One of the great wonders of the human mind is the ability to create the
world it wants. We see the things that support our worldview and are blind
to the things that do not. If we see the world as a hostile place our mind
will focus on slights and will spin things into a negative. Paranoia comes
on a sliding scale from one to ten. Some of us are so anxious for this age
to come to an end and for the second coming of Jesus to occur we see "Signs
of the Times" everywhere. They are usually negative because that fits an
end time worldview. See Matthew 24.

Then there are those who do not believe the world is any worse off now than
it has ever been. The wars and earthquakes and threats of violence fit into
a pattern of history that has been with us for thousands of years.
Increased numbers are merely the product of better reporting in an age of
instant worldwide news coverage. For these people the world has always been
a dangerous place, so live with it.

There is a third kind of person who, while not being a total Pollyanna, sees
the blessings they have and are grateful. While they recognize bad things
do happen, those bad things are far outnumbered by good things. They
minimalize bad things and refuse to let them set the tone for their life.
They long for the second coming but are happy to make the best of what is.

There is such a wealth of incidents, good and bad, our minds are
intriguingly capable of defining, with an overwhelming amount of evidence,
the history and present we desire. The most difficult educational framework
to design for schools is social studies. Just whose viewpoint will be
emphasized in the limited number of pages a history book can contain?