Reality and Improvement

[Mole]

The world is improving a lot, but our minds and feelings have not caught up with this. How can our minds and feelings catch up with reality?

Do click on What do global problems cost us? Thoughts from Bjorn Lomborg - YouTube

 

[Litsnob]

It depends on whom you socialise with whether or not it seems like people have not caught up with this good new. If my Facebook feed is a good sample, and it may not be, I see everything from ranting and raving to burying heads in the sand. Some people need to realise that the world is improving and perhaps there is no need to panic, but others need to realise that doing nothing (praying for example) achieves nothing.

 

[meowington]

The world is improving a lot

I disagree. It's not because education and health are improving, among other things, that the world as a whole is improving.
I've seen the world population double in my lifetime and air quality decline, to name just a few. Hardly an improvement to me.
But I guess it all depends what you use as measurement for the above statement.

I'm saying the world becomes increasingly more mad and dangerous (but that's probably just as arbitrary).

 

[Mole]

I disagree. It's not because education and health are improving, among other things, that the world as a whole is improving.
I've seen the world population double in my lifetime and air quality decline, to name just a few. Hardly an improvement to me.
But I guess it all depends what you use as measurement for the above statement.

I'm saying the world becomes increasingly more mad and dangerous (but that's probably just as arbitrary).

If we look at the world before the industrial revolution and after the industrial revolution, the improvement is enormous in field after field after field.

It is natural for us to focus on the daily bad news, just as it is natural for our newspapers to focus on our daily bad news, so we can wrongly conclude that the world is becoming more mad and dangerous, when exactly the opposite is happening.

And once we tune into reality, we move from pessimism to optimism.