Progress-focused

Hans and Ola Rosling show that we know too little about the progress in the world and they explain how we can change that.  Hans Rosling, founder of the Gapminder foundation, became famous for his TED presentations about the development of the world in areas such as health, wealth and environment. In those presentations he use Tendalyzer software which made them spectacular and dynamic (see here ). They were also surprising in their content. They showed that the world has improved, and is still improving, in many ways. Examples of such improvements are decreasing child mortality, decreasing extreme poverty, better and longer education, especially for women, increase life expectancy, etc.

The new radio advertisement of UNICEF in my country says: "The world is on fire. But children did not light it." I believe that UNICEF is a great organization but I dislike that they use the phrase "the world is on fire". There is, of course, much suffering in the world and there are gruesome things going on. It seems like the daily news is filled with stories about war, terrorism, and crime. But if the daily news is the only thing you depend on, the world always looks like a powder keg. And while I think it is useful and necessary for the news to pay attention to the horrors of the world, there is another way of looking at reality which is also important.