Inspiring News Articles
Excerpts of Highly Inspiring News Articles in Major Media
Below are one-paragraph excerpts of highly inspiring news articles from the major media. Links are provided to the original inspiring news articles on their media websites. If any link fails, read this webpage. The most inspiring news articles are listed first. You can also explore the news articles listed by order of the date posted. For an abundance of other highly inspiring material, see our Inspiring Resources page. May these inspiring news articles inspire us to find ever more ways to love and support each other and all around us to be the very best we can be.
The Better Angels of Our Nature takes a thesis I would love to believe; indeed, have casually believed for most of my life. It is that humans have grown less horrible with time. The 20th century, the century of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot, of Mao in China and Mobutu in the Congo, was appalling, but the number of deaths by violence as a proportion of the total population remained modest compared with the ferocious cruelties of the wars of religion in the 17th century. The modern nation state – the Leviathan of the philosopher Hobbes – has had a civilising effect almost everywhere. Education has helped, as has the empowerment of women, and the idea, too, of human rights. Within the epic sweep of history from ice age hunter gatherers to modern suburban householders, [author Steven] Pinker examines both the big picture and the fine detail, with surprises on every page. Overall ... he finds examples of falling murder rates everywhere (including among male English aristocrats 1330-1829). Murder rates as a percentage of population were far higher among the supposedly peace-loving and cooperative hunter-gatherer communities – the Inuit of the Arctic, for instance, the !Kung of the Kalahari and the Semai of Malaysia – than in the trigger-happy US in its most violent decade. Unexpectedly, deaths in warfare, once again as a percentage of total population, were far higher among the Gran Valley Dani of New Guinea, or in Fiji in the 1860s, than in Germany in the whole of the 20th century.
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Dozens of high schoolers and their teachers are flowing into the University of Southern Californias Galen Center, dressed in their debating best and bantering in various languages. All of these students are members of the Junior State of America (JSA), and theyre used to spirited exchanges about government. But theyre here today to practice a different diplomatic skill: having thoughtful conversations across political boundaries. People say, When I try to have these kinds of conversations, they go really badly, [workshop leader Brooke] Deterline says. Such verbal blowouts often breed simmering resentment and fracture relationships. Deterline wants to teach people how to cultivate compassion for others even when they dont agree with them, which she sees as necessary for a divided country to find a shared vision for its future. From the start, Deterline makes clear that what shes about to teach is the conversational equivalent of tai chia philosophy focused on holding back, not charging forward. I used to think courage was giving somebody a piece of my mind, she tells the students. Its acting with an open heart in the face of conflict. It is a choice, and it also is a muscle. What often shuts down conversations across the political aisle, she explains, is when our brains go into what she calls the red zone. When were stressed, our natural compassion is cut off, she says. Deterlines core message is that when you notice your brain heading into the red zone, you can take steps to divert its course.
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