Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think

Feeling, Not Thinking
There’s something else going on as well. What are people really thinking
when they say the world is getting worse? My guess is they are 
not
thinking.
They are feeling. If you still 
feel
uncomfortable agreeing that the world is
getting better, even after I have shown you all this beautiful data, my guess is
that it’s because you know that huge problems still remain. My guess is you
feel
that me saying that the world is getting better is like me telling you that
everything is fine, or that you should look away from these problems and
pretend they don’t exist: and that feels ridiculous, and stressful.
I agree. Everything is not fine. We should still be very concerned. As long
as there are plane crashes, preventable child deaths, endangered species,
climate change deniers, male chauvinists, crazy dictators, toxic waste,
journalists in prison, and girls not getting an education because of their
gender, as long as any such terrible things exist, we cannot relax.
But it is just as ridiculous, and just as stressful, to look away from the
progress that has been made. People often call me an optimist, because I show
them the enormous progress they didn’t know about. That makes me angry.
I’m not an optimist. That makes me sound naïve. I’m a very serious
“possibilist.” That’s something I made up. It means someone who neither
hopes without reason, nor fears without reason, someone who constantly
resists the overdramatic worldview. As a possibilist, I see all this progress,
and it fills me with conviction and hope that further progress is possible. This
is not optimistic. It is having a clear and reasonable idea about how things are.
It is having a worldview that is constructive and useful.
When people wrongly believe that nothing is improving, they may
conclude that nothing we have tried so far is working and lose confidence in
measures that actually work. I meet many such people, who tell me they have
lost all hope for humanity. Or, they may become radicals, supporting drastic
measures that are counter-productive when, in fact, the methods we are
already using to improve our world are working just fine.

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Take, for example, girls’ education. Educating girls has proven to be one of
the world’s best-ever ideas. When women are educated, all kinds of
wonderful things happen in societies. The workforce becomes diversified and
able to make better decisions and solve more problems. Educated mothers
decide to have fewer children and more children survive. More energy and
time is invested in each child’s education. It’s a virtuous cycle of change.
Poor parents who can’t afford to send all their children to school have often
prioritized the boys. But since 1970 there has been fantastic progress. Across
religions, cultures, and continents, almost all parents can now afford to send
all their children to school, and are sending their daughters as well as their
sons. Now the girls have almost caught up: 90 percent of girls of primary
school age attend school. For boys, the figure is 92 percent. There’s almost no
difference.
There are still gender differences when it comes to education on Level 1,
especially when it comes to secondary and higher education, but that’s no
reason to deny the progress that has been made. I see no conflict between
celebrating this progress and continuing to fight for more. I am a possibilist.
And the progress we have made tells me it’s possible to get all girls in school,
and all boys too, and that we should work hard to make it happen. It won’t
happen by itself, and if we lose hope because of stupid misconceptions, it
might not happen at all. The loss of hope is probably the most devastating
consequence of the negativity instinct and the ignorance it causes.