Good news vs. 'pessimism porn'

I just read this article by John Stossel who's work is one of the few MSM people I usually can enjoy. I think that he has hit the nail on the head.

www.foxnews.com...

Our brains just aren't very good at keeping track of the good news. Evolution programmed us to pay attention to problems. Good news often happens slowly. The media miss it.

He mentions a book that I am going to order from the library by Matt Ridley, The Rational Optimist. I think that it should be a good read.

"People are much more interested in hearing about something that's gone wrong," says Ridley. "It sounds wiser to talk about what might go wrong than to talk about what might go right."

I think that we have been over saturated with Doom Porn. We should focus on the brighter side of life from time to time, just to maintain a balance.

a reply to: TDawgRex

Pick me ups? Music does that for me. Watching the birds out back, walking my dog. In this day and age I am simply too old to go adventuring. But thats okay, in this day and age I can see it on the Internet.

I wish I could go back to smoking sometimes, that was a good cover but it nearly killed me.

Thing about all the warm, fuzzy, happy things is that they are already happy warm and fuzzy. They don't need to be addressed. Put your money down and enjoy.

I want to find out how to help people get on past their questioning quandriess, I want to expose the lies that make us believe everything is alright. Endless war, murder, corruption… I want the madness to stop. I want to turn the world back to happy, warm and fluffy. Doing that doesn't get me down as much as it gives me hope that somehow, some way things will get a little brighter.

If you can make people laugh along the way a little, too…

By the way…

Yet time and again, humanity survived doomsday. Not just survived, we flourish. Population increases, yet famine becomes rarer. More energy is used, yet the environment gets cleaner. Innovation and trade keep improving our lives.

That part is mostly crap.

originally posted by: TDawgRex
I think that we have been over saturated with Doom Porn. We should focus on the brighter side of life from time to time, just to maintain a balance.

Well Ill admit it, Im a pessimist and indeed think that the world is going to hell in a hand basket.

But Im always focusing on the brighter side as I get to wake up and goto sleep with her body snuggled up against mine.

I realize that I dont realize how lucky I am

a reply to: Tucket

Haha yea. They have a knack for lightening the mood.

Sometimes too much. I think it 'is important not to lose focus on the large problems with society. We are surrounded by threats. The rules are becomeing too restrictive, punishments are not being doled out consistently, the police are no longer trusted by the populace.

Any child, even animals, know when they are not being treated fairly, and everyone has the same reaction to being treated unfairly. We act out proportionally to the offence.

Im actually surprised there are not more stories of people or groups fighting violently back against "The System". I think it says a lot about how peaceful our nature is. We want to live in a society that is governed by rules that are fair and we want to believe that our system is fair. Some of us, to the point of pretending it is, in spite of the overwhelming contradiction that creates when we pay attention to all of this "doom porn".

But it's not "Doom Porn". It's the stories of some injustice forced onto innocent people by a system that is being run unfairly from top to bottom. But some of us realise when you put a funny moniker on a serious topic, it opens the gates for immature people to ridicule it. Like "conspiracy theorist". A label that is used to scoff and belittle the person instead of the point.

So now, all bad news is just "Doom Porn".

These stories are the symptoms of bad laws, bad legislation, bad policy, bad management, corruption from the top to the bottom,

Yet somehow we are supposed to focus on the positive? Smoke and mirrors. Watch one hand while the other shoots unarmed people in the streets. Vote on your fav idol while children are sold around the world. Enjoy your steak and lobster while the kids down the street go hungry because their parents bought meth instead of groceries. Watch your fav politician gladhanding and kissing babies while his staff writes out a plan to turn deadly chemical waste into a mandatory water additive that makes your teeth healthy. Yay.

So in other words...people like to feed off of pessimism? That seems to be some of the responses I see here.

Not taking a moment like Intrptr says to appreciate the small things from time to time?

I like balance in my life. I see it all, both good and bad. Excuse me for finding something to make me smile from time to time.

We all observe what goes right. We just don't really verbalize it.

When my kid is learning to bait a hook, he watches me and repeats what I do. That is him observing what went right. He just isn't verbalizing it.

However, if my dad watched me do it he would chastise for the way I put the worm on (we had a difference of opinion on that matter) and point it out.

Sometimes silence is consent.

originally posted by: TDawgRex

Excuse me for finding something to make me smile from time to time

I excuse you for misunderstanding. I have a pessimistic view of the world, not of myself. This is because I can affect my world by doing things like sports, playing guitar, thinking positive, loving etc..

What I cant do is change the fact that the world is being governed/destroyed by evil..

But believe it or not, I do smile "from time to time."