Dear Jessica Brennan,
Last week I ran into an old acquaintance in the parking lot of a local store and when I asked her how she was, she gave me an itemized list of everything that was going wrong. Then when I asked about her daughter, she told me that she was sad that she was not yet a grandmother, but “Who would want their daughter to bring a child into this world anyway?”
It was in that instant that I realized that I have absolutely no patience with people who think the world is bad and getting worse. They are negative, have no hope for a bright future, are part of the problem and are woefully misinformed.
Since 1950 the world has gone from 75% of the population living in extreme poverty to 10% of the world living that way today.
In 200 years we have gone from a planet with about 18% literacy to a world with 80% literacy.
Infant mortality is falling, political freedom and life expectancy are increasing, conflicts are declining.
Over the last 30 years, violence against women and children has decreased considerably as have the rates of missing persons. It is safer for kids to play outside today, than it was when I was a kid. Ground the helicopters and put away the bubble wrap, folks.
So why do we think things are bad and getting worse? Well, apart from our addiction to drama, we tend to forget that good news doesn’t sell, but a fascination with fear does. So as we are having news marketed to us by the brains behind the schemes crafted by your favourite news source, the data proves that we flock to controversy and disregard the rest of what is broadcast.
Do we still have a lot of work to do here on the little blue planet? Of course. I didn’t say that we are perfect, far from it. But we are improving in some very important ways which have cleared the path for the next generation to make additional improvements in years to come.
What if we expected things to get better instead of worse? What if we took everything we watched and read with a grain of salt, including the things we want to believe because they align with our own perspective? What if we looked around with our own eyes and made our own decisions about the world rather than buying into someone else’s agenda?
One missing child, is too many missing children. One abused person is too many abused people. One family living in poverty is unacceptable. One rape, one murder, one bully is too many. But I would like to suggest that believing things are always getting worse, and perhaps destined to continue to get worse, is not the solution.
And the cry that we should not bring children into this world? Rubbish. I say, keep having babies, and raise them to be good, loving citizens of the planet. Who else is going to do the important work of the future?
Love,
Mum xo
