The World Isn’t As Bad As You Think It Is

Climate change. War. Poverty. Deadly pandemics. Corruption. Evil. Rampant crime. Racism. Sexism. Inequality. Overpopulation. Biodiversity collapse.

Everything is broken. And humanity is doomed. What’s the point in having children if they’re going to grow up in a hellish environment? Why should children bother studying at school when climate change is going to destroy their lives?

Humanity stands on the brink of collapse and our future will be filled with chaos, pain and terror. Right?

If you agree with everything written above, I’m here to tell you that you’re completely wrong.

I’m here to tell you that the image you have of the world is distorted, disfigured and wildly inaccurate. Even the smartest people you listen to may be completely wrong about the state of the world.

In a survey by Ourworldindata.com, the following question was asked to citizens from multiple countries: “All things considered, do you think the world is getting better or worse?”

% of people who answered “better”

United States – 6%

United Kingdom – 4%

Australia – 4%

China – 41% (take note of this)

The first reason people are pessimistic about the future is because they’re uneducated about a number of important statistics that I will explain in the first part of this article.

The second reason is that people (even the smartest among us) don’t understand how the news environment is distorting their entire world view – causing them to view the world as far more negative than it actually is.

The final reason is that people falsely believe that the apocalypse (climate change) is drawing nearer year by year.

This article will be split into 3 sections:

1. The Best News In The World (That you never heard about)

2. The News Environment Is Making You Unreasonably Pessimistic

3. What You Never Heard About Climate Change

The world is a complicated place. Nobody knows everything and nobody can predict the future. But I’m about to explain why your view of the world may be far more negative than the reality.

The World Isn’t As Bad As You Think.

The Best News In The World (That you never heard about)

“If you had to choose a moment in history to be born, and you did not know ahead of time who you would be—you didn’t know whether you were going to be born into a wealthy family or a poor family, what country you’d be born in, whether you were going to be a man or a woman—if you had to choose blindly what moment you’d want to be born, you’d choose now”.

—Barack Obama, 2016

While all of the worse news you can imagine had been fed to you on a consistent basis, the best news in the world happened quietly. Completely unnoticed by you.

In almost every possible measure, living in the world has drastically improved. Less war. Less crime. Less poverty. Less premature deaths. Less disease. Less car crashes, Less plane crashes. Less death from natural disasters. Less racism. Less sexism. Less homophobia.

The question is – did you even know this was the case?

You form your picture of the world through the news, not through statistics. All of the information you receive about the world outside of your immediate surroundings must pass through the filter of the news. What is this filter? One in which bad news sells and good news doesn’t.

It doesn’t matter how many different news sources you receive your information from. All news passes through the bad news filter before it reaches you.

News is about things that happen, not things that don’t happen. You never hear a news reporter say: “I’m here reporting from a country that has been at peace for the last 40 years”, or a headline that says: “Local school is not involved in a mass shooting”.

Bad news often happens quickly, while good news appears gradually. Sudden events get clicks, slow change doesn’t.

This news environment is so omni-present that you actually think you came to your conclusions about the state of the world by yourself. What you forget is that almost everything you know about the world was not experienced first-hand. And almost all of your information about the world passed through the bad news filter.

So you probably think the world is far worse than it actually is. And you’re probably completely oblivious to the incredibly good news humanity has had over the last 70 years.

War

For most of human history, war was the natural pastime of governments and peace was a mere respite between wars. We live in the most peaceful time of human history.

Consume enough news, however, and your brain will be filled with stories of constant war around the world. You may even begin to get the impression that war is increasing dramatically, when the exact opposite is true.

Wars take place today and wars took place in the past. So people conclude that “nothing has changed”—failing to acknowledge the difference between an era with a handful of wars that collectively kill in the thousands and an era with dozens of wars that collectively killed in the millions

LGBT Rights

In the past, homosexuals had to live a life of secrecy; they had to hide their sexual identities their entire lives, or risk being rejected by their social circles and families.

Today the world is more accepting of the LGBT community than any other time in human history. All around the world, homosexuality is becoming decriminalised; from Africa to Asia, LGBT rights are becoming more and more accepted.

This is great news, right? Well, if you consumed enough news, you’d think that the LGBT community was being discriminated against more than ever before. News articles about homophobic attacks will leave you with the impression that we live in a deeply homophobic society, despite the incredible positive statistics.

Once again, all-round positive news passes through the bad news filter and comes out negative.

Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault

While violence towards women was relatively common in the past, today it’s much rarer. The culture has unanimously decided that violence towards women is completely unacceptable. Rapists are shamed and jailed (when enough evidence is available to convict them).

