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In this paper examining the psychology of pessimism, Harvard psychology professor and bestselling author of The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Steven Pinker says there’s a wide gap between perception and reality when it comes to human development and progress. One reason is that ‘bad is stronger than good.’ It means that people are more sensitive to bad things than they are to good things. Pinker found that people were pessimistic in every era. “People have always been convinced that the world is going downhill,” Pinker says.
According to Pinker and other researchers, economists and historians, the world is not going downhill. Quite the opposite, actually. They argue that there has never been a better time to be alive. Ever. Read these three books and you’ll never complain about [almost] anything again. The long line at Costco or the delayed flight won’t seem nearly as bad.
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The Age of Discovery: Navigating the Risk and Rewards of Our New Renaissance
“This is the best moment, ever, to be alive,” writes Ian Goldin, professor of globalization and director of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. Goldin argues that history’s golden age is today. “Humanity is healthier, wealthier, and better educated than at any time in our history.” Goldin points to the technological advancements of the past two decades as creating the conditions for the “new renaissance.” For example, “The Internet, effectively non-existent 20 years ago, linked 1 billion people by 2005, 2 billion people by 2010 and 3 billion people by 2015. Now, over half of humanity is online.”
According to Goldin, the “conditions are ripe” for a new golden age, one where it’s possible to succeed and to share ideas that will improve the world in ways unimaginable for those who came before us. “We can seize this moment and realize a new flourishing that in magnitude, geographic scope and positive consequences for human welfare will far surpass the last Renaissance.”
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves
I’m certainly not the first to find Matt Ridley’s book to be insightful and thought-provoking. Although Bill Gates takes issues with some of Ridley’s theories, he agrees with the premise of the book that “Our lives have improved dramatically—in terms of lifespan, nutrition, literacy, wealth and other measures—and he believes that the trend will continue…Mr. Ridley deserves credit for confronting this pessimistic outlook.”
In Ridley’s book you’ll learn about the Sun King, Louis XIV, the King of France from 1643 to 1715. At the time he was “the richest of the rich in the richest city.” He had 498 servants at his beck and call but, as Ridley points out, his riches are dwarfed by “the cornucopia” of food and services the average person has available today. In one of the most compelling passages, Ridley points out that in just a 50-year time period (from 1955 to 2005) the average human being “earned nearly three times as much money, ate one-third more calories, buried one-third as many of her children and could expect to live one-third longer. She was less likely to die as a result of war, murder, childbirth, accidents, famine, whooping cough, tuberculosis, malaria, diphtheria, typhus, typhoid, measles, smallpox, scurvy or polio…she was more likely to own a telephone, a flush toilet, a refrigerator and a bicycle.”
It is, according to Ridley, “an astonishing human development.”
Progress: Ten Reasons To Look Forward To The Future
“We are witnessing the greatest improvements in global living standards ever to take place,” writes historian Johan Norberg. “Poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy, child labor and infant mortality are falling faster than at any other time in human history.”
Norberg’s book vividly paints an unsettling portrait of what life was like for most people in the past, when life was grim for nearly everyone. Take sanitation, for example. “In 1900 horses supposedly fouled New York City streets with more than 2.5 million pounds of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine daily. The streets were carpeted with the stuff,” writes Norberg. In London, cholera killed 25,000 people between 1848 and 1854 because people didn’t know better than to dump raw sewage into the River Thames, which they also used for drinking water. “The truth is that, if we care to turn the clock back, the good old days were awful.”
I recently spoke to Norberg about why so many people seem so unaware of the remarkable progress we make every day, in nearly every aspect of our lives from technology to healthcare. Norberg explains that while war, crime, disasters and poverty are “painfully real,” in a world of instant media exposure the exceptions become the rule. Norberg quotes Oxford University economist Max Roser who says, “Things that happen in an instant are mostly bad. It’s this earthquake or that horrible murder. You’re never going to have an article on the BBC or CNN that begins, “There’s no famine in South London today” or “Child mortality again decreased in Botswana.”
Shining a light on problems is worthwhile when it results in action, but it can also create a ‘distorted filter’ that makes the world look far worse than it is. Business leaders cannot afford to see the world through a distorted filter. A healthy perspective based on the weight of evidence builds optimism which, according to Intel co-founder Robert Noyce, is an essential ingredient of innovation. These three books will give you the perspective you need to succeed in the golden age—today.
Carmine Gallo is a keynote speaker and author of "Talk Like TED" and "The Storyteller's Secret".
