Ashok Gupta argues that the world feels worse than it actually is, partly because of negative news and a survival bias he calls "doom judging." While real suffering exists, past wars were far more catastrophic. He suggests cultivating gratitude and supporting those in crisis as antidotes to despair.
I hear so many people saying, "Oh, I wouldn't want to bring a child into this world," or, "The world's really going downhill," or, "What's going to happen in the future?" Yeah, and it can feel like the world in its current situation is much worse than it ever has been, right? And I would like us to reflect on that. Is that because actually, objectively, the world is getting worse across so many different parameters? Or is it actually that we are consuming more news? Right, we're consuming more of the negativity that's going on around the world. What is actually going on here objectively? And so we want to retrain our minds by having these new perspectives, not only from a cognitive level, but also an emotional level as well. And I think that, you know, it's recognizing that because our brain is trained for survival, it has a cognitive bias. And its cognitive bias is focusing on what is bad about humanity and what we see around us. And no doubt, there's nothing here that's minimizing how challenging and terrible the situation is for those in the Middle East, for those being caught up in the conflict right now. There is no underestimation of how challenging that is, how fear— uh, how fearful that is for the people living there. Many people losing their lives and so on. So we're not in any way minimizing or underestimating that, but for us who are away from that situation, this can be yet another bit of information that the brain then starts judging the entire world. We call it doom judging, yeah, as bad and negative. And actually, what we want to realize is that throughout human history, there have always been wars, conflicts, Yeah, and yet even though we see this in the news, we are living through times which are actually the most peaceful. There can be a romanticization of the past, that the past was much better. Think about our ancestors, think about our recent grandparents. They had to live through the First World War, the Second World War, where the situation was much worse. Yeah, where it literally was a world war and everyone was living through deep insecurity. And so therefore, let's feel grateful for what we do have and also look to how we can support people going through that suffering. It doesn't help us to go through the deep negativity and depression that might come from these situations. Humanity will get through this. We've got through wars, conflict, massive challenges in the past, and let's just believe in the power of the human spirit to get through this and to see that positive things, or certainly new ways of organising ourselves, can come out of this.