While rape was incredibly common throughout history, today we have less rape than ever before. Entire villages would be attacked, raped and pillaged on the regular. With every war throughout history, rape was rampant. Husbands would be brutally murdered, women would be raped and kept as slaves.

There is less violence towards women today than any other time in human history.

But once again, watching or reading the news doesn’t leave this impression at all. The current narrative on this topic is that we live in a “rape culture”, women are constantly harassed and that toxic masculinity needs to be eradicated to fix the problem.

Why is there no celebration whatsoever for the incredible progress made in this area? Because almost every single person in our society receives their information through the bad news filter. People have built up an impression of this topic overtime through reading news headlines, instead of looking at statistics.

The outline of the discussion around domestic violence and rape is set by the news. Everybody else then has their discussions within this outline.

*While the number of rapes committed has decreased quite drastically, it’s still quite prevalent, highly traumatising and large numbers of victims never come forward. In a nutshell, rape is still a big problem.

Murder

In the past, with no CCTV cameras, no forensics and a less present police force, murders were easier to get away with. As you can see by the graph, homicides have plummeted.

You are safer walking the streets today than ever before (on average, depending on where you live). But this piece of good news has not been reported to the general public.

Many people believe that their country is rife with crime. If they live in America, they may believe they need a gun to protect yourself because there are so many criminals around them, even if their neighbourhood is extremely safe.

Plane Crashes

Flying has become the safest form of transport available. We can now fly all around the world, at a relatively cheap price with near perfect safety. The chance of being killed in a plane crash has been reduced to around 1 in 11 million.

What an incredible time to be alive!

What other generations of human beings had the opportunity to see the world like we do? What a success story. And what great news! If you told generations of the past this news they would be overjoyed.

But not us. Somehow, our system of “news” takes this incredibly positive story and still manages to pull out the small amount of bad news available.

The only time the news talks about the aviation industry is when there’s a crash or some other sort of problem. The incredible success story of this part of our lives is never mentioned by the news, and thus, is never appreciated by most of the public.

(Are you more afraid of flying in a plane than driving in a car? This might be why.)

Think the world is a dark, scary place? All you have to do is head onto Youtube, watch some travel Vlogs and you’ll soon find out the idea you had about various parts of the world was completely wrong.

Because the news not only passes through the bad news filter, but also comes through a cultural filter. If you live in America, you consume mostly American news. If you live in Australia, you consume mostly Australian news.

You probably have a western perspective on the world.

Because of the western perspective that your media feeds you, you may still believe that the world consist of “The west and the rest”. In the past there was an enormous gap of wealth between the west and the rest of the world. But the world has changed.

We no longer have a giant wealth gap between the developed world and the third world. What we have now is a gradual slope. East Asia has as much wealth as the west, South-East Asia is generating wealth rapidly—even Africa has seen a massive increase in wealth over the last 20 years.

China and Korea have transformed from impoverished countries into world leaders. Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines (all of which were previously dirt-poor countries) are quickly following their example.

Just ask yourself: When you think of Vietnam, what image comes to mind? The Vietnam War? It ended 45 years ago. Vietnam now contains shopping malls, skyscrapers, a thriving tourism industry, high-quality education and fast internet connections.

In fact, many western expats have chosen to live their lives in Vietnam, believing the quality of life to be much higher than that of western countries.

The developing world has been rapidly lifted out of poverty over the last 50 years and nobody seems to have noticed.

What news could possibly be better than a massive reduction in world poverty? Seriously, I challenge you to try and imagine a piece of news more positive than this.

Yet the media barely reported it and almost nobody talks about it.

Even Africa, which The Economist once called “The Hopeless Continent” in the year 2000, now shows promising economic growth. Overall, the proportion of people in Africa living in monetary poverty has clearly declined, from 54% in 1990 to 41% in 2015.

If the current trends continue, Africa’s absolute poverty rate will fall to 24% by 2030. What incredible news! Do you remember hearing about it on the news? Me neither.

In the west, many of us still imagine the world as it was 50 years ago. We fail to notice just how much has changed in the developing world—they have skyscrapers, good education, fast internet access, luxury cars and the ability to travel around the world.

“We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future.”

Marshall Macluhen

Watch: The Best Stats In The World – Hans Rosling

The News Environment Is Making You Unreasonably Pessimistic

Despite these facts, many people believe that humanity is doomed. The system is broken, the apocalypse is drawing near and some even believe that humanity is a cancer on the planet that needs to be eradicated.

Perhaps you also feel this way to some extent. But you have to ask yourself: What information did you base these conclusions on? And where did you receive this information from?

Did you look at actual data? Or did you just watch a lot of news media and gradually form a picture of the world in your head?

It doesn’t matter how smart you may be, if your information sources are flawed then you’re misinformed. And if you got your information from news media, then your information sources are flawed.

