Why the world is not falling apart

I believe I’ve linked to this article on Slate before, but even so, it’s more than worth reading. With everything going on around us, there is this tendency to think we are all the victims of circumstance and that the world is become a worse place. It isn’t.

The only sound way to appraise the state of the world is to count. How many violent acts has the world seen compared with the number of opportunities? And is that number going up or down? As Bill Clinton likes to say, “Follow the trend lines, not the headlines.” We will see that the trend lines are more encouraging than a news junkie would guess.

Go ahead. Read it. And be happy you live here, now.