Viewpoint by Jonathan Power
LUND, Sweden (IDN-INPS) – Do we, especially our politicians and media, focus more on threats than on opportunities, dwell on loses more than on gains, and learn more from past failures than from successes?
When we are children we are frightened of bogeymen. When we are adults we often inflate dangers.
When two years ago Steven Pinker published his book telling us how the number of battlefield deaths had gone dramatically down since World War 2 and pointed out how life had been transformed for poor people in the Third World because of immunization, contraception, disease eradication and widespread literacy many were taken by surprise.