The news is not an accurate reflection of reality. It is a very specific part of reality that is plucked out of the entirety of world’s events. It doesn’t matter if you get your news from multiple sources. All news media works in a very specific fashion in order to appeal to human beings.

The news isn’t an omniscient god that reports the reality of the world exactly as it is. The news consists of groups of human beings trying to report stories that other humans will be interested in.

Slow change isn’t news. Fast change is. Good things tend to happen slowly. Bad news often happens fast. Therefore, bad news will always outweigh the good in news media.

On top of that, almost all news media is a business. Their goal is not to accurately report facts about the world. Their goal is to sell stories and make profit. Bad news sells. Good news doesn’t.

The truth is often boring and nuanced — the truth usually doesn’t make good headlines or gripping news articles. And the truth doesn’t follow any particular narrative. Human beings love stories, and we like to build up a story of the world inside our head. Even if that story is a tragedy.

Data that comes along that doesn’t fit with that story is confusing, doesn’t follow the narrative inside our heads and is thus ignored. (The world is getting better? Impossible!)

People will adamantly tell you that the world absolutely is getting worse. Because of this problem, and that problem, and this problem. But never do they consider that all of their information about the world passed through the bad news filter that’s inherent in all news organisations.

The world is enormous. And there are more than 7 billion human beings on the planet, so so there will always be cases of bad news. If crime is decreasing, there will still always be enough crime to fill the newspapers. Even if the crime had dropped to 5 crimes per day in each country, that would still be more than enough to fill the newspapers full of crime on a daily basis.

In the same vein, even if the news is overwhelmingly good, there will always still be enough bad events to fill newspapers, because the world is simply so complex and huge.

People also mistake their discovery of bad events in the world with the birth of those bad events. The bad events existed before you found out about them, all that changed is that you heard about them through a news outlet.

You’ve been exposed to more information, discovered more of the world’s bad news and then falsely concluded that the number of these bad events are increasing. But the only thing that’s really increased is your access to information. The world has always been full of darkness, only it’s now (arguably) less full of darkness than it’s ever has been

For many, the news environment has such a grip on them that they can’t possibly imagine the world any way other than what’s been presented on their screens.

But what’s the reality of the world really?

When you watch the news, you make a quiet assumption that it’s at least somewhat representative of the real world. But instead think of this: What are your neighbours doing? What are strangers in your town doing? What are random people in Belgium doing? What are people doing in Sydney? That’s the world.

The truth is, the majority of the world is made up of people simply going about their everyday business: people going to work, people eating, people talking with their friends, people sleeping. Normal human things. This is 99% of the story of humanity. But this will never appear on the news.

What’s the reality of the world? The chaos on your screen or the quiet peace in the room that surrounds it?

What You Never Heard About Climate Change

*I am not a climate scientist and I do not personally have any extensive knowledge about climate change. I understand that this is a highly complex topic and that I may slightly wrong, or even wildly wrong*

Let’s make one thing clear: Climate change is real. Humans are definitely warming the planet.

Well that’s it then. We’re doomed. Rising sea levels will flood our cities. People will burn to death in wildfires caused by rising temperatures. Hurricanes will get bigger and bigger. We’re in a mass extinction and human beings are causing it. Don’t have children. Human beings are a cancer on the planet.

Not so fast. Where did you get your information about climate change from? “Science!”. I hear you say. Wrong. You got your information from news media. You don’t personally have a detailed understanding of climate science and you didn’t personally read extensively through scientific papers on climate change.

And just like any other story, climate change has passed through the very same bad news filters that the rest of the news has.

You probably think of the climate change debate like this: On the one side you have the world’s scientists telling us the apocalypse is coming, and on the other side you have the climate change deniers — idiots who refuse to believe well-documented science.

This is the impression you’ve built by consuming news media. And it’s wrong.

Now. Personally I know absolutely nothing about climate science. But after doing a good amount of research on the topic, I’ve come to believe that the situation is nowhere near as bad as I previously thought it was.

While there is plenty of disagreement amongst scientists about how bad the problem is, most of them don’t seem to believe that it’s the apocalypse that the news media would have us believe.

Other voices, like Bjorn Lomborg and Michael Shellenberger believe climate change is a problem that humanity is perfectly capable of managing.

You may be so engrossed in the climate alarmist narrative, that you may be about to completely disregard everything I’m about to say. I too believed that the world was heading towards the apocalypse.

But guess what, I actually did some research. And my mind has been changed.

This is what I learned.

1. The Polar Bears Aren’t Going Extinct

One of the most iconic images of the climate apocalypse is the starving polar bear sitting on top of a small island of ice. You’ve heard this narrative year after year.

