Now we come to economics.
Our adult economists will naturally be horrified.
“You cannot allow five-year-olds to run the global economy!”
Perhaps not.
Although considering the occasional performance of adults running the global economy, I think the children deserve an interview.
Imagine explaining extreme wealth inequality to them.
“This man has $500 billion.”
“How much is that?”
More money than he could reasonably spend.
“And that lady?”
“She has twelve dollars.”
“Why doesn’t he give her some?”
Ah.
Well.
You see…
Markets.
Capital.
Assets.
Shareholder obligations.
Tax structures.
Productivity.
Economic incentives.
Monetary policy.
Fiscal policy.
International competitiveness.
The child is still staring at you.
“But he has loads.”
Yes.
“And she hasn’t got enough?”
Correct.
“So give her some.”
Somewhere an economist has fainted.
Now, obviously, economies cannot literally operate according to playground sharing rules. Incentives matter. Ownership matters. Investment matters. People who create things deserve reward.
But perhaps the child has exposed something adults deliberately bury beneath vocabulary.
How much is enough?
That is a question modern civilisation rarely asks.
We ask:
How much can I earn?
How much can I own?
How much can I accumulate?
How much can my company grow?
How much market share can we capture?
How much wealth can we generate?
But almost never:
When do I have enough?
A Five-year-old understands possession.
Try removing a favourite toy and you will receive an immediate lecture on property rights delivered at approximately 120 decibels.
So let us not romanticise them.
Children can be selfish.
Spectacularly selfish.
They can also be generous with startling spontaneity.
A biscuit can be broken in half.
A toy can be shared.
Someone crying matters.
Perhaps our economic system needs a little more of that instinct.
Not childish economics.
Human economics.
⸻
THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR
This should be interesting.
The Generals arrive.
Maps are unfolded.
Satellites activated.
Strategic objectives explained.
The children are informed that humanity possesses enough weaponry to kill extraordinary numbers of human beings.
“Why?”
For protection.
“From who?”
Other countries.
“Why do they have weapons?”
For protection from us.
The children look confused.
Correctly.
One child suggests that perhaps everybody could stop making them.
A defence analyst explains deterrence theory.
Another child starts colouring in Poland.
But the question remains.
Human beings have developed weapons of astonishing sophistication partly because we are terrified that other human beings will develop weapons of astonishing sophistication.
Everybody is protecting themselves from everybody else protecting themselves.
It would be funny were the consequences not so appalling.
Our Five-year-old Defence Minister eventually makes an announcement.
“All bombs must be turned into climbing frames.”
Impossible, naturally.
Ridiculous.
Naive.
Childish.
But tell me:
Which is genuinely more insane?
Turning weapons into playgrounds?
Or turning playgrounds into rubble?
⸻
REMBRANDT, SHAKESPEARE, EINSTEIN, PAVAROTTI & NEWTON
We have a strange habit of assuming that because somebody is young, very little is happening inside them.
Then occasionally a child appears who paints astonishing pictures.
Another demonstrates extraordinary mathematical ability.
Another performs music with a maturity apparently beyond their years.
Prodigies remind us of something uncomfortable:
Human potential does not always wait politely for adulthood.
We have seen children displaying artistic gifts that make adults stare.
Children composing music.
Children calculating numbers at extraordinary speed.
Children understanding patterns nobody formally taught them.
Not every five-year-old is Rembrandt.
Nor, for that matter, is every fifty-five-year-old.
That rather destroys the argument.
Age does not automatically produce wisdom.
It produces experience.
And experience and wisdom are not identical.
You can experience the same mistake fifty times.
Human history has demonstrated this with magnificent consistency.
Perhaps wisdom requires something else.
Curiosity.
Humility.
Wonder.
The willingness to say:
“I don’t know.”
Children are rather good at that.
Politicians?
Less so.
Imagine a presidential debate where somebody asks a complicated question and the candidate replies:
“I don’t know.”
The audience gasps.
