Sun Tzu teaches the our perceptions must always different from reality. For example, what is your perception of the increasing happiness of people all over the world? If you follow news media, you would think that people are suffering from record levels of unhappiness. However, the opposite is actually true. The best subjective measure of improving positions is not our perceptions of others, but their perception of themselves. When people are asked about their own happiness, the results are surprising. While the media gives us the impression that the word is going downhill fast, the latest research shows that happiness is rising dramatically all over the world over the world, including in the US, which is one of the happiest places on earth (17th). Also surprising, the report shows that freedom and democracy are more important to happiness than economic wealth (though the later clearly follows the former). What leads to freedom and democracy? War and competition in one form or another. Tyrants don't give up power (as Mugabe recently proved). Control is pried from tyrants' hands solely by war be it hot, cold, or economic. While some people seem to think that the U.S. is making the world a worse place by challenging tyrants, the opposite is actually true. As far as our negative impressions of the world we get through the filter of the mainstream media, perhaps they are just describing the condition of their own industry and their unhappiness about it.