CHAPTER 4
The Good News
The world is better than the media report
Our Worldview May Need Adjusting
One of the books I discovered while writing this one is Factfulness, by Hans Rosling. It’s fascinating and upbeat, and catalogues facts and extensive research about our current world in an easy and uplifting read. There really is hope for us now and in the future.
Dr. Rosling was one of those amazing people who earned both an MD and a PhD. He used his accumulated knowledge and boundless energy to help people with open minds see the world from a perspective different from that of the news media. Among his many roles, he was a physician, a professor of international health, and a cofounder of the Gapminder Foundation. His mission was to combat ignorance about the present with a fact-based worldview. He also gave some of the most popular TED Talks ever, with more than 35 million views.
Sadly, Dr. Rosling died of pancreatic cancer at age sixty-nine, while at the peak of his contributions. He devoted the last year of his life to completing his book with the help of his son Ola and daughter-in-law Anna. He left behind a great treasure in Factfulness and a wonderful legacy of searching for truth to help us better understand our world.
Some Facts: The United States and the World
As I read Factfulness, my curiosity about the current state of both the world and the United States significantly increased. I discovered several reliable websites that back up Dr. Rosling’s findings. They’re worth checking out. Any or all of them will give you a boost.
Being mindful that political nastiness, war, crime, hatred, disease, prejudice, greed, corruption, natural disasters, and other negatives have been and always will be with us, let’s take a brief look at some of the marvelous and inspiring trends that are occurring daily, but are rarely mentioned in the news.
Please understand that, for the most part, I’m using my own lifespan to show the progress being made. To refresh your memory, I was born in 1940 and wrote this book in 2020, the year I turned eighty. I hope while reading this, regardless of age, you will also look at the progress made in numerous areas during your own lifetime. I just happen to go back farther than most of you do.
Education. Naturally, a teacher looks at this trend first. In the year I was born the high school graduation rate in the United States was 51 percent. By the time I had graduated in 1958 the rate had gone up to almost 65 percent. Today it stands at nearly 84 percent and continues to rise.
In 1940 3.8 percent of U.S. women and 5.5 percent of men had earned college degrees. By the time I earned my bachelor’s degree in 1962 the rate had gone up to 6.7 percent women and 11.4 percent men. Today those college graduation rates are almost 35 percent women and 34 percent men. We continue to grow as an educated society. And as the level of our education improves, so does our standard of living.
Literacy and education are also rapidly advancing worldwide. Dr. Rosling places particular emphasis on the increasing educational opportunities for girls, who for centuries were traditionally kept out of schools due to cultural norms and beliefs.
Health and life expectancy. In 1940 the average life expectancy in the United States was sixty-two. Today it’s a shade under eighty. This is the result of phenomenal advances in medicine and health care, along with an increase in knowledge about the value of a healthy diet and regular exercise. More and more people are living longer and healthier lives.
You may be wondering, as I did, where the United States ranks among countries in the world in longevity. Considering our incredible advances in medicine, shouldn’t we be at or near the top? The bad news is that we’re not in the Top 30. The good news is that we’re #31. Japan tops the list. Others in the top ten are Singapore, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Australia, Iceland, Israel, South Korea, and Sweden. Why aren’t we higher? See above—healthy diet and regular exercise. Many people in the United States still choose neither.
The eradication of polio. With all of our recent advances in the treatment of cancer and heart disease, you may wonder why I want to focus on a disease that barely exists in the world today. It’s just to put things in perspective from my own life experiences. If you had asked me when I was growing up in the 1940s and ’50s what my greatest fear was, the answer would have been polio. It is a brutal and crippling disease that mostly went after young people. Some of my childhood friends were severely paralyzed by it, and I worried about catching it literally every day. It’s impossible for anyone born after 1964 to relate to this.
One of the happiest days of my life occurred in my junior year in high school, when I received the Salk polio vaccine. I mention this because countless dedicated medical researchers are currently working on cures for other devastating and fatal diseases, and many more such breakthroughs will happen in the years ahead.
Democracy and freedom are on the rise. We read and hear daily about atrocities in the world that are the result of corrupt and dictatorial governments. What we don’t read and hear about is the steady growth of democracy and human rights.
According to the Pew Research Center, in 1946 only 29 percent of the world’s countries had a form of democratic government. That number had gone down to 24 percent by 1976. But over the next forty years, it grew to 58 percent. With the growth of democracy have come advances in education, health care, an increase in freedom and individual rights, improved economies, a higher standard of living, and happier people.
Poverty is in decline. In 2013 my wife Cathy and I took a three-week trip to India. Many of our friends commented, “Why would you ever want to go there? Isn’t it mostly poverty?” The answer was, “No, there’s much more to it than that,” but we didn’t convince anyone.
India is much more than poverty, and we enjoyed a fascinating experience. India, along with China, are the best two examples of countries reducing the rate of poverty. As recently as 1997, approximately 42 percent of the people in both countries were living in extreme poverty. Today, that figure is 12 percent in India and 1 percent in China, and the numbers continue to go down.
