The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse.Gregg Easterbrook Gregg Edmund Easterbrook is an American writer who is a senior editor of The New Republic. His articles have appeared in Slate, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Wired . The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse. New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of : Random House, 2004. Gregg Easterbrook believes that practically everything is getting better. For example, he states that national crime rates have been plummeting, American life-expectancy has nearly doubled in a century, environmental trends in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. and Europe (except for greenhouse-gas accumulation) are positive, and steep rises in family breakup breakup The division of a company into separate parts. The most famous breakup to date was the 1984 division of AT&T (formerly, American Telephone & Telegraph Company). This breakup was intended to increase competition in the communications industry. and teen pregnancy rates have been halted. With air-conditioning, antibiotics, clean water, and indoor plumbing, the quality of life in America is the best it has even been in human history. Yet many of us are anxious and depressed (there has been a ten-fold increase in diagnosed depression in western countries). If most things are getting better for most people, why don't Americans behave as though they believe this? Easterbrook says the fundamental reason is that most people are too busy concentrating on what they don't have rather than on what they have. Instead of being grateful for the modern conveniences that abound in society, many of us focus on keeping up with the Joneses "Keeping up with the Joneses" is a popular catchphrase in many parts of the English-speaking world. It refers to the desire to be seen as being as good as one's neighbours or contemporaries using the comparative benchmarks of social caste or the accumulation of material goods. or regretting that we bought product x rather than product y. Also, the media rarely reports good news. What we get instead are stories featuring crisis and complaint. Can we overcome the progress paradox and feel less bad? Easterbrook maintains that we can. He argues that optimism, gratitude, and acts of forgiveness can not only make present-day life more fulfilling, they are actually in our self-interest (e.g., a study published in The American Journal of Psychotherapy The American Journal of Psychotherapy is the official journal of the Association for the Advancement of Psychotherapy. It began publishing in 1939. It is published 4 times a year. External links
The Progress Paradox offers affirming and constructive suggestions on how to feel better in our modern world (it includes insights from the discipline of "positive psychology"). And its author has a sense of humor Noun 1. sense of humor - the trait of appreciating (and being able to express) the humorous; "she didn't appreciate my humor"; "you can't survive in the army without a sense of humor" sense of humour, humor, humour . Here's how he concludes the book: "It is ours to decide what the future will hold. And if we decide well, the future may hold an ever-better life, about which our descendants will complain." REVIEW BY MARTIN H. LEVINSON, PH.D. |
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