Do you matter?
LET’S start with the big picture: if it is significance on this Earth you are looking for, then the numbers are increasingly against you.
Go back 2000 years and there were fewer than 200 million people on the planet. When the industrial revolution kicked in from the 18th century, however, new methods emerged of feeding vastly more people and combating the infectious diseases that had kept our numbers in check. Our numbers began to shoot up, reaching nearly 7.7 billion now. Today, you are, to a greater extent than in all history, just a face in a crowd.
That doesn’t mean you matter any less to your closest friends and family. And perhaps you or your offspring may be one of those few who change the world for better (or for worse). But that is statistically unlikely. Even in spheres where we like to think we are important, such as parenting, the evidence suggests individuals don’t matter that much. Geneticist at King’s College London has pointed out, for instance, that identical twins brought up in different families generally end up with the same level of cognitive ability.
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It isn’t just about you
But there is another, contrary, line of thinking, that collectively all of us can make a difference on a grand scale. In the broad sweep of human history, these are pivotal times. With the development of nuclear weapons in the mid-20th century, humanity reached a point where we can destroy ourselves. In this century, existential risks have only increased thanks to the threat of catastrophic climate change, bioweapons, artificial intelligence running amok and more. “The analogy I use is that we’re inching our way along a path along the side of a sheer cliff, where one wrong step could be our downfall – no more adventures, no more journey,” says philosopher at the University of Oxford.
“Decisions we take today could decide whether trillions get a shot at life”
You can argue, then, that the decisions we take today matter more than ever: they could determine whether trillions of as-yet unborn people get a shot at life. And while few of us walk around carrying nuclear codes in a briefcase, when it comes to existential issues such as climate change or movements for social justice such as Black Lives Matter, the effectiveness of our response is determined by the sum of individual actions. We may not know why, but we are all in control of our actions (see “Are you predetermined?”) – and what kind of life you choose to lead surely does matter.
There are things you can do to increase your positive impact. Ord helped kick off the effective altruism movement, which says that by donating small amounts of money to charities that are proven to be more effective, you can do more good. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ord now thinks that one of the most effective ways to do good is to donate to charitable organisations trying to head off existential threats to humanity.
“It needn’t be that every donor focuses on giving to these causes,” he says. But collectively we need to do more than we are on this front. “It’s hard to be precise about how much we spend [on this], but it’s definitely less than the world spends on ice cream.”
What is the lesson of all this? Perhaps we should beware self-fulfilling prophesies. If you believe you don’t matter, then you won’t. If you believe you can matter – well, you just might. Joshua Howgego
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are worth about $10 million, according to an of the ““, the cost that society is willing to pay to save one life.
THE ELEMENTS OF YOU
By sheer weight of numbers, there is a clear answer to the question “what are you made of?”. Over 60 per cent of all the atoms in your body are hydrogen, the lightest in the periodic table.
Go by overall mass, however, and the leader is oxygen. Oxygen largely comes in molecules bound to other things, notably with hydrogen as water (H□O). We tend to define ourselves with reference to the element that is second in terms of mass, however, because it is so crucial to the body’s chemistry and structural integrity: we say we are carbon-based life forms.
Deconstruct an 80-kilogram human, and oxygen, carbon, hydrogen and three other elements account for almost 99 per cent of the body by mass, in the following proportions:
Oxygen – 52kg (65%)
Carbon –14.4kg (18%)
Hydrogen – 8kg (10%)
Nitrogen – 2.4kg (3%)
Calcium –1.1kg (1.4%)
Phosphorus – 0.9kg (1.1%)
Also present in quantities from hundreds of grams to just a few grams are, in descending order, sulphur, potassium, sodium, chlorine, magnesium, iron, fluorine and zinc – plus, in even tinier quantities, strontium, iodine, copper, manganese and molybdenum. Other elements may also be present, but tend not to be permanent fixtures. Richard Webb
All of the “You: Special issue” features
- You are stardust: The long view of when your existence really began
- How nature, nurture and sheer randomness combine to make a unique you
- Think your sense of self is located in your brain? Think again
- You are not one person: Why your sense of self must be an illusion
- Why it’s the aliens living inside you that create your sense of you
- Do we have free will or are all our decisions predetermined?
- If we can’t change the world, does anything we do matter?
- Why we’re in tune with our emotions – but suck at judging our smarts
- If the multiverse exists, are there infinite copies of me?
