There's a clay tablet in the British Museum that's dated about 3800 B.C.-Babylonian. It's a census report-a people count-to determine tax revenues. The Egyptians and the Romans conducted census counts. And there's William the Conqueror's famous Domesday Book, compiled in England in 1085.
In our own country, the census dates from 1790. Soon we will do it again. Counting people tells some interesting things. Especially since computers enable us to extrapolate trends into the future. Take this, for example: If the population of the earth were to increase at the present rate indefinirely, by A.D. 3530 the total mass of human flesh and blood would equal the mass of the earth; and by A.D. 6826, the total mass of human flesh and blood would equal the mass of the known universe.
It boggles the mind, doesn't it?
Or conside this one: The total population of the earth at the time Julius Caesar was 150 million. The total population increase in two years on earth today is 150 million.
Or bring it down into a smaller chunk: In the time it takes you to read this, about 200 people will die and about 480 people will be born. That's about two minutes worth of life and death.
The statisticians figure that about 60 billion people have been born so far. And as I said, there's no telling how many more there will be, but it looks like a lot. And yet-and here comes the statistic of statistics-with all the possibilities for variation among the sex cells produced by each person's parents, it seems quite certain that each one of the billions of human beings who has ever existed has been distinctly different from every other human being, and that this will continue for the indefinite future.
In other words, if you were to line up on one side of the earth every human being who ever lived or ever will live, and you took a good look at the whole motley crowd, you wouldn't find anybody quite ike you.
Now wait, there's more.
If you were to line up on the other side of the earth every other living thing that ever was or will be, you'd find that the creatures on the people side would be more like you than anything over on the other side.
Finally, this: There was a famous French criminologist named Emile Locard, and fifty years ago he cameup with something call Locard's Exchange Principle. It says something to the effect that any personpassing though a room will inknowingly deposit something there adn take something away. Modern technology proves it. Fulghum's Exchange Principle extendsit: Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leaves something and take something away. Most of this "something" cannot be seen or heard or numbered. It does not show up in a census. But nothing counts without it.
-Robert Fulghum
Click here to go see artwork by Christian Riese Lassen
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