The simplest beautiful things go unnoticed while the vial malice gets all the PR. Just take a glimpse at the news, open a daily newspapers and you’ll get the full blow of a world twirling in chaos, rapidly, uncontrollably, leaving you as a bystander that has nothing else to do but helplessly feel horror, angst, anxiety…

Does this mean that it is all bad, that the pit has become so deep that you can’t even see the stars from it and have no idea which way is up any more? Of course not. It just means that the attention and energy in capitalism go into the things that boosts ratings and sell newspapers. But why does the bad sell better, why does the devil have a better press kit than the good? Because you’re wired like that. You’re made to beware of the dangers of the world, this is a survival mechanism designed by nature to keep you alive and avoiding potentially life threatening situations. A cautious cat lives longer. You’re psychologically prone to negative emotion and sensitive to the bad that surrounds you. On the savanna you could have been killed if not aware of the beast lurking from the shadows while you’re enjoying the sky. This primal instinct is now exploited as a media tactic of attention gathering. This is the medias only goal – not to inform (it’s already been so processed that it barely has anything to do with the truth, meaning or content) but to consume as much of your attention as possible.

So no, the world is not all bad, it’s so good you can’t even imagine, but due to the “beware” reflex of our neurology and physiology the good has somehow become banal and pushed to the margins as a side story. It’s quite common sense that you’ll pay more attention to the problem which needs fixing than to the thing that is right, but are you changing anything perched before the TV or with your nose in a newspaper sipping a latte.

Find alternative sources of information. There are millions of people on this planet doing amazing things with scarce resources. Just imagine if the monetary resources of machinery perpetuating helplessness would be reappropriated to the “banality of good”, to a common altruistic goal, redistribution of goods that ARE ENOUGH to sustain everybody, to a caring economy and sustainable practices, to organizations and nonprofits that are doing their best to alleviate all kinds of suffering. Try to do something that helps all – if that ain’t a good use of your time we don’t know what is. There is nothing banal about the good, and once you reallocate your attention you’ll see it as well.