![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The New Optimists have successfully marketed this worldview as “neutral” and “fact-based,” to use two of Rosling’s favorite words. While not saying that all is well, New Optimists fixate on positive trajectories and scold critics for being “alarmists.” Social progress is not a matter of struggling for justice, the “optimistic” narrative goes, but rather extending the benefits of economic growth, a task best supervised by philanthropic capitalists (like, say, Gates), who, of course, are the biggest beneficiaries of such “progress.” This affirmational declaration is one of the global elite’s rituals of “ neoliberal self-congratulation,” as editor-in-chief of The Baffler, Chris Lehmann, puts it. Pinker and Rosling, the stars of the glass-halffull school of intellectuals known as the New Optimists, seek to persuade people that civilization is heading in the right direction, with the world getting better every day. That prompted Peter Wallenberg Jr., scion of Sweden’s richest family, to offer the book as a free downloadable file to all Swedish high school students as well. In 2018, Gates went a step further, offering electronic copies of the late TED Talk star Hans Rosling’s book, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World - And Why Things Are Better Than You Think, to all U.S. ![]() Rosling reassures people like Gates that, since things are always improving, we need not bother to change how the world operates. ![]()
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