Isn’t it so weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn’t going to be room to bury anyone anymore? For my ninth birthday last year, Grandma gave me a subscription to National Geographic, which she calls “the National Geographic.” She also gave me a white blazer, because I only wear white clothes, and it’s too big to wear so it will last me a long time. She also gave me Grandpa’s camera, which I loved for two reasons. I asked why he didn’t take it with him when he left her. She said, “Maybe he wanted you to have it.” I said, “But I was negative-thirty years old.” She said, “Still.” Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn’t, because there aren’t enough skulls! .Jonathan Safran Foer
About This Quote
The logic behind this quote is that the earth has not stopped growing. If the earth stopped, there would be no room for everyone to bury their dead. So with only a finite space on the earth, most people die before they can be buried. In Shakespeare's time, people didn't have the same number of people with them as they do now.
For example, Shakespeare thought that there were about 2 billion people living at the time, with a death rate of about a million a day. The population is now around 7 billion and it's estimated that there are currently about a million deaths every day.
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