SUNDAY NIGHT SLIDES
If you were alive 220 years ago, in the year 1800, you would have been 1 human being out of 1 billion people living in the world.
Now, just over a couple of centuries later, you are 1 human being living on a planet that is soon to surpass 8 billion living people.
To put that in context, it took the human race approximately 200,000 years to reach 1 billion people and then 0.1% of that time to octuple. And at its current rate, 10 billion within the next 30 years.
Astonishing.
That's a helluva lot more people who with their basic human rights need access to food, water, clothing, education, employment, housing, healthcare and support if unable to sufficiently support oneself – according to The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Not only that, but with newfound online sociability, how has this impacted the measurements of equality and equity across the world?
Equality meaning that each individual or group of people is given access to the same resources and opportunities as others and receives the same treatment and support at the same time.
Equity meaning that it's recognised that each individual or group of people has differing circumstances and distributes the appropriate resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.
It's proportionate allocation that's the difference.
And it's proportionate allocation that matters most when closing the gap of living standards related to the health and wellbeing of a whole population.
According to Immanuel Wallerstein and his World Systems Analysis, it's been the hangover of medieval feudalism (the imposed hierarchical structure of a state: Kings > Lords > Nights > Peasants) that developed after world empires disbanded that's keeping the current system as a hybrid function that mixes self-generating power with hyper-population growth contributing as fuel.
So with more people in the human race, does it naturally heighten competitiveness and consequently lower selflessness?
Competitive though we evidently are, we also underestimate the influence of social comparison on self-evaluation. And how perceiving wealth, relative to our peers, is more important to us than actual wealth accumulated.
In a survey conducted by Harvard School of Public Health in America, participants voted that, in the same conditions, they would prefer to live in a world where the average annual salary was $25,000 but they earned $50,000 than one where they earned $100,000 but the average was $200,000.
Competitiveness?
Or avoiding loss?
In a separate study, employees would explain externally that achieving mastery at their job was more important than achieving superiority (ranking higher than their colleagues).
But in reality, it was found that comparative ranking to their colleagues actually affected their internal self-evaluations more when job mastery didn't come close.
Misalignment.
It's easy to see why one-upmanship is a rational human pursuit too, especially when it appears to be linked to one's own happiness.
Economist Richard Easterlin found that whilst a country’s wealthier citizens are generally happier than its poorer ones, as a country becomes wealthier, its citizens do not automatically become happier— a contradiction now known as the Easterlin paradox.
A study conducted in 2010 with 12,000 British citizens would seem to support Easterlin’s conclusion; revealing that more income only boosted life satisfaction when that income rose higher in relation to peers of a similar age group, educational level or region.
Whilst money isn't everything per se, it sure allows us a sense of achievement through ownership (houses, cars, material possessions, Instagram stories etc.), achievement through financial security, and achievement that alleviates our fear of failure.
But it's personal time, that whilst it's a limited commodity, is the only unit of currency owned in equal amounts by all; an hour of your time is as precious as an hour of my time.
So my question this week is:
When was the last time you purposefully allocated your personal time to help someone else without reciprocation?
Charlie
FEATURED SLIDE
FINAL THOUGHTS 💭
In memory of Josh Taylor ❤️