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4.33 AVERAGE
4.33 AVERAGE
I was completely wrong about the world. I'm very happy that, I read this book and know I completely wrong.
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Read it quickly and it helped improve the way I interact with the world, but I had several gripes with the author’s mechanisms for disseminating his message.
I quite enjoyed Rosling's TED talks, and was thoroughly disappointed by this book. Overall found it to be pretty patronizing and misleading. I'd argue that the book isn't following its own advice on multiple fronts. I think the points raised in his TED Talk are still valuable and worth sharing, and would point people to those instead of this book every time.
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
- I struggled with this book because I generally agreed with the end conclusions. Yes, life is generally the best it’s ever been for people; for violence or illness based deaths, education, poverty, and equal rights for POC, women, LGBT, and disabled folk. It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in the sensationalism in the news and forget that! Completely agree with the need to reorient ourselves in that reality and not get swamped with the constant bad news. But his Ted talk did a far better job at conveying this message than the book in my opinion.
- This feels incredibly out of touch coming from a wealthy foreign white man telling women, POC, LGBT, and disabled people in America how stable and lucky they actually are. Maybe if we had a better healthcare system and our government enabling the privatized prison systems to have a sneaky legal slavery for free labor it would be different. But it's not and this whole book really frustrated me.
- He promotes looking at wealth/economic stability as 4 income levels instead of first or third world countries. I think it’s very cool to try and introduce a newer frame, but this is still incredibly narrow and doesn’t include the full range of wealth people live in? I wish his framework and indicators of upward trends were better outlined. Like yes I own a car and a washing machine, and have a small safety egg for emergencies, but I’m still below the poverty line for America? But yet he would put me at the highest income level in the world. My financial security is drastically different from someone who makes 50k a year, much less 100k, which is still not even close to the upper class in America, much less that 1%! He paints a picture of it only being the top .01% with boats and mansions and that's just…not true? Because of our system, if I had a medical emergency that made me unable to work for a while it could completely ruin my life and easily send me back to these lower tiers. Versus someone who makes $150k would have much more stability in case of an emergency. And this is a much more common wealth bracket that is still nowhere close to this boats and mansions idyllic life he describes for the 0.01%. The complete disillusioned idea of what is stable makes me not trust anything he says. Lumping the top 1% and those living paycheck to paycheck into the same category oversimplifies reality, dismissing significant struggles in an attempt to paint an overly optimistic picture of the world.
- He counts a “higher quality of lifestyle” being anyone who has a roof over their head, eats at least one regular meal a day, and has basic reading and writing skills. He is correct that the access to these basic needs has gone way up, but to cap our ambition there for fellow humans with all of our modern wonders is a disservice to each other. Especially when there is such a radical disparity within his level 4 high income bracket. A lot of the "things are better than you think!" talk is..semantics. For example he says most of the word is middle class and a small part of the population is actually extremely poor! Sounds great until you read his definition of middle class which sounds like hell lol
- The preoccupation with such general statements paired with generalized data points leads to unjustified optimism/inaccurate view of the world. He preaches that you shouldn’t blindly trust vague data that news sources throw at you, but then does the exact same thing in reverse when he throws vague narrow data at the reader to prove a massive questionable point. That doesn't promote good habits with receiving and questioning data, which seems like such a huge point of the book, to be better prepared to not get stressed out by sensationalism in the news. It presents all these statistics as facts, without ever citing his sources, and doesn’t talk at all about the difficulties of gauging what accurate data is within studies. Maybe if I didn’t work within Economics that examines these exact statistics I wouldn’t be so critical, but the point is to promote healthy habits and understanding from news and data reports, and this doesn’t do thattttt.
- “Claiming in that moment (of tragedy) that things are getting better would be to trivialize the immense suffering of those victims and their families. It would be absolutely unethical. In these situations we must forget the big picture and do everything we can to help. The big facts and the big picture must wait until the danger is over. But then we must dare to reestablish a facts based world view again. We must cool our brains and compare the numbers to make sure our resources are used effectively to stop future suffering. We can’t let fear guide these priorities.”
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
This was a good perspective, however I will not stop worrying about everything HANS because worrying is a way of life for me at this point, HANS… tyvm
informative
slow-paced
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
informative
inspiring
medium-paced