Bound To Piss You Off

It’s Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear – Gregg Easterbrook - (Public Affairs)

As I was working my way through Gregg Easterbrook’s latest book, It’s Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear, I found myself alternately nodding my head, scoffing out loud, and groaning at some of the conclusions he was drawing and the commentary he offered on a wide range of things. I think the agreement was spurred more by what I feel is my inherent optimism than anything Easterbrook pointed out.

On further reflection I think that It’s Better Than It Looks will probably offer something to piss off everybody who reads it at one point or another. It may be as simple as this book being more of a macro worldview in a time when we have become more and more micro focused.

On guns, always a hot button issue, Easterbrook bemoans “lax gun laws.” Thinking logically, laws inherently cannot be lax – only enforcement of laws can be lax. If Easterbrook is claiming that the laxity is that we are somehow short of laws regarding guns, I would argue that the 20,000 current laws on the books regarding guns are probably far short of anything I would describe as lax.

When you boil it down, reality is never really as it seems; it is the perception that counts with most folks. Easterbrook focuses a chapter of hunger, or more specifically why we don’t starve and makes the case that we live in an abundant world that produces enough food so no one should go hungry. It may be the difference between starvation and hunger and the words we use to describe both of those states of being.

We are inundated with a constant stream of messaging about the number of children who go to bed hungry every night and the national programs proclaiming that a donation will be made to feed kids for every ________ purchased. Add to that the outcry over potential cuts in school breakfast and lunch programs and the new advent of backpack programs where kids get sent home on the weekend with a supply of food to get them through the time without those breakfast and lunch programs. All this in a day and age when 45+ million are on food stamp programs. The whole why we don’t starve may be a tough sell.

What gets missed in the mix is the massive decline in two parent families, climbing illiteracy rates, the declining results in public education paired with skyrocketing costs and the utter lack of personal responsibility/accountability. It begs the question…is it really Better Than It Looks?