OUR WORLD IN A NUTSHELL

By Jim MacNeill

A few years ago the Ness Creek Journal, a Saskatchewan craft quarterly, described our world in terms easy to understand. It is worth repeating because the eminent biologist, Spencer Wells, proved we are all related.

If we were to reduce the earth’s population of 5.5 billion to 100 and put those 100 in a village, keeping the ratios as before what would it look like?

It would consist of 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 North and South Americans, 8 Africans. Women would outnumber men 51 to 49. We would have 30 whites compared with 70 non-whites. Fifty percent of the wealth would reside in the hands of six people, all from the United States. Eighty people would live in substandard housing, so our village would look like a slum. Of our 100 residents 70 would be unable to read, and 50 would never get enough to eat, going to bed hungry every night Each night someone would die, and each day a baby would be born. Only one person would hold a college degree.

Our resources would barely sustain us with fewer than half getting a living share. The poor would have the biggest families.

Our village would have all the appeal of a ghetto, a deadly one in which neighbours killed or enslaved one another over religion, power, and politics.

"Jim's Snapshot" is updated each Monday with a fresh, provocative and stimulating insight from local writer and visionary, Jim MacNeill.