Every now and again, someone complains that only the bad news gets reported, never the good. It sounds plausible, until some wag on the Today programme allows an optimist to put together an example of what a good news bulletin would look like. By the second item, about how children in Barrow-in-Furness have managed to get a new playground from the council, we're pleading for the return of harrumphing Humphrys.

But maybe the problem is that the right news is being reported, but it's just given a negative spin. A couple of recent stories that caught my eye certainly seemed to fit that bill. Yesterday, I read how kids are now so well looked after and free from desperate financial need that they no longer have to get up really early, seven days a week, and before a long day at school, to do a job that no adult would ever do for such antisocial hours and pathetic pay. Good news! Except, of course, the report actually said that kids were now too lazy to do paper rounds. File that alongside the shock exposé that a shortage of street urchins is raising the cost of chimney sweeping.

Likewise, the other week I read how web users were now too smart to be fooled into signing up for useless newsletters or tricked into making rash impulse purchases when online. Only that was told as a tale of how surfers are becoming more selfish, as though it's just mean that people aren't handing over their email addresses and credit card details to any old geek who can put together a cute animation involving small furry animals.

The human capacity to focus on the bad side of change and totally ignore the obvious benefits is truly staggering. You can be sure, for example, that more people have complained about the changes to Cif than have written in to praise it. ("Yes, but it has got worse," I hear people insist …)

We know that we are prone to Luddite moaning, of course, but countering it is really difficult. One reason for this seems to be that optimism is taken to be a sign of stupidity, which is why Americans strike so many Brits as thick. Kierkegaard would not the be the intellectual hero he is today if instead of Fear and Trembling he'd written Joy and Smiling.

Optimistic interpretations of events often seem obviously dumb, even if we have no good rational reasons to prefer them to pessimistic ones. If you're not convinced, try these.

First, isn't it good that the human race has, over the last century, managed to bring more people into the world, with all the capacity for rich life that entails, than at any time before? Are you scoffing already at this jolly take on the officially awful population explosion? But why is this silly? Life through most of history has been nasty, brutish and short and although too many people do live in misery, there are now more content people on the earth than at any time before.

Or what about celebrating the virtually complete elimination of hunger in the west, an even more patently true fact? There is the side effect of increased obesity, but surely it isn't rational to think this wipes out all the gains that vastly reduced malnutrition has given us?

Indeed, some bad news stories seem just perverse. To see the growth in opportunity to live a long and healthy life as a grim tale of an ageing population is surely to fail to see the sun for the vapour trails.

Yet I too am so in the grip of this bogus realism that as I write, I feel a little silly, even though rationally I can't see that anything I've said is wrong. Try defying default pessimism yourself. For one day, look on the upside of everything reported as decline, and notice how different the world is. It'll be too good to bear.