And Now for Some Good News
2022 Was a Better Year
In recent years, we’ve been bombarded every new year with articles about how the previous year was “the worst year ever,” or “a bleak and terrible year,” or “a year we’re all just glad is over” – a trend that Dave Barry rightly lampoons in his annual Year in Review.1 Setting aside the fact that 2021 was – by most objective measures – a better year than 2020, I wanted to reflect on the fact that 2022 was one of the first years where honesty requires something other than that reflexive pessimism.2
2020 probably was the worst year for the world in a long time, and 2021 had its good moments and its bad moments. Both years were pretty good for me personally, but this essay won’t be a personal one. Instead, I want to explore some positive developments in 2022, and the ways in which this last year continued the trend of improving upon the year before it.
With a war in Ukraine, inflation eating our wallets, homelessness and violent crime and the opioid crisis still spiking, and after more than two tragic plague years, it might seem that America is in a bleak moment and the world is in crisis. And, to be sure, there is much that is wrong in the world. But…
There is a Silver Lining: