If you are reading this article, you are probably a part of the luckiest 3% of the world’s population.

(Watch with better quality)

Interesting Points:

Six people would own 59% of the wealth, while 53 people would live off 2.00$(U.S.) a day or less. Thirteen people would be starving to death, and 43 people wouldn’t have basic sanitation. Most sad of all, we would spend over 100$ trying to kill a neighbor for every 1$ we spend trying to help.

If you stumbled on a village of small, blue people with these characteristics, what would you think? If you observed 6 Smurfanoids were hording most of the resources while 13 Smurfanoids were starving to death; you would probably conclude that people in this village are only worried about themselves. You would also conclude that they are irrationally violent, as 100 times more resources are spent trying to kill each other than trying to help each other.

I don’t think anyone would want to be a member of this village. In fact, you probably would want to stay far away from these villagers.

In many ways we are still an irrational world full of tribes fighting each other. We’ve definitely improved. The average person is better off than they’ve ever been. But, we still have a long ways to go.

What can be done?

Research from the human genome project suggests that genetically we are all 99.9% the same. We need to start looking at ourselves as a unified species, instead of only identifying ourselves with subgroups. I think much of the existent division exists because of political and religious organizations, which convince their members they are superior. This is done to the point where killing people who do not belong to your organization is justified. A broader and more humble view of things needs to be propagated.

We also need to be more charitable. Society idolizes the most wealthy instead of the most generous. In the world’s current condition, having an excess of frivolous wealth centered around an individual should be viewed negatively.

Improvement requires more than knowledge and sympathy. We need to provide service that improves our condition and actively oppose harmful world-views.