Top reasons people worry too much

1. People need a higher purpose to their lives. therefore when things are hunky dory in their personal life, they feel unfulfilled/guilty and try to find a cause to get worked up about. This is not true of the poor, sick or otherwise distressed cause they just don't have the ability to think beyond their immediate problems.

2. A lack of scientific temper, over reliance on gut instinct, or what feels good/right. Gut instinct approach to complex problems generally leads to bad conclusions. The need to come to a definite opinion about everything, though many things are simply not knowable beyond a reasonable degree of probability, and often not even that. Lack of understanding of basic statistics and excessive faith in media and experts. Systemic biases in media to sensationalize issues.

3. Some causes require one to insist on changing how other people think and behave. This is true of causes like religious causes (convert the heathen), promoting values (why do young people nowadays dress like that) or ideological (I cant believe you are a democrat OMG). Since this is extremely difficult to do it causes distress and worry.

4. A tendency to think that one's way of life/ culture is the best of all possible worlds. Since we live in a time of rapid social change causes distress.

5. A culture that places too much emphasis on "my heart is in the right place" than "I have a brain that can function beyond the rudimentary" excessively. too much emotion, too little intellect.

6. Ignorance of history and thus the ability to decipher how damn good things are right now for humanity in general compared to history. Overly pessimistic approach to problems though bad ideas by their very definition are unsustainable and tend to die out.

7. Unreasonable insistence that there should be no human misery or conflict, though some measure of this is inevitable. Unreasonable idea that large human problems say malnutrition can be fixed overnight, though it can only be a gradual process.

8. Inability to differentiate between relative and absolute deprivation. Relative deprivation by its very definition cannot be eliminated.Excessive insistence on fairness/equity in all aspects, though its the natural condition that people/things are unequal to a goodish extent.

9. Affinity for doomsday theories, OMG we are all gonna die! Society is going to hell. Apocalypse is coming unless we repent! Blah blah blah.

10. Faulty assumptions about stuff like economics, "if somebody is winning somebody else must be losing" (life is not a zero sum game!). "Rich are always bad and they exploit poor." "Unions are always bad." "The rich always get richer and poor get poorer." "Debt is always bad, me and my country should always be debt free."

11. "Humanity sucks coz they cant see the obvious truths that i do, I gotta save them, even if its from themselves against their will. Aah the burden I carry. Woe is me!"

12. "If I do my job well, I deserve stability, security, a house that always goes up in value, a few vacations, good health care and schooling and all other basic comforts of life. waaah I played by the rules but got laid off anyway.Life is so unfair waaaaah sob sob"

13. The Halo effect: A Nobel prize winner in physics says he wants to ban cucumbers since he believes cucumbers cause lung caner. He is a Nobel prize winner therefore he must be right. I have eaten thousands of cucumbers in my lifetime. I am so screwed (worry worry). Nomura is a smoking hot girl, Momura doesn't like me. since she is smoking hot, she must be a good judge of people. There is something wrong with me. (worry worry)

14. I am devoted to Cause X, Alice doesn't believe in Cause X. But I am good person, therefore Alice must be a bad person. There are so many bad people like Alice who don't believe in cause X. The world is full of bad people and we are going to hell in a hand basket (worry worry).

15. Inability to recognize the deuced difficulty of predicting future effects of events,and underestimating the effects of unintended consequences. Sometimes the happiest events at first glance tend to put events in motion that are disastrous, and vice versa.

16. Extrapolation: My career/ social life/ what have you sucks till now in spite of best efforts. therefore it will always suck. (worry worry)

So we should all relax, smile more and have a cocktail!