Why it's not the worst of times, but sometimes feels like it

Are we living in the worst of times, to paraphrase Charles Dickens who, by the way, wrote the line a couple of centuries backor are we just gazing too longingly at the half-empty part of the glass?

That was the thrust of a recent column by Globe & Mail columnist Gary Mason, who said that times are so bad, he wants to unplug and escape from the relentless awfulness of the daily news feed.

Mason appeared on Alberta at Noon Monday, to talk about it.

The worst of times

"We've dealt with Donald Trump for a year now," Mason said. "For me personally that's made me pretty pessimistic about the occupant of the White Houseand what's flowed from that? Particularly, race relations in the U.S. are as bad or worse than they've been in years.

"You've got the gun violence, the school shootings you have school shootings almost once a week," he said.

"It is depressing."

Beyond the borders of the U.S., it's even worse

"Beyond the borders of the U.S., you have what's going on in China XiJinpinghas installed himself as a leader for life, effectively becoming more of a dictatorship than it already is.

"[With] Russia, you've got Putin doing essentially the same thing," he added, "running sham elections, while quite possibly killing people on the streets of Britain using nerve gas. You've [also] got people using Facebookdata to influence the outcome of elections."

Mason was prompted to write the column by the seeming endlessness of the negative news cycle.

"It was just all of this stuff that came crashing down. I was just sitting with my wife onenight, having a glass of wine, andI said to her, I would just love to get the hell out of here, go buy a place in the country, buy a dog, and just sit it out andsee what happens."

'Justin Trudeau wouldn't hurt a fly'

While Mason seemed to be of the belief that's it the worst of times elsewhere, he also didn't cite any Canadian examples in his column an omission he says was deliberate.

"The distinction I made in the list was that I really see people that I've referenced in the column andsituations as kind of destabilizing to the world I'm talking about world leaders who can cause other nations great harm. Just dangerous people in my opinion and I don't include Justin Trudeauamongthose people.

"I don't think Justin Trudeaucould hurt a fly basically," he said.

"Canada stands apart in terms of the problems we haveto be honest, they're kind of minimal, compared to the problemsa lot of other people have in a lot of other countries.

"That's kind of the distinction I was making," he said."Iwas talking about people who I consider have caused the world to be a much more unstable place than it was, 10 years ago, 20 years ago."

While Mason and a number of listeners seemed to think things have reached a tipping point, University of Alberta historian James Muir presented a starkly different perspective on the present moment.

"It might be true we're not feeling terribly happy about it, but it's not that special," Muir said.

1918 was way worse

To illustrate, he suggested taking a look at how the world was doing a century ago.

"100 years ago, it's the last year of World War I," he said. "We're at the beginning of the last German offensive, in March and that's followed by the Battle of 100 Days, when the Allies ended the war and that [single] battle, between the middle of July and November 11,had twomillion casualties.

"It's an incredible number [of casualties]," he said, "and yet that was small in comparison [to what was about to come].

"Beginning in roughly January of 1918," he said, "people start getting sick. They contract the flu that they can't fight off and within a couple years somewhere between 50 and 100 million people died of the Spanish Flu around the world.

"In comparison, there are wars today andillnesses today," he said, "but nothing like that."

A new media environment

What both commentators seemed to agree on was that what makes now seem especially awful might be the way in which people consume news today, as opposed to how we used to do it.

"I'm on Twitter quite a bit," Mason said. "It's like a tap, that's constantly open, and it never shuts off.

"It's just running out andmost of the time the news it's not great. You kind of wish there would be a tap that's just good news, but that's not realistic."

The upside of social media

Muir also agreed with a caller's suggestion that some remarkable social movements have been birthed through social media that are changing the world for the better.

"That smallness of the world, that capacity to quickly communicate around the world, leads to things like the Woman's March being organized, leads to things like the march [against guns] on Saturday being organized," Muir said.

Mason, despite his digital gloom, conceded that the present moment has produced some glimmers of inspiration.

"I look at the millennials," he said."I've got twomyself I see that generationandthat gives me hope, becausethey're incredibly intelligent, compassionate, and want todo good things.

"They're behind the whole movement we're seeing in the U.S. now to bring in some form of gun controls," he added. "It may be 18-year-olds who end up provoking that change.That gives me hope too.But then I look at leadership around the world," he added, "and that can get me down a little bit."

With files from Alberta at Noon

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