Outside In | Despite war, climate fears and economic woes, life really is getting better
- Beyond what the crisis-obsessed media may report, the world is actually making steady progress against poverty, illiteracy, disease and more
- More than anything, we should rely on a fact-based world view rather than the fact-free bigotry incubated across much of social media
When the fog of global gloom gets too hard to bear, my thoughts often flicker back to Monty Python’s 1979 epic Life of Brian and Eric Idle tied to a cross in Golgotha singing: “Always look on the bright side of life”.
But there are more constructive ways of clearing the gloom. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker wrote in late December 2019, on the cusp of a new decade, of seeking “a ray of optimism to pierce the gloom of the daily headlines”. “Progress is a historical fact,” he said. “Over the past seven decades, humans have become (on average) longer-lived, healthier, safer, richer, freer, happier and smarter, not just in the West, but worldwide.”
More valuable therapy comes in Hans Rosling’s 2018 book, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, published almost a year after his death from pancreatic cancer. “Step-by-step, year-by-year, the world is improving. Not on every single measure every single year, but as a rule,” he wrote. “Though the world faces huge challenges, we have made tremendous progress. This is the fact-based world view.”
Rosling was thorough in explaining why so many people think the world is more frightening, more violent and more hopeless than it really is.
