Newell spoke Monday morning to Marian Tupy, editor of HumanProgress.org and Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, about what’s in his book “Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know,” and the question of whether or not civil discourse in America is getting better, or worse.
“You have these Top 10 trends - people trends, health trends, violence, work, natural resources,” Newell began. “I found that all very interesting, and then you synthesize all of this together as to what it all ultimately means. And you make the observation, why do so many smart people wrongly believe that all things considered, the world is getting worse? Is it, or is it not?”
“The world has a lot of problems. It has always had a lot of problems and it will always have a lot of problems, but the world is certainly in a much better shape than most people imagine,” Tupy said. “And I think that part of the reason why people are focused on the negative and have a rather negative view of the world is because of the nature of the media. The media, in order to sell newspapers or to keep you glued to television, lead with stories of blood and gore and civil wars and horrible things happening to people. Those of us who read newspapers or watch TV, we'll always have an imbalanced view of the world. And that is why you need to really look at long-term trends and ask yourself, am I better off than I would have been fifty years ago or a hundred years ago or two hundred years ago?”
“On that score, most of us are much better off by most indicators of human wellbeing, but there are other things at play,” Tupy continued. “Bad things, when they happen to us, have much more of a traumatic effect on us than when good things happen to us. Good things sort of wear off much quicker. Also good things tend to be gradual. They take a lot of time - just think about building a house or getting an education, accumulating a lot of wealth. But you can lose it in the blink of an eye due to fire or a car accident or a stock market crash. There are a lot of these negativity biases that we have evolved over millennia. The final thing that I would like to point out is that I think that when people talk about optimistic things, they sort of sound like they are trying to sell you something, they're sounding unserious - whereas other serious people are on TV warning about things to come and people give them much more of an ear. People are much more interested in these stories of doom and gloom rather than positive things.”
“I agree with you very much, and I think you referred to the news as kind of being a mental shortcut,” Newell said. “And I think people are embracing headlines - they don't read the body of the story and they don't go beyond the story. So they read the story, and then instead of reading some of the research behind it, some of the supporting evidence behind it, they just accept it.”
“Let me give you one example,” Tupy replied. “It is absolutely true that crime in the United States is much higher this year than it was last year. That is true. But if you compare our crime rates, our homicide rates to say, the mid 1990s, then they are still much lower than what they were. What the journalist should be doing in stories about crime is to say, yes, crime is on the increase, but it is still much lower than what it was. What is it that we have done in the 1990s to bring crime down that we are not doing today? Now, that would be a very good journalistic thing to do. And it doesn't take that much of a newspaper column or an online article to explain that things are better, even though right now we are going through a rough patch.”
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.
