This appeared in the constantly excellent Global Village section of The Times magazine last Saturday.
~~~
You should be so lucky
If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, there would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 59% of the world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death
1 would be near birth
1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer
If you have food in the fridge, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world
If you have money in the bank and spare change somewhere, you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy
And if you can read this message, you are more blessed than the two billion people in the world who cannot read at all
~~~
T1000
Originally posted by royalchickenHow many gay people do you know? All the gay people I know (I lived with a few in a commune while at varsity) are the most disgusting human beings I've ever met.
Hmmmmmmmm...even numbers of hetero- and homosexuals would do wonders for the stability and peace of said village.
Very interesting post though. However, I don't know if I beleive some things.
Originally posted by royalchickenNone of that... Am I not entitled to my opinion?
Please, none of that here. I meant, for example, 10 homosexuals and 90 heterosexuals, so that pairing would be facilitated, eliminating some strife.
But that's not my point, I just maybe misunderstood your point a bit. I have nothing against gay people in general.
All I meant was that all gay people are maybe not the happy and peace loving people that they are portraid in the movies.
Originally posted by royalchickenYes, but you would have to have even numbers of male homosexuals and female ones and the same thing with heterosexuals. Might be tricky with such small numbers.
Hmmmmmmmm...even numbers of hetero- and homosexuals would do wonders for the stability and peace of said village.
And, you might even have one bisexual to mess them all up 😉
Originally posted by royalchickenNo, if you haven't experienced something, then you can't make general opinions. I now know the 'good and bad', so a general opinion is in order (and a sign of my open-mindedness) because at least I stayed with them for a year and gave them a chance to prove what kind of people they are.
Certainly not...some are, some aren't. General opinions based strictly on personal experience are the hallmark of narrow-mindedness (in my opinion 😉).
Originally posted by royalchickenWhat do you mean, not sufficient? That's the only way to form opinions. Would you rather be spoon-fed experience through books or whatever? When experiencing something yourself, you form your own opinion, which can be appended by books or other forms of information.
I agree, of course, that experience is necessary to develop opinions, but it is not sufficient. Too frequently, one hears of people developing all kinds of prejudices because of some narrow experience they had.
one reason prejudice occurs is because you have 1 bad experience and then assosiate that type of person with the bad experience. eg. I get mugged by the first asian I see, I then assosiate all asians with being violent theives. If I have known 5 asians then I think that asians are more likely to be muggers than other races. If you have a limited exposure to anything then a bad experience with it can cause an aversion to it that isn't truely justified. Phobias can have the same root.
Gay people are just people, therefore you get hippies & a**h**es, and every other kind of person a straight person can be. You're right that TV tends to give gay people a very steriotypical image. In my experience gay perople tend to be mor accepting & firendly, maybe because they have likely known what it is like to not be accepted.