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The World Is Not Falling Apart
An anonymous reader writes: As much as we like complaining, and as much as the big media stations like to focus on the most horrible news of the day, the world is actually becoming a better place. Stephen Pinker and Andrew Mack have an article in Slate going through many of the statistics for things like homicide rates, child abuse, wars, and even autocracy vs. democracy. They're all trending in the right direction. Maybe not fast, or even fast enough, but it's getting better.
They say, "Too much of our impression of the world comes from a misleading formula of journalistic narration. Reporters give lavish coverage to gun bursts, explosions, and viral videos, oblivious to how representative they are and apparently innocent of the fact that many were contrived as journalist bait. Then come sound bites from "experts" with vested interests in maximizing the impression of mayhem: generals, politicians, security officials, moral activists. The talking heads on cable news filibuster about the event, desperately hoping to avoid dead air. Newspaper columnists instruct their readers on what emotions to feel. There is a better way to understand the world. ... An evidence-based mindset on the state of the world would bring many benefits."
They say, "Too much of our impression of the world comes from a misleading formula of journalistic narration. Reporters give lavish coverage to gun bursts, explosions, and viral videos, oblivious to how representative they are and apparently innocent of the fact that many were contrived as journalist bait. Then come sound bites from "experts" with vested interests in maximizing the impression of mayhem: generals, politicians, security officials, moral activists. The talking heads on cable news filibuster about the event, desperately hoping to avoid dead air. Newspaper columnists instruct their readers on what emotions to feel. There is a better way to understand the world. ... An evidence-based mindset on the state of the world would bring many benefits."
World not falling apart my ass!
Sensationalism sells, and nothing is sensational like the end of the world. Ergo, all news is about the end of the world.
"An evidence-based mindset on the state of the world would bring many benefits."
Perhaps evidence can be gathered to support that hypothesis.
Not always. If the media makes it seem like things are getting worse overall. That would tell people the direction they are going in is wrong and will backtrack to the older ways when they were better.
You have sites like Fox News turning relatively moderate conservatives into extream conservatives. Due to the flood of negativity poison. Where before many issues were not a big deal or some supported it, now have became a polarizing issue.
Most of our judgment is based off of emotions, yes even the pro-science, well educated crowd. So misrepresented facts can cause a call to action where one isn't needed
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The big thing that is worse, I think, is economic inequality, and I do think that is something that needs to be worked on. However, the world has less racism, less homophobia, better medicine, cheap and fast global communications, inexpensive computing devices that can perform amazing computations, and put the shoe phone from "Get Smart" to shame,. Not to mention that violent crime and rape are at their lowest level since the 70's. The world is an awesome place now.
> The jobless? The disenfranchised? The dispossessed and everyone else who loves to lick Obama's boot?
Yes, them. Or are you COMPLETELY ignorant of history?
At what other time in history could people take two or three years off work and collect unemployment benefits? Have a look at a picture or film of a low-income or rural area from a hundred years ago. Note the large number of children sick from hunger-related disease. Then drive through a modern low-income housing project. Note all the 22 inch rims.
It's never incorrect to say "perhaps we could make things better". To say "things were better when people starved to death as opposed to today, when they might need to buy the generic-brand cheese with their EBT card" is outrageous. It just makes you look utterly ignorant.
Or were you referring to today versus ten years ago? If your idea of history is the last ten years, then you're correct. In 2004, 5% of people were unemployed. Today, it's 7.5%.
A wise politician one said, "Never let a crisis go to waste". If the public isn't agitated, they won't give up their liberties and control to the government.
Crime rates are down, yet cops are more militarized than ever. Police shootings are rare. Gun violence is down. College campus sexual assault rates are actually 0.61%. The earth is not warming in 20 years. There is no missing heat in the oceans. Hurricanes and tornado count are at a historical low. Unemployment counting those not looking for work is at a 40 year high. Inflation in food (not counted) is huge, yet commodities (gold / oil) are deflating. College debt is crippling high, but so is general credit card debt.
If you dig into the numbers behind the "official" numbers, everything is topsy turvy. That's why the public sees doom and gloom - everything they experience is counter to what we are being told, including articles saying "Don't panic".
You say that like the groups are separate.
Obama's aligned with the typically-liberal Democrat party. Liberals tend to believe that one of the government's jobs is to make things better for the jobless, the disenfranchised, the dispossessed, the poor, the hungry, and the downtrodden, so he's pushed programs that aim to help such folks.