The newspapers explode.
Social media collapses.
Yet those may be the three most intelligent words spoken during the entire campaign.
Our five-year-old leader would have no difficulty saying them.
“I don’t know. Let’s find somebody who does.”
And suddenly we have invented competent government.
⸻
THE GREAT EXPERT REVOLUTION
This is where our imaginary government becomes slightly less ridiculous.
The children would not actually perform brain surgery.
They would not design bridges.
They would not operate nuclear reactors.
They would not calculate monetary policy using crayons.
Although, again, crayons may have produced some historical budgets of comparable quality.
The Baker’s Dozen would instead establish principles.
Simple ones.
Is anybody being hurt?
Is anybody hungry?
Is this fair?
Are we telling the truth?
Will this damage the Earth?
Are we leaving things better for the children who come after us?
Then experts could work out how.
Perhaps we have government backwards.
Adults currently spend enormous energy arguing about ideological systems before asking whether those systems actually make human beings healthier, safer, freer or happier.
The children would begin with the human question.
“Does this help people?”
Then let the economists, scientists, engineers, doctors, teachers and planners work out how to accomplish it.
A government guided by innocence but administered by expertise.
Now the joke is becoming slightly dangerous.
Because that doesn’t sound entirely stupid.
⸻
THE MINISTRY OF PLANET EARTH
Next meeting.
Climate.
Forests.
Oceans.
Pollution.
Species extinction.
The experts explain that humanity depends upon the natural world.
“Obviously,” says a child.
We explain that forests help regulate ecosystems and store carbon.
“Okay.”
We explain that oceans are essential to planetary life.
“Okay.”
We explain that biodiversity supports ecosystems upon which agriculture and civilisation depend.
“Okay.”
Then we explain that despite knowing all this, humanity continues damaging these systems because changing behaviour can be economically inconvenient.
The child stares.
“So you know you’re hurting the planet?”
Yes.
“And you live here?”
Yes.
“And there isn’t another one?”
Not conveniently.
“And you keep doing it?”
Yes.
“Why?”
We begin explaining quarterly earnings.
The child leaves.
Frankly, I don’t blame her.
There is something extraordinary about human intelligence.
We can detect planets orbiting distant stars.
Split atoms.
Map genomes.
Build machines that converse.
Photograph black holes.
Yet apparently we struggle with:
Don’t wreck the house you live in.
Every Five-year-old who has ever been told not to draw on the wallpaper understands the principle.
⸻
SOUL TIME
Now we wander into stranger territory.
Good.
I like strange territory.
It has better scenery.
There are spiritual traditions and philosophical ideas suggesting that very young children remain closer to whatever mystery precedes ordinary human identity.
Some call it spirit.
Some consciousness.
Some reincarnation.
Some ancestral memory.
Some imagination.
Some simply shrug and say:
“We don’t know.”
And perhaps “we don’t know” is exactly where genuine curiosity should begin.
Parents occasionally report young children saying peculiar things.
Talking about places they have supposedly never visited.
People they never met.
Lives they could not have lived.
Whether these stories represent reincarnation, imagination, overheard information, developing cognition, coincidence or something science has yet to understand is another question entirely.
But I am fascinated by the possibility.
What if consciousness does not begin exactly where we think it begins?
What if children arrive carrying something we gradually train out of them?
Not factual memories necessarily.
Something subtler.
A feeling.
A connection.
An instinctive understanding that existence is astonishing.
Call it Soul Time.
That strange region before schedules, mortgages, political affiliations, résumés, passwords and tax returns completely colonise the mind.
A Five-year-old can spend twenty minutes examining an ant.
An adult walks past because he has an appointment.
Which one truly understands time?
⸻
THE MEMORY BEFORE BIRTH
I cannot tell you that children remember before birth.
Nobody can responsibly present that as established fact.
But what a magnificent question.
What if they do?
What if fragments remain?
What if the imaginary friends, impossible memories, sudden recognitions and extraordinary statements occasionally made by children are glimpses of something?
