These positive trends stand in contrast to the news:

We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded by negative news from every angle. If you turn on CNN (what I call the Crisis News Network), you'll predominantly hear about death, terrorism, airplane crashes, bombings, financial crisis and political scandal.

I think of the news as a drug pusher, and negative news as their drug.

There's a reason for this.

We humans are wired to pay 10x more attention to negative news than positive news.

Being able to rapidly notice and pay attention to negative news (like a predator or a dangerous fire) was an evolutionary advantage to keep you alive on the savannas of Africa millions of years ago.

Today, we still pay more attention to negative news, and the news media knows this. They take advantage of it to drive our eyeballs to their advertisers. Typically, good news networks fail as businesses.

It's not that the news media is lying — it's just not a balanced view of what's going on in the world.

And because your mindset matters a lot, my purpose of my work and this post is to share with you the data supporting the positive side of the equation and to give you insight to some fundamental truths about where humanity really is going...

The truth is, driven by advances in exponential technologies, things are getting much better around the world at an accelerating rate.

Top Reddit comment:

These types of positive trends cannot be understated. If we don't bring (almost) everyone with us as we all move forward, the advancements of the whole (global collective) are diminished. Though some have greater rewards, we all benefit when the whole advances.

500+ Reddit comments:

https://reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/4q4qmi/why_the_world_is_better_than_you_think_in_10/

Imzy comments:

https://imzy.com/kindness/post/why_world_is_better_than_you_think_in_10_powerful

5 more good charts showing the world improving:

https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts/

http://pandawhale.com/post/73852/world-population-living-in-extreme-poverty-1820-2015

http://pandawhale.com/post/73765/why-the-world-is-better-than-ever-and-will-get-better-still

Source: https://twitter.com/rands/status/812155300325179392

More: http://pandawhale.com/post/14255/if-the-world-were-a-village-of-100-people

See also: 14 charts that should restore your faith in humanity

Found here:

http://pandawhale.com/post/74241/in-2016-populations-of-tigers-pandas-and-manatees-all-started-growing-for-the-first-time-in-years

An additional 250,000 people in the world every day are no longer in extreme poverty.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/01/21/opinion/sunday/why-2017-may-be-the-best-year-ever.html

Also: "Just since 1990, more than 100 million children’s lives have been saved through vaccinations, breast-feeding promotion, diarrhea treatment and more. If just about the worst thing that can happen is for a parent to lose a child, that’s only half as likely today as in 1990."