The Progress Triptych

by Abdul Haq*

I. “Better Than Ever” — A Misleading Frame

It is a common refrain in our modern era: we are doing better than ever before. The evidence, at first glance, seems compelling. Literacy rates are up. Child mortality is down. Extreme poverty, as a percentage, has plummeted over the last two centuries. Statisticians and optimists alike repeat the mantra: progress is real.

But percentages have a way of disguising truths that absolute numbers reveal.

In the year 0 CE, the total human population is estimated to have been around 400 million. At that time, poverty was not a category but a condition of life. Subsistence living was the norm for nearly all. Today, we live in an age of technological miracles and surplus. Yet even now, with the global population exceeding 8 billion, over 700 million people live in extreme poverty, defined as surviving on less than $2.15 per day.

That means, in absolute terms, more people are living in abject misery today than were alive at the dawn of the Common Era. Progress by percentage allows us to feel good about leaving behind a larger number of suffering human beings than any time in history.

If we take 0 CE as a moral and demographic baseline, then we cannot claim to be doing “better than ever before” unless two conditions are met:

The absolute number of people in poverty must be lower than 400 million;
And that number must be falling year after year.

We are not there. Worse, the people now suffering may be doing so for longer than their ancient counterparts. Advances in healthcare and nutrition mean that poverty lingers, rather than killing quickly. The average life expectancy for the poorest may still be lower than in wealthier populations, but it is often high enough to extend a lifetime of struggle. Misery, once short and sharp, is now stretched over decades.

A child born into poverty today is more likely than ever to survive infancy to live a full human lifespan within conditions no person would willingly endure. In this way, longevity itself becomes an ethical burden: to live long and suffer long is not a triumph of progress.

Progress should not be judged solely by how many thrive, but by how many we still allow to suffer when we have the means to do otherwise. To speak of “better than ever” without reconciling this reality is to build a monument to percentages on a foundation of disregard.

II. The Tyranny of the Average

Averages are powerful tools. They help us see large trends, smooth out noise, and guide long-term planning. They are the instruments of climate, not weather. Excellent for understanding patterns, but disastrous if used to dress for the day.

And yet, we use them as if they are reality.

Consider a world in which every person is either 1 meter or 2 meters tall, split evenly. Now imagine we design furniture, doorways, clothing, transportation, and safety gear for a person who is 1.5 meters tall. That person would not exist. The result is a world where no one fits, and yet every product is said to serve “the average user.”

This is not far from how we treat human need.

By designing policy and infrastructure for statistical means, we fail to serve the margins who may not be not marginal at all in absolute numbers. People who live in poverty, people with disabilities, neurodivergent individuals, cultural or linguistic minorities, and many others experience a poverty of fit. They are expected to conform to systems that were never built with them in mind.

Averages obscure this. They give the illusion of service to all while failing many.

In some cases, this is inconvenience. In others, it is suffering. For those already struggling, such as the 700+ million living in extreme poverty, the mismatch becomes another form of deprivation. The world is not just hard; it is not made for them.

Averages should help us detect trends. But when we start designing for averages rather than for humans, we are doing ourselves a disservice. Worse, we may justify harm with mathematical authority.

The weather is what we live through. The climate is what we prepare for. Averages are climate. We must not mistake them for weather.

III. Customization: The Third Frontier

We now live in a world where customization at scale is finally possible. With the rise of digital manufacturing, adaptive software, and machine learning systems, we are no longer bound to the logic of mass production. In theory, we can shape products, processes, and services to fit individuals rather than averages.

And yet, something resists.

To some, customization feels like a loss of control. It threatens the comforting order of standardization, the clean efficiency of uniformity. The fear is that if we build for diversity, we will break the system. But perhaps it is the system that needs to break.

Because true equity, true dignity, requires fit.

We have already seen what happens when the poor are treated as statistical residue and the marginalized as edge cases. Injustice masquerades as neutrality. Progress hides behind pleasing metrics. And the full richness of humanity remains unrealized, not because it is unreachable, but because it is inconvenient to reach for.

Customization is not chaos. It is the architecture of care. It says: You are seen. You are not a rounding error.

Through real poverty alleviation and design for real fit, we will not only reduce suffering, we will witness the emergence of something extraordinary: the full spectrum of human possibility. Not polished uniformity, but a chorus of differences tuned to harmonize.

The tools are here. The potential is here. What remains is the will.

Whereas we can be optimistic about our potential, and we have come far, Hans Rosling should at least have nodded to the absolute numbers.

* Abdul Haq is a pseudonym.