Human beings and wisdom
Recently, I was surprised by the article «Are there more dead or alive?”, signed by journalist Wesley Stephenson on BBC News, February 5, 2012. The work indicates that currently life expectancy is between 75 and 80 years. But in other ages, human beings had shorter life expectancy.
In the aforementioned report, Wendy Baldwin, a member of the Population Reference Bureau of Washington, refers that estimates of life expectancy in the Middle Ages indicate that people lived up to 10-12 years. The data refer that «many people did not go beyond childhood,» he says.
So what are the numbers? There are currently 7 billion people alive and the Population Reference Bureau estimates that around 107 billion people have lived. This means that we are not even close to having more alive than dead. In fact, there are 15 people dead for every one alive. We surpassed the 7,000 million deaths between 8,000 BC and 1 AC.
Wesley Stephenson, in the report «Are there more dead or alive?«
Looking for a more current look at the phenomenon
This motivated me to search for updated data on such assertions. Thus I discovered a publication of the year 2019, in the Spanish edition of Scientific American, entitled «How many human beings have there been?», Signed by Jan Osterkamp.
The most boring thing, which is the answer, first: 108,000 million people is the figure of those who have ever lived on the face of the Earth (at the moment of 2017; now there are more, of course). To calculate it, a few billion up or down, demographers have had to use a bit of fantasy. Does everything fit in that number? SOURCE: «How many human beings have there been?» By Jan Osterkamp. SOURCE: Article «How many human beings have there been?», Published in Research and Science.
«How many human beings have there been?» By Jan Osterkamp
The figures will not be exact but: Did you know that since the emergence of man inhabiting our planet, more than 100 billion human beings have died? So how much investment in knowledge, experience and wisdom has been lost?
Thinking about man and his history since the genesis
If we start the count, since Homo sapiens more than 40,000 years ago, it is possible to estimate that more than 100 billion human beings have disappeared. With them, part of the accumulated knowledge throughout humanity has been lost.
Special mention deserves the vast majority that did not leave a mark through a written document, a book or their memoirs, in any of the information media that have existed throughout the history of man on Earth.
To better understand the above reflection, let’s think about the city cemetery or the territory’s cemetery and ask ourselves: How many similar people lie in this place? How much wisdom has been lost? How many experiences lived?
When passing through mortuary rooms or spaces it is possible to realize how the remains of the most dissimilar people of all social, political, religious or racial categories lie there. We can see a king and an entire royal family, a president, a ruler, a dictator, a serial murderer or a famous dancer, a prominent prostitute or a famous singer. All the same: there they only differ in the spaces that have housed their remains at the end of life.
There they are all the same, but at the same time different. What differentiates them lies in the wisdom, the accumulated experiences, the studies carried out and the sum of knowledge that they managed to gather throughout their lives. Beyond the pain that the physical disappearance of each person can cause, death is sad to me because it implies a truly immense loss of information and wisdom.
A space to store and treasure all that we are
Why then don’t we think of having a site where we can download and upload our experiences and knowledge? Have we thought about gathering all our stories and bequeathing to humanity all the wisdom that we bring together in life? It would take a site where we do not have to be experts in one subject or another for our legacy to have value.
Human beings have made so much progress in computing that we can count on a simple repository, accessible to all, in which we pour our data, tastes, experiences and knowledge in the most practical and organized way possible. A space that allows us to have a universal repository of wisdom, in which we can rely to make decisions, from the simplest to the most complex.
Imagine our children studying the history of their parents or analyzing the legacy of their grandparents, relatives, or anyone who has inspired them. They could do searches to support their arguments in all the information that their ancestors have left as wisdom and knowledge.
At FySelf we hope that one day not too far away we can applaud these benefits with our platform. Join our experience for a safe and universal identity. Be part of the world’s first Social Identity Network.
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