Hans Rosling was truly admirable. He started as a doctor but moved to being a public figure who worked on driving greater understand of the world, especially related to health. His Gapminder Institute has some excellent resources for teaching. Indeed, they are useful for everyone whether you are in education or not. His aim was to improve the way we all see the world. A recuring theme is that many of us are thirty years out of date in our views. (Unfortunately, he died in 2017 and despite the great work he did I’m sure the same problem still exists today.) His biography (written in Swedish and published a few years after his death in English) details how he learned about the world. We can all do with benefiting from his insights.
Understand The World Using Visualization
One of his major contributions was the visualization of the world. For example, he plotted income against life expectancy. The size of the bubble in the figure shows population size with the colors for world regions. (Blue for Africa, red represents Asia including Australasia, green shows the Americas, and yellow Europe). You can see India and China clearly given their massive bubbles. The large green bubble of the US is pretty easy to spot. That Africa is still the poorest region comes through clearly too.
His main message was the world shouldn’t be seen as just rich and poor. Most countries and most people, e.g., Indians and Chinese, are in the middle. Countries that a generation ago were poor shouldn’t be seen as poor nowadays. They have got significantly richer. Positive change can, and does, happen. Generally, we want the African countries to follow the positive economic development examples from the Asian countries.
A Worthwhile Investment
Interestingly, Rosling shares how his son wanted to borrow money, or at least have his father co-sign a loan, for a new computer to allow the initial work on visualization to be done. Rosling admits to saying “no” because he thought a new computer was extravagant. We almost didn’t have the thing that made Rosling’s career because a father couldn’t see the point of what their kid was suggesting. There is probably a lesson there but as a father I don’t know what it is.
Respecting Cultures
Rosling spent several formative periods of his life working in challenging situations in Africa. He worked in Mozambique not too long after its independence, and Liberia during a major Ebola outbreak. He had to learn to work with people from different places. He needed to respect cultures which can be tricky for all of us — even an experienced traveler. An example of this came with how Rosling dealt with his research assistant, Thorkild. His research assistant was a devout Baptist who refused to drink. When working in Africa a nun brought out alcohol in a gesture of friendship. Thorkild was starting to say “no thank you”.
…I intervened quickly, holding out my glass to show how keen I was to be served and simultaneously elbowing Thorkild in the midriff, whispering “Come on, it’s about culture–not religion. You had better drink the stuff and smile to show how much you appreciate these wonderful nuns.”
Rosling, 2020, page 135
Respecting cultures is hard. To respect the culture they were visiting Rosling had to disrespect his assistant’s culture and basically bully a junior person. I’m not as sure what the right answer in that situation would be but Rosling had no doubt that he was right to do it.
Warts And All
In a memoir I appreciate when people admit that they are far from perfect. When the hospital cleaner was late for work Rosling admitted shouting at the cleaner only to find out the tardy member of staff’s son had just died. When Rosling found out the death was from measles one might have hoped for a bit of compassion. The cleaner didn’t get that from Rosling. Instead, the cleaner got an interrogation.
“Why didn’t you see that he was vaccinated?”
Rosling, 2020, page 197
Rosling was later embarrassed about his lack of sensitivity. When you work in public health I imagine it must be pretty hard to accept it when people do stupid things. We should try and help prevent foolish choices but people will always do stupid things. We need to try to be sympathetic when people fail even when their own mistakes cause the problem they are suffering from. My plea for forgiveness doesn’t apply to public figures, e.g., RFK junior, given the problems they cause for people who aren’t them. (BTW why are the Kennedy’s still a thing in the US? Have they contributed anything positive since the 1960s?)
At times Rosling’s biography can be a tough read. He was faced with medical life and death decisions that I would find it impossible to make. It makes you appreciate not just Rosling but all those who work in tough medical jobs. We should definitely all do our bit to help them tackle horrible diseases especially if that is only receiving the odd jab when they suggest it.
For more on Hans Rosling see A Positive View Of The World Using Facts and Improving How We See The World
Read: Hans Rosling (2020) How I learned to understand the world: a memoir. Flatiron Books, 2020.