In the United States, the poverty rate was 22 percent when I graduated from high school in 1958. In 2010 it was down to 15 percent and, after some fluctuation, it fell to nearly 12 percent in 2018. The teacher in me believes that as long as we continue to expand educational opportunities throughout the world, we’ll be able to bring the poverty numbers even lower.
Technology is rapidly improving countless facets of life. Via email, I recently asked one hundred people who grew up in the 1940s, ’50s, or ’60s what the best development of their lifetime was. More than ninety answered technology. While I asked for a one-word answer, many gave me additional feedback. One of my college friends said, “It’s sometimes hard to believe how much better we have it these days. Our cars, phones, tools, TVs, appliances, e-books, cameras, music, lighting, email, websites, videos, clocks, and just about everything else in our homes these days are better.” Yes, technology has greatly improved our lives.
If you were born in the 1980s or later, you might have a difficult time understanding what it was like when we older folk were growing up. Amazingly, a lot of us got through college without Google or Wikipedia. We tend to take most of our technology for granted today, so let me go down memory lane regarding two devices we use most days.
• Telephone. My parents grew up without one. When I was growing up, we would lift the handset off the cradle and ask the operator to connect us to another number. Later, we went modern and dialed our own numbers without any help. Then came push-button and cordless phones, and then the cell phone. I was about forty-five when I got my first flip phone. It took a few more years before I became really cool and got an iPhone.
• Television. Having a TV in one’s home didn’t become common until the 1950s. We didn’t have one in our home until 1955 (my first year in high school). The screen had an odd shape, the picture was in black and white, the reception was fuzzy, and we had just one channel. When I was a junior it doubled to two channels. Color and hi-definition TV were light-years away. I’m still amazed at what we’re able to watch on that large, flat, colorful, crystal-clear screen today. And I love all the choices. The telephone and TV are only two examples. Technology continues to make our lives better in literally thousands of other ways.
Quality of life. Largely because of advances in education, health care, economics, democracy, and technology, we have the potential to live longer and happier lives. Without overwhelming you with statistics, here’s a short list of some of the other ways in which life is getting better. But you won’t read or hear about them in the news. Bad news travels fast, but good news takes the scenic route. The key is to appreciate these advances rather than take them for granted.
• Child labor is dramatically down throughout the world.
• Income is rising in most countries.
• Murders in the United States are in steady decline.
• Travel by car or plane is safer than ever.
• The rights of women, minorities, and LGBTQ+ persons have steadily risen. (Yes, more progress is needed.)
• Access to food and clean water increases daily.
• School bullying is being significantly reduced.
• Home ownership in the United States is near peak level.
• Smoking and other uses of tobacco go down each year.
• There are far fewer teen pregnancies.
• Sports and entertainment get better every year.
• There is more opportunity than ever to have a good quality of life.
These are but a small percentage of the ways in which the world is getting better. There are countless more. But as Dr. Rosling reminded us, our instincts for fear and negativity, combined with news media that focus on the worst, lead us to believe otherwise.
Another Look at the Good Old Days
Throughout history adults have complained about the values, work ethic, and behavior of the younger generation while constantly glorifying the good old days. I’ve never bought into it. As a teacher, I saw great promise in most of my students and reminded them often that they were our future and that each generation has the responsibility of making life better. Life is better today because of those younger generations. And the generations yet to come will do the same.
My generation waxes most poetic about the 1950s: post-war economic boom, rock ’n’ roll, Elvis, drive-in theaters, soda fountains, the baby boom, the first satellite, the first organ transplant, the expansion of TV, Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse, and on it goes. Ah, those Happy Days.
They were happiest for white males growing up in middle- and upper-class families, but not so hot for a lot of other people. My learning and teaching of history greatly broadened my perspective. Here are a few of the sad realities of that time (all of which I’d been unaware):
• Racial discrimination was widespread and legal.
• During the Korean War almost 37,000 Americans died.
• Smoking increased dramatically.
• Gay, lesbian, and transgender people had to live double lives while hiding their real identities.
• Poverty was far worse than today.
• Women were held back in just about every category except getting pregnant, raising children, and housework.
• Crime increased dramatically.
• There wasn’t even a Super Bowl.
We could compile a similar list of the major negatives in any decade, along with a list of the positives. The point is that the good old days were only better because we tend to have selective memories and a “my generation was the best” mentality. But the truth is that life is better than ever.
A Few Recommendations
Our progress rarely makes the headlines. I’m deeply indebted to the people who have researched and written about it, and I hope I’ve condensed some of their main findings into a brief and readable chapter. It could have been five or six times as long.
Let me leave you with two recommendations if you’re interested in learning more about how things are actually getting better:
1. Read Dr. Rosling’s book Factfulness. It’s enjoyable to read and will brighten your outlook.
2. Make good use of one of the greatest innovations in history: the Internet. Do a search on “the world is getting better.” You won’t have time to read all the fascinating articles that come up.