The Good Things

[the_std]

I'm debating with the state of things if I want all the crazies to be right that the world is going to end in 2012

Okay, this comment got me thinking... Do things really suck so badly that the world ought to end? Have we gone so far down the ladder that only bad stuff is happening and it would be better off for everyone if we were just going to cease to exist? (Please note, this is a rambling post. You've been warned, people!)

Now, before you guys jump on me, yeah. This is a debate site. And yes, debate stems from controversy and disagreement. Disagreement doesn't usually happen over good things. I realize that. But I still think that we too often forget that, for every kid who gets bullied or person who gets harassed, there is still so much good in the world.

11-year old boy finds his way home with the help of strangers is not "11-year old boy kidnapped and murdered".

... And in researching news articles to back up this statement, that is the only good thing I could find on Google News. Searching "good" or "happy" only brought up stuff about Good Friday massacres and sports teams happy to be playing a home game. Which really sucks. I mean, I know the good stuff doesn't really make it on to the news. "People Generally Happy" does not make a gripping headline. But the only positive articles I could find besides the little boy were fluff or sports pieces.

I, for one, refuse to believe that those things the news portrays are the only things out there. The world is not headed to hell in a hand-basket. Things are generally better now than they have ever been before, globally speaking. Standard of living is up, education rates are up, poverty levels are down. But it seems like the human condition is "the more we know, the unhappier we are". The better things get, the better we realize they could be and the more we bitch about the way things are. Which is not to say that those realizations are always negative - they've spurred unprecedented growth in industry and technology and we are leaps and bounds ahead of where we were even fifty years ago because of people trying to ameliorate flaws they see in this world.

But what the general Westernized public always seems to forget, and this is something I often see ignored here, is that we have it so, SO good. Even the bottom rung of our society is better off now than they ever have been before. And yes, things could get better. And they should! We should never stop improving. But globalization has skewed our perspective on things. Ten terrible things a day happening across the world does not negate the twenty great things that also happen. You just never hear about them.

Please realize that this post was not made to guilt or to preach. I just often feel that it would do us all a bit of good to hear the positives as well as the negatives. Too bad modern news corporations don't seem to share my outlook on the matter.

[Ginger Tea]

True, when news isnt covering fluff (mostly celebs) or sports it is predominantly bad news.
I stopped watching the news in general (when I had a TV) as 24 hour news shows seemed to be the same 30 minute feed looped, granted you arn't meant to watch it 24/7 its more "news on demand", but both my father and brother had the news on as background. One year I was round my brothers 'rehearsing' for a gig and doing some 4track demo's and the TV was on BBC News 24, it was the day Discovery (without googling) broke up on entry, I don't recal any other news items meantioned that day, I did ask him to change the channel as nothing new was comming on, about that or anything else in the world, I'm sure alot of scheduled news was dumped to tell people for the one hundredth time what had happened.

Now I get it was a big story at the time and still affects the families to this day, but after over an hour of the same loop even with the sound off, I just didn't feel that I could care anymore.

[Andara Bledin]

We're overfed and overexposed to bad news on a constant basis. Some recent study pointed out that the better off a nation does, the more it exaggerates the bad news it publishes.

I can't wait until serving the news fails as a profitable venture and it becomes all about the transmission of facts and ideas without need to pander to ratings and advertisers.

^-.-^

[Greenday]

One year I was round my brothers 'rehearsing' for a gig and doing some 4track demo's and the TV was on BBC News 24, it was the day Discovery (without googling) broke up on entry, I don't recal any other news items meantioned that day, I did ask him to change the channel as nothing new was comming on, about that or anything else in the world, I'm sure alot of scheduled news was dumped to tell people for the one hundredth time what had happened.

Well, that's like the earthquake in Japan recently. Watching the news was like the only channel that I can get here. And it was 24/7 coverage practically of Japan. So I pretty much stopped watching for a week. And when I started watching news again, they still seemed to be talking about it.

[the_std]

Hm, I think I made my point badly.

Yes, it does suck that news organizations are so heavily biased towards the negative, but my original point was that we, the relatively informed, decently intelligent population of the forum, are still so prone to "one bad thing happened, therefore the world is ending" mentalities. If we're so bad, what are the regular populace like? Do we truly believe that the world is nothing but negativity, or does anyone see the positives anymore?

[HotelKatz]

Negative news brings money because people will continue to watch until the negativity is gone or over. Positive news makes people feel good, but doesn't bring much money.

I'm reminded of a scene in Ghostbusters 2. the one before the statue of liberty scene.
the part where Ray says, "You know, I just can't believe things have gotten so bad in this city that there's no way back. I mean, sure, it's messy, it's crowded, it's polluted, and there are people who would just as soon step on your face as look at you. But come on! There's gotta be a few sparks of sweet humanity left in this burned-out bird. We just gotta find a way to mobilize it!"

I know it really has no connection to this topic, I'm just reminded of it.