The Global Village

The illustration below, from Dr Philip Harter of Stanford University's School of Medicine, is now widely quoted. He says 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 would be Africans
• 52 would be female, 48 male
• 30 would be white, 70 non-white
• 70 would be non-Christian, 30 Christian
• 89 would be heterosexual, 11 homosexual
• 6 would possess the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from USA
• 80 would live in substandard housing
• 70 would be unable to read, 50 would suffer from malnutrition
• one would be near death, one would be near birth
• one (yes, only one) would have a college education; and
• one (yes, only one) would own a computer.

Looking at the statistics, we can safely say that we haven't quite arrived. It is a cause for concern when illiteracy and malnutrition are still rampant at this time and age. And the disparity between the haves and the have-nots is one big gaping chasm that seems impossible to bridge..