Honestly, as cheeseball as this sounds, the most life affirming fact I know is that Jesus loves us and we are children of God.
posted by katypickle at 9:19 PM on January 9, 2020 [12 favorites]

Lead paint was banned in the late 70s, and lead-based additives in gasoline were cut by 90% during the 80s and ultimately banned in 1996. North America is on its last generation of leaders who spent their formative years huffing lead vapors.
posted by mhoye at 9:20 PM on January 9, 2020 [50 favorites]

Parrots have demonstrated acts of kindness towards each other.
posted by mekily at 9:22 PM on January 9, 2020 [9 favorites]

I volunteer at a humane society. I’m blessed to be in an area that really loves animals, so every time there’s a long-term dog or cat resident that makes me think there’s no way they'll find a home — too unsocial, too unhealthy, too needy, too energetic, too old, etc — they find a loving home more quickly than I think. There’s a community who is showing up.

I know these are good homes because usually the adopters send regular updates either on social media or by emailing the shelter, which then passes those notes along to volunteers. This is life-affirming to me, that when I despair that there is too much need in this world that at least in this small corner of my universe I don’t have to bear this particular and perhaps insignificant need alone. It’s my life’s particular example of taking Mr. Roger’s mom’s advice to look for the helpers.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 9:32 PM on January 9, 2020 [12 favorites]

People create things. Incredible. What a strange thing to emerge in our cosmos. I continue to be astounded at human creativity. That works like these exist and were made by humans makes me really suspect there is something deeper going on. In a good way.

Stasia Burrington
James Jean
Violetta Hernandez

Where does it come from? Why am I uplifted and *affirmed" when i take a minute to actually look?
posted by j_curiouser at 9:39 PM on January 9, 2020 [12 favorites]

There was a time when smallpox killed millions of people a year.

In the past 40 years, not a single human life, anywhere on the planet, has been lost to smallpox.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:48 PM on January 9, 2020 [25 favorites]

Post-traumatic stress disorder comes from trauma, yes, but so too does post-traumatic growth. It's why trauma survivors sometimes refer to the trauma as the best thing that ever happened to them. Beautiful things can come from awful, awful things.
posted by suncages at 9:51 PM on January 9, 2020 [21 favorites]

The most life-affirming thing for me is how individual humans differ. That goes all the way from the little personality quirks of people I know (Including myself) to great works of art - both are the results of human subjectivity.

In the age of capitalism, they exemplify to me how supposedly ‘unproductive’ things make our lives worth living. How our subjectivity alone has intrinsic worth. Not because it‘s ‚good for‘ something - just because it is.
posted by The Toad at 10:13 PM on January 9, 2020 [11 favorites]

The chains of evolution that brought us octopi and humans diverged 600 million years ago, and yet we are able to interact with each other as intelligent species.

Basically: intelligence evolved on Earth twice.

Now look up at all those stars. If intelligence is that common, if it evolved twice on the same planet, can you imagine how many people are waiting out there to say hello?
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 11:19 PM on January 9, 2020 [10 favorites]

Millions of hectares are still burning in the Australian bushfires, yet for parts that have been ravaged, new green shoots have already started to sprout. Life always finds a way.
posted by Jubey at 1:33 AM on January 10, 2020 [14 favorites]

when I recognise value & beauty & autonomy & awesomeness in myself, I'm also & simultaneously celebrating exactly those characteristics in everyone else, because we all share equally in those features
posted by rd45 at 2:24 AM on January 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

The most life-affirming fact I know is the fact of love. That it exists at all, but also that it exists in so many forms, the type that blazes for a brief second and then blows out (but made the world more beautiful in the short space of time that it existed), the type that lasts a lifetime, the type that comes into being within a minute of meeting a person, the type that grows gradually over years. It's just so beautiful, and it is all around us.
posted by unicorn chaser at 2:59 AM on January 10, 2020 [10 favorites]

The hole in the ozone layer has stopped growing through the use of rigorous science, good communication and empathetic diplomacy.

The depletion of the ozone layer through pollution was without exaggeration a danger to life as we know it, as its unlikely that our current civilisation would have survived intact with the threat of ecosystem collapse and crop yield failures from unshielded exposure to the sun's UV radiation. Though progress remains difficult, and continued vigilance will always be required, a little science in the right place was enough to change our fate, and it honestly gives me hope for the future.
posted by Eleven at 3:55 AM on January 10, 2020 [21 favorites]

I am all about life-affirming re-framings.

The fact that we (including the most hopeless among us) have a whole bunch of presumably happy mites living on our bodies has given me hope and answered the question "why am I here?" for me personally.

I also take great joy in Pablo Picasso's theory.

