The world is getting better, but the media hide it

Systemic Flaws In the Reported World View

By Chris Anderson

Paradoxically, one of the biggest reasons for being optimistic is that there are systemic flaws in the reported world view. Certain types of news — for example dramatic disasters and terrorist actions — are massively over-reported, others — such as scientific progress and meaningful statistical surveys of the state of the world — massively under-reported.

Although this leads to major problems such as distortion of rational public policy and a perpetual gnawing fear of apocalypse, it is also reason to be optimistic. Once you realize you're being inadvertently brainwashed to believe things are worse than they are, you can... with a little courage... step out into the sunshine.

How does the deception take place?

The problem starts with a deep human psychological response. We're wired to react more strongly to dramatic stories than to abstract facts. There are obvious historical and Darwinian reasons why this should be so. The news that an invader has just set fire to a hut in your village demands immediate response. The genes for equanimity in such circumstances got burned up long ago.

Although our village is now global, we still instinctively react the same way. Spectacle, death and gore. We lap it up. Layer on top of that a media economy that's driven by competition for attention and the problem is magnified. Over the years media owners have proven to their complete satisfaction that the stories that attract large audiences are the simple human dramas. Rottweiler Savages Baby is a bigger story than Poverty Percentage Falls even though the latter is a story about better lives for millions.

Today our media can source news from 190 countries and 6 billion people. Therefore you can be certain that every single day there will be word of spectacularly horrifying things happening somewhere. And should you get bored of reading about bombs, fires and wars, why not see them breaking live on cable 24/7 with ever more intimate pictures and emotional responses.

Meta-level reporting doesn't get much of a look-in.

So for example, the publication last year of a carefully researched Human Security Report received little attention. Despite the fact that it had concluded that the numbers of armed conflicts in the world had fallen 40% in little over a decade. And that the number of fatalities per conflict had also fallen. Think about that. The entire news agenda for a decade, received as endless tales of wars, massacres and bombings, actually missed the key point. Things are getting better. If you believe Robert Wright and his NonZero hypothesis, this is part of a very long-term and admittedly volatile trend in which cooperation eventually trumps conflict. Percentage of males estimated to have died in violence in hunter gatherer societies? Approximately 30%. Percentage of males who died in violence in the 20th century complete with two world wars and a couple of nukes? Approximately 1%. Trends for violent deaths so far in the 21st century? Falling. Sharply.

In fact, most meta-level reporting of trends show a world that is getting better. We live longer, in cleaner environments, are healthier, and have access to goods and experiences that kings of old could never have dreamed of. If that doesn't make us happier, we really have no one to blame except ourselves. Oh, and the media lackeys who continue to feed us the litany of woes that we subconsciously crave.

Therapy more likely than extra money to make you happy

Research shows that therapy is 32 times more cost effective at making people happier.

Although the article doesn't say what form of therapy they studied.

If men are so badly treated, why are we so happy?

In response to a previous post on women's narcissism and happiness, someone left the following comment:

"I read that men are happier than women. I have also read that women are less happy now than in the fifties while men are happier. But how can this square with our understanding of how badly men are treated and how feminism has damaged them? How can we be happier yet be in the desperate situation that I think you and I think men are in?"

I wanted to answer it here, as I believe the answer is rather strange, and makes one question a lot of our assumptions about life.

The answer, I believe is that our happiness is ultimately unrelated to things that we strive to gain or not to loose. For example, I read before that people who loose a limb are no less happy, a year on, than when they had the limb intact, and people who win the lottery, are, one year on, no happier. When it comes to happiness, fortunes or misfortunes cannot raise or dent your natural levels in the long run. A good quote from Aubrey de Grey makes this point well:

"Humans are very, very good at adjusting their aspirations to match their expectations. When things get better, people are happy – but if they stay better and show every sign of continuing that way, people become blasé. Conversely, when things get worse people are unhappy, but if they stay worse and show every sign of continuing that way, people become philosophical. This is why, by all measures that have to my knowledge been employed, people in the developed world are on average neither much happier nor much less happy now than they were when things were objectively far worse. This is a good thing in many ways, but in at least one way it is a problem: it dampens our ardour to improve our lives more rapidly. In particular, it depletes the ranks of “unreasonable men” to whom Shaw so astutely credited all progress."

