It Got Better, or Why 2016 Wasn't Complete Crap
Damn right I like the life I live / 'Cause I went from negative to positive
Disclaimer: It's going to be rather difficult to write this post without sounding preachy, insulated, and spoiled, but I'm going to try. Don't say I didn't warn you.
There are a lot of people talking about why 2016 sucked ass. I'm not here to dispute that a lot of shitty things happened this year. Legends died, an orangutan was given the keys to the nuclear triad without knowing what it was exactly, a seeming genocide has continued without end in sight, the world got warmer, etc. Further, there may have been losses on a personal level in your family or friendships. Life sucks sometimes and I'm deeply sorry for you if something deeply sucky happened in your life this year.
I understand well why people have repeated the “F 2016" refrain, notably throughout my Facebook and Instagram feeds. I'm just as susceptible as the next person to hate-reading news stories about topics that don't jive with my worldview. All the free time my trip provided to scroll through my social streams to stoke that fire of aimless ire didn’t help.
But has 2016 really been the worst? I think it’s the culmination of a worldview we’ve collectively formed for a long time. Our society seems to be more pessimistic than ever, particularly in relation to the incredible social and technological advancements, among others, we have made to this day that make our lives better by many metrics. The eminent psychologist, Steven Pinker, has a theory on this serial pessimism. Pinker’s essay for the Cato Institute is incisive and certainly worth the read, but to save you precious reading seconds so you can get back to hating this past year on Facebook, here’s his summation:
There are many reasons to think that people tend to be more pessimistic about the world than the evidence warrants. I have suggested that this can be attributed to three emotional biases that are baked into our psychology: bad dominates good, the illusion of the good old days, and moralistic competition. These feed into a single cognitive bias — the availability heuristic — which in turn interacts with the nature of news, thereby generating an inclination toward pessimism.
To add color to Pinker’s argument: humans feel and remember bad things that happen to or around them more intensely and for longer than good things; we have a predisposition throughout history to think it was better in the past because, among other things, we have trouble processing change within and without ourselves, and the past is easier to conceptualize and idealize than the ever-changing and complex world around us; we give moral critics more weight in society than those who are apathetic or don’t hold an opinion on matters of the day -- you’re better morally if you criticize what’s happening around you than if you sit on the sidelines in an idealistic haze. Combine these tendencies with our propensity to pessimism, probably developed through evolution for us to avoid negative outcomes to survive, we overreact to negative events. Think about the fact that the physical downside to over-preparing for negative events that don’t happen isn’t as bad as actually experiencing those events. And when we have endless exposure to bad events made newly available by 1.5 billion smartphone cameras broadcast by and to as many Facebook accounts, these psychological tendencies combine to put us in the collective psyche we experience today.
As for the 2016 celebrity death phenomenon that has weighed us down more recently, this article addresses why we shouldn’t necessarily overreact to what has surely been a large collective loss of talented and iconoclastic individuals. I would add that as we all get older, we’re going to know more and more people on a personal and celebrity level who we’re going to sadly see leave this world.
I’ve never taken as hard a look back in reviewing my past year as I have with 2016. But I am here to tell you after long consideration that for me -- and I’m going to wager for many of you you as well -- this was an amazing year. I’m sure more than a few of you are now saying, “Yea, Greg, we get it, you traveled the world and lived the good life, of course you’ll say that, get over yourself,” if not worse. I get it. I’m not going to deny the privilege I’ve enjoyed this year and throughout my life, although I’m not here to apologize for it either. But I went through a lot personally through 33 years to get to where I happily sit now, specifically an internet gaming cafe in beautiful Surat Thani, Thailand. And why am I here versus a nice cafe typing on my own laptop? Well, I lost my mac charger, which cost me over 100 bucks to replace, only for either it to stop charging or my mac not hold the charge, and then I eventually bricked my mac in a misguided troubleshooting session. So yea, sure, F you, 2016, for taking my laptop as another one of your precious casualties.
Actually though? Thank you, 2016, for bringing the long line of insightful, hilarious, beautiful, lovely and charming people I’ve met into my life. Thank you for all the physical mountains you’ve brought to my feet to climb and the emotional mountains you brought before me to tackle and grow stronger. Thank you for the endless delicacies I’ve devoured and the new hunger you’ve formed in me to learn new languages and skills and about more and more corners of the world and the people that inhabit them.
I’m not that keen on making resolutions for the simple fact that I’m quite shit at keeping them. However, a resolution that I’ve long thought about is one I am set to conquer quickly in the new year, specifically on 1/1/2017, when I enter a Buddhist monastery to commence my first 10-day silent meditation retreat. There are many reasons I’ll be forgoing champagne and revelry and other worldly decadences this new year’s eve in favor of silence, 4 AM wake up calls and two simple, vegetarian meals a day.
As I mentioned at this trip’s outset, I’m traveling first and foremost to learn about myself. I’ve had so many chances to indulge in superficial gratifications throughout this trip, and it’s been highly enjoyable to do so. But I’ve known for a while that the best way to learn about myself is, as William Hunt puts it in his seminal work on S.N. Goenka's teachings, to “sever outward contacts in order to see what happens inside.” He goes on to say, “we must begin by knowing our own nature; otherwise we can never solve our own problems or the problems of the world.” I am at once both enthralled and excitedly nervous to learn the teachings of the Vipassana discipline and to begin this new journey towards “the highest authority … one’s own experience of the truth.”
I realize that to some what I’ve writting here might sound vaguely idealistic, ethereal, overly optimistic. Perhaps it is. I don’t care. The only other resolution I’ve pledged to myself for the coming year is to continue in this line of optimistic thinking by continuing to practice what I will learn in the next week and a half.
Tim Ferriss, my generation’s most prominent “self help guru,” has a practice with his friends not just to set resolutions for themselves but to offer ones to each other for them to commit to. If you’re game, I’d like to offer one to my readers here. Be more optimistic. We know from the above that given our predilections and today’s media environment, it’s easier than ever to be pessimistic. So, one might deduce that it’s harder than ever to be optimistic. I say, give it a shot.
Like for instance, the next time someone famous or close to you dies, sure, go ahead first and grieve your heart out for the loss now in your life. But then maybe do as my beloved New Orleanians do and, after the last note of the funeral dirge is sounded, wail on your horns and drums and sing a song of the glory that was that person’s life and celebrate the gift of it in yours. I mentioned before that a particularly memorable moment for me this trip was the random dance party in Milan I stumbled on with new friends as a tribute to Prince two nights after his passing. Surely this dance and collective love, and the similar one I also fondly look back on the night of MJ’s death, would never have happened without those losses.
Or perhaps realize that the election of your unfavored candidate was also supported by another half of the society you share. They’re not miserable! So, instead of whining and miserating online, use that as motivation to Ghandi yourself and be and create the change you’d like to see in the world. Try to see the miracle of life and love that exists in others. This guy thinks we’re living in a damn fine time. And realize that, barring a nuclear holocaust, things can and are getting better. Here, I even lmgtfy-ed to show you!
Happy new year to all you amazing people. I can't wait to make 2017 fucking awesome together.
