The other day I heard of yet another smart phone release. The hoopla spritzed as this earth shattering announcement was spewed with endless ballyhoo and fervid assurances that the ultimate of “cool” had at last arrived on the scene.
This raises the question “Are we there yet?” Let’s consider several intrusive realities.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that nearly 870 million people of the 7.1 billion people in the world, or one in eight, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2010-2012.
(http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm)
Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.
At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.
More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening.....
According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”
(http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats)
More than 10.1 million people are held in penal institutions throughout the world according to the latest edition of the World Prison Population List (WPPL), …. 2.29 million in the United States.
(http://www.prisonstudies.org/news/all/140-more-than-ten-million-prisoners-in-the-world,-new-report-shows.html)
In the U.S. roughly “one in eleven suffers from addiction to either alcohol or another drug of abuse. Many more are addicted to unhealthy behavior.”
(http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_people_in_the_us_suffer_from_addiction)
U.S. alcohol statistics reveal that approximately 50,000 cases of alcohol overdose are reported each year. In 2009, an estimated 30.2 million people 12 or older reported driving under the influence of alcohol at least once in the past year.
(https://www.caron.org/knowledge-library/statistics-outcomes?WT_mc_id=GrantsPPC&gclid=CN_in_LWp7oCFSlo7Aoda38AHA).
In the 10 years from 2000 through 2009, more than 298,000 people died from gunshots in the U.S., about 30,000 people a year. If you exclude natural causes of death and consider only deaths caused by injury, it is the second-leading cause of death over that time span; only car accidents (417,000) killed more people. (These numbers come from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.)
(http://www.forbes.com/sites/robwaters/2012/07/24/gun-violence-the-public-health-issue-politicians-want-to-ignore/)
Total number of abortions in the U.S. 1973-2011: 54.5 million+
234 abortions per 1,000 live births (according to the Centers for Disease Control)
Abortions per year: 1.2 million
Abortions per day: 3,288
Abortions per hour: 137
9 abortions every 4 minutes
1 abortion every 26 seconds
(http://www.all.org/nav/index/heading/OQ/cat/MzQ/id/NjA3OQ/)
Besides starvation and hunger, poverty and destitution, imprisonment and addiction, we have huge maldistrubtions of wealth especially in America with widespread unjust and indefensible payment of discriminatory wages, uneven access to education, health care, and basic opportunities. One can only conclude that the single most important factor for virtually all of us is the hand we are dealt on the day we are conceived.
Honesty is as rare today as ever. Even half the hip hop world would rather lie or die than tell you freely if they have personally experienced skeeting. We simply seem to be unable to be honest regarding sexual matters as if God’s gift of sexuality was beneath our nervously defended respectability—a respectability all dressed up in blatant lies consistently trumps simple truth. However, there is no end to boasting of “respectable” lurid sexual exploits.
Games people play have not let up. We continue to hide our true agendas and manipulate systems and people with hidden ulterior motives. The respectable lie, the silent lie, is much preferred over honesty any day.
So when the question is asked “Are we there yet?” I must in astonishment ask “What planet have you wafted over from?”
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