Or what if they are simply demonstrations of the astonishing creative architecture of a developing brain?
Either possibility is fascinating.
Science should not be frightened by mystery.
Spirituality should not be frightened by questions.
The moment either says, “You must not ask that,” my Five-year-old Minister for Curiosity will immediately ask:
“Why?”
And she will keep asking until somebody answers.
Good girl.
⸻
THE MINISTRY OF RELIGION
Oh dear.
This meeting could take a while.
Representatives of the World’s religions arrive.
Each explains its beliefs.
The children listen.
One asks:
“Does your God love everybody?”
“Yes.”
“And yours?”
“Yes.”
“And yours?”
“Yes.”
“And yours?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent,” says the child. “Next.”
Unfortunately, the adults are not finished.
There are doctrines.
Interpretations.
Sacred territories.
Historical grievances.
Rules.
Sub-rules.
Denominations.
Schisms.
Heretics.
Orthodoxies.
Theological disagreements several centuries older than anyone currently alive.
Eventually the child raises a hand.
“If all your Gods want us to be good, why are you fighting about which one said it best?”
The meeting adjourns early.
⸻
THE MINISTRY OF POLITICS
This one lasts approximately seven minutes.
“What’s a political party?”
A group of people who broadly agree about how society should be governed.
“So they work together?”
Within the party, theoretically.
“And with the other party?”
Not usually.
“Why?”
Because they disagree.
“About everything?”
No.
“So when they agree, do they work together?”
Sometimes.
“Why not always?”
Because if the other party succeeds, voters may give them credit.
The child blinks.
“So sometimes you don’t help fix something because the other people might look good?”
Well…
“Yes.”
“That’s stupid.”
Meeting concluded.
Refreshments served.
⸻
THE OFFICE OF TRUTH
Now we reach something revolutionary.
Children lie.
Of course they do.
Usually badly.
“Did you eat the chocolate?”
“No.”
“Why is there chocolate around your mouth?”
“I don’t know.”
Political career underway.
But small children have not yet perfected the sophisticated adult lie.
The carefully constructed half-truth.
The technically accurate deception.
The statement designed by twelve communications advisers to sound like an answer without containing one.
Imagine a government press conference run by Five-year-olds.
“Did your government make a mistake?”
“Yes.”
WHAT?
The journalists freeze.
“Whose fault was it?”
“Ours.”
Several correspondents require medical assistance.
“What are you going to do?”
“Fix it.”
The stock market rises 4,000 points simply from shock.
Perhaps one of the greatest transformations in civilisation would occur if leaders were allowed to admit error without treating it as political suicide.
We demand impossible perfection from leaders.
They respond by pretending never to be wrong.
We punish admission.
They learn concealment.
Then we complain politicians lie.
Perhaps adults created precisely the political culture we claim to despise.
A child might simply say:
“I broke it.”
There is extraordinary moral power in those three words.
⸻
THE DEPARTMENT OF APOLOGIES
Every nation would have one.
Its job would be enormous.
Human history is essentially a very long list of people doing dreadful things, followed by their descendants explaining why technically it wasn’t quite as dreadful as everyone says.
The Department of Apologies would have one rule.
No apology may contain the phrase:
“We regret that people were offended.”
That is not an apology.
That is grammar wearing body armour.
The Five-year-old version is better.
“I hurt you.”
“I shouldn’t have.”
“I’m sorry.”
“How can I make it better?”
Imagine applying that to nations.
Not endless inherited guilt.
Not humiliation.
Not rewriting history.
Simply recognition.
We did this.
It caused suffering.
We acknowledge it.
We learn.
We move forward.
Children can quarrel viciously over a plastic truck at 10:15 and be building a castle together at 10:23.
Adults can maintain a territorial dispute for 400 years.
Who exactly is immature?
⸻
THE MINISTRY OF OLD PEOPLE
The children decide that elderly people are extremely important.
