I do not know if we want to get into politics etc. in this blog, but i ran across some interesting statistics that might lead to some discussion...
"Setting the world's population at 100, there are nearly 60 Asians, 21 Europeans and only 4 Americans. Out of the 100, 70 are not white, 70 are non-Christian and 80 live in sub human conditions. Only 25 have food, clothing and a roof over their head, one has a computer, one has a university education and 70 can't read.
And the fact we can even invest in the markets is unique since 92% of the world can't. The bottom line: if you have money in the bank or in your wallet, you're among the 8% richest people on the planet and based on this bigger picture, that's something we should all be thankful for." (This was from the Aden Forcaster newsletter which is about the financial markets, and that's the reason for the comment about investing.)
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2 comments:
Mark, thank you for reminding us how good we have it. I have often thought that living in Roseau at the beginning of the 21st century with good health, a good family, a good church, etc, etc, etc, I have it better than 99.9% of all the people who have ever lived.
Being the self-appointed myth-buster that I am (people send stuff to me a couple times a week asking if what they're looking at is a hoax), I found myself thinking that the illiteracy number seemed a bit high. As I looked into it I discovered that illiteracy can be defined in a number of different ways. I suspect the figure you have, 70% of people not being able to read, is probably accurate if one includes all the children under 6 years of age. I'm not sure how UNESCO defines illiteracy, but the chart at: http://snipurl.com/ijuw shows that even in the most illiterate parts of the world the rate does not exceed 55%. Rates in most countries are much lower than that.
I too am a natural skeptic, so I guess I'll weigh in.
I wonder, for example, about the 80 who live in "subhuman conditions". What does that mean? How was it measured? As well as the 75 who have no home.
One of the reasons I have for wondering about it is an area I'm familiar with - psycho social studies in measuring happiness. When they've tried to measure how happy and contented people are, they have found virtually no correlation between happiness and income, GNP, literacy, technological sophisication etc.
As far as technological comforts go I do not doubt that we are at or near the top of the pile, but how much are we skewing things by using that as a significant measuring stick? I don't know but I am skeptical.
They also find a consistent pattern that people, in general, from a variety of races and cultures and geographical locations are all inclined to think that they are happier than others - kind of like Lake Woebegone where "all the children are above average".
Anectodally I rember Paul Fink talking about his time in Viet Nam during the war. Something that astonished him was how happy and carefree villagers were who, from his perspective, had nothing.
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