Insight #12: On the future

Hello everyone and welcome to Insight #12; On the future.

• I'd like to start this insight with a psychology fact: People experience negative emotions, experiences and thoughts more strongly than positive ones. For example, of you measure the brain activity of someone when they receive 50 bucks and when they loose 50, the loss is literally “felt” more, about twice as bad as the good of gaining the 50 actually.

• Because of this things like news and the media mostly produce and share pieces that induce negative emotions. If you are enraged or saddened by something you are more likely to talk about it and share it. This negativity bias in our culture also affects our ideas of the future.

• A lot people think that we are likely to destroy ourselves be it by war, ecological collapse, or any of the apparent myriad of life-threatening challenges we face. However I am of the idea that we shouldn't really worry that much. Sure, these issues are very real and have very real consequences, and many are very new and very complex, but even then, I believe a positive outlook Is not only more useful, I'd consider it more likely.

• If you measure most pointers of health, life expectancy, security, and many many things that we depend on, you'll find they are improving, and are at their best literally ever. The amount of uplifting data and facts is actually quite grand, but it is rarely shared or talked about, for the reasons we covered earlier.

• There's also the utilitarian aspect. If you aren't going to do anything about the world's problems you care so much about, then there is literally no point worrying about it. If you do care, then do something about it. However at the end of the day I think most people can only really meaningfully contribute to major problems by being informed and voting for leaders that actually have the capabilities for enacting systematic change. Otherwise individual efforts are for the most part shouts in the void and have little impact.

• I want to emphasize the importance of the idea of systemic change. We live in a world massively interconnected and systematic, and change should be implemented in a scale that matches that size. If not things are just going to remain the same, for most systems by design resist change. This isn't to make you more pessimistic about the future. This concept is being gradually grasped by our leaders and I believe human intelligence will prevail even after the most challenging of situations.

To avoid making a 17 point insight I will cut it here for now. My tip to start changing your outlook on the future is to start looking for the good data. It is very much out there.

Until next time, have a great week.