Agreeableness

The pop psychology personality profile* I currently favor has a trait called Agreeableness. It doesn't measure how pleasant a person is so much as it measures how kind that person thinks everyone else is. It's an interesting inversion- it's oddly satisfying to think that one of the foundations of self is an unshakable belief in the wickedness of the world.

*It's called OCEAN or CANOE or FFM or Big Five, and there is some nebulous scientific evidence that it's valid. Eat it, Myers-Briggs. Another advantage over the MBTI is that no one has put much energy into defending being very Neurotic as a good thing.

I'm from a small town and I grew up cute, white, and well mannered. Thus, on some cellular level, I think that everyone else is probably a better person than I am. Every single prudent, street-wise behavior I possess is an aftermarket feature.

My abstruse point is that most media sources don't share my faith in humanity. I assume it's because they're better informed. Well, I assume that the people who are newsworthy are statistically more unpleasant and that journalism is a very competitive field and very competitive fields tend to reward random chance and nepotism and that is bad for trusting others. This is why I'm not better informed: I tune out as soon as it seems like one party is acting like Snidely Whiplash.

My only hope is media created by similarly entitled people. Thank god for This American Life.