SOCIAL WRONGS
I am sure we all agree that there are many unpleasant, uncomfortable, hurtful, and tragic situations in our world that require corrections which are sociological in nature. What I am referring to are wrongs that affect mankind and society in general; and/or certain groups of people or segments of society in particular. These problems usually recognize no national boundaries, and often range over large areas. I firmly believe that the conversion of our world to a single unified entity would be the source of much assistance in the solution of many of these problems.
Perhaps the most widespread and painful among such problems is the existence of dire poverty in so many places,. In a nutshell, more than a billion people worldwide live lives of unbelievable privation--from birth until death. And there is no hope for them as the world presently exists.
Shouldn't it shock and sadden us to realize that 1.2 billion of us--approximately twenty percent, or one out of five, of us--live on less than One Dollar per day? Or that 2.8 billion--or nearly half of us--make do on less than Two Dollars per day?
To focus into a specific place for an example, it is shameful to note that in the Philippines, having a population of about 80 million, approximately 50 million survive on less than Two Dollars per day. Among these poor souls, more than 30 million spend their entire lives in temporary shelters; and something like 25 million have no access to sanitation.
Even in America, the current economic leader of our world, more than 36 million people--or approximately one out of eight--were living in poverty in 2003. This ratio has not likely improved much since then--and has possibly even worsened with the recent economic disaster that has befallen us. An interesting additional statistic in this regard is the fact that problems that generally arise as a result of poverty have been said to be the number three cause of death in this country.
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