The world is much better. The world is awful. The world can be much better. All three statements are true.
— Read on ourworldindata.org/much-better-awful-can-be-better

“It is wrong to think that these three statements contradict each other. We need to see that they are all true to see that a better world is possible. by Max Roser July 20, 2022 The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. All three statements are true at the same time. Discussions about the state of the world too often focus on the first statement: The news highlights what is going wrong, rarely mentioning any positive development. A pushback on this narrative takes it to the other extreme, which is equally damaging. Solely communicating the progress that the world has achieved becomes unhelpful, or even repugnant, when it glosses over the problems that are real today. It’s hard to resist falling for only one of these perspectives. But to see that a better world is possible we need to see that both are true at the same time, the world is awful and the world is much better. To illustrate what I mean, I will use the example of one of humanity’s biggest tragedies: the death of its children. But the same is true for many of the world’s other problems. Humanity faces many problems where things have improved over time, which are still terrible, and for which we know that things can get better…”