Steve Sakar CRJ 303 9/27/2015
Hans Rosling presented a powerful presentation on our societies old mindset of social classes, as well as, the overall meaning of “we” and “them”. Rosling started off the TED talk by introducing how his students talked about the difference between “we” and “them”. The students classified the “we”, as the Western World, and the “them” as the Developing world. Our old mindset about the Western world, was the western countries consisted of small families who lived long lives. Furthermore, our mindset on the developing world, was the third world countries consisted of larger families who lived short lives. Throughout the video Rosling presents a variety of data sets about our mindsets. For example, Rosling presents scatterplots about income and health, income and child mortality, as well as, life expectancy per family size. He uses the scatterplots to show us, over time that the West is no longer the big super power people once thought the west was. Also, Rosling described we shouldn’t differentiate developing and developed countries based, on family size, income, life expectancy, or health, because their is no longer a difference between developing and developed countries, as the third world countries have caught up to the Western countries.
The video did end up changing my mindset on the world’s classification of “we” and “them”. I never displayed a deeper knowledge on the outside world, and how the other countries outside the United States function. My first impression was everyone else was struggling to get by where they are currently living, hence why a mass amount of people were moving over to the U.S. My opinion ended up changing after viewing Rosling’s TED talk. The reason being, is because actually after being informed through Rosling’s research, the countries I would classify as “them”, have actually been improving, and some third world countries better off than the U.S. Overall, the middle income families are catching up with the higher income families, and no longer do I feel countries in the West are farther ahead than the so called developing countries.
Our old concept of the Western World being the big superpower over everyone else, has changed since earlier history. No longer today, does the terms “we” and “them” apply to our world. The reason being, is because as time and technology advance over time, countries have catched up with living quality with one another. Furthermore, countries now have better health care, insurance, and overall living stability. Also, higher income or better known as the developed countries are experiencing more troubles than the developing countries. For example, Botswana a high income area has one of the highest percentages of having HIV, and a lot of the low income areas are barely affected by HIV. Overall, throughout Rosling's scatter plots throughout the TED talk, the graphs over time showed to carry no meaning to whether one country was higher income or lower income. The end of Rosling’s presentation describes a new mindset, which our world should follow. The new mindset Rosling described was our world is always converging, and actually we are all on the same level as one another, for example most of the Third World is on the same trajectory toward health and prosperity, and many countries are moving twice as fast as the west.
References
Let my dataset change your mindset. (2009, June 14). Retrieved September 26, 2015, from https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_at_state