Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (24 page)
Authors: Hans Rosling
Afterward, our host looked at me and said, “I have never seen that before. How can you admit such stupid people for medical training?” I explained that all elevators in Sweden had sensors on the doors. If something were put between them, they would instantaneously stop closing and open instead. The Indian doctor looked doubtful. “But how can you be sure that this advanced mechanism is working every single time?” I felt stupid with my reply: “It just always does. I suppose it’s because there are strict safety rules and regular inspections.” He didn’t look convinced. “Hmmm. So your country has become so safe that when you go abroad the world is dangerous for you.”
I can assure you that the young woman was not at all stupid. She had simply, and unwisely, generalized from her own Level 4 experience of elevators to all elevators in all countries.
On the last day, we have a little ceremony to say goodbye where I sometimes learn something about the generalizations other people make about us. On this particular occasion in India, my female students arrived on time, beautifully dressed in colorful saris they had bought locally. (The elevator-door leg injury was nicely healed.) They were followed ten minutes later by the male students, evidently hungover and dressed in torn jeans and dirty T-shirts. India’s leading professor of forensic medicine leaned over to me and whispered, “I hear you have love marriages in your country but that must be a lie. Look at these men. What woman would marry them if their parents didn’t make them?”
When visiting reality in other countries, and not just the backpacker caf
é
s, you realize that generalizing from what is normal in your home environment can be useless or even dangerous.
I do not mean to sound critical about my students. I am no better myself.
In 1972, as a fourth-year medical student, I studied at the medical school in Bangalore. The first class I attended was on examining kidney X-rays. Looking at the first image, I realized this must be kidney cancer. I decided to wait awhile before telling the class, out of respect. I didn’t want to show off. Several hands then went into the air and the Indian students one by one explained how best to diagnose this cancer, how and where it usually spreads, and how best to treat it. On and on they went for 30 minutes, answering questions I thought only chief physicians knew. I realized my embarrassing mistake. I must have come to the wrong room. These must not be fourth-year students, these must be specialists. I had nothing to add to their analysis.
On our way out, I told a fellow student I was supposed to be with the fourth-years. “That’s us,” he said. I was stunned. They had caste marks on their foreheads and lived where exotic palm trees grew. How could they know much more than me? Over the next few days I learned that they had a textbook three times as thick as mine, and they had read it three times as many times.
I remember this whole experience as the first time in my life that I suddenly had to change my worldview: my assumption that I was superior because of where I came from, the idea that the West was the best and the rest would never catch up. At that moment, 45 years ago, I understood that the West would not dominate the world for much longer.
If you can’t travel, please do not worry. There are other ways to avoid using wrong categories.
Anna would always insist that the trips I did with my students were a na
ï
ve and unrealistic way to teach most people about the world. Few people wanted to spend their hard-earned money traveling to far-flung places only to try a pit latrine and experience the unglamorous everyday life on Levels 1, 2, or 3, far from the beach, the great cuisine and bars, and the fairy-tale-like wildlife.
Most people were just as uninterested in studying the data about global trends and proportions. And anyway, even looking at the data, it was pretty hard to understand what it meant for everyday life on different levels.
Remember the photos used to describe the levels in the chapter on the gap instinct? They all come from Dollar Street, a project that Anna developed to teach armchair travelers about the world. Now you can understand how people live without leaving your home.
Imagine all the homes in the world lined up on one long street, sorted by income. The poorest live at the left end of the street and the richest live at the right end. Everybody else? Of course, you know it by now: most people live somewhere in the middle. Your house number on this street represents your income. Your neighbors on Dollar Street are people from all over the world with the same income as you.
Anna has so far sent photographers out to visit about 300 families in more than 50 countries. Their photos document how people eat, sleep, brush their teeth, and prepare food. They capture what their homes are made of, how they heat and light their homes, their everyday items like toilets and stoves, and in total more than 130 different aspects of their daily lives. We could fill a whole book with images showing the striking similarities between the lives of people living on the same incomes in different countries, and the huge differences in how people live within countries. We have over 40,000 photos.
1
What the photos make clear is that the main factor that affects how people live is not their religion, their culture, or the country they live in, but their income.
Here are some toothbrushes from families with different income levels. On Level 1 you brush with your finger or a stick. On Level 2 you get a plastic toothbrush. On Level 3 you get one each. And Level 4 you are already familiar with.
The bedrooms (or kitchens or living rooms) of families living on Level 4 look very similar in the United States, Vietnam, Mexico, South Africa, or anywhere else in the world.
The way a family living on Level 2 in China stores and prepares food looks very similar to the way a family living on Level 2 in Nigeria stores and prepares food.
In fact, when you are one of the 3 billion people living on Level 2, whether you live in the Philippines, Colombia, or Liberia, the basic facts about your life are quite similar.
Your house has a patchwork roof, so if it’s raining you might well get wet and cold.
When you go to the toilet in the morning it is smelly and full of flies, but at least there are some walls to give you some privacy.
You eat the same for almost every meal, every day of every week. You dream about food that is more varied and more delicious.
The light flickers because the electricity is unstable. You have to rely on moonlight on the nights when the power is out. You secure the door using a padlock.
When you go to bed in the evening you might brush your teeth with the same toothbrush as the rest of the family. You dream about the day when you don’t have to share your toothbrush with Grandma anymore.
In the media, we see photos of everyday life on Level 4 and crisis on the other levels all the time. Google
toilet, bed,
or
stove.
You will get images from Level 4. If you want to see what everyday life is like on the other levels, Google won’t help.
It will be helpful to you if you always assume your categories are misleading. Here are five powerful ways to keep questioning your favorite categories: look for differences within and similarities across groups; beware of “the majority”; beware of exceptional examples; assume you are not “normal”; and beware of generalizing from one group to another.
Country stereotypes simply fall apart when you look at the huge differences within countries and the equally huge similarities between countries on the same income level, independent of culture or religion.
Remember the similarities between the cooking pots of families on Level 2 in Nigeria and China? If you saw just the picture from China you would probably think, “Oh, that’s how they heat water in China. In an iron pot on a tripod over a fire. That’s their culture.” No. It is a common way to heat water on Level 2, all over the world. It’s a question of income. And in China, as elsewhere, people also cook in several other ways, depending not on their “culture” but on their income level.
When someone says that an individual did something because they belong to some group—a nation, a culture, a religion—take care. Are there examples of different behavior in the same group? Or of the same behavior in other groups?