Not because a polling company says seniors are a crucial electoral demographic.
Because old people know things.
They remember.
They have stories.
They know what happened the last time adults announced that war would be quick.
They remember recessions.
Migration.
Hardship.
Community.
Loss.
Love.
Children and elderly people sometimes share a peculiar alliance.
One has not yet entered the machinery.
The other has begun escaping it.
Both may understand things those of us frantically operating the machinery have forgotten.
So every Baker’s Dozen government appoints a Council of Grandmothers and Grandfathers.
Their job?
Tell us when we are being idiots.
They will be extremely busy.
⸻
THE MINISTRY OF ANIMALS
At last, some sensible cabinet appointments.
Dogs become advisers on loyalty.
Cats become advisers on boundaries.
Elephants advise on memory.
Dolphins take communications.
Bees run agriculture.
Ants handle infrastructure.
Owls are given ceremonial roles because they look knowledgeable, although nobody is entirely certain what they actually do.
And humans?
Humans are placed on probation.
For approximately 10,000 years.
The children ask a remarkably difficult question:
“Why do we think everything belongs to us?”
The forests.
Oceans.
Animals.
Land.
Minerals.
Water.
Why?
Because we are the dominant species?
Does power establish ownership?
If an elephant could write property law, would humans agree with it?
If whales had international waters legislation, what would it say?
If forests could vote, would they approve our development plans?
Absurd questions.
Wonderful questions.
Questions capable of loosening the mental cage in which we place ourselves at the centre of everything.
⸻
THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Here our Five-year-olds become ruthless.
School must contain more questions than answers.
Teachers are promoted from information dispensers to professional awakeners of curiosity.
Children learn mathematics.
Science.
Languages.
History.
Art.
Music.
Philosophy.
Nature.
Cooking.
Money.
Emotional literacy.
Critical thinking.
How propaganda works.
How advertising manipulates desire.
How algorithms influence attention.
How to recognise nonsense.
How to say “I was wrong.”
How to disagree without hatred.
How to sit quietly.
How to grow food.
How to care for someone dying.
How to comfort someone grieving.
How to repair things.
How democracy works.
How debt works.
How contracts work.
How to detect when somebody uses impressive vocabulary to disguise an empty argument.
Especially that last one.
Examinations would change too.
Instead of:
“Memorise this.”
We ask:
“What do you think?”
“Why?”
“What evidence would change your mind?”
“Can you understand the opposite argument?”
“Can two apparently contradictory ideas contain pieces of truth?”
Good heavens.
We may accidentally produce adults.
⸻
THE MINISTRY OF PLAY
This will be the largest department.
Adults have made a terrible mistake.
We decided play is what children do before beginning the serious business of life.
But play is experimentation.
Imagination.
Negotiation.
Creativity.
Risk.
Problem-solving.
Social learning.
Discovery.
Innovation.
Nearly everything humanity is proudest of began because somebody played with an idea.
“What happens if…?”
Those four words built civilisation.
Our Five-year-old government therefore mandates play.
Adults complain.
“We don’t have time!”
The children respond:
“You had time for a three-hour meeting about scheduling another meeting.”
Point conceded.
⸻
THE MINISTRY OF ENOUGH
This may be my favourite.
Its purpose is not to prevent ambition.
Ambition can build cathedrals, cure diseases, compose symphonies and reach the stars.
Its purpose is to ask one question:
Enough?
Enough money?
Enough possessions?
Enough power?
Enough territory?
Enough fame?
Enough revenge?
Enough growth?
Enough consumption?
Enough?
Civilisation currently possesses an accelerator pedal but appears to have misplaced the brake.
More.
Bigger.
Faster.
Richer.
Higher.
Again.
Again.
Again.
The Five-year-olds might remind us that sometimes the greatest luxury is simply:
Enough.
⸻
BUT CHILDREN AREN’T INNOCENT ANGELS
Of course not.
Anyone who has supervised thirteen Five-year-olds simultaneously is currently laughing so hard they require oxygen.
