Is the world really better than ever?
By the end of last year, anyone who had been paying even
passing attention to the news headlines was highly likely to conclude that
everything was terrible, and that the only attitude that made sense was one of
profound pessimism – tempered, perhaps, by cynical humour, on the principle
that if the world is going to hell in a handbasket, one may as well try to
enjoy the ride. Naturally, Brexit and the election of Donald
Trump loomed largest for many. But you didn’t need to be a remainer
or a critic of Trump’s to feel depressed by the carnage in Syria; by the deaths
of thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean; by North Korean missile tests,
the spread of the zika virus, or terror attacks in Nice, Belgium, Florida,
Pakistan and elsewhere – nor by the spectre of catastrophic climate change,
lurking behind everything else. (And all that’s before even considering the
string of deaths of beloved celebrities that seemed like a calculated attempt, on 2016’s part, to rub salt in the wound:
in the space of a few months, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Prince, Muhammad Ali,
Carrie Fisher and George Michael, to name only a handful, were all gone.) And
few of the headlines so far in 2017 – Grenfell tower, the Manchester and London
attacks, Brexit chaos, and 24/7 Trump – provide any reason to take a sunnier
view.
The headlines have never been worse. But an increasingly
influential group of thinkers insists that humankind has never had it so good –
and only our pessimism is holding us back
Read more at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/jul/28/is-the-world-really-better-than-ever-the-new-optimists?CMP=share_btn_fb
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