I've been reading about "Mean World Syndrome" and was wondering about its impact on the JW mindset. We take in a large amount of news media that mostly reports "negative" stories (wars, natural disasters, crime, failing economy and bad traffic). This tends to alter our thinking that these are common occurrences. But, statistically our risk of any of these horrific fates is pretty minimal (except the traffic, but you’ll just have to bear with me).
Thousands of years ago we lived in small villages and little cities - news we received had a greater impact on us directly. For example a lion attack within our village or city meant that we had to be more aware when out in the fields. We would alter our behavior to avoid the attack. If we were right, we might be able to avoid getting eaten. But, if we were wrong, there were no corrective actions to let us know that there were no lions to eat us and we didn’t need to be on "alert".
I think that both of these effects "train" our brain to think the world is a much worse place than it really is.
Darth Fader