Children fight.
Children grab.
Children scream.
Children manipulate.
Children exclude.
Children become jealous.
Children test boundaries.
One will absolutely attempt to nationalise everybody else’s biscuits.
This essay is not really arguing that we should hand nuclear launch codes to kindergarten.
Please don’t.
The point is more uncomfortable.
Children contain both generosity and selfishness.
So do adults.
But adults have had decades to institutionalise theirs.
A greedy Five-year-old steals your biscuit.
A greedy adult can create a financial instrument.
A furious Five-year-old throws a toy.
A furious adult with sufficient authority can throw an army.
The difference is not necessarily moral superiority.
It is scale.
⸻
WHAT DO WE LOSE WHILE GROWING UP?
Perhaps that is the real question.
Not:
“Would children govern better?”
But:
What did we possess at Five that leadership desperately needs now?
Curiosity.
Wonder.
Flexibility.
Imagination.
Directness.
The ability to make friends quickly.
The willingness to cry.
The ability to recover from crying.
A weak attachment to status.
A fascination with nature.
The instinct to ask why.
The ability to say “I don’t know.”
The ability to invent a world and enter it completely.
And perhaps something else.
A sense that everything is alive with possibility.
Adults call this naivety.
Sometimes it is.
But perhaps cynicism is simply naivety that has been mugged and refuses therapy.
We should not return to childhood.
We should recover what adulthood unnecessarily confiscated from it.
⸻
THE FINAL MEETING
After five years, the experiment ends.
The thirteen children are now ten.
The adults return.
Politicians reclaim their offices.
Economists recover their spreadsheets.
Generals retrieve their maps.
Lobbyists emerge blinking from underground bunkers.
The world asks the children what they learned.
One says:
“People need food.”
Another:
“People need somewhere safe to live.”
Another:
“Don’t hurt people.”
Another:
“Listen.”
Another:
“Share.”
Another:
“Don’t wreck nature.”
Another:
“Stop fighting.”
Another:
“Tell the truth.”
Another:
“Say sorry.”
Another:
“Ask questions.”
Another:
“Old people know stuff.”
Another:
“Animals matter too.”
And the thirteenth child thinks for a moment.
Then says:
“Why did you need us to tell you this?”
And there it is.
The entire bloody problem.
⸻
PERHAPS WE ALREADY KNOW
Maybe humanity’s greatest crisis is not ignorance.
Maybe we already know most of what matters.
We know children should not starve.
We know war destroys.
We know cruelty causes suffering.
We know greed without limit corrodes society.
We know loneliness hurts.
We know ecosystems matter.
We know lies destroy trust.
We know hatred breeds hatred.
We know power requires accountability.
We know every human being eventually dies.
We know we cannot take any of our accumulated possessions with us.
We know all of this.
Yet knowing and doing remain separated by a canyon.
And into that canyon we pour ideology, profit, tribalism, fear, bureaucracy, nationalism, ego and excuses.
Perhaps wisdom is not discovering increasingly complicated truths.
Perhaps wisdom is finally obeying the simple ones.
⸻
SO LET’S ELECT THE CHILDREN
Not literally.
Although I confess some election results make the proposal increasingly tempting.
Instead, perhaps every parliament, congress, senate, cabinet, boardroom, religious council and international summit should keep thirteen empty little chairs in the room.
A Baker’s Dozen.
Symbolically occupied by Five-year-olds.
And whenever somebody proposes a war…
Look at the chairs.
Whenever somebody proposes cutting food from hungry children…
Look at the chairs.
Whenever somebody says poisoning a river is economically necessary…
Look at the chairs.
Whenever somebody accumulates more wealth than generations could spend while employees cannot afford housing…
Look at the chairs.
Whenever somebody tries to turn race, religion, nationality, gender, sexuality or difference into hatred…
Look at the chairs.
Whenever politicians become more interested in defeating opponents than solving problems…
Look at the chairs.