Of course, that's countered by the Republican conservatives, who tend to believe that everyone can make their own fate, so those programs are forced to be either opt-in or neutered. If you want to rebel against the government's control, you have that freedom to forge your own way in life.
The end result is a system where assistance is tied to one's embrace of government. Sure, one can stay independent, but that's likely how he got to be jobless, disenfranchised, dispossessed, poor, hungry, and/or downtrodden in the first place.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The world is huge coupled dynamical system. It is good to see its state is moving in a good direction. However, as with many dynamical system, it is also a highly unstable. The current conditions are quite favorable, no real scarcity of our resources, no serious climate change, no world wars, no major deadly disease outbreaks etc. However, that doesn't mean that we can now lay back and assume that past performance is a good predictor of our future. If you disagree, think about it and tell me, what will happen to our beloved coupled dynamical system when we run out of oil (just to mention one thing which we know WILL happen not that long from now)...
That's a very interesting perspective.
I'd say that the fundamental, defining difference between conservative thinking vs progressive is that while progressives say "let's change things for the better" conservatives say "don't throw the baby out with the bath water". Conservatives think America is basically pretty good, progressives think it needs it be "fundamentally transformed", as Obama put it. Progressives say "we need to do something" (and proposal X is something, so we need to do it). Conservatives think we shouldn't lose sight of the principles that once made this the greatest country on earth.
If you belief, based on the news you see, that the place is falling apart, then indeed "we need to do something" (liberalism) is a reasonable response. If you believe life is pretty good, and slowly getting better, then you should stick with what's been working (conservatism). So I'd come to the opposite conclusion as you.
If having more women in nursing and more men in programming is a terrible, horrible thing, then we have to do something about it. If black people can never succeed, if it's unimaginable that any black person could ever be a judge, a mayor, or a senator, then we need to do something about that. On the other hand, if black people can be judges, mayors, senators, and even president of the United States, then all the liberal progressivism is unnecessary, and indeed their complaints of being "kept down by the man" are just whining, excuses. If the society isn't basically racist, then Al Sharpton is out of a job. Progressivism REQUIRES big problems. If you don't believe there are big problems everywhere you look, you have no interest in liberals' big "solutions".
Personally, I think some things could be improved. Liberals do a pretty good job at identifying the problems. However, they all-too-often fall into the trap of "we have to do something, and proposal X is something, so we have to do proposal X". Conservatives are hesitant to change things, so they don't screw things up. Perhaps the ideal would be for liberals to set the agenda of which problems we want to solve this year, then for conservatives beancounters to get out their calculators and figure out which proposed solutions have worked well elsewhere or in the past, and which ones are economically feasible. So the liberals force the conservatives to do SOMETHING, and the conservatives ensure that the SOMETHING has a reasonable chance of working, and without making us bankrupt.
... are social? Global warming, over-population, every ecosystem on the planet in decline, ravaged fish stocks, depleted soils, widespread environmental contamination, a loss of green spaces, habitat and species, and on, and on don't reflect on the world's condition? Let the rainbows and unicorns run wild!
Its pretty easy to find places where this is clearly not true (eg: Syria). But those are localized places and times. That's like finding a place where entropy seems to be decreasing; you can do that, but that only means elsewhere it increased more. Human society seems to follow Theodore Parker's principle: The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
This seems like a good place and time for my favorite Christmas song, written by Longfellow after he'd lost his entire family (wife included) during the Civil War:
I heard the bells on Christmas day Their old familiar carols play, And wild and sweet the words repeat Of peace on earth, good will to men.
I thought how, as the day had come, The belfries of all Christendom Had rolled along th'unbroken song Of peace on earth, good will to men.
And in despair I bowed my head: "There is no peace on earth," I said, "For hate is strong and mocks the song Of peace on earth, good will to men."
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: "God is not dead, nor doth he sleep; The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, With peace on earth, good will to men."
Till, ringing, singing, on its way, The world revolved from night to day, A voice, a chime, a chant sublime, Of peace on earth, good will to men!
real-world policies are designed to entrap those foilks into dependency on the Glorious Liberal State,
Right on brother, the proven ulterior motives of heathcare, unemployment benefits, etc of this administration that hates america are the worst of all time. Things have never been this bad....wait what was this story about again? Something about sensationalism in the media making things look awful when they're really the best in history?
