Hans Rosling in ‘Factfulness’ aims to free us from our archaic mindsets that imagine world as a living, breathing hellhole
Trump in America, Modi in India, the rise of islamophobia in Europe, a forever ablazed Middle East, an on-the-verge-of-collapse Africa, a dwindling economy at home, the entire world on the verge of a climate catastrophe, rampant corruption, every journalists predicting doom, all the seers promising ‘better days’ ahead, and the majority of us sit torturing ourselves with sadness that is neither warranted nor real.
We in our quest to see the bits and pieces (read events, personalities, accidents, happenings) lose sight of what is called the ‘Big Picture’. Since we the journalists focus and magnify collages of human miseries, our readers and viewers are bound to see the world as zilch but a pale blue dot occupied by 7 billion humans going to hell in a handbasket.
“We, in all honesty, perceive the world like this because we got our ‘facts’ wrong,” claims Hans Rosling in his book ‘Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World-And Why Things are Better Than You Think.’ Rosling, a physician and public educator famous for his groundbreaking TED Talks, ventures out to go beyond the everyday visuals and rhetoric, beyond the noise on our tellies, beyond the false dichotomies spread and propagated and believed mindless, and beyond the make-believe world where terror and fear reigns supreme
and mankind is forever on the precipice of the great abyss.
There are two real victims in all this. One is the depressed, gloomy human being, who feels utterly miserable as they survey the suffering of ‘lesser mortals.’ They sit on their comfy sofas staring at their TV screens, tablets, cell phones, channels and sites being flipped through at the mercy of their thumbs. The second victim is ‘fact’. Simple, unadulterated, quantifiable, and readily available, ‘fact’ is relegated to the fringes. Its place is taken by hearsay, outdated notions, rote learned statistics and partial, biased reporting by media on dramatic events.
Factfulness aims to counter rampant ignorance among the masses about the ‘state of the world’. Ranging from the fallacy that the world in 21st Century can be divided in ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries to overgeneralization and failure to acknowledge the gradual change that has altered the world for the better, Factfulness razes the misconceptions, half-truths, downright lies and delusions about the world believed by the average joe, experts, scholars and intellectuals alike. In short, it aims for and hits hard at what are believed to be the ‘gospel truths’ about the world.
Going Beyond the dichotomy of ‘Developing/Developed’, ‘Rich/Poor’
We live our lives and imagine our world in binaries. ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. ‘Haves’ and ‘Have nots’. ‘Poor’ and ‘Rich’. ‘Saints’ and ‘Sinners’. ‘Right’ and ‘Wrong’. ‘Doers’ and ‘Thinkers’. ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’. ‘Developed’ and ‘Undeveloped’. ‘Enviable’ and ‘Pitiable’. And this ‘mindset’ is ruining
our present, blurring our past and imperilling our future. We are either clueless or are in utter darkness about the very basic facts about our world. Yet we feign to be knowledgeable when in reality we don’t have any understanding of the most rudimentary stuff like child labour, female education, average life span, and global poverty.
Policy makers, check. Academics, check. Experts, check. Scholars, check. Teachers, check. All the aforementioned learned and intellectual leaders of people repeatedly fall in this either/or trap.
The single most important idea that the book offers, if one is bound to pick one, is imagining four levels of income depicting socio-economic realities that seven billion people of earth belong to rather than the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ world binary that is not only archaic in 21st century but also misleading.
The Four Income Levels tell an altogether different story of our world. A story where the majority of humankind is neither subjugated in extreme poverty, and nor is the mythical one-percent having all the fun on their yachts with their fancy rolexes and swanky cars. On Level One are those people who are living on $2 or less per day. On Level Two are those who are earning more than 2$ but less than 8$ per day. On Level three are those who are earning between 8$ and 32$ and on Level Four are those who are earning more than 32 $ per day. Interestingly, if one divides the world along these levels, one could easily see that majority of the people all over the world are living on the two middle levels, where their basic needs of food and shelter are met.
Simply put, one billion people are living on Level One, three billion people are living on Level 2, two billion people are living on Level Three and again one billion people are living on Level Four.
The dramatic instincts we need to tame
Rosling identifies dramatic instincts that overdramatize and taint our world view. The Gap Instinct blurs our perception of reality as it perpetuates our love of dichotomies.
Negative Instinct makes us more prone to hear negative than positive information as they say that good news is no news while the Fear Instinct makes the world a lot more scarier than it already is. The Size Instinct makes us blow things out of their proportion like poverty levels, out of school children, crime rates etc. The Destiny Instinct and Single-Perspective Instinct can be balanced by keeping track of gradual improvements that are neither newsworthy nor easily perceivable and steering clear of simple ideas and simple solutions for complex ideas respectively. While the Blame Instinct should be tamed by resisting to find a scapegoat and looking for causes, not villains and relying on systems, not heroes. Lastly, the Urgency Instinct
demands that small steps should be taken as rarely any matter involves an either/or or now and never choices.
DO’s and DONT’s of Factfulness
First let us count the DON’Ts.
DON’T try to make sense of the world through news alone. DON’T trust your gut-feeling about everything. DON’T assume you know because you are more likely to mistake your feelings for your thought. DON’T blow things out of proportion. DON’T assume people to be deaf and dumb idiots. DON’T fall prey to false dichotomies. DON’T be an optimist. DON’T be a pessimist. DON’T give in to the perennial instinct of overdramatizing life.
Now the DO’s.
DO look for information beyond news, you’ll find it readily. DO try to differentiate between ‘actual’ and ‘nostalgic’ version of past. DO conceive things in their proper proportion. DO categorize things, information, people and events but try to be mindful and meticulous. DO respect people and their ideas. DO strive and see beyond the either/or divide. DO your best to transcend the instinct of being swayed by a good story with lots and lots of drama.
About the Authors
Hans Rosling was a medical doctor, professor of international health and renowned public educator. He was an adviser to the World Health Organization and UNICEF, and co-founded Médecins sans Frontières in Sweden and the Gapminder Foundation. His TED talks have been viewed more than 35 million times, and he was listed as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. Hans died in 2017, having devoted the last years of his life to writing this book.
Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, Hans’s son and daughter-in-law, were co-founders of the Gapminder Foundation, and Ola its director from 2005 to 2007 and from 2010 to the present day. After Google acquired the bubble-chart tool called Trendalyzer, invented and designed by Anna and Ola, Ola became head of Google’s Public Data Team and Anna the team’s senior user experience (UX) designer. They have both received international awards for their work.