Thank you for asking such a beautiful question!
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 4:12 AM on January 10, 2020 [9 favorites]

When you stop and weigh every evil, wrong, hurtful, damaging thing humans have done to each other, themselves, and the planet, and you stack them up against all the loving, kind, giving things they have done, the loving, kind, giving things win in quantity and quality, every time. The sheer fact of observing the untold millions of babies held, cradled and sung to, the generosity of parenting (even imperfectly), the actions of friends, the keeping of gardens, the feeding of birds, the giving of gifts, the helping of the sick - the good far, far outweighs the bad. IT doesn't make the bad disappear, but when look at things on balance and stop discounting and overlooking those small, real, good actions, giving them their proper weight, it's clear that good wins the long game.
posted by Miko at 5:41 AM on January 10, 2020 [18 favorites]

I like thinking about how we are all made of stars.
posted by wicked_sassy at 5:57 AM on January 10, 2020 [7 favorites]

In the last 30 years, the share of the world population in extreme poverty has declined from 36 percent to 10 percent. That's about 2 billion people in today's world.

That shouldn't be an argument for complacency about the many horrors that still exist, but an inspiration to continue to improve life on a broad scale.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:36 AM on January 10, 2020 [14 favorites]

“The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.”
― B.B. King
posted by waving at 6:38 AM on January 10, 2020 [5 favorites]

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
- Kahlil Gibran
posted by jquinby at 6:55 AM on January 10, 2020 [5 favorites]

The universe got along just fine before we existed. It'll get along fine after we exist. None of this matters.

This may be a troubling fact to some but it actually gives me comfort.
posted by bondcliff at 7:16 AM on January 10, 2020 [10 favorites]

This is going to sound ridiculous, which is really the point.

Every Halloween, the local state university's band plays a concert for kids. This is a middle of the road state university, with young adults that really just love to play music.

They also all dress up in costumes. One year, the percussionists wore emoji masks, and one was the poop emoji, playing the timpani. A bearded lady playing the tuba. Moana was the director.

And what really is music except reverberating sound waves? And instruments? I mean, they are blowing through tubes with spit valves!

So here is a bunch of average humans making sound reverberations together in absurd costumes for an audience of half-listening, also costumed small children and their caregivers. Because they love it and have fun doing it.

That is as life affirming as it gets.
posted by jillithd at 7:37 AM on January 10, 2020 [6 favorites]

Just the fact that groups of people (villages, towns, cities, civilizations) continue to coexist all over the world every day is pretty amazing to me. There are big parts of our brains that just want to punch people and steal their food and run around naked and screaming, but 99.99999% of the time we don't do those things. Instead we spend most of our time figuring out how to get along with each other and communicate and keep this delicate thing that we've built together going a little longer.
posted by LeeLanded at 8:06 AM on January 10, 2020 [7 favorites]

You might want to check out the book Factfulness, by Hans Rosling.
posted by Grither at 8:34 AM on January 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

Wicked_sassy beat me to it.

We're all made of stardust.
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 12:10 PM on January 10, 2020

I'm in a FB group with 11,000 members. Last week, someone posted something antiBlack, I called it out, and there was a dogpile of 200+ comments calling me a stupid snowflake and telling me to chill because the OP "didn't intend to be racist". It's a hideously mundane occurrence for me, both online and in real life, unfortunately.

BUT- this time- about TWENTY people spoke up, eloquently, to agree that the original post was racist, explain the racism, interact directly with the worst commenters, shut down the most virulent racism deniers, and support and thank all the members who invested the labour to say something. It really felt like solidarity.

Judging by their profile pics, most of these awesome people who spoke up were millennials. And it made me very happy to realize that the next generation of leaders we'll have are going to come from this generation- many of whom have such strong analysis and, most importantly, the COURAGE to speak up.
posted by pseudostrabismus at 12:15 PM on January 10, 2020 [10 favorites]

As much as I know there are terrible people in the generations behind me, most of them that I've met are really cool. I know kids who are raising money for whatever cause, and other kids who are standing up to family about racism, and so many kids who have discovered how to be themselves and not being afraid to define themselves, kids really are the future, and based on what I see, our future is pretty bright. (and funky, cause man those kids have style)
posted by Ftsqg at 12:54 PM on January 10, 2020 [3 favorites]

I love this thread, by the way. Thanks to OP and everyone who responded. This is my favorite use of the internet.

Here's a whole compendium of positive news and facts- illustrated by a delightfully whimsical cartoonist.

And here's random, and occasionally absurd facts, also illustrated with delightful whimsy.
I'm not sure which I find more delightful and affirming, these bits of knowledge, or the illustrations.

Please keep this thread alive with more stuff. I'm loving it.
posted by SaharaRose at 1:34 PM on January 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

How Trees Survive and Thrive After A Fire -- In which it is revealed that trees have reproductive tactics which are only activated in case of a fire.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 2:20 PM on January 10, 2020 [3 favorites]

Humans invented ice cream well before they invented electricity, freezers, or cold chain shipping.
posted by blnkfrnk at 4:33 PM on January 10, 2020 [14 favorites]

In a universe largely ruled by entropy, life EXISTS. I find that pretty amazing. We are things made of anti-death, pushing back against decay whether we mean to or not with every moment we’re here.
posted by threecheesetrees at 12:46 AM on January 12, 2020 [1 favorite]

This thread is closed to new comments.