The title above is actually the name of a 1968 film starring Mary Tyler Moore and George Peppard.  In this film the two actors, who usually play straight-arrow types, are weirdly cast as a beatnik/hippie artist couple living in sin in a loft in New Your City.  They are cynical and negative until accidentally exposed to a tropical bird from which they catch a virus.  In a second weird twist, the virus causes them to become optimistic and happy.  When they discover the source of their happiness, they decide to go all over NYC exposing the bird to as many people as possible.  Pretty soon, NYC is experiencing an epidemic, but, again weirdly, New York City has become a far, far better place.

This film’s message, obvious and powerful, has continued to resonate strongly with me over the years.  Surprisingly (or maybe not), it went down in history as one of those films hardly anyone ever saw.  I have often thought this film may have been suppressed by a conspiracy, but I finally decided that it got left in the dustbin of history because film promoters found its message (don’t worry, be happy) esoteric, unbelievable, and thus, difficult to promote.  Whatever its merits in 1968, I have decided that this obscure film addresses the most important problem of the 21^st century in the USA.

When I was a kid in the 1950s, immediately following America’s two biggest catastrophes, the Great Depression and World War II, everyone I knew was happy and optimistic.  Since 1965, the world has seen substantial decreases in war, infant mortality, pollution, disease, hunger, and poverty, but everyone thinks things are bad and getting worse.

What is going on here?  A great majority of people in the USA, especially elites, have got something important backwards.

Recent best-selling books by famous authors (Hans Rosling, Matt Ridley, Michael Shellenberger, Johan Norberg, and others) tell the story that the world has been getting much better for a long time, but most  people are unaware of this, and, actually believe the opposite.  Rosling’s surveys prove that most people are unaware of the human progress demonstrated in his voluminous UN statistical reports, and, actually believe the opposite.  Even more interesting, the more highly-educated people attending Rosling’s lectures scored worse on his knowledge quizzes than people of average education and chimpanzees.

Rosling describes human mechanisms acquired through evolution, saying that pessimism has greater survival value than optimism, but that is not enough for me.  When a great majority of highly-educated people believe the opposite of the truth, something must be really wrong somewhere.

An average Joe does not need to look very far to find a culprit: the news media.  If things were getting so much better, year-after-year, why would the media keep it from us?  The answer, of course, is simple and obvious.  To media folks, good news is not news.  Bad news sells papers.  “If it bleeds, it leads.” A recent Psychology Today article discussed “fear-based news” calculated to produce anxiety, and advised people to not watch the news as a mental health strategy.  Personally, I quit watching TV news in 1968, the same year I saw What’s So Bad About Feeling Good.

The fear-based news media are not the only culprit holding a bleeding knife near a crime scene.  With minimal effort, one can discern a few red-faced fellow-travelers, namely our politicians, who frantically tell us every night of “existential threats” to our well-being.  This is an area where Democrats and Republicans are two peas in the same pod.  Evil forces are out there everywhere and ready to smite us … until and unless we rely on government and vote for someone who can save us.

If some of us are able to step outside this veil of fear-based communication, we might read a few calmly-reasoned books, and conclude that the many dire “existential threats” to Americans, to humanity, and to animals, and the environment, for that matter, are being wildly exaggerated by the media and politicians, a class of people who have a vested interest in generating panic and anxiety.

As a controversial first lady famously said … “Just say: NO “ … to fear-based news and communication.

Categories: Commentary, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Truth/Science