The Brain group will discuss “The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling and Making of Cultures” by Antonio Damasio at 1pm, October 7 and “Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think”, a 2018 book by Hans Rosling, for their November meeting.
The latter is a book that will engender much discussion. Quoting from Wikipedia (please visit Wiki for original citations):
In his book, Rosling suggests the vast majority of human beings are wrong about the state of the world. He believes his test subjects think the world is poorer, less healthy, and more dangerous than it is. Rosling recommends thinking about the world as divided into four levels based on income brackets.
Although Rosling argues that the future will be better than expected because birth rates are stabilizing, life expectancy around the world is increasing, the gender gap is nearly closed, and the extremely impoverished population is shrinking, others point out that populations are still expanding (with many still under-nourished), life expectancy in the US is decreasing, the gender gap is only nearly closed in education and not in employment, and extreme wealth has become more extreme. According to Business Insider, Rosling “misses critical wrinkles in the data” and has not presented “the whole story”.