[sekou]

The "How not to be ignorant about the world" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-UYgdg) TED talk by Hans (Rest In Peace) and Ola Rosling covers this topic well. Objectively the world is improving for humanity, however in the West and in "developed" nations it's harder to feel like things are going well.

[nebabyte]

Of course the world is improving on metrics like "deaths by natural disasters". That's just a consequence of technologies and infrastructures improving over time, and charitable funding to developing nations that aren't corrupt to the point that the money just ends up with their politicians.

"Sure we're all getting better, just look at global food and safety" is as inanely pointless an argument as "of course nothing is getting better, just look at poverty and corruption" - both lie on opposite ends of the most obvious basic spectrum of human behavior. If all you're worried about is "will I be alive and breathing" then yes, by all means, you have an "optimistic" future.

The political and economic trends of major countries might seem insignificant in comparison, but the world takes its cues from first-world countries. The state and progress of things in first world countries are a pointer to where things are going to go in those nations once the lowest levels of Maslow's hierarchy are covered.