We can turn on any major news media station and find stories of war, poverty and illness at pretty much any given time of day. Many people that watch the major news stations have a side they have picked in the stories.
They have identified who they believe is the “right” one based on everything from nationality, to race, to religious beliefs. Then we have the people who are against mainstream media who are spouting off terms like “zombies”, or “sheeple”, or telling people things like, “wake up!”
For thousands of years people have been pointing the finger at everyone else but themselves. “Once this group of people changes, THEN the world will get better.” The human ego loves a “me vs. them” scenario. As long as it can put its focus on an external situation, the ego never has to deal with its own issues.
However the problem with always placing our focus on him or her or that country or that religion is that we never get a chance to focus internally and focus on our own personal development instead of the worlds.
When a person never deals with their own “flaws”, they will keep finding them in the world. These are the people who will tell you that world is getting worse or that things are more terrible than they have ever been.
By no coincidence, people that are focusing on their own self growth and living a peaceful and more mindful life are the ones that will tell you that the world is getting better, things are shifting and the level of consciousness among people is rising.
So who is right? Is the world really getting better, or is it actually getting worse?
“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented w/ evidence that works against the core belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit with the core belief” ~ Frantz Fanon
Both sides of the argument have been accused of having cognitive dissonance. Those who think the world is getting better are accused of turning a blind eye to reality, and those who believe the world is getting worse are told that they are just negative and are looking for the problems. Technically this is true for both. A core belief a person has will cause them to only see the evidence for their side of the coin.
However, a person that has turned their focus inward instead of outward will start to notice that their perspective of the way things are going in the world is directly proportionate to their perspective of themselves. When they become healthier, happier, and more rooted in awareness, they stop finding so many problems with the world outside them.
So while it could be true that both in fact DO have cognitive dissonance, there is a new movement emerging in consciousness that reconciles both sides. This new consciousness will show that the only true way to change the world or to see a happier world is to change and become happier ourselves.
“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world, as in being able to remake ourselves” ~ Mohandas Gandhi
Life is a matter of perspective. There is no possible way that a person could prove either way that the world was getting better OR worse. To make such a broad statement would be similar to saying that all Americans were this way or all Chinese were that way.
If we only watched the mainstream news we would surely see all the negativity of the world being blasted across the screen, and nations being referred to as if they were an actual person. “Israel did this”, or “Russia has done that.”
What this ends up doing is dehumanizing the people that actually live in these countries. Not everyone in every country agrees with what their government is doing so it is unfair to stereotype an entire population of people based on their nationality, or race or religion for that matter. Nations are made up of people. Individuals that then make up families who make up communities who make up cities.
And while the news does love to make references to entire countries as if they were individuals, what they many times fail to do is focus on individual’s stories.
Yes we know about the wars going on, but do we know that a woman in Canada cured a terminal illness by going on a plant based diet? Or that a man in South America opened up his heart chakra yesterday? Or that a woman in Europe achieved a higher state of consciousness yesterday that allowed her to quit an addiction? No, of course these things aren’t “news-worthy” so it isn’t the type of thing that would get reported on.
The world is getting better one individual at a time, and most of these instances are things that we will never get to hear about.
As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.”
So if you prefer to see a world that is moving forward and becoming more progressive and more accepting, the trick is to become these things yourself.
Once you have turned your journey inward instead of outward you will start to see people outside of you in a new way. You will have more compassion with them, empathize with them, and understand them on a human level.
It is at this point that your perspective on things will start to shift. And you realize that you in fact ARE the world, so when you get better, the world does too.
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