If we could, at this time, shrink the Earth’s population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like this:

There would be 57 Asians, 21 Europeans, 14 from the Western Hemisphere (North and South) and 8 Africans.
70 would be non-white; 30 white.
70 would be non-Christian; 30 Christian.
50% of the entire world wealth would be in the hands of only 6 people.
All 6 would be citizens of the United States.
70 would be unable to read.
50 would suffer from malnutrition.
80 would live in sub-standard housing.
One would be near death; one would be near birth.
Only one would have a college education.
No one would own a computer.

When one considers our world from such an incredibly compressed perspective, the need for both tolerance and understanding becomes glaringly apparent.

~ Unknown

Book of the Week

Count Your Blessings: The Healing Power of Gratitude and Love
by John F. Demartini

“A beautiful book that has many insightful stories. It opens the mind and the heart. I also like the Refelections, Realizations and Affirmations sections after each chapter.”

~ Angela Salinas

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Dear Hearts

I have searched high and low and have been unable to discover who is the author of “A Summery of the World”. But, whoever it is has an amazing ability of putting things into perspective.

Carl Sagan in his book, Billions and Billions – Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium, 1997, writes of a “secular parable” heard during the “Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders” at the Kremlin in 1990. (An astonishing event, by the way, but that is a subject for another HeartBeat)

The “secular parable” seems to be a take-off from the above A Summary of the World, or visa versa:

Imagine our species as a village of 100 families.

Then, 65 families in our village are illiterate,
and 90 do not speak English.
70 have no drinking water at home.
80 have no members who have ever flown in an airplane.
Seven families own 60 percent of the land and consume 80% of all the available energy. They have all the luxuries.
Sixty families are crowded onto ten percent of the land.
Only one family has any member with a university education.
And the air and the water, the climate and the blistering sunlight, are all getting worse.
What is our common responsibility?

I’m sure the statistics have shifted since all this was written (maybe one family would own one computer) but the rest of it probably still holds fairly true.

There is much we can learn from this Summary of the World. Lessons about sharing and caring abound. What I got out of it right away was a feeling of deep gratitude for all that I have and how good things are in my life. From this prospective if I where to start writing a gratitude list I would be at it for hours.

If you are reading this, you too are a member of the relatively few privileged and prosperous families of this global village.

Kinda makes it easier to see all the good in your life, doesn’t it?

Have a great week.

Love and blessings,

Rick and Patricia

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