Sunday, January 23, 2005
Looking at the World from Another Perspective
I found this message on Khadijateri's blog, an American living in Libya with her husband and six children. It is very eye opening.
If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess
59% of the entire world's wealth and all
6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death;
1 would be near birth1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.
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There is no question in my mind the Western and Northern nations must take responsibility for improving the circumstances of the whole world. How this should be done is another question. On an individual level? Or on a national level? Should each "have" country be matched with a "havenot" country? Do the NGOs that get us to sponsor children (their families, and villages) do a good job? How do we know what is the best path to take? Should the United Nations take a leadership role? And a major question, how do we get the US to pitch in and take responsibility?
In Canada, we have been struggling for years on how to "fix" the damage done to Aboriginal peoples over the last couple of hundred years by white colonialists. How do we get this to happen on a world-wide basis?
If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess
59% of the entire world's wealth and all
6 would be from the United States.
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death;
1 would be near birth1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.
----------------------------------------------
There is no question in my mind the Western and Northern nations must take responsibility for improving the circumstances of the whole world. How this should be done is another question. On an individual level? Or on a national level? Should each "have" country be matched with a "havenot" country? Do the NGOs that get us to sponsor children (their families, and villages) do a good job? How do we know what is the best path to take? Should the United Nations take a leadership role? And a major question, how do we get the US to pitch in and take responsibility?
In Canada, we have been struggling for years on how to "fix" the damage done to Aboriginal peoples over the last couple of hundred years by white colonialists. How do we get this to happen on a world-wide basis?
