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RE: Trendlines over headlines: why the world is doing much better than you probably think

in #economy7 years ago (edited)

The problem is that things simply seem worse than they are usually. When something is freaking hammered it becomes more severe. Increasing peoples fears or, more accurately feeding off them.
In the "olden" times we wouldn't hear about the catastrophic tsunami on the other side of the globe within seconds of it Happening. Then simultaneously getting local news coverage of some crazy person going on a shooting spree. And bam, we also have a POTUS that just sparked bigotous rioting in a major city. To, your fave celebrity just died from a drug overdose!
All these chains of Information is media bombardment of info. All coming at us at once. We didn't use to have that bevause our news came at a much slower pace. Micro-atrocities That people are filming on their phones going viral left and right. No wonder most people’s heads are spinning and "the end is near"
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Not only that, but people retreat from it. With the information overload, people become less engaged, not more engaged. There's just too much to take in. So people become desensitized to it and chalk it up to the background noise, which brings down their overall outlook on the world. In the same way that victims of abuse tune out all but the worst abuses over a long enough period of time, the average person is tuning out most of the bad stuff and just accepting that things are all bad, all the time.

Yeah, good analogy about the victim of abuse. I can relate. <_<
But this isn't about that. Yeah you're right though. I think there are kind of two categories the ones that retreat and tune out, then the ones that are almost too tuned in. I can go either way depending on where i am at emtionally. But when I'm tuned in i get hypervigilint also like abuse /trauma victims. There's no happy medium for me with the news /media.
Bleh, am I making any sense here

You totally are. I understand completely, and I do the same thing myself. Like I have to tune out sometimes because if I don't, I'm going to be consumed by all the negative shit out there.

Totally. Otherwise as an empath, i get way overwhelmed. That's why when i post on a super serious subject (like one of my early posts - "the executioners life") i have to have a completely set aside time mentally to be both rational but edgy and raw at the same time. So, that's why i can not do those posts all the time. Happened to be my most successful post too. But that's why i get kinda annoyed when ppl are like oh, just do more documentary posts. It's not that simple!
Sorry, Rambling ....

Nah! Go ahead and ramble! Part of the beauty of Steemit is that we can build a community, and part of that is talking like this in the comments section.

So, in the eternal words of Led Zeppelin: ramble on!

Unfortunately you are correct, this constant bombardment of bad news has physical effects on our body, the Amygdala is generating cortisol, a stress hormone which has very real negative effects on your body and anxiety...

Yeah, cortisol is a bad one. Can cause weight gain, heart issues, etc!

Hi Chelsea,

Thanks so much for the re-steem!
Our emotional buttons are being pushed by people who have decades of experience in button pushing.

Unfortunately the press still has this cloak of respectability from true journalism, from a time when newspapers actually were able to speak truth to power.
And undoubtedly there are individual journalists who still mean well, the problem is that they participate in an industry which is built on capturing human attention.
To do that, it knows what works: drama, murder and mayhem.

Of course there is still plenty of that but it depends on how you frame it.
If as you say you zoom in closely, you can portray a world on fire, if you have a helicopter view, most things actually are going relatively well.

Very true words. I hear so many complaints of poverty and while i do not doubt it, as you said, the cases of extreme poverty are decreasing daily.
Another issue i see with "poverty " in America and ill preface this by saying, I lived for many years in a very racially and economically divided area. These "poor" are poor only in their minds. Many of them that were living off government funded programs had huge tvs, nice cars, phones, etc. I don't see that as poor. But maybe I'm missing something

Absolutely, the trick is though in their mind they truly think they are poor because they are comparing with those that have more. As you say most of it is mental.
I'd like to see the people you talk about explain how poor they think they are to the family from Mozambique (in the long Hans Rosling video) who were saving up to buy a bike....

"So you say you are poor, yet you have time to get obsese because you don't exercise enough, because you drive everywhere in your car talking on your phone and sit around all day watching television (never mind the size)... suuuurrrre"

Now don't get me wrong, there are people who are truly suffering and unfortunately people even in the US who can't afford proper food. That is poverty indeed.

You got me! Yes most of these individuals were obese. There were even some selling their food stamps. Which makes me really mad. >_< they were not truly poor and YES there are some truly poor people in America but nothing like the video you're referencing. Not even close. These individuals think that society owes them something and that's a disease itself - the entitlement disease