Cheer the Eff Up!

On perspective and pouting

I’ve canceled more than one subscription lately because the creators were just so damn negative. My parting comment was, literally, “Cheer the fuck up!”

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

Facts to meditate on:

1. Anarchists assassinated five world leaders between 1897 and 1921. That does not include bombings with mass casualties.

2. 50 million people died in the 1918 pandemic.

3. Most people died in childhood before World War I.

We are not in an uniquely horrible time. We are actually lucky. Our forebears had it much worse with no minimum wage, child labor, dangerous jobs and general hunger.

But to listen to our mass media, or even online, you would think the world is about to collapse and we are on the verge of killing each other for food. It is simply not true.

People love the false history of olden times. They believe not having indoor plumbing was better somehow. That infections didn’t kill thousands of people. That slavery wasn’t a stain on our country. That life without weekends or holiday…