This past Wednesday marked the Inauguration of our 46th President of the United States; Joesph R. Biden. Among the highlights of the pomp and celebrations was President Biden’s inaugural speech. His speech was not just a call to unity, it was a call to a return to truth, science, and generally using factual information to guide our decisions both as individuals and a country. In honor of this call to action, let’s start off the new administration with a good read: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World - and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, Anna Rosling Ronnlund, and Ola Rosling. Although written in 2018, it is quite relevant and essential these three years later.
Much like mindfulness is defined a stress-reducing habit of living in or focusing on the present moment, “factfulness” is defined by the authors as: “a stress-reducing habit of only carrying opinions for which you have strong supporting facts.” Seems simple, right? Not so, apparently. In Factfulness, the authors reaveal why, when asked simple questions about the world, we so often get the facts wrong. Between our tendency to divide the world into two camps (usually some version of us vs. them) to the way we consume media (where fear rules the airwaves) to how we perceive progress (or what we understand as a lack thereof), Factfulness lays out the ten instincts that distort our perspectives.
Bill Gates called it “One of the most important books I’ve ever read.”, and former President Barack Obama said it is “a hopeful book about the potential for human progress”. Check it out and let’s all start off 2021 with a better understanding of how we can meet this call to unity, sanity, and fact-based living.