Aug1

100.

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what if there were 100 people in the world?

when i read my blogging friend Brian’s post

on ‘writing from the heart with brian’ 

https://writingfromtheheartwithbrian.com

i was very taken with this questi0n.

he kindly agreed to let me share and reblog this wonderful lesson

i wonder if everyone read this and took it to heart,

would they understand more

about how lucky they are in this world

and begin to help others

who are not as lucky?

—

When I was a young kid, I was small for my age. We’d line up at the start of the year, smallest to the tallest, and I would always be one of the shortest boys in my class. I wasn’t the smartest either, I had to work hard for my grades. Every ‘A’ felt like I had run a grueling marathon to earn it.

On top of that, I would compete against my bigger, stronger brothers and always seemed to get my butt whooped. I write this to say that I didn’t feel special or lucky. When I was successful in school or sports, I would inevitably downplay my wins, assuming the test was easy or the challenge lighter than in past years.

My feeling of being just average persisted for a long time. I was curious about others, but I didn’t have great perspective. It took going off to college for me to see how fortunate I was. I walked in one day to my Economics 101 class and the prof started talking about how fortunate we were to be sitting in his classroom and to have the “luxuries” that we took for granted. He broke the world down into 100 people and called us some of the lucky ones.

Getting to the heart of the issue

We were supposed to be talking about some abstract economics concept that was going to be on the next test, but none of my classmates nor I were going to remind him. I was curious about this new topic and found it fascinating. With a few simple numbers, he showed that I was luckier than I ever could have imagined.

Here’s what I mean.

The 100 People Foundation, regularly uses World Factbook data to break the world into smaller more easily digestible numbers. If the world were a village of 100 people, of course, there would be an equal number of men and women. The majority of the people, 66 to be exact, would be between 15-64 years old, 25 would be between infant and 14 years of age, and 9 would be 65 and older.

From a geographic standpoint, 61 villagers would be Asian (of that, 20 would be Chinese and 17 would be Indian), 14 would be African, 11 would be European, 9 would be Latin or South American, 5 would be North American. As far as languages go, the largest number, 12, would speak Chinese, with 6 speaking Spanish, and five English.

One of the lucky ones

But here’s where it gets interesting. Less than 7 percent of the people would have their own home, eat full meals and drink clean water, have a mobile phone, surf the internet, and have gone to college. Yes, the devil is in the details. Let that sink in, less than 7 percent. Um, I get annoyed when the wifi goes down for a minute, 93% don’t have the Internet or a mobile phone? Really?

Of the 100, close to 80 people would have a place to shelter them from the wind and the rain, but 22 would not. Can you imagine, no shelter? Nothing substantial to save them from Mother Nature’s slights including storms, hurricanes, fires. Eleven of the 100 would be undernourished and 1 would die of starvation. Of the 100, 86 would be able to read and write; 14 would not, with only 7 having a college degree.

I can’t speak for the rest of my Econ class, but when I started to view wins and losses from a different lens, I started to see how fortunate I’ve been in my life.

What about you? How fortunate do you feel when you look at your life from this perspective?  Brian

—

“The Overview effect is a cognitive shift. You look down at the earth and realize that everyone who ever lived and died, every person that has ever been born was within this tiny blue speck in space. Divisions such as race, gender, country and language fall away.

The design is round because the world is round, and I wanted to make it a defined and pleasing shape. The colours are chosen from flags. It uses natural frequencies instead of percentages. This is a deliberate choice so that it can be as accessible to as many people as possible.”

credit: This graphic was tweeted byAstronaut Chris Hadfield, and reprinted in many publications.

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44 responses »

  5. Wow! That was a fascinating post! It’s hard to understand how so many could be suffering from a poor environment. I felt so sorry for those who had little to fa e life with.

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  7. Wow! Food for thought!
    And even that phrase got me thinking – the choice of food – as I ponder what I’ll take out of my fridge for my lunch today. So much choice!

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  14. Taking a step back to look at the bigger picture and our place within the 100 or the specs from looking at it from space – is quite humbling and sobering to think about. The things we often taken for granted put into crystal clarity.

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  16. Bette Midler’s 1990 song From a Distance has always kind of stuck with me. When I first heard the song on the radio, the line “From a distance, there is harmony, And it echoes through the land, It’s the voice of hope, It’s the voice of peace, It’s the voice of every man” rattled around in my head for months. I think that’s what strikes me most about the 100 people example, we’re so fortunate and we have the capacity to help so many others. Thanks so much for the shout out and for your perceptive thoughts. I really appreciate how you took the example even further!!!! 😎😎😎😎

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  22. I understand the point. I truly do. My brain, however, keeps saying that a hundred people is such a minuscule number, no one would starve or have anything happen to them. I realize it’s just an example, but there are more than 100 people down the block from me. And the problems are actually geographical, corrupt governments, religions, lack of medical care, weather conditions, etc. Philosophically, being materially fortunate is one thing, but being in a loving family, regardless of wealth, is also a fortunate thing. We the people can’t even stop what’s happening in our own country. People everywhere have no power against the thugs that run the countries. We can’t feed people in other countries, build them shelters, or do much of anything. We are currently BOMBING and KILLING them. IF WE COULD STOP WAR, we could help everyone stay alive, including our own soldiers, but that doesn’t seem to be a possibility either. We can’t stop anything that’s happening. Life isn’t that simple. We can do things locally, of course, just know you might get arrested for feeding the homeless. We have tiny bandaids for enormous problems and people no longer have the power to bring about change. At least at the moment. We are on a runaway train and it’s not slowing down. The people responsible for the terrible conditions are never held accountable for what they do to the people. THEY ARE THE PROBLEM. A hot meal won’t get rid of them. The real problems need to be dealt with, if there is ever to be peace, or food and shelter. Otherwise, noting will ever change. People seem to refuse to look at the big picture and recognize why people are not getting what they need. Governments, Greed, the need for Power over others. Those things are the cause. Equality is the answer. Respect. Shared wealth. Cooperation, Acceptance. We need those things everywhere. Feeling bad for those with less doesn’t help anyone. No more wars. Stop the lies about scarcity in a world of abundance. Stop the 1% from building their bunkers and getting tax breaks. Those kinds of things can help the poor. I don’t know how to fix any of it.

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    • so many life-ending issues and suffering come with inequality. and feeling for them may be a tiny step in learning empathy. if people were empathetic and had the power to help, they could do so, instead of ignoring it or making it worse. the people at the top of the heap determine with happens to the rest below them, they choose and force things to never be equal, as they do whatever it takes to hang on to that power.

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