Veracity

by Douglas E. Richards

“People are wired for addiction, plain and simple. I’ll spare you the biochemistry lesson, and the explanation of how this biochemistry actually helped our species survive in primitive times. The important point is that addiction is an enormous problem, and getting worse in a hurry. It’s hard to find someone who isn’t addicted to something. Millions of us in this country are

alcoholics. Millions more are addicted to opioids and other drugs. We’re addicted to sex, gambling, nicotine, and caffeine. And now to our phones, to the Internet, and to video games and social media.”

“Not only does human brain chemistry make us highly susceptible to addiction,” he continued, “but our technology and our lifestyles are taking us further and further away from our basic natures. Evolution perfected our wiring to allow us to survive and reproduce in a simpler, less distracting world. But our brains are poorly suited to modern society. There are so many people now. So much is happening so fast, and there is so much information to absorb, coming from all directions. There are so many distractions. Endless temptations being pedaled to us everywhere we look. Our outmoded wiring now ensures that we’re stressed out much of the time, in a constant addictive frenzy, rarely able to fully relax.”

“Being addicted makes us feel anxious,” he said. “But, often, succumbing to our addiction makes us feel even more anxious.”

“But there’s a growing realization that instead of uniting people, it often makes people feel more isolated, more depressed.”

Our wiring and physiology cause us to require certain things for our well-being. Sunlight, for instance. Human touch and affection. Human intimacy. Our brains require these things for smooth functioning. Our souls require it. But I would argue that we have a need to spend more time in the natural world, the world in which we originally evolved.”

First, people are born to worry. That’s how we made it to the top of the food chain. Constant anxiety is the curse that comes with consciousness, with sentience.

We’re the only species smart enough to fear not only actual, present threats, but also a myriad of imagined threats. Worse, we’re the only species burdened with the knowledge of our own mortality. And this makes us the most neurotic animal on Earth.”

“All other apex predators are completely content when not facing an imminent threat. Not a care in the world. This is rarely true of the human species. Because there are an infinite number of possible threats to worry about. We worry about issues that are decades off, like our retirements. We worry about finances, and what people think of us, and our salt intake, and everything else under the sun. Our jobs, and our kids, and legislation being passed in Washington, even if it won’t impact our lives in the slightest. Our imaginations are so great, in fact, that fear of a pending public speaking engagement, trepidation over next month’s family reunion, or anxiety over an upcoming performance review can engage our fight-or-flight response just as surely as can a dangerous predator.”

“So we’re often in a state of high anxiety over endless possibilities that never even come to pass,” he continued. “We’re constantly tilting at phantoms. If I drive to the store now, will there be bad traffic? I worry about it. I’m anxious about it. Even if my worry turns out to be completely unfounded. This ability to foresee possible dangers has helped us to survive, to dominate the planet, but at a great cost to our psychological well-being.”

“Not only is worry innate,”

“it’s also one reason we gravitate to drugs and alcohol in the first place. To help us forget our worries, however temporarily. To reduce anxiety. To take the edge off.

“Regardless,” he continued, “you can’t be happy when you’re overcome with worry. So a key ingredient to achieving happiness is to become ...

concentration, that don’t give our imaginations room to find new things to worry about. If we’re totally focused on something we enjoy, living in the moment, like every other animal in the animal kingdom, we’re alive, electric—and happy. Especially if we’re...

But I’ll tell you the most important factor of all when it comes to being happy. Having strong relationships. With friends, or neighbors, or lovers, or spouses, or family. Maintaining a strong social network.”

“We used to spend quality time with a few people. Actually with them—physically. For hours on end. Now we

spend time interacting with hundreds of people, but on our phones, or sitting in a chair all alone facing a computer screen.”

“Finding the actual data to compare the world today with the world

of the fairly recent past. It’s out there. A number of writers and researchers have even compiled these data into bestselling books. Take poverty, for example. In 1950, seventy-five percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. Thirty years ago, it was down to about forty percent. Today, it’s fewer than ten percent.”

“Thirty years ago, there were twenty-three wars being waged worldwide. Today there are only eleven. This is still eleven wars too many,” he added soberly, “but we’re going in the right direction. Today, there are ten thousand nuclear weapons in existence. Which sounds terrifying and untenable. And it is. But just thirty years ago there were six times as many.”

“Pick any important metric you can think of. Racism? If you really think America is more racist than ever, you don’t have any idea what things were like thirty years ago. Or fifty years ago. In your generation, sixty-six million Americans voted for a black president. Do you think that would have happened fifty years ago?

“Back then, minorities routinely faced open, unabashed discrimination. Discrimination about what jobs they could have, schools they could attend, country clubs they could join, or neighborhoods they could move into. This affected blacks, Italians, Asians, Irish, Jews, women, gays, and so many other groups. I’ll bet you had no idea that interracial marriage was once illegal in a number of states. Believe it or not, until 1967. Fifty years ago only three percent of newlyweds were interracial. Today it’s close to eighteen percent, almost a six-fold increase.”