Almost everybody thinks that the polar bears are going extinct because of the narrative they’ve consumed in media. And yet, this narrative isn’t even correct.

In the 1960’s, the number of polar bears had dropped to roughly 5,000 to 19,000. The main problem was the over-hunting of polar bears. Ever since hunting was regulated in the 1970’s the number of polar bears has been increasing gradually. The latest estimate shows that there are now around 26,500 polar bears in existence.

Polar bears also survived through the interglacial period when it was far warmer than it is now.

But that hasn’t stopped the polar bear narrative being spun over and over again. Polar bears are cute — and a great way to encourage people to care about climate issues. In essence, they’re a great marketing tool for environmentalists.

The polar bear shown in this National Geographic video appears to show a polar bear starving due to the effects of global warming. The truth, however, is that this is simply an old polar bear. His condition has absolutely nothing to do with global warming. National Geographic later apologised for misleading their audience with this video.

The endangered polar bear continues to be a symbol of climate change, despite the statistics that tell us that their numbers are increasing.

2.“The World Is Burning” narrative is false

The world is on fire. And it’s all due to climate change. These are early signs of the apocalypse. That’s the dominant narrative right now.

And it’s true that climate change is likely exacerbating forest fires to some extent. But the real picture is far more complicated.

It is likely that most of the increase we’re seeing now has little to do with the climate and everything to do with other human activities that we have much more control over (…) significant human presence—such as closeness to towns and roads, the number of people living in an area, and the amount of land developed—can “override, or swamp out, the effect of climate.” – Bjorn Lomborg

It seems as though climate change is exacerbating forest fires to some extent. But the effect that climate change has on the severity and frequency of forest fires has (according to some) been blown way out of proportion.

Many climate scientists believe that the increase in forest fires over recent decades is due to more human presence in the area (something easily fixable), and the warming of the climate.

But every time there’s an outbreak of forest fires, people immediately jump to the same conclusion: It must be climate change. All other factors that don’t fit that narrative (that the fires may be caused by other human activities, for example), are ignored.

Over the past 150 years, our exposure to fire has dropped dramatically. We used to burn wood, then we switched to fossil fuels. If we’d had worldwide media networks in the early 1900’s, they would have been predicting the apocalypse too.

True, there’s been quite an increase in fires in the last 20 years and climate change has exacerbated this. But it’s nothing compared to the fires from the early 1900’s, and it’s not the apocalypse (Despite the hellish imagery of fires engulfing forests you see in news media).

3. Deaths From Natural Disasters Have Decreased Massively

If you think people in third world countries are getting ravaged by devastating natural disasters worse than ever before, you’re wrong. Less people die in natural disasters now then any other time in human history.

We have less destruction from floods because we got better at building flood dikes. We have less destruction from earthquakes because we got better at building earthquake-proof buildings. We have less deaths from hurricanes because we have an incredible weather system that alerts everybody in the area when a hurricane is approaching.

We’ve made extreme progress in protecting ourselves from extreme weather events. We should be celebrating this, but of course, nobody has any idea this has occurred.

4. We Are Not In A Sixth Mass Extinction

“Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We’re in the beginning of a mass extinction” – Greta Thunberg

Actually Greta, we’re not. There is quite a lot of biodiversity being destroyed due to climate change, but we’re not in a mass extinction.

All major scientific bodies agree that the biomass loss we’re currently experiencing does not fulfil the requirements for a sixth mass extinction. When a real mass extinction occurs, like the Permian–Triassic extinction event which happened roughly 252 million years ago, a cascading effect of species loss occurs that’s impossible to stop.

Extinction events are caused by enormous disasters, like Asteroid impacts or supervolcano eruptions. They are not caused by a rise in temperature of a few degrees.

To sum up a large amount of science in a short sentence: Humans are causing some extinction, but we’re not causing “The Sixth Mass Extinction”. No reasonable scientist would claim this to be true, only a climate activist would.

None of this is to say that climate change isn’t a problem, or won’t be a major problem in the future. Climate change is real and will have real consequences. There are also many unknowns—unforeseen “tipping points” that may push us towards climate catastrophe

But as far was we know, it’s probably not the end of the world.

(Much of my understanding on the climate issue comes from the following two books: “False Alarm” by Bjorn Lomborg and “Apocalypse Never” by Michel Shellenberger.)

This isn’t about being naively optimistic. It’s about not being unreasonably pessimistic.

The screens you stare at every day may leave you feeling like the world is a chaotic, dangerous, unjust, racist, sexist, apocalyptic place. But walk out your front door and out into the actual world and what do you see?

People walking around. People chatting with their friends. People walking their dogs. People taking care of their children.

The news isn’t the world. The world is the world. And the world, in 2020, is actually pretty great.