22 Mar 10 ways the world is getting better!
It’s hard to feel happy if you think the world is falling apart around you.
And sometimes, especially if you watch the news, it can feel like everything is doom and gloom!
Which makes happiness VERY hard to enjoy.
But the world isn’t all bad; and we can and should enjoy happiness because … the world is actually a pretty amazing place and there are good people doing good, and good things happening all the time!
Don’t believe me? Need some reassurance? Check this out…
via Psychology Today by Douglas Kenrick
In his most recent book, Steven Pinker presents data showing that the tone of the news has become progressively more negative over the last 50 years. Is that because things are actually getting worse?
Headlines: We’re on the Eve of Destruction
If you read the news headlines, they certainly do give the impression that the world is going to hell in a runaway subway train. Here are the headlines from the New York Times on the day I wrote this—March 18, 2018: 1. A purported rise in anti-semitism. 2. Follow ups about the young man who slaughtered 17 high school students in Florida, using an assault weapon anyone can legally purchase at the local mall in most U.S. states, 3. At least 16 migrant refugees, including children, who drowned off a Greek island, 4. Police lying under oath, even when there is contrary video evidence, 5. U.S. President Trump attacking Robert Mueller (who heads a special counsel investigating collusion between Trump’s campaign and the Russian government to bias the 2016 election). 6. How offshore oil and gas operators are demanding less regulation, despite inspections revealing potentially lethal safety problems in their sloppy operations. To be evenhanded, I took a glance at the Fox News website as well, and didn’t find the news any more positive on the other side of the wall of alternative facts.
Looking more broadly than a single day’s news, the last century has certainly seen a great number of troubling developments—the world’s population tripling, forests rapidly disappearing, and the gap between the rich and the poor growing larger and larger. All the while, the elected representatives of the world’s most powerful country act not like leaders, but like lackeys for the forces of greed, violence, and scientific ignorance. Well, they do find time to go on TV and offer prayers for anyone whose child was murdered by the assault weapons they help keep in stock at your local mall.
What’s not to dislike about the depths to which mankind is sinking during these no good, very bad, times?
In his new book: Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker takes issue with doomsday politicians and news sources, reviewing a number of sources of data that suggest a great deal of continuing progress in the world (though he doesn’t actually make promises about a bright future, see below)
Reality: The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades
In his book, Enlightenment Now: The case for reason, science, humanism, and progress, Steven Pinker argues that the world is not, in fact, getting worse. In fact, Pinker argues, things are getting better and better (if not in every way, at least in many important ways that are often overlooked). And Pinker reviews reams of data to back up that claim, dazzling the reader with graph after graph showing steady increases in life’s good things, and decreases in the bad things.
Below I list ten things that have improved dramatically…
…keep reading the full & original article HERE