I’m going to start this essay with an ask.

Please invest 5:57 watching the video below.

It’s from 1966.

In it, the BBC asked kids what life would be like in 2000.

It’s worth it for their responses (and their dope British accents).

I’ll see you below after you’ve watched.

What struck you?

I was struck by how articulate, funny (sometimes inadvertently) and wrong they were.

What I found most interesting and alarming was how pessimistic these kids were.

Was their pessimism warranted, i.e., is the world actually getting worse?

In a word, no.

The world is, in fact, getting better.

It’s been getting better well before 1966.

And it continues to improve.

• Are people living longer? Yes. Dramatically longer.
• Are fewer people poor? Yes. Extreme poverty has dramatically dropped.

These are just 2 measures but across measures of health, wealth, education, etc, humans are doing better.

Take a look at the charts below from the wonderful Our World in Data for evidence.

So if the world is getting better, why do we continue to believe it’s getting worse?

Being pessimistic about the future is a long-standing human tradition.

We cherish yesterday and dread tomorrow.

As a result, every decade has multiple catastrophes of the future that require action today.

From the 1950s to the 2010s, every decade had a few themes that were going to result in imminent decline:

• overpopulation
• nuclear war
• global famine
• oil & natural resource scarcity
• environmental pollution
• acid rain
• nuclear energy accidents
• AIDS
• ozone layer depletion
• Y2K
• political polarization
• mental health
• climate change

And the list goes on.

Yet, we’re healthier and wealthier than we’ve ever been.

A big part of the reason for this is that bad news travels fast. And good news travels slow.

One reason negativity dominates the news is that bad things tend to happen suddenly while good things tend to happen gradually so are rarely newsworthy on any particular day. – Gurwinder Bhogal

In addition, good news is bad business.

“If it bleeds, it leads” is a news maxim coined by William Randolph Hearst back in the 1890s.

It is a profound but dark insight that capturing an audience and having influence – both prerequisites to money and power – are achieved with negativity and sensationalism.

This isn’t just a journalistic phenomenon.

If you’re pitching a book, speaking on CNBC, trying to build a social media following, etc, predictions of impossibility work.

“I have observed that not the man who hopes, when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage.” – John Stuart Mill

And finally, optimism about the future is often viewed as strange, naive, out of touch, anti-intellectual and/or privileged.

“How can you say the world is getting better when [insert recent bad news event] is going on?

Confidence in progress is not fashionable.

Gloom, however, is always in.

Why it’s important we teach our kids to be optimistic about the future

The narratives we embrace shape the world we create.

And right now, our schools peddle in pessimism.

The results of this are apparent in the sentiment of 12th graders who’ve become dramatically more pessimistic over the last 20 years.

In fact, while we typically cherish yesterday and dread tomorrow, our public schools increasingly teach students that yesterday was also terrible.

They’ve adopted a “despise yesterday, dread tomorrow” worldview.

This doom loop narrative of the world was bad and will stay bad is carcinogenic.

Optimism is not about ignoring problems.

It is about believing in our ability to solve them.

Kids should understand that humans are incomparable problem solving machines and should be taught and shown how we’ve conquerered (or at least begun to conquer) past problems.

This isn’t a naive dream; it’s a necessary mindset for progress.

As we’ve been building The School of Entrepreneuring, we’ve been focused on building an instructional model, a leadership development strategy and a culture which fosters:

• Agency – the capacity to act independently and make choices, reflecting a sense of empowerment
• Self-efficacy – the belief in one’s ability to succeed to drive greater motivation and persistence.
• An internal locus of control – a belief that one can exert their will on the world vs the world happening to them

Optimism about the future is required for all of the above.

It fuels action.

It drives innovation.

It inspires others.

And most importantly, it creates a culture where kids believe they will thrive, not just survive.

They should view predictions of impossibility as opportunities — an opportunity for them to serve others by solving these problems.

They should also be aware and motivated by the rewards – both psychic and monetary – for solving these problems.

Pessimists sound smart. Optimists make money. – Patrick Collison

Our kids should see the future not as a place to fear, but as a canvas for their achievements. The world is getting better, and with their help, it will continue to do so.