My favourite website to show my students is Gapminder. It’s a brilliant display of how our biased views of the world prevent us from seeing what’s statistically happening.

As you work your way through the quizzes, it becomes clear that humanity is at its best right now. Aside from climate change and a few other UN Goals, everything has been moving in a positive direction—worldwide.

Great news, right?

Overall, yes. But we’re still dealing with the same issues, which have been constantly repeating throughout history. We’re fighting the same battles, watching the same tragedies and coping with the same hardships. We just keep dressing them up with different names.

All this in a world where anyone, at any time, can get access to the entirety of human knowledge at their fingertips. You would think that would be a game changer for society.

Nope.

Nothing has changed, but it’s never been better.

Maybe the world really belongs to the optimists and their true superpower is ignoring everyone while they do their work.