A decreasing number of us now alive were born during the 1930’s and 1940’s. Depending on our ancestry and the teaching practices of our high schools and/or colleges, we may have experienced or been taught about the Holocaust as a part of the history of that period. Starting in 1933, officials of the Third Reich in Germany had enacted increasingly repressive measures against Jews, eventually resorting to mass murder as a “final solution” to a perceived threat from Jewish participation in European cultures and economies.
Well over six million civilians, mostly Jews but also some other “deviants” such as labor organizers, freethinkers, Romani people (“gypsies”), homosexuals, or people with physical or mental challenges, died or were killed in various parts of Europe during the period 1939-1945. Many of the deaths occurred in concentration camps, some of which were expressly designed to streamline the extermination process. Where I lived and studied, some survivors had had direct experience of these camps.
I had difficulty grasping the sheer enormity of such an undertaking. The use of the label “final solution” for this horror, though, has ever since made me leery of any attempt to portray any given policy or procedure as “the solution.”
One example the Roslings give in their book Factfulness is less deliberately destructive: extremes of “free marketism” as an organizing principal for society on one hand, or “equalityism” on the other:
“For example, the simple and beautiful idea of the free market can lead to the simplistic idea that all problems have a single cause—government interference—which we must always oppose; and that the solution to all problems is to liberate market forces by reducing taxes and removing regulations, which we must always support.
Alternatively, the simple and beautiful idea of equality can lead to the simplistic idea that all problems are caused by inequality, which we should always oppose; and that the solution to all problems is redistribution of resources, which we should always support.”
Suggesting a more nuanced approach, the Roslings advocate taking much of “received wisdom” with multiple grains of salt, including fairly often questioning our own assumptions or expertise.
Hans Rosling gives multiple examples from the health care field, his area of greatest concentration. He is not a great fan of the U.S. health care system as currently constituted, but cautions: “I can understand why people looking at the United States and its inequalities and health-care outcomes would decide that private markets and competition should never be allowed anywhere near the delivery of public goods. … [However], (t)he challenge is to find the right balance between regulation and freedom.”
In a book threaded through with charts and statistics, the Roslings conclude the body of their chapter on single perspectives this way: “The world cannot be understood without numbers, nor through numbers alone. A country cannot function without a government, but the government cannot solve every problem. … No single measure of a good society can drive every other. … It’s not either/or. It’s both and it’s case-by-case.”
Among their “factfulness prescriptions” to counter the single perspective instinct: “Remember that no one tool is good for everything. If your favorite tool is a hammer, look for colleagues with screwdrivers, wrenches, and tape measures. Be open to ideas from other fields.” Amen.
Jinny's Occasional Poems 