Articles & Essays

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What if Being Pronoiac is Good for you?

The Harvard School of Public Health in Boston has found that a positive outlook on life can actually protect your heart from cardiovascular disease.

In this comprehensive review of over 200 studies of various forms of well-being and cardiovascular health outcomes, Harvard researchers Julia Boehm and Laura Kubzansky discovered that certain psychological traits—optimism, positive emotions and a sense of meaning—offer measurable protection against heart attacks and strokes. These characteristics have been found to slow the progression of cardiovascular disease as well.

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There are More Things in Heaven and Earth Than are Dreamt of in Your Philosophy

Does water have memory? Can it retain an “imprint” of energies to which it has been exposed? A recent experiment provides interesting results.

New research from the Aerospace Institute of the University of Stuttgart in Germany supports the theory that water has a memory—a claim that could change our whole way of looking at the world.

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Don’t Underestimate the Forces of Good

Peace in our time? Scientist makes bold prediction that war is on the wane and will halve over next 40 years.

  • University of Oslo research suggests number of countries at war will fall from one in six to one in 12
  • Higher education, lower infant mortality and lower population growth are reasons why the world can expect a more peaceful future
  • Current conflicts in Libya, Tajikistan, Syria, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mauritania and Iraq will probably be over
  • The risk of conflict will be greatest in India, Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia and Tanzania
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Don’t Underestimate the Forces of Regeneration

Mexico City: Now One of Safest Places in Mexico – Once infamous for its pollution, lawlessness, & chaos, it’s at the vanguard of ecological & civic change. Abortion, gay marriage, & gay adoption is legalized. Outsiders who once viewed the city as terrorizing, now want to visit, to live here.

Mayor Ebrard steps down on Dec. 5 with wide approval ratings over his six-year administration, which has changed Mexico City both on the surface and in ways much deeper. For starters, Mexico City simply looks different. There are all-women buses that circulate the city and newly paved bike paths traversed by men in suits commuting to work.

Perhaps the most important changes have taken place under the surface, via new laws, climate action, and violence-combating plans. Abortion was legalized in 2007, as was gay marriage in 2010, and later gay adoption. Mexico City has been at the vanguard of ecological change, and has also been transformed by the things one no longer sees: It’s now perceived as one of the safest places in Mexico.

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Conspiracy to Find a Cure

A trio of oral medicines from Abbott Laboratories Inc to treat hepatitis C produced unprecedented cure rates in patients who had failed to benefit from standard treatment, as well as very high cure rates for newly treated patients

Some 93 percent of patients who failed prior therapy had a sustained virologic response (SVR), meaning they were considered cured, after 12 weeks of taking the trio of new drugs, plus ribavirin.

“Nobody anywhere has broken the 50 percent mark in (cure rates) for this population,” Scott Brun, a senior Abbott research executive said in an interview. “These are robust results.”

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A Glimmer of Pronoia for the Poor and Sick

For impoverished women with cancer, there’s a special clinic that provides alternative medicine for free.

To a poverty-stricken woman living with cancer, the thought of a free massage or acupuncture treatment to soothe her chronic pain and emotional fatigue may seem like a far-flung pipe dream.

Yet even in these hard times, angels live among us.

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Zoom and Bloom, Not Doom and Gloom

7 Best-Case Scenarios for the Future of Humanity

Most science fictional and futurist visions of the future tend towards the negative — and for good reason. Our environment is a mess, we have a nasty tendency to misuse technologies, and we’re becoming increasingly capable of destroying ourselves. But civilizational demise is by no means guaranteed. Should we find a way to manage the risks and avoid dystopic outcomes, our far future looks astonishingly bright. Here are seven best-case scenarios for the future of humanity.

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Pronoia from the Future

Germany exports more energy than ever. The surplus is due to the massive development of renewable energies.

Germany exported the equivalent of the output of two large power stations – 12.3 terawatt hours – during the first three quarters of the year, according to a preliminary report from the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW), seen by the business weekly Manager Magazin.

By comparison, Germany had to import more than it exported over the first three quarters of last year, when the balance was -0.2 terawatt hours. But that was the exception during recent years – since 2006, Germany has consistently exported well over five terawatt hours more than it has imported.

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Pronoia from Below

The Occupy movement evolves, showing all of us rabble-rousing progressives how to build a mass movement and transform the way the political process works: Start at the grassroots by helping people in need.

There is a sense of camaraderie reminiscent of Zuccotti, as young people plan the day’s activities. Donations come in by the truckload and are sorted in the basement, which looks like a clearinghouse for every household product imaginable, from canned soup and dog food to duvet covers.

“This is young people making history,” said Mark Naison, a professor at Fordham University who has been studying Occupy Wall Street. “Young people who are refusing to let people suffer without putting themselves on the line to do something about it.”

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Another Outbreak of Human Ingenuity and Inventiveness

Teenage girls from Africa invented a new kind of generator.

How’s this for an innovative startup: four African girls — the eldest of which is just fifteen years old — have worked together to invent a generator that’s powered by urine. The group presented their creation at this year’s Maker Faire Africa, and it’s so freaking brilliant it makes me want travel back in time and punch 15-year-old me right in the solar plexus.

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The Beginning of the End of an Abomination

U.N is set to ban horrific practice

On Monday, [Khady] Koita, a leading figure in the campaign against female genital mutilation (FGM), will join other high-profile activists at the United Nations to drum up support for a global ban on a practice forced on millions of children every year.

"FGM is horrific, brutal, degrading and indefensible," said Koita, who was born in Senegal and now lives in Brussels. "My big hope is that one day no girl will have to go through what I have been through."

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Presidential Elections Are Just One Way to Change the World

Howard Zinn: The Optimism of Uncertainty

We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don’t “win,” there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope. An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

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Commit Some Pronoia on Yourself

Telling Fewer Lies Linked to Better Health

Telling the truth when tempted to lie can significantly improve a person’s mental and physical health, according to a “Science of Honesty” study presented at the American Psychological Association’s 120th Annual Convention.

“Recent evidence indicates that Americans average about 11 lies per week. We wanted to find out if living more honestly can actually cause better health,” said lead author Anita E. Kelly, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame. “We found that the participants could purposefully and dramatically reduce their everyday lies, and that in turn was associated with significantly improved health.”