Hans Rosling makes a case for the popular concept among the westerners of applying the concept ‘we’ and ‘them’. As explained, ‘we’ referred to the western world. This is a society where there are smaller families mainly of two or fewer children, higher incomes and better quality of lives. The HIV prevalence in these regions is significantly low in addition to having some of the lowest child mortality rates relative to the rest of the world. Leading the ‘we’ group is the United States and other developed worlds which generally show superior quality of lives among other desirable societal features (Hans, 2009).
On the other hand is ‘them’ which are the developing countries in Africa, South East Asia, and the rest of the world associated with larger families, higher poverty rates, higher child mortality and lower lifespan among other elements (Hannum & Buchmann, 2015). These countries are considered, according to the traditional mindsets of ‘we’ and ‘them’, not to be in the same level as the developed countries and one that requires several years of development to catch up with the developed world. Included in this categories are countries such as Mexico and Singapore that are conventionally considered less developed than the US and other countries (Hans, 2009).
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Whether the Video Changed my Mindset
From Hans Rosling presentation, there is a clear manifestation of lack of coherence between the old mindset and the contemporary dataset. Therefore, it has changed my mindset regarding ‘we’ and ‘them’ (Hans, 2009). With increased investment in health and higher levels of social and economic development in countries that were considered ‘them’ previously such as India and China and even African nations such as Botswana, there has been a drastic large-scale shift in the actual state of affairs in these countries (Packenham, 2015). The conventional mindset of ‘we’ and ‘them’ is no longer an accurate interpretation of the existing state of affairs. At the moment, most countries continue to shift along a positive trajectory. This is evident in the case of China where from 1960’s, there has been an aggressive social development characterized by rapid development in the social programs such as health and hygiene, increased access to medication and reduction in the sizes of the families due to the widespread acceptability and use of family planning programs (World Bank Group, 2014).
Eventually, the practical reality in some of the countries is changing. Countries that were previously labelled developing are consistently improving, evident by the case of Singapore where the improvement in health has even exceeded that of Sweden, while Sweden is still ranked as ‘we’ while Singapore is ‘them’ (Mabogunje, 2015). Clearly, therefore, the old mindset is no longer applicable and there is distinct and massive development across the world that makes the generalization of countries and regions across the world utterly irrelevant (Stenberg et al., 2014). After watching the video, there is much change in the perspective of view as the current view is not updated and has never reflected reality, especially in the "them" countries.
Society and Old Mindset
It is arguable that Rosling’s video on the old mindset is significantly old. However, the world has never moved past its traditional mindset of ‘we’ and ‘them’. In different economic forums, the world is still divided along the lines of developed, developing, and emerging economies with limited or no appreciation of the growing scale of similarities between different regions (Hans, 2009). At the moment, Africa and part of Asia are still considered developing despite massive changes and rapid evolution of the social development landscapes over the years (World Bank Group, 2014). The dataset presented by Hans Rosling therefore still does not concur with the people’s mindset and their view of the world (Packenham, 2015).
References
Hannum, E., & Buchmann, C. (2015). Global educational expansion and socio-economic development: An assessment of findings from the social sciences. World Development , 33 (3), 333-354.
Hans Rosling (2009). Old Mindset . Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_at_state?language=en
Mabogunje, A. (2015). The development process: A spatial perspective . Boston, MA: Routledge.
Packenham, R. A. (2015). Liberal America and the Third World: Political development ideas in foreign aid and social science . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Stenberg, K., Axelson, H., Sheehan, P., Anderson, I., Gülmezoglu, A. M., Temmerman, M., ... & Sweeny, K. (2014). Advancing social and economic development by investing in women's and children's health: A new Global Investment Framework. The Lancet , 383 (9925), 1333-1354.
World Bank Group. (2014). World development indicators 2014 . New York, NY: World Bank Publications.
