In Japan, the kanji of the year was announced following a public vote. The winner? The character for 'war'. In Britain, the public chose 'goblin mode' as the word of the year, a term describing behaviour that’s "unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy.”


Such choices make the world seem very bleak indeed, but that would be the wrong conclusion to draw. In just the past few days, the UN kicked Iran out of its women's rights commission, the US enshrined same-sex marriage into law, and scientists made a breakthrough with nuclear fusion. These are the kind of good news stories that our friends at The Progress Network, Future Crunch and Positive News cover every week.


Over the holidays, ask friends and family to tell you their favourite piece of good news from this past year. Like they say at Future Crunch: “If we want to change the story of the human race in the 21st century, we have to change the stories we tell ourselves.”