“Life expectancy keeps climbing. Extreme poverty continues to fall. Literacy rates are rising. Child mortality is dropping. More people have clean water than ever before. These century-long positive trends—the foundations of rational optimism—remain unshaken.”
The above quote is from The Rational Optimist newsletter (2025)
The news would have us believe that the world is in chaos, the climate is killing us, hatred is running rampant and the greedy few are taking all the spoils while the rest of the world starves and dies.
Granted, there is much hatred, poverty, oppression, disease and war in the world, but not as much as popular media tells us.
120 years ago life expectancy on Earth was about 40 years. Most people died from harsh conditions and diseases we didn’t understand. Today life expectancy is above 70 and we have vanquished smallpox, polio, malaria, tuberculosis, diphtheria, whooping cough, AIDS, and so many other diseases. Most people die from lifestyle related causes: heart disease, lung cancer, drug overdoses, etc.
Have you bought into the news narrative? Do you live under a cloud of fear that you might be next?
I’m not saying the news is wrong, I’m just saying that what they report on is not the dominant reality. For example: the recent spate of aircraft related incidents has many people afraid to fly. They think the whole system is coming down and planes are unsafe. Not true. Sometimes weather trumps training and unavoidable accidents occur. Sometimes foolish pilots collide with other planes on the ground. Sometimes a person in a crowded airport doesn’t hear the control tower and takes off into the path of another plance. But RARELY.
The planes themselves are the safest form of public transportation we have. People who seem willing to get into a driverless Uber are afraid of a professionally operated aircraft. People drive their own cars to the airport and then fear the plane. The car is many times more dangerous and most drivers were not professionally trained nor regulated.
The world recently panicked over Covid, but drugs that could easily treat it were being suppressed and governments were manipulating treatment in ways that made it worse. Now many who got vaxxed have come to regret it. And the disease has diminished as a threat. Treatment is now about like “the flu” and fears have subsided. Yet the news media keep telling us “Fears increase of a possible variant!” (Run & hide! Not really.)
If all you hear about each day is how many government workers are being laid off, how badly the hostages have been treated, how air disasters have killed people, and how rich some people are…then that becomes your world. Not THE world, but YOUR world.
Change the mix of what goes into your mind. Don’t allow one information pipeline to dominate you. Look around you right now, do you see or hear any of those “threats”? Is your community in lock down? Are there gangs around you? Most of us would say no. That doesn’t mean we should not be sympathetic and help where we can, it just means we should not be overwhelmed by just one line of information.
Have a very Nice Day and make it nice for others too.
Cathcart.com
