This CNN article points out that by almost every measure, the entire world has vastly improved over the last 20 years. But it also points out that most editorials written are about the negative view of things, and most people think things are getting worse.
Why do so many people think things are bad and getting worse, when the world is the best it’s ever been? http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/24/opinion/johnson-progress-overlooked/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
Because people are idiots? That’s all I’ve got for what I think of as the “hell in a hand basket” effect.
The world in general has improved, definitely. Especially as jobs shift from high-wage to low-wage areas, raising the overall living standards. But this same tread doesn’t help us much in the US as jobs shift away from us. Note that the article also points out that economic inequality and poverty have increased in the US.
A man from Scotland buys two lottery tickets.
One is the winner! He wins millions!!!.
When interviewed, the Scot seems depressed and the interviewer asks, “What is wrong? You have the winning ticket!”
The Scot looks up, “Yes, but the other ticket I bought was a waste of money.”
The point of this story is that, no matter how good things are going, people will always find a reason to bitch and complain.
Negative editorials engender more…engagement, I guess, but even that aside, why is it such a bad thing to try to improve what can be improved, regardless of how “good” things are compared to the past? Apparently, there will always be people bitching and complaining about the people bitching and complaining.
Sorry…I couldn’t hear you over the noise of my “everything’s OK” alarm.
I’ve heard this short handed as “Gold Balls Syndrome” – long version = Even if God gave him golden balls, he just bitch that they were too heavy to carry around.
I think the internet has also given us so much more knowledge about more than just our local troubles. When you’re bombarded with news about suffering in every part of the world, you think it’s getting worse, when you just didn’t hear about it before.
Cherry pick a different set of social factors to measure and I am sure you could come to the opposite conclusion.
I blame the Media.
PSSST! Not joking!
I blame the kids…
“What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?” - Plato
Throught history, “things were better thirty years ago”.
Maybe even pre-history - “You can’t even get a decent bit of flint these days…”
We only remember the good bits.
We forget the hairstyles…
Crime is at a 50 year low. I’d hardly call that ‘cherry picking.’
Maybe not, but a lot of the actual things on that list are quite arbitrary, and, in some cases, whether they are good or bad depends on your perspective. Take “per capita gasoline consumption”. If that is lower, that may be good for the environment, but it also means people get to travel less than they would otherwise like, and probably reflects declining income in real terms. The list of factors is cherry picked and spun hard to get the conclusions the author wants.
Incidentally, for those who are saying so, this is really not an age issue. If we were talking about declining moral standards or something it might be, but that is not what the article in the OP is about. I am pretty sure, from what I hear, that a lot of young people are not at all happy about the state of the world they have been left with by their elders.
The point I was attempting to make (rather flippantly, as usual), was that the idea that “things used to be better in the past” is not an invention of the modern media.
Newspapers don’t dictate public opinion, public opinion dictates newspapers.
If they want to stay in business…
I don’t know. I remember what life was like for my family back in the 70s, and I know what it’s like today. It’s better today in every way.
My grandmother, who just died last Tuesday, one month short of her 108th birthday, once told me she didn’t believe in the concept of “the good old days” She thought the washing machine was one of the best inventions ever. She said life is better with indoor water and toilets, vacuums, air conditioning, refrigerators. “How did we keep clean when I was little?” she once said. And the medical advances let her live as long as she did. She was a breast cancer survivor, having a mastectomy at the age of 91.
And if this was “the good old days” I wouldn’t have a father. His own father died of a heart attack at the age of 53. Dad was just the same age when he had his. But now we have open heart surgery, angioplasty, clot busting drugs, and I have my Dad. You can have your good old days.
Life is better now.
My grandma only lived to be 80 but she lived long enough to know that 5 of her granddaughters and 2 grandsons got to go to college, even though some grandchildren are still only in elementary school. She was a farmer’s daughter from Colorado, and appreciated the libraries, cable television and CD player. She didn’t have to worry about any of us dying from typhoid or polio. She had a clothesline for many years, but in the Indiana winters she appreciated having an electric clothes dryer.
Grandpa loved shopping at supermarkets, giant cups of coffee, hot sauces, and his cars. He was amazed at my mp3 player, and took pleasure in Comedy Central.
It just drives me crazy that bad news makes the news, but good news wither not reported at all, or gets a small paragraph on page 34. So many people are just convinced that times are bad and getting worse, when the opposite is true.
Just to have complete reproductive freedom! Just to not be tied to baby-making, to have the choice if I get pregnant, to be able to take birth control. This year I got permanently sterilized. I’ve never had children and I’m not married. Do you think I could have done that even 30 years ago?
Just for that alone, these days are far, far better, and people are insane. I’m almost of the mind that the Roman empire didn’t fall due to decadence, it fell because of the crazy people who preferred all of the rules and couldn’t handle the relaxed atmosphere.
Eh, some of the categories are a little esoteric. But crime rates, pollution, GDP-per-capita, life-expectancy, gender equality, infant mortality and educational participation are all pretty standard measures of social well-being. I disagree that they’re cherry-picked. I suspect that if you asked a hundred social scientists to make a list of the ten top statistics they’d use to measure social welfare, those would be on most peoples lists.