Everything is horrible!
What makes you say that?
It's just this general feeling I always have.
Yeah, I feel that way too.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
It's New Year, y'all, a time when we all tend to take stock
in ourselves and the world around us.
It's also the time of year when I consume the most media,
since I'm pretty much stuck on my grandma's living room
couch watching TV, mostly under duress.
It's really easy to think, based on our introspective New Year's
mindset and all the news around us, with the wars and the crime
and the disease and the environmental destruction
and the oppressive governments watching us, and the drones--
Anthony, I'm going to need you to take
a deep breath in and out.
Sorry, it is just really easy to get caught up in that stuff.
But here's the thing.
It is genuinely the best time in the history of the world
to be alive.
And it actually keeps getting better,
especially when you realize how short of a period of time
that we've been around, and just how long humans have been
struggling against the elements.
True.
We hear a lot of stuff about epidemics and mortality rates
in developing nations.
But since 1950, the infant and child mortality rate
has gone down in every single country in the world
in every income bracket, every single one.
And the average life span in the world
has gone from 47 to 70 years old in that time.
In the 1850's in England, pretty much
the easiest place to live on Earth at the time,
the average person only lived to be 40.
So we've doubled that.
And there's still a lot do to combat disease,
but this is still a huge gain.
And hunger is also in a huge decline.
We're talking about 925 million people living in hunger today,
as opposed to 958 million in 1970.
And that might seem like a really small difference,
but the population then was 3.7 billion,
and now it is 7 billion.
So that means we went from having 25% of the world
not having enough to eat to 13% now.
We dropped hunger by half.
We're even decimating poverty.
We hear a lot about recessions and unemployment.
But 30 years ago, 40% of the world
was living on less than $1.25 a day.
In 2010, that number dropped to 14%.
Murder and violent crime is dropping too.
Look, in the Middle Ages, there was about 15% chance
that somebody was going to murder you.
That was the deal.
You get born, you get an axe to the face, and then you die.
In the 20th century, even with both world wars,
violent death was down to 3%.
13 years into 21st century, and we're down to 0.003%.
Still early.
I'm optimistic.
Yeah.
Well, those aren't just some pretty solid numbers.
These are feel good numbers.
So why do we feel so bad?
Part of it is that, hey, we weren't
around hundreds of years ago.
We're looking at such a narrow picture of things.
And there's also the problem of media saturation.
We know about everything that's going on everywhere all
the time right now.
And the media tends to focus on the negative.
A study done on the content of Time Magazine
over a 30-year period showed that 73% of those stories
were about violent crime, but only 10% of the total crimes
reported to the police during that same time were actually
violent.
It contributes to something that mass media researcher George
Gerbner called Mean World Syndrome.
That's a good name.
The media focuses on the negative.
We only see the negative.
We only know the negative.
You can also call it the Availability Heuristic.
You are more likely to believe that the world matches
the available information that's already in your head.
Right.
So you have to fill your head with a more rounded view
of everything.
Dig down and find the real information
and the good news that's out there.
But don't think that we're just glossing over all the work that
still needs to be done.
We know that there are things to fix.
Just don't forget that we're working on fixing them
while you're reading about how to tear them apart.
When the world looks bleak, you just
remember what DNews told you.
You are so much more unlikely to get an axe in the face
than you once were.
So on that note, what's your good news for 2014, guys?
Let us know down below and subscribe for more good news.
I can't think of a single person I
know who's gotten hit in the face with an axe.
Me neither.
I did once in Scouts.
Why did you have to go ruin it, Trace?