Hans Rosling

It’s not the numbers that are interesting. It’s what they tell us about the lives behind the numbers

I’m talking about that irresistible temptation we have to divide all kinds of things into two distinct and often conflicting groups, with an imagined gap—a huge chasm of injustice—in between.

He probably thought I would be surprised

You started with ‘them and us’ and then changed it to

I’m very interested to understand what you mean

I have never understood them

So I did just that

The world has completely changed

Graphs showing levels of income, or tourism, or democracy, or access to education, health care, or electricity would all tell the same story: that the world used to be divided into two but isn’t any longer.

Today, most people are in the middle. There is no gap between the West and the rest, between developed and developing, between rich and poor. And we should all stop using the simple pairs of categories that suggest there is.