The world is rapidly changing, but in ways that many of us fail to understand. For many, things are bad. For many, things are getting better. So we need to understand how the world can both be bad and getting better at the same time, and what this means for our understanding of social change and development.

It is relatively easy to show that the world is bad. It is relatively easy to show that the world is getting better. We live in a world in motion, which is both bad and getting better at the same time.