With scary things-- Islamic State, terrorist attacks in western countries like Belgium and France, Brexit, Trump, climate change and a very long list of other controversies, it seems only rational to conclude that the end of civilization is coming this way. We are hurtling at breakneck pace towards our mutual self-destruction, guaranteed by our lack of concern for our planet and/or obsession with the destruction of one another by greed and hatred.

But are we really?

History builds itself with a series of “push and push-back” movements, to quote one of my high school history teachers. Whenever society moves in one direction, it can be assumed that even if its movement is forward and will keep going that way, we will still always be progressing in a 2 steps forward, one step back kind of pattern. A good way to find unobscured evidence of this is to look at the two party system we have here in the United States. If American opinion never changed, then we’d expect either Democrats or Republicans to always win the ballot, but they don’t. The most important part of the tug-of-war argument though is that you can include world conflict too. Since the end of WWII, death rates from violence have been consistently decreasing in the aforementioned fashion. We see spikes in the 60s and 80s, but a serious drop after the Soviet Union’s collapse in the 90s (for reference, check out the “World In Data” link about War and Peace at the bottom. This is using the first graph- the second graph is useful too, if you want to see a lack of European conflict after WWII, although it wasn’t mentioned because it was probably driven by the Cold War).

Coming to the turn of the century, many people look at today-- with ISIS fighting in Iraq and an embattled Syria, the South China Sea disputes and Boko Haram conducting raids in Central Africa-- and come to the conclusion that we live in a world full of terror and self-destruction; thankfully, there’s a host of evidence that paints a more positive picture of these events. Sure, violence has increased in the past couple of years (though most of the increase has just been the beginning of the Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts), but we have to remind ourselves that many of these controversies aren’t new developments, China didn’t decide to all of a sudden make an issue out of the disputed territory to their south, and the Middle East has seen over 60 conflicts since the end of WWII (Link 2). The point being that these problems are all expectable and the world is responding in its own pace, none of this means our cataclysmic end to a collapsing society, these are the same issues that have been around for decades (which sounds like it contradicts the last paragraph, except it doesn’t because violence is just now erupting from these controversies). People aren’t dumb, especially governments.

Coming back to our own United States, it's pretty safe to say that a good percentage of the country is terrified by the prospect of a Trump presidency, I know I am. An easy way to put your mind at ease about this is to remind yourself that there isn’t a realistic way he’s going to win the vote. His numbers are slipping and his entire campaign has been centered around gathering the authoritarian minds of the nation under one flag, but there just aren’t enough of them to win a popular vote, especially since the situation in Syria is slowly getting better every day.

So assuming the previous arguments are correct, the next logical question to ask is why does it seem so easy to get caught in this feeling of armageddon breathing down humanity’s neck? As of what I know, there are a couple reasons for this, but ultimately I think it boils down to the way the media today works. It’s not a huge secret that media outlets, especially American ones, dramatize events and come up with news that doesn’t really mean anything to fill space. As it stands, online media outlets make money through ads, so the more stories they can get you to read, the more money they make. The mix of ads and public obsession with small dramas and violent events makes a website full of clickbait articles about people you don’t actually care about doing either odd or disgusting things.

Let’s test this, because obviously just making a claim without evidence is bad for logic based arguments. I have the BBC app, so how about I just read off the most popular titles right now and try make the connection I just pointed at.

So I’m looking at a couple of things I’m expecting to find a few of: overly personal articles about either

A.) a person who either did or had some horror put upon them, or

B.) a person who is doing something odd or unique that you don’t actually care about but might want to at least look at what they’re doing; also articles about tragedies going on in the world right now, or disasters happening to people across the globe from the main British demographic; Also celebrity articles if I am to add on to the news that doesn’t matter thing, but I can’t judge people for liking them.

1. “Woman’s arm ripped off in parked car [In Britain] ”- Okay… What a perfect example! This is exactly what I am talking about. Do you know her? No you don’t! Where is the relevance? There isn’t any, this headline just makes money because it has shock value. This would be fine if the majority of the audience was from Britain itself, but then the second item in this list wouldn’t make any sense. Either way, this isn’t news. Its only purpose is as a money maker and a filler for content that isn’t there.
2. “NFL player refuses to stand for anthem” - The article itself is a little more relevant than the title this time: the player is protesting racial injustice. Even so, I still don’t get how the BBC, which I assume has a mostly British audience, would have reason to make an article about an American football player popular- this is mostly excusable because of the content, but this headline is written in a way that uses controversy and anti-patriotism to grab a reader’s attention. The headline almost misleads the reader, trying to make the story seem like more than it actually is.
3. “At least 25 dead in Turkey strikes in Syria” - Personally, I always think it's important to keep updated on the big issues going on in the world (Syria and Iraq, Brexit, South China Sea), but the BBC has been posting 3 articles a day about the war, which happens to be on the decline. Yes, more needs to be done about the situation there- it’s atrocious; however, it is important to remember that just because you keep seeing articles about how awful the situation there is, it doesn’t mean that the whole world is on its knees.
4. “Airline pilots arrested on alcohol charge” - Worldwide there seems to be around 130,000 pilots give or take, so this fits in with the people doing disgusting things category. How is this international news? Certainly the airline should be fined for allowing this to happen, but with 37 million flights a year this doesn’t deserve this much attention. All this does is scare people and hurt the company.
5. “Germany expects up to 300,000 migrants” - Same as the third. It’s terrible. We need to do something about it, but the world is not ending, just changing.

So that’s the point (and this was just BBC, go on Fox or MSNBC, news outlets whose platform’s are pushing an agenda with this same strategy, and try to do the same thing). It’s easier to make something big out of something small than to make something out of news that isn’t there, and making money is a fine reason to do something, just not the best reason when it comes to the world of media.

World Conflict Statistics:

https://ourworldindata.org/war-and-peace-long-run

List of Middle Eastern Conflicts: