X-Message-Number: 15816
Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2001 12:27:25 -0500
From: James Swayze <>
Subject: Numbers of suffering people
References: <>


I don't think it is accurate to try to use raw numbers to assess the level of 
suffering in the world today compared to past times. I feel we (everyone, first 
through third world) are way better off now than in any time in the past. If one
disagrees perhaps one could pick a

time from the past that one feels was better. I'll promptly point out the 
horrors of that time and why one really doesn't want to exist then. Yes in terms
of shear numbers of people at any one time more may be in dire straights right 
now but that's only because the

population has grown exponentially acquiring 90% of the total in just the last 
century.  What is more accurate is PER CAPITA statistics (caps used for 
italics). Per capita we live in the best times yet. I feel it will only get 
better. My reason is I follow the trend. Over

all we are tending toward betterment of life for all. No it's not fast enough 
but with technology, the very technology that frightens the pants off the 
luddites, it will soon speed up exponentially. We must stay the ignorant hordes 
from storming the gates. Corporations have

pushed GM foods on the public because if they had asked John Q. Public his 
opinion there'd be no GM foods! John Q. Public's mental image of a scientist is 
Frankensteinian...white coated, hair unkempt, wild eyed, frenetically mixing 
mysterious contents of foaming test
tubes....boom!!

James Swayze
--
Some of our views are spacious
some are merely space--RUSH

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