Cool to hate

It's cool to hate. And it's easy to hate too. Turn on the TV and watch the news, and pretty much all that you'll hear is bad news. We're in the midst of a recession, unemployment is on the way up and the economy's going to get worse before it gets better. There's another war in Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan are still pretty damned dangerous and the long-fought war in Sri Lanka still rages. Kenya, the one real example of African democracy actually working, just passed a bill curtailing the freedom of the press. Russia's cutting off it's gas supplies to the Ukraine and it's hitting Europe (again) and Zimbabwe's still trying - and failing - to free itself from Mugabe's evil grip - but now it's being ravaged by cholera too. Ask the average person on the street and they'll talk about how everything's more expensive, life is harder, taxes are too high and the government's terrible. They'll most likely yearn for the "good ol' days" and wax lyrical about how things were in days gone by.

But before you go and spend all day in the quagmire of a deep depression, this is not the point I want to make. My point is that life is pretty darned good actually. We're finally getting rid of that simian President of the USA and with the new administration, that disgrace to the supposedly free world (by which I mean the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp prison) might finally be dismantled. Technological advancements have never made life so easy as it is now. Labour saving devices abound and allow previously impossible tasks to be done with the click of a button. You can be fired in a metal tube weighing several hundred tonnes at nine-tenths of the speed of sound, 10km above the ground and expect to land safely - halfway across the world in less than a day. Even if you don't fly, you can still talk to family and friends in far-flung lands for absolutely nothing. Healthcare improves with every day and you will survive illnesses and accidents that would've killed you under half a century ago. Things we take for granted now were just dreams not very long ago at all.

Sure, there are things that aren't perfect and some things are getting worse. But there's a hell of a lot which is good and improving too. So next time you hear someone whinge that the world's crap and wish it was still the 1970s, don't just nod and give your half-hearted agreement. Have the courage to stand up and say "Actually no, you've never had it so good. Stop complaining and appreciate it, dammit!". Or at very least, think it.