The world has shifted, but has our mindset?

Photography by Freya Parkinson

Tatiana Škultétyová questions our pessimism in the context of global progression.

How many of the world’s one-year-old children today have been vaccinated? How many girls in low income countries across the world complete fifth grade? How many people in the world have access to electricity?

These are just a few examples of the questions used by Hans Rosling, author of the critically acclaimed book Factfulness, to challenge a wide variety of professionals and the general public. Men and women, ranging from scientists to UN economists, have received those questions in a multiple-choice format to test their knowledge of the condition of modern progress. Shockingly, and quite sadly, the vast majority scored worse than chimpanzees would if they answered randomly. In fact, most participants saw the world in a far more negative state than reality.

Coming back to the questions, 80% of children are vaccinated, 60% of girls in low-income countries complete fifth grade, and 80% of people have some access to electricity. That doesn’t sound so bad. Are you surprised? I know I definitely was, together with a large proportion of people who have taken Rosling’s test. It is truly astonishing how little we seem to actually know about the current state of the world.

You might be wondering – why does this matter? Isn’t it better that we are underestimating rather than overestimating our global development? In a sense, maybe yes. The overly negative view of the world may serve as a very strong incentive to continue working on and investing in the resolution of issues such as poverty, inequality, or environmental degradation, as their acuteness is stressed. At the same time, however, the ever-present negativity might be mitigating our efforts by spreading a sense of desperation and helplessness. Human beings often possess a simple outlook; when they don’t see progress, they lose hope in the process of improvement. Rosling’s research sees only 5% of Americans correctly identifying that world poverty has been halved in the past 20 years. 95% believe that it has either remained the same or even doubled. These numbers are extremely alarming: if we believe that charity work and global projects are not contributing to poverty reduction, do we abandon them, thus risking a descent into a pit where we believe that nothing can be done? Of course not! In order to move even further forwards in tackling all kinds of issues and making the world a better place, it is crucial to first see the world in its truest colours. And a good place to start is recognising why we feel so pessimistic about the present and the future, despite overwhelming empirical evidence.

Photography by Freya Parkinson

The boom of media, especially in recent years of social media, has transformed our knowledge and perspective of the world. After all, it has never been easier to stay on track with what is going on in each corner of the world. While this quick and efficient dissemination of information offers great platforms to draw attention to important issues, and is allowing virtually all of us to partake in solving them, it is also a great source of dramatisation and underestimation of achievement. Inherently, news stories sell better when they broadcast something outrageous, alarming or even scary. Creating a sense of panic is what generates the farthest-reaching and fastest-spreading headlines. The incentive to report on something that is sad, something that is only getting worse, and something we should be worried about, is higher than producing a congratulatory article about how we have managed to increase literacy over a span of 20 years. On top of this, Rosling’s testing has shown that only 20% of US media members and an astonishing 6% of EU media members were able to pick the correct answer for how many children are vaccinated against measles. This shows that the incentive to depict progress is not only lower, but that reporters themselves are unaware of it taking place. It is no surprise then that readers are blind to much of our global improvements themselves.

Such reporting, full of pessimistic prognoses and worrisome statistics, has naturally seeped into our lives. It is something we were reminded of during school and throughout our childhood. We were consistently shown countries in Africa as examples of poverty, not to mention our parents using the infamous line, “there are children in the world that have nothing to eat and you are going to waste all this food.” Subconsciously, in the back of our minds, we have therefore created an image of low income countries as places where children are starving, women are being abused, and there is hardly any water or food, not to mention access to education. While I am not saying that all of these issues have been eradicated and that poverty is no longer a concern, I do believe that we have curated a very narrow view of low income countries. We are overlooking the fact that, even though a country may struggle with issues surrounding poverty, they may have also accomplished a lot, as many countries in Africa have done so in the past few decades. Indeed, populations are becoming increasingly educated, healthier, and wealthier. This must be acknowledged no matter how small the steps are.

What do these accomplishments look like in numbers? In 1820, only 12% of the world was literate, in 2016, only 14% remained illiterate and this number has steadily decreased by 4-5% every 5 years. Amazing success. While Africa still holds 9 out of 10 deaths by malaria, it has made tremendous progress by almost halving the number of infected people in only 15 years. Access to improved water sources has increased from 76% in 1991 to 91% in 2015.

All of these figures are great examples of achievement, and there are plenty more similar statistics mapping out positive trends. Ultimately, this proves that our collective endeavours are working, and that the world is shifting towards the better. This is exactly the message I’m hoping to streamline – the world has gone through an incredible development in the past 10 years alone, and is constantly improving. Yes, there are still people experiencing extreme poverty, children going to bed hungry, people suffering from serious diseases and yes, it is important to be aware of that. But it is equally necessary to be aware of how far we have managed to come, in order to motivate us in the future. Indeed, the world has shifted and now it is time for our mindsets to adjust as well so that we are able to keep the train of development going.

This article was originally published in Issue 724 of Pi Magazine.