Pigeon Heart Ponderings

This here lil’ diddy was developed by the Wisconsin RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) group. This is a bird’s-eye view into what the world would look like if the population were shrunken down to a village of 100 people with all of the existing human ratios remaining the same. The following is what would be:

61 are from Asia

14 are from Africa

11 are from Europe

8 are from South America, Central America (including Mexico) and the Caribbean

5 are from Canada and the United States

1 is from Oceania (an area that includes Australia, New Zealand and the islands of the south, west and central Pacific)   even my computer doesn’t know about Oceania because it’s reprimanding my for misspellings. Twice.

More than half the people in the global village come from the most populated countries:

20 are from China

17 are from India

5 are from the United States

4 are from Indonesia

3 are from Brazil

3 are from Pakistan

More than half of the people speak these 8 languages:

21 speak a Chinese dialect- 16 speak the Mandarin dialect

9 speak English

9 speak Hindi or Urdu

7 speak Spanish crazy, right? My ethnocentric side is all like “What?! I thought everyone spoke Spanish, everywhere!”

4 speak Arabic

4 speak Bengali

3 speak Russian again- this surprised me. It’s a huuuge country! I figured more! And certainly not the same amount of people speaking as….

3 speak Portuguese !

More than half the villagers are under the age of 30. On average, 1 person dies and 3 babies are born every year. A baby born in the village today can expect to live to age 63. Hmmm world average…. Interesting. Three cheers for modern meds, eh? Keeping us up past 40 on the regular. 

There is no shortage of food in the global village. If all the food were divided equally, everyone would have enough to eat. But the food isn’t divided equally. No way! So although there is enough to feed the villagers, not everyone is well fed:

20 other people are severely undernourished

Only 30 people always have enough to eat. Count your blessings my friends.

52 would be female

48 would be male

70 would be nonwhite

30 would be… guess… white! right.

68 would be non-Christian

32 would be… you got it.

89 would be hetero

11 would be homo

10 people would possess 59% of the entire world’s wealth. I found this figure rather astounding, assuming the number would be far lower. Trickle down, anyone??

76 would have electricity. Ya’ll are surprised by this too, right? That’s a lot. I figured… well… wrong.

17 would be unable to read. That’s more like it. Not that that’s a good thing, I am just not surprised by that fact. Incase you cared about what I thought! Boy, I’m seeing cynical patterns brewing up inside of me in relation to all this info…

1 would have a college education

17 would not have clean, safe drinking water

43 would not have adequate sanitation (public or household disposal)

32 would breathe air that was unhealthy because of pollution

15 would own a computer. On my bike the other day I rode by a dirty, dusty gutter punk kid sitting outside of his squat messing around on his laptop. Amazing. I composed a list for him in my head for when he’s packing up camp after, oh- I don’t know- train hopping? Do kids do that these days? I might be romanticizing. I used to be in the know!… Toilet paper- check. Leathermen- check. Mangey puppy- check. Banjo with missing string- check. Facial tattoos- check. 100 lb. pack- check. Overalls- check. Sign for skrilla- check. Portable computer—- um- check?

And so~ if you have $$$ in the bank, your wallet, or even spare change in a dish somewhere~ you get to rank among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy

Being able to read this message you have a leg up on the over 2 billion who cannot read at all.

~ Food for thought people. It’s good to have some perspective. Bless up!