The world is full of badness: disease, death and destruction. Sometimes it's hard to believe that good things happen - but they do! This book will be full of all the stuff we never get to see on the TV screens, all the happy news! Acts of kindness...
No matter what news channel you watch to get the gist of current affairs, it's all the same process - 'Good morning/evening' followed by a whole host of reasons it's not a good morning or evening: another kid's been stabbed, more bombs have been set off, a plane crashed, a philanthropic celebrity figure died and just to set the tone, six people have been convicted of sexual assault.
Random Fact: For the first time in living memory, New Yorkers passed an entire day without a single person being shot, stabbed or subjected to a violent crime in November 2012. And let's just take a moment to remember that the statistics come from reported crimes. So the bad things may have happened, but I guess we'll never know. We'll give NYC the benefit of the doubt here.
Humans, generally as a species, have a natural affinity towards negativity. We are drawn to sadness and heartbreak and misery and angst - this is what is known in psychology as the negativity bias or the negativity effect, which is the idea that things of a negative nature, such as unpleasant ideas, thoughts and feelings, trauma, etc. have a greater effect on a person's behaviour, cognitions and emotions than neutral or positive things, even when they are of an equal intensity. So, something just slightly bad will make you think and feel a lot more than something extremely positive. This is probably why we find ourselves drawn back to the same headlines even though they make us question our faith in humanity, the reason why we laugh for minutes and cry for hours.
This book is an effort to overwrite that bias and to remind ourselves that good people and good things and good hearts exist and exist in abundance. We will share stories of success, of triumph and of overwhelming happiness to remind ourselves that there is positivity out there. Hope lives on.
As well as all the happy news that the media largely excludes, we will also be sharing things like motivational quotes and cute dog pictures just to make sure the warm fuzziness stays put. Because there's nothing like a cute lil' puppa wearing a cape to make you feel all melty and sparkly inside:
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We hope you appreciate what we're trying to do here and that it brings you much happiness. LTAC!
