Vicious Cycle of Outrage
How bad is the world, really?
US nears 300,000 deaths from Covid-19 after record day
Amid rising violent crime, city divided over additional outside police help
Teen booked with murder in double homicide
“Our country is divided,” US Representative worries over future
Toddler’s blunt force trauma death ruled a homicide
With news like that, it’s no wonder some alarmists liken the US to “a war zone.”
Social media, with its tendency to create echo-chambers, amplifies those worries. Clicking on the “share” button is so easy, “This headline confirms what I already thought of the other political party,” a Facebook or Twitter user subconsciously rationalizes, unwittingly embracing his own confirmation bias.
On the sharing goes, spreading ill-will like a virus from person-to-person, fed by the cortisol being pumped out by those busy, indignation-activated adrenal glands.
But let’s stop and take a breath.
How bad is the world, really?
Steven Pinker clearly elucidated in his 2011 book, The Better Angels of our Nature, that the world today is much less violent than it has ever been, even the United States.
As well, who can deny that our moral evolution has made things repugnant today that were accepted as normal in the not so distant past. Criminals are no longer hung, drawn and quartered for the amusement and horror of the public. Slavery is outlawed. There are no humans in zoos, and even animals have rights, unlike during my youth in the 1960s when scientific experimentation on not just animals, but unwitting humans, occurred.*
The availability heuristic and news coverage
Along with our daily bombardment of news about Covid-19 and racial violence, comes the unseen psychological…
