Playing video games can help to reduce stress and anxiety, and improve mood
I thought this was going to be an article about optimism (&quot;geeking out&quot; as in getting excited about things). I acknowledge that I&#x27;m responding to the headline and not the meat of the article.<p>I&#x27;ve recently (past ~5 years) stopped viewing the world pessimistically. I don&#x27;t believe it&#x27;s because I&#x27;m blindly optimistic, but because I didn&#x27;t have the perspective to understand our ancestor&#x27;s problems and how good of a life I had. It&#x27;s pretty cool that I didn&#x27;t die in 6th grade when I put that knife through my hand, that my knee doesn&#x27;t lock anymore after having my meniscus removed, and pretty cool my wife survived to adulthood with unbelievably poor vision and asthma. It&#x27;s pretty cool that a large portion of living is automated now by the systems around us, from food to cleaning, and that those systems are affordable enough that they&#x27;re common place in most households. We&#x27;ve freed our societies up to focus on arts and science which has created a flywheel that keeps paying us greater and greater returns that we keep investing into arts and science.<p>Humans have done some cool things to conquer our basic nature and environment, and we continue to do cool things. Compared to other species we are absolutely killing it. Yes we suck compared to what we are going to be in the future, but that&#x27;s the point!<p>Whenever I get a brief feeling of &quot;this is bad,&quot; I remind myself that humans have conquered far worse than whatever &quot;this&quot; is and that we are likely to triumph over this thing too. Taking a second to appreciate what our species has accomplished, and &quot;geeking out&quot; about it, has helped improve my quality of life, thought I&#x27;d take a moment and share that with you.