Escalation in Recent Years

So while it is true that bad news has been a fact of life throughout recorded history, recent decades of this 2th century give evidence that bad news is on the increase, indeed it is escalating rapidly.

Undoubtedly, war news has been the worst kind of bad news our present century has heard.  The two greatest wars in history -aptly called World War I and World War II-certainly saw bad news reported on horrendous scale.  But that really has only been a fraction of the bad news this unhappy century has furnished.

Consider just a few headlines selected at random:  September 1, 1923: Quake razes Tokyo-300,000 dead; September 20, 1931:  Crisis-Britain devalues the pound; June 25,  1950: North Korea marches into the South; October 26, 1956: Hungarians rise against Soviet rule; November 22, 1963: John Kennedy is shot dead in Dallas; August 21, 1968: Russian tanks roll in to crust the Prague uprising; September 12, 1970: Hijacked jets blown up in the Desert; December 25, 1974: Cyclone Tracy flattens Darwin-66dies; April 17, 1975: Cambodia falls to Communist forces; November 18, 1978: Mass suicide in Guyana; October 31, 1984: Mrs Ghandi shot dead; January 28, 1986: Space shuttle explodes on takeoff; April 26, 1986: Soviet reactor is on fire; October 19, 1987: Bottom falls out of the stock market; March 25, 1989: Alaska hit by oil spill; June 4, 1989: Troops massacre protesters in Tiananmen Square.

Yes, history shows that bad news has always been plentiful, while good news has been comparatively scarce. As bad news has escalated in recent decades,m goo news has diminished as each year goes by.

Why should this be? Will it always be so? The next article will address these two questions.

Next time: Good News Ahead!

The Watchtower, 1996