It occurred to me to think about people. All of our raw material is pretty much the same. That is, for the most part, people have 5 senses, around 206 bones, lungs, a brain, a heart. There are about 6.4 billion people all pretty much built the same. It’s like one of those creepy suburbs where all the houses are nearly identical.

And, when it comes to raw material, I’m not just talking about bones and muscles and organs, either. Across the wide world and down through a tall history, there are not many significant differences. People, all of us, need food and shelter and family and friends and love and sex sometimes and attention and, yes, a means to continue to live.

So, right this second, there are 6.4 billion instances of me, pretty much. That sounds like ego. It’s not. It’s just the opposite actually. It humbles me without belittling me. As one tree in the forest, I am as important as any other, and as useful, as beautiful, as meaningful, as significant. And, when called upon, I can stand for all of the rest. I am, as every other tree is, an emblem, a symbol, a signifier, for all the others.

All the little differences that divide us are mostly ridiculous. Ancestry. It’s important, yes, to know where you came from, but not as much as all that. Sometimes ancestry and heritage are badges worn only to divide. Race. Mostly nonsense. Gender. Also a trifle. Religion. A thousand gods, nearly all the same, called by different names. All built out of a need to believe in some design, some purpose. And that need, the need to believe, to know, to understand, is almost altogether universal. Geography. An accident of more or less significance. Age. Only the accumulation of experiences of which each is not that different.

Perhaps the most significant difference, in the end, is a difference of opportunity. Some of those opportunities, such as the wealth of geography and the wealth of family, are accidental. Some of those opportunities are arbitrary and continue to exist only out of a stubborn perception, such as racial and gender advantage.

Meanwhile society has evolved to a culture of isolation where nothing so much as privacy is valued. Every man is an island. And civilization has thwarted the public savage. Civilization works to set man free from man. So said the exiled from the comfort of his island.

Meanwhile, to see the population of the world right now, with some reaonable precision, look here.

SS