Peter Diamandis writes a newsletter emphasizing developing an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity mindset. Sometimes he’s a little over the top for me, but he publishes much science-based information on health, longevity, and abundant living.
Recently he reviewed The Rational Optimist, by Matt Ridley. I have not read it, yet (too many books stacked up right now). But it sounds intriguing.
Diamandis says, “And lately, the behavior that has most caught his attention is humanity’s predilection for bad news. As Ridley puts it:
“It’s incredible, this moaning pessimism, this knee-jerk, things-are-going-downhill reaction from people living amid luxury and security that their ancestors would have died for. The tendency to see the emptiness of every glass is pervasive. It’s almost as if people cling to bad news like a comfort blanket.”
Diamandis continues, “In trying to make sense of this pessimism, Ridley, like the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, sees a combination of cognitive biases and evolutionary psychology as the core of the problem. He identifies the cognitive bias ‘loss aversion’—a tendency for people to regret a loss more than a similar gain—as the bias with the most impact on abundance. Loss aversion is often what keeps people stuck in ruts. It’s an unwillingness to change bad habits for fear that the change will leave them in a worse place than before.”
Ridley cites a number of cases where pessimists who were widely publicized were completely wrong. Sometimes, the alarm actually drove humans to change behavior in order to avert disaster. (Maybe the same may one day be said about climate change.)
I think we can learn something from this. Check out how often God (or Jesus) performed some sort of miracle, but almost always it entailed the human in the story to do something. God alerted them or helped a bit. The human was expected to step up and respond with action. Here’s a quick list just off the top of my mind as I write this:
- Moses
- Gideon
- David
- Nehemiah
- Jeremiah
- The rich young man
- The lepers
- The disciples
Where do we put ourselves? How should we be responding right now?
Faith Venture 
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