Suck Cess
musings from the necrosphere
I read that there have been approximately 117 billion people to have ever existed in the roughly 192,000 years of our earthly existence. This number includes the extant 8 billion souls who are trudging around today in search of the closest McDonalds. That means that there are approximately 109 billion dead people here on earth. So, that’s around 7% of our entire lot, living right now.
We all know the stupid analogy about the glass and how you perceive the level of its contents. Does that mean that you’re an optimist if you regard the planet as 93% human cemetery, as opposed to 7% home planet?
Here in the US we tend to measure our lives by the successes we’ve amassed over those less fortunate than ourselves. I don’t know if it’s because my successes have involved nothing resembling fortune, or if its due to the blunt accuracy of my perception, but I don’t see things that way. For me, I don’t measure my life in terms of success, I measure it in terms of survival.
Granted, it’s a loaded survival. If I lived to be a hundred, cast away in a vegetative state, totally shut out, I’d hardly call that a life at all. To be more accurate, survival to me is like a life that is 99% physical and mental health, and 1% enrichment. But that 1% is dense, man, like a neutron star. It’s in bloom like a invisible network of mycorrhizal filaments just below the surface, feeding and nourishing and holding down the god damn fort. That 1% is my humanity, my character, my imagination and creativity and broad use of symbolism. That 1%? Well, it’s everything.
Or, at least this is what I was thinking about on my way to work this morning.
Good morning.