Friday, January 21, 2022

What is working for you and what is not?

This post passes on to MindBlog readers the discussion topic for a Feb 6 2:00 p.m. (CST) Zoom meeting of The Austin Rainbow Forum, which I coordinate along with fellow Austinites Darrell Laremore and Charles Curry. If you are interested in attending the session please email forumaustin@gmail.com.

What is working for you and what is not? Are things as bad as most of the media suggest? We are freer, richer, safer than we have ever been before, yet anxiety and suicides are at all-time highs. What sets our ratio of hopelessness to hopefulness?  Do we have overactive fear, negativity, and blame biases?  Below is  a selection of background reading relevant to optimism versus pessimism. 

Maybe things are not as bad as we think

Most People are Good

Social Media isn’t the problem…We are.

Antidotes to anxiety and hopelessness

How to stay optimistic when everything seems wrong.

How to be more optimistic

The Compassionate Instinct

What can go wrong - the tide of bad news from our media

America Is Falling Apart at the Seams

The Mental Health Toll of Trump-Era Politics

Going Bananas in the Age of Anxiety

More optimistic long term views

 Hans Rosling: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World - and Why Things are Better Than you Think.    (10 psychological instincts that mislead us, for example to excess fear, negativity, blame, etc. - The link takes you to the first of a series of four blog posts abstracting the main points of the book)

Steven Pinker: Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress   (The link takes you to a series  of posts abstracting the main points of the book).

Nicholas A. Christakis: Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society  

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