Only look at the downside?

‘Pessimism’ former U.S. president Dwight Eisenhower once declared, ‘Never won any battle’. That may be true, but in the war to capture the hearts and minds of the modern media cycle, pessimism it would seem, has emerged utterly triumphant. One can hardly open a newspaper or turn on the news, without being utterly drenched in an overwhelming aura of negativity and despair towards the current state of the world. Political commentators, regards of ideology, seem united in the belief that the direction we are all headed in, is terrible. To be fair, on first glance, it may appear that these gloomy outlooks are justified. The global economy, still shaken from the events of the 2008 crash, appears highly unstable. The far-right, once confined to the margins of extremist groups, is on the rise again. Likewise religious fundamentalism is a force once more, fuelling terrorism, intolerance and bigotry. Omnipresent governments carefully watch our every move, in a manner that would make Orwell blush. Surely, the end times must be nearly upon us?

Would-be soothsayers are fond of comparing every major occurrence to a historic predecessor, boldly claiming with absolute certainty, that the pattern is repeating itself. Trump’s rise to the Republican nomination? The exact same as Hitler’s, they solemnly declare. Russia’s annexation of Crimea? Identical to the Sudentland. When Turkish armed forces shot down a Russian fighter jet, the Daily Mail, quite unashamedly, ran a headline announcing that ‘The World holds its breath’, comparing the incidence to the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, and asserting that World War 3 was now an utmost certainty. Such an approach may be a useful tactic to sell newspapers. However, a loose similarity to historical events is altogether quite different from being able to argue that a severe global catastrophe is inevitable. Whenever a crisis occurs, modern Cassandras will always claim to have seen it coming. What they will not say is how many times they saw things coming that never materialized, or how the specific mechanisms behind the crisis are different from those on which their predictions were based.

The problem stems from the fact that while audiences enjoy positive reviews, they tend to view pessimistic or negative outlooks to be more intelligent and clever. Thus, it can be of little surprise that those publications which seek to portray a sense of intelligence amongst its readers tend to adopt a more critical tone. It would, after all, be an extraordinarily strange occurrence were one to open an issue of The Economist and read only ‘good news’ stories. And rather naturally, it is only
when things go wrong that they become interesting and worthy of report. By focusing only on the negative however, we ignore the enormous good which has occurred. One billion people have been lifted out of poverty in the last 20 years. Despite huge concern over healthcare systems, people are living longer and better lives. And notwithstanding all the wars and conflict across the globe, we are experiencing one of the most peaceful times in human history

That is not to say that the world is without its problems. Economic growth remains sluggish, and the gains of prosperity are unevenly spread. This has fuelled enormous anger and dissent amongst the disaffected, which has been channelled by populist and at times, demagogic leaders. The Middle-East remains as chaotic and forlorn as ever, although now it does so in a way which affects its rich European neighbours. Nevertheless it is important to put these events in their proper context. And in the words of Monty Python, we should not be afraid to ‘look on the bright side of life’.