The Census Bureau just released its 2007 numbers, with a passel of statistics about American life. Not surprisingly, we’re the fattest humans on the face of the earth, even porkier than our closest competitors in England, Mexico, and Australia.

We drink more bottled water per person than beer (but still we’re fat?) and we love high fructose corn syrup, consuming more than twice as much as we did in 1980 (okay, no wonder we’re fat).

We watch a lot of TV (64 days a year) but we’re watching less than in 2000, (about 110 hours less per year). The extra time is spent on the Internet, with total hours zooming from 104 hours in 2000 to 183 hours in 2005.

The most telling statistic concerns college freshmen. Amid the heady idealism of 1970, a whopping 79 percent said their goal was to develop a meaningful philosophy of life. But in 2005, 75 percent said their top priority was to be financially very well off.

I understand today’s freshmen. Facing tuition costs of $40,000 a year for four years (is that…$160,000? Oh my God!) they can’t afford to be philosophical. Plus, the job market ain’t what it used to be. In 1970, a college degree opened a lot of doors. Today, not necessarily.

But I have a theory – based on no facts whatsoever – that today’s freshmen will at some point encounter that same heady search for meaning as their 1970 forebears. After all, the spark that drove 1970’s idealism hasn’t been erased from the human race, perhaps just submerged by the heavy weight of financial pragmatism.

Someday, today’s freshmen will look up. They’ll have enough to make their monthly credit card balance, and the battery on their iPod will run low, long enough for them to hear a few moments of silence. In the shocking quietude of their mobile office, they’ll wonder: isn’t there something more than this?

Then what’s going to happen?