A cura di @RNik.

Un articolo di Max Roser, pubblicato su Vox e ricco di dati ed infografiche, tenta di illustrare un fatto che spesso ci sfugge: negli ultimi due secoli, le cose sono andate sempre in meglio per l’umanità.
Quali “cose”? La ricchezza, la cultura e la salute, tanto per citare le prime.

Ma se i numeri dicono questo, perché noi non ce ne rendiamo conto o abbiamo addirittura una percezione opposta? Roser un’idea in proposito ce l’ha:

I do not think they are the only ones to blame, but I do think that the media is to blame for some part of this. This is because the media does not tell us how the world is changing; it tells us what in the world goes wrong.
One reason the media focuses on things that go wrong is that the media focuses on single events, and single events are often bad — look at the news: plane crashes, terrorism attacks, natural disasters, election outcomes that we are not happy with.
Positive developments, on the other hand, often happen very slowly and never make the headlines in the event-obsessed media.

Se i dati sono positivi, non siamo comunque nella posizione di ritenerci soddisfatti: c’è ancora molto da fare:

Big problems remain. None of the above should give us reason to become complacent. On the contrary, it shows us that a lot of work still needs to be done — accomplishing the fastest reduction of poverty is a tremendous achievement, but the fact that one out of 10 people lives in extreme poverty today is unacceptable. We also must not accept the restrictions of our liberty that remain and that are put in place. It is also clear that humanity’s impact on the environment is at a level that is not sustainable and is endangering the biosphere and climate on which we depend. We urgently need to reduce our impact.

 

Immagine di Jose Romero.09 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0