“This book is my very last battle in my lifelong mission to fight devastating global ignorance. It is my last attempt to make an impact on the world: to change people’s way of thinking, calm their irrational fears, and redirect their energies into constructive activities”.
The book Factfulness has never been more necessary. It analyses how humans see the world they live in today and discovers how in fact the knowledge we have is outdated from many decades ago. So in order to upgrade people's knowledge, Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund start by quizzing its readers and surprising them by how many things they get wrong. I even tested people close to me and it seems we all see the world worse than it really is. Now the main question is: why is that?
Our brain is first and foremost prepared for overdramatic worldviews, add to this ten instincts the authors expands on in this book: the gap instinct, the negativity instinct, the straight line instinct, the fear instinct, the size instinct, the generalization instinct, the destiny instinct, the single perspective instinct, the blame instinct and the urgency instinct.
By deconstructing each one of them, the Roslings will prove how data can be a therapy and how understanding can be a source of mental peace to also become wiser. As founders of the Gapminder Foundation in 2005, a non-profit that promotes sustainable global development, and other project such as Dollar Street, the proposition to its readers is that “Factfulness, like a healthy diet and regular exercise, can and should become part of your daily life” and we should never lose our childlike sense of wonder, inspiration and curiosity to find out how the world really is.
Hans Rosling has worked as a physician and a public health official and has insisted on losing categories such as “developed” and “developing” countries in favor of analyzing countries through four levels of income. He has been a teacher and TED talk speaker, looking to show through his bubble charts some of the things that have improved in the last decades including women’s education, immunization, electricity and internet coverage, water and protected nature.
“The data shows that half the increase in child survival in the world happens because the mothers can read and write”.
Let's stop being blind to what is happening around us and stop believing the stereotypes produced by the media, we need to sharpen our glasses to be able to think critically and examine carefully the information we are receiving. This has never proven more pressing as rapid communications today focus more on ever changing quantity instead of quality. Let us start educating ourselves in facts.
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