Because we focus only on problems, we don’t see progress – but there is
found those who managed to delay gratification tended to perform better from a health and education perspective.
You see, delaying gratification is resisting our natural urge to consume in the present, in excess.
So too with seeking negative signals. We live in cities of tens of millions of people. Companies today have thousands of employees. To get a system to work requires motivating strangers who are dispersed across time and space, fostering trust and cooperation.
These dynamics can’t be created by solely focusing on the negative. Instead they require an affirming framework – setting a vision and goals and creating positive feedback.
While we tend to be optimistic about our own personal situation, believing our best days lie ahead, we universally suffer from what is called “declinism” – we think our world is on an irreversible downhill path.
In most countries, 50 to 80 percent of people think the world is getting worse – incorrectly so. Poverty levels have more than halved from the 1980s to today (53 percent to 17 percent), infant mortality has decreased by more than 50 percent from 1990, and violent crimes are down dramatically since 1990 (50 per 1000 to 15 per 1000).
The world faces fundamental challenges but it’s getting better.
In the case of South Africa, this is particularly catastrophic: when you add together negative framing, seeking negative signals, and the perception of “declinism”, you get very bad results.
South Africa is framed in a negative way. The international media tend to see us in a binary way. “Will we survive; won’t we survive?”
It’s quite remarkable. When we focus solely on the negative, three flawed – and hence disastrous – consequences arise. Because we focus on the negative, we’re often unaware or disbelieving of the positive. My experience is we’re ignorant of our progress since democracy.
Take the economy: it’s nearly twice the size it was in 1994, in real terms. And even if you take population growth into account, it’s nearly 50 percent bigger per person.
Of course it’s unequal – and this legacy remains our greatest responsibility to