Another week, another round of depressing headlines.
Another week, another round of depressing headlines.
The year has begun with more political dysfunction, with a three day shutdown of the US government. Yet while the pundits and comedians obsess about the latest twist in the presidential reality show, the opioid public-health crisis continues to spiral out of control, the regulations that keep America’s air and water clean are gutted, and hard-working residents are unceremoniously booted out of the country. Outside of America, new reports show that the world’s richest 1% are now hoovering up 82% of humanity’s newly created wealth, that temperatures in the Arctic regions continue to , and that 8 million tons of plastic are now every year.
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If you’re someone who considers themselves to be smart, engaged, and widely read, your response to this kind of news tends to be outrage or cynicism. In a world beset by climate change, environmental degradation, forced migration, political extremism, toxic masculinity, human-rights violations, and economic inequality, it seems like the only sane reaction. At this point, the scale of the challenges we face seems to be matched only by the ineptitude of our political leaders. To the well-informed cynic, it’s obvious that the human race is utterly incapable of getting its shit together.
You know who else thinks like that? Emo teenagers. They naturally default to cynicism because it’s safe. To them, the world is an uncertain, mean place filled with stupid authority figures and meatheads. Instead of changing that world, it’s far easier to retreat to your room, cry softly onto your copy of Nietzche, write some dark poetry, and wallow in the endless night of the human soul.
However, as anyone who’s gone back and read their teenage poetry knows, teenagers aren’t wise. They don’t really understand what’s going on. They haven’t had enough experience. Their decision to adopt an attitude of cynicism may like feel like an act of rebellion; a way of reclaiming agency in a world that has obviously gone mad. But in reality, it’s a decision based on fear, uncertainty, and inexperience.
As an adult, you’ve got no excuse. Cynicism is lazy. It’s the easy way out. If you only expect the worst from society, you never have to worry about being wrong or disappointed. And if you stay cynical for long enough, it leads to what Steven Pinker calls corrosive pessimism. If everything is awful then politicians are always liars, business leaders are always greedy, and we’re all on a collision course with a climate-change time bomb. And what’s the point in trying to do anything about that?
This kind of attitude is bad enough when it happens on an individual level, but at the societal level, it’s toxic. In a time where action is paramount, cynicism creates a paralyzing effect. It causes predatory delay, which is effectively the same as losing. It concedes the fight to those whose power and wealth is tied to planetary destruction and the misery of others. Perhaps more importantly, it ignores the incredible stories of progress that are taking place.
These good news stories don’t get as much airtime as the doomsday ones, but quietly, behind the scenes, they’re changing things for the better. Here, for example, are 10 stories from this year alone that you might not have heard about.
So in 2018, how about cultivating an attitude of optimism instead? Not as a judgement or a reaction to the world around you, but as a personal choice—and a political project.
We’re not talking about naive optimism, that kind that recycles, sings “Kumbaya,” donates a few dollars to a political campaign, and hopes Elon Musk is going to fix all of our problems, no.
Try it out: Make optimism your filter bubble in 2018, and see how it goes.