And ask:
How would we explain this to them?
Not how would we manipulate them.
Not how would we package it.
Not what clever words would we use.
Simply:
Could we sit opposite thirteen children and explain why this decision is right?
If we cannot…
Perhaps it isn’t.
⸻
A BAKER’S DOZEN FOR HUMANITY
So here is my proposed new global cabinet.
Thirteen Five-year-olds.
Different colours.
Different cultures.
Different languages.
Different families.
Different abilities.
Different personalities.
One who paints.
One who sings.
One who calculates.
One who dreams.
One who talks constantly.
One who hardly speaks.
One who loves insects.
One who dismantles everything to discover how it works.
One who comforts anybody crying.
One who asks impossible questions.
One who believes dragons exist.
One who suspects adults are completely bonkers.
And one who keeps asking:
“But why?”
Put them around the table.
Then bring in the greatest scientists.
The greatest teachers.
The greatest doctors.
The greatest engineers.
The greatest philosophers.
The greatest artists.
The greatest farmers.
The greatest thinkers.
And instead of asking:
“How do we become more powerful?”
Ask:
“How do we leave these thirteen children a World worth inheriting?”
There.
Government policy solved.
You’re welcome.
⸻
AND PERHAPS…
Perhaps children do remember something.
Not necessarily another lifetime.
Not necessarily heaven.
Not necessarily the womb.
Perhaps they remember something adults forget.
That nobody arrives owning anything.
That everybody arrives vulnerable.
That everybody needs somebody.
That language comes later.
Nationality comes later.
Religion comes later.
Politics comes later.
Money comes later.
Status comes later.
Prejudice comes later.
The newborn arrives before all those labels.
Just Human.
Perhaps that is Soul Time.
Not another dimension somewhere beyond the stars.
Perhaps Soul Time is the tiny interval in human existence before the world tells us who we are supposed to hate, what we are supposed to want, whom we are supposed to fear and how much we are supposed to own.
And perhaps enlightenment is not travelling upward into some mystical realm.
Perhaps it is remembering backwards.
Remembering the person beneath the labels.
Remembering wonder.
Remembering curiosity.
Remembering that another human crying matters.
Remembering that the Earth is not an inheritance from ourselves but a temporary home shared with those not yet born.
Remembering that intelligence without compassion can become monstrous.
Remembering that wealth without generosity becomes poverty of another kind.
Remembering that strength without kindness is merely force.
Remembering that certainty without curiosity becomes dogma.
Remembering that leadership without service becomes domination.
Perhaps the Five-year-olds don’t possess all the answers.
Thank goodness.
People who believe they possess all the answers have caused quite enough trouble already.
Perhaps their gift is something better.
They still possess the questions.
Why?
Why not?
Who says?
Is that fair?
Does it hurt anybody?
Can everybody have some?
Can we fix it?
Can they play too?
Why are they fighting?
Why can’t we be friends?
And perhaps the most devastating political question ever conceived:
“Why are you doing that if you know it’s wrong?”
Try fitting that onto a campaign poster.
⸻
So no.
I am not seriously proposing that we replace every government on Planet Earth with thirteen five-year-olds.
Not yet, anyway.
But I am proposing something perhaps even more radical.
Before making decisions for humanity, perhaps adults should remember what being human felt like before somebody taught us all the reasons we supposedly couldn’t get along.
Maybe civilisation does not need another ideology.
Maybe it doesn’t need another political messiah.
Maybe it doesn’t need another trillion-dollar weapon.
Maybe it doesn’t need another forty-seven-page declaration written by a committee about why the previous declaration has not been implemented.
Maybe it needs thirteen little chairs.
Thirteen glasses of apple juice.
A plate of biscuits.
A box of crayons.
And one terrifying question:
“WHY?”
Because after several thousand years of adults running Planet Earth, I think the children deserve at least one meeting.
And if things go badly?
Well…
They’ll be six next year.
They’ll have more experience.
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