One thing I'm sure you (should) agree with is that today's conspiracy theory's are some of the best ever.
The big thing that is worse, I think, is economic inequality,
If everything is getter better in terms of quality of life, and economic inequality is growing, then how can you EI as bad?
At the very least it's not bad enough to matter.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Slashdots just as guilty of this as anywhere else...
A month or two ago I was getting modded troll left and right for suggesting that Ebola wasn't about to ravage North America and kill millions of people.
Aaron Sorkin, The Newsroom, and the greatest country in the world
For all the later melodramatic histrionics that did not work, Aaron Srokin hit this subject in the opening of The Newsroom, where just ignoring the evidence for ratings doesn't do anybody any kind of justice.
Transcript and comments from Sorkin:
http://www.gq.com/entertainmen...
"Fine. [to the liberal panelist] Sharon, the NEA is a loser. Yeah, it accounts for a penny out of our paychecks, but he [gesturing to the conservative panelist] gets to hit you with it anytime he wants. It doesn't cost money, it costs votes. It costs airtime and column inches. You know why people don't like liberals? Because they lose. If liberals are so fuckin' smart, how come they lose so GODDAM ALWAYS!
And [to the conservative panelist] with a straight face, you're going to tell students that America's so star spangled awesome that we're the only ones in the world who have freedom? Canada has freedom, Japan has freedom, the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Belgium has freedom. Two hundred seven sovereign states in the world, like 180 of them have freedom.
And you, sorority girl, yeah, just in case you accidentally wander into a voting booth one day, there are some things you should know, and one of them is that there is absolutely no evidence to support the statement that we're the greatest country in the world. We're seventh in literacy, twenty seventh in math, twenty second in science, forty ninth in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, third in median household income, number four in labor force, and number four in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next twenty six countries combined, twenty five of whom are allies. None of this is the fault of a 20 year old college student, but you, nonetheless, are without a doubt, a member of the WORST period GENERATION period EVER period, so when you ask what makes us the greatest country in the world, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about?! Yosemite?!!!
We sure used to be. We stood up for what was right! We fought for moral reasons, we passed and struck down laws for moral reasons. We waged wars on poverty, not poor people. We sacrificed, we cared about our neighbors, we put our money where our mouths were, and we never beat our chest. We built great big things, made ungodly technological advances, explored the universe, cured diseases, and cultivated the world's greatest artists and the world's greatest economy. We reached for the stars, and we acted like men. We aspired to intelligence; we didn't belittle it; it didn't make us feel inferior. We didn't identify ourselves by who we voted for in the last election, and we didn't scare so easy. And we were able to be all these things and do all these things because we were informed. By great men, men who were revered. The first step in solving any problem is recognizing there is one, America is not the greatest country in the world anymore."
Or at least the 24-hour news cycle did when they covered the girl in the well story endlessly. To make matters worse, social media is enabling bogus memes to spread like kudzu. There's an important phrase that people should be taught and that is "Totality of the circumstances." What this means is that these bogus memes are almost always one-sided counting on the gullibility of the viewer to accept it as fact without knowing that there are circumstances and facts that happened which are conveniently skipped lest they burst the bubble of the narrative.
The jobless? The disenfranchised? The dispossessed? The poor, the hungry, the downtrodden?
Or is it just getting better for the corporate, the military, and everyone else who loves to lick Obama's boot?
You too can be successful! Just lick that boot! Lick it good.
This type of comment says a lot about the people who agree with it. When the headline says "The World", they only talk about the United States.
Yes, some things are improving. But others are not. And to say that the things these people picked define "the world" is nothing more than hubris.
There are many things that are not improving. Some of them bode extremely poorly for the future. Climate may be one of those (or not... we will see.) Loss of privacy is another. Militarization of police is another. Constitutional erosion is another. A continuously increasing burden of badly crafted and anti-liberty legislation is another. The US justice system is a horror show from one end to the other. We're presently building a mostly unemployable permanent lower class by the continuing and increased implementation of never forgive, never forget social patterns and supporting technology. The vast majority of wealth has become concentrated in the hands of a very few people and corporations, and those same people and corporations have assumed de-facto control of our political system everywhere it does something that matters to them.
Depending on where you sit in regard to these issues, and others, your world may be sucking harder on an ever-increasing curve.
The world is what it is. Happy-assed optimism isn't called for outside of your own situation, and only then if that's how you see it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.