Quantifying Human Activity-Meg Mickelsen

While cruising for an interesting article on the Atlantic Monthly website, I stumbled upon a video entitled What Happens Around the World in 60 Seconds.  Expecting to be wowed by the sometimes majestic beauty and often alarming size of humanity, I eagerly awaited my enlightenment.  This is a summary of the statistics presented.

Captured in the space of this minute:

25 Americans are receiving a passport

58 airplanes are taking off

116 people are getting married

144 people are moving to a new home

255 babies are being born

11,319 packages are being delivered by UPS

83,000 people are having sex

243,000 photos are being uploaded to Facebook

5,441,40 pounds of trash are being thrown away

136,824,000 pounds of carbon dioxide are being released into the air from the burning of fossil fuels

7,150,000,000 human hearts are beating 500,500,000,000 times 

I speculate that the purpose of this video is to put perspective on human life, and maybe to give people warm fuzzy feelings about babies and lovemaking in turn with more cynical ones about overpopulation and pollution.Yet, the most astonishing thing to me about this video was its meaninglessness.  One cannot even comprehend many of these numbers, and if one could, what significance would they even hold?  They are approximations of approximations that hold no truth to what it means to be human.  The world may be becoming more globalized everyday, but most humans still live in tight tiny little worlds made up of a few social circles and little awareness.  Furthermore, the tiny bit of awareness about humanity that the average human does glean from their experience of a fraction of the globe is loads more significant then the numbers listed above.  You probably have already forgotten most of those numbers.  Who cares how many babies were born in a minute, unless they know the babies' parents?  I am not saying that this video is totally valueless, merely that the connection one may or may not feel from watching these 60 seconds about 60 seconds of humanity will fade in probably only a little over 60 seconds. Humanity, being human is so much greater then a few meaningless figures. In conclusion, there is no frequency to humanity.