Now, of course, just because loosing a limb doesn't dent someone's long term happiness, that doesn't mean that we would be content to deliberately loose one, or have one of our relatives loose one. So, there is clearly a distinction between what is desirable and right, and what makes us happy. And that is quite strange if you think about it, as we are clearly therefore motivated by some other force than happiness. Or perhaps we are just falsely motivated by what we think will make us happy, or avoid making us sad?

Scientific advice on happiness

I recently bought the new book "59 seconds" by Richard Wiseman. This is a book that claims to offer 'self improvement' advice based on REAL findings from psychological studies. It claims that much of the standard advice from self-improvement gurus has no basis or evidence to support it, or may even be incorrect. For example, one story you often see in self-improvement books and articles suggested that a study once showed that simply writing down a list of goals makes you dramatically more likely to succeed in life. Yet no-one has ever been able to locate this study.

Here is a summary of some of the advice he gives on increasing your happiness, based on scientific research:

(1) Spending money on material things doesn't make you happy, but spending money on experiences, such as holidays, shows, or even a meal, does. The key things seem to be that experiences offer the opportunity to interact with others, or having things to discuss with others after the experience. Equally, spending money on others does more to increase happiness than spending it on yourself.

(2) Smiling, sitting upright and generally ACTING happy, can make you feel more happy. The smile can't be fleeting, it must be for between at least 15 to 30 seconds or more.

(3) 'positive thinking', psychotherapy, or even just talking about your problems does not seem to make people happier. Instead, evidence suggests that writing a diary about your problems can be extremely beneficial to your happiness (the theory is that writing encourages one to structure your thoughts whilst chatting about them, less so).

(4) Similarly to (3), even if you don't have significant problems, keeping a diary in which you express gratitude towards all the good things in your life, positive thoughts about the future (e.g. imagine - realistically - things have gone as well as you can hope, and you have achieved your goals), and affection towards those you love/have loved. Part of the reason for why this works is that the human brain has a tendency to quickly 'habituate' to almost anything and thus we take things for granted and must remind ourselves of them.

Women's narcissism and happiness

Us women are more egocentric and narcissistic than we ever used to be, according to extensive research by two leading psychologists.

I can't vouch for the rigor of this research... but it certain accords with my own experiences of modern Western women! In particular, I think that years of politically correct claptrap in the media - in particular in women's magazines and newspaper collumns - has left women with totally unrealistic expectations of what men find attractive in a woman. In short, they project what THEY find attractive in a man, onto what they assume a man will find attractive in a woman. In essence: career success, material wealth, and 'worldliness' (i.e. experience, and how well travelled they are). You can quite see this in the way that women (particularly those in their 30s) describe themselves on dating sites (i.e. when they are trying to 'sell themselves'). Of course, the reality is that these qualities are not important at all for the vast majority of men who are looking for a relationship with a woman.

But does all this narcissism make women any happier? I would guess the exact reverse. And this accords with research I've read that shows that women are less likely than men to be happy. In general, I'd say that focusing on yourself is more likely to make you miserable, whilst focusing outwards onto the outside world, and loosing yourself in some external interest, is more likely to lead to contentment. And wasn't this, after all, the wisdom of philosophical movements like Buddhism? That you should try to forget your ego and loose yourself by focusing on other things?

Confucius on happiness

"If you want to be happy for a day, get drunk. If you want to be happy for three days, get married. If you want to be happy forever, cultivate a garden."

Money Vs Happiness

Research on money and happiness: It turns out that money actually can buy happiness, but not a lot of it.

Happiness

Marshall Brain (The founder of 'How Stuff Works'): Wealth brings diminishing returns in terms of happiness. If you spend 10 times more for something it might not buy you any more happiness at all. The funny thing is, once this equation is understood, there is a tendency to stop buying extravagant things and to live more modestly. People look for happiness not in material objects, but in other ways.

Video Talk by Dan Gilbert: Why are why happy? Why aren't we happy?

Michael Crichton on Happiness

Make the world a better place and you make your life worth while.That's the heart of happiness, and all the rest is commercial hustle.

A short essay, but one which certainly makes you think. Maybe one of the greatest insanities of the Human race is that we are all pursuing happiness, yet mostly by doing things which don't make us happy, yet we never seem to learn.