“But we hear about racism in the US constantly,” said Paige. “We do. Because it still exists. But also because we’re far more conscious of it than we used to be. More ready than ever to call it out. More determined that it be completely eradicated. Which adds to the perception that the problem is worse than ever, and also, unfortunately, makes false allegations of racism more powerful than ever. But if you take a look from thirty thousand feet, racism is declining, and movements dedicated to making sure it continues to decline are thriving.”

“Take health and longevity. We’re now living far longer, and in far better health, than

at any time. Freedom? A far greater percentage of the world’s population live in free societies than ever before. Literacy? A few hundred years ago, only a small minority could read and write. Now, ninety percent of young people around the world are literate. Safety? We’re safer than ever before in countless ways. Just to choose one metric, we’re more than ninety percent less likely to be killed in a car accident than we were in the fifties or sixties.”

“I’m just saying that, collectively, people’s perception of today versus yesterday doesn’t match the reality.”

“Today, we have access to more entertainment than even the most farsighted visionary could even dream of in centuries past. Imagine how limited

your entertainment choices were before the invention of radio and television. Even fifty years ago, you had three or four television channels to choose from. There was no cable, no streaming, no Internet. If you missed part of a program, there was no rewinding, you just missed it. If you wanted to read a book, your choices were limited to what was in the local bookstore or library. Now you have instant access to millions of titles, to books that have been out of print for decades and more.”

“I could go on forever. But our wealth and quality of life is substantially better now than it has ever been. In eighteen hundred, forty percent of children died before the age of five. Forty percent. We’ve invented indoor plumbing and created sewer systems. We have instant access to unlimited clean water. Instead of spending months crossing our country in covered wagons—a dangerous journey—we fly across in hours. We have tiny cell phones that take the place of an...

gaming system, telephone, and Internet-access-system that blows away each of the indiv...

“Countless goods and services that used to be scarce are now abundant. We have better clothing, better housing, and better living conditions. Imagine summers before the invention of air-conditioning,” he added with a horrified look on his face.

“In the seventeenth century, mirrors were so expensive that only a king could afford what we can now buy at Walmart for ten dollars. And this more-for-less trend can be seen everywhere. Every decade the cost of computing power, electricity, transportation, long-distance communication, and countless other goods and services has plummeted.”

Truth is rarer than it’s ever been.”

“First, and perhaps most importantly, despair and pessimism are in our very natures. We’re wired to seek out bad news over good, and to always fear the worst. So bad news seizes our attention, while good news is often ignored. ”

“Evolution,”

“These are indispensable behaviors for

surviving in a harsh environment. Say you were walking along the savanna, tens of thousands of years ago, and heard a rustle in the grass. This rustle may have been caused by the wind. Then again, it may have been caused by a lion that was stalking you. If you assumed this...

“We tend to think of evolution as only shaping us physically,”

“but much of our psychology and our

behaviors have also been shaped by this force. We evolved to pay attention to bad news ov...

the worst—for good reason. Good news is nice. Bad news can t...

“So we tend to freak ourselves out on a regular basis. I’ll give you a few examples. In 1798, Thomas Malthus published an essay describing how population growth is exponential, but the growth of the food supply is linear. If the population kept growing, he insisted, mass starvation was inevitable. But as I told you at my house, poverty and starvation are at lower levels than ever before, and the population...

“Why? Because we developed ever more efficient methods of food production and farming. We automated what had been the most labor-intensive process on Earth. We dramatically improved the yields of our plants and animals, found better ways to protect crops from bugs and blight, invented better irrigation methods, and so on. The bott...

disaster sells,”

“Not only sells, but seizes our attention and imagination. Feeds our neurotic natures. There were other scholars at the time of Malthus who predicted that we’d be fine, that we’d find better ways to produce food. Malthus was dead wrong, and they were absolutely right. But they died as unknowns, while Malthus became famous.

“Throughout history, pessimistic books warning of a coming Armageddon have outsold optimistic books a hundred to one. Pessimists win fame and adoration. Those who attempt to refute a doomsday thesis are called naïve, or simpletons, and are often attacked as incompetent. And this, despite the fact that the doomsday criers have always been wrong, and those who refute them have always been...

believing the sky is falling every year for many hundreds of years, and yet it...

“Because, as a species wired to attend to possible danger, we never learn. I’m not saying we shouldn’t worry about the future of our species. There are plenty of legitimate causes for alarm. But we need to keep them all in the proper perspective. We need to understand that we tend to overestimate risks and dangers, and keep our heads about

Because the people who deliver the news know that the more overblown and dramatic the headline, the more alarming or contentious, the more clicks and eyeballs it will attract.

expression, ‘if it bleeds—it leads.’