If the final decades of the 20th century were marked by a burst of techno-capitalist optimism, the first decades of the 21st century have often felt like a step-by-step descent into despair. Beginning with the false Armageddon of Y2K and followed in quick succession by the bursting of the tech bubble, “the hanging chad” disputed U.S. presidential election and then, of course, the attacks of 9/11, the last two decades have seen a relentless cascade of rising pessimism and dystopian gloom. For a time, that sense of impending doom was most pronounced in the western world, but with spreading anxiety over climate change and the effects of Covid-19, we have reached the end of 2022 with a disagreeable form of globalization: Everyone, it seems, feels grim about the present and worse about the future.
And yet, far more went right in 2022 than most of us recognize. Rather than being the sum of all of our fears, the year was in many ways a possible harbinger of a pessimism thaw. Of course, focusing on what has gone right requires an asterisk acknowledging that much did not. But we know that already, and the negative skew is a distortion. News, politics and social media thrive on bad news and hot emotions: People respond more powerfully and immediately to anger, outrage and fear than they do to hope and calm. That makes it difficult for good news to stand out, but we do ourselves a disservice if we fail to give progress its due.
The Bright Side of 2022
