It’s Driving Us Sane By Howard Bloom

We are in times that you’d think would drive us crazy.  We are in the middle of two wars without end, Russia’s war in Ukraine and a war that most folks do not want in Iran.  Oil prices are almost 69% higher than their low nine months ago.  We’re being told that smart phones are crippling our kids.  And we have a United Nations gathering in New York in which some world leaders are painting us as the biggest villains in history.

So you’d think we’d be suffering from societal exhaustion.  You’d think we’d be going bananas.

But in reality, Americans are going a lot less crazy than you’d think. We reached the peak of madness around 2020 and 2021.  That was in the Covid crisis, a crisis that drove us bonkers. But in a lot of areas, we’ve been doing better ever since.

The most dangerous ways of acting out have gone down since the pandemic. Violent crime and murder have taken a nose dive. For example, the violent crime rate has fallen by almost 200,000 violent crimes a year, reaching the lowest national rate in decades. Murder alone fell 18.1% just from 2024 to 2025.

Drug-overdose deaths are down. They’ve slid from more than 110,000 a year in their 2022–23 peak to about 70,000 in 2025.

Traffic deaths have fallen nearly 15% since 2021, from almost 43,000 deaths in 2021 to roughly 36,600 in 2025.

At the pandemic’s peak, passengers were fighting flight attendants, stripping off their clothes, dancing on seats and forcing planes to divert.  But the FAA says the rate of unruly-passenger incidents has plunged more than 80% since the record highs of 2021. Even measures of anger have fallen from their pandemic highs.

Then there’s the high-tech doom and gloom preached to us by techno alarmists. We’re being told that AI is about to take our jobs away. But Britain’s The Economist estimates that the AI boom has so far created around one million American jobs.

Also in the land of techno-gloom, we’re being told that smartphone addiction is tarnishing our lives. But seventy-three percent of Americans say their smartphone helps them stay informed. And 51% say their smartphone helps them feel connected to other human beings.

Meanwhile, our happiness and satisfaction with our own lives is startlingly strong—81% of Americans said in 2025 that they were either very or somewhat satisfied with their personal lives.

On the other hand, there are social exhaustion measures that are going up—or staying disturbingly high. For example, in figures on road rage, tailgating and yelling at other drivers are down. But angry honking and deliberately cutting off other drivers are up. In fact, angry honking is way, way up—from about 45% of drivers in a 2016 American Automobile Association study to 66% in 2025.

But the bottom line  is this: Covid drove us crazy.  But since the Covid virus released its grip, in a surprising number of ways, we’ve actually been going sane.

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About the author: Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. Bloom’s new book is The Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is Wrong. Says Harvard’s Ellen Langer of The Case of the Sexual Cosmos, Bloom “argues that we are not savaging the earth as some would have it, but instead are growing the cosmos. A fascinating read.” One of Bloom’s eight previous books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT.  Bloom’s work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. Not to mention in scientific journals like Biosystems, New Ideas in Psychology, and PhysicaPlus. Says Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Evolution’s End and The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, “I have finished Howard Bloom’s [first two] books, The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain, in that order, and am seriously awed, near overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he has done. I never expected to see, in any form, from any sector, such an accomplishment.  I doubt there is a stronger intellect than Bloom’s on the planet.”   For more, see http://howardbloom.net or http://howardbloom.institute

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References:

Brenan, Megan. “New Low in U.S. ‘Very Satisfied’ With Personal Life.” *Gallup*, January 23, 2025. https://news.gallup.com/poll/655493/new-low-satisfied-personal-life.aspx.

Federal Aviation Administration. “Unruly Passengers.” Accessed September 24, 2026. https://www.faa.gov/unruly.

Federal Bureau of Investigation. “FBI Releases 2025 Reported Crimes in the Nation Statistics.” August 14, 2026. https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-2025-reported-crimes-in-the-nation-statistics.

Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Violent Crime Falls at Historic Rate, New FBI Data Show.” August 24, 2026. https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/violent-crime-falls-at-historic-rate-new-fbi-data-show.

jimmyjohnjohnjohn. “Are People Behaving Weirder Lately?” *Reddit*, r/SeriousConversation. https://www.reddit.com/r/SeriousConversation/comments/1hi9d0o/are_people_behaving_weirder_lately/.

Khazan, Olga. “Why People Are Acting So Weird.” *The Atlantic*, March 30, 2022. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/03/antisocial-behavior-crime-violence-increase-pandemic/627076/.

Murphy, Kathleen. “Why Everyone Is Acting So Crazy.” *Wholistique*, Medium, December 30, 2022. https://medium.com/wholistique/why-everyone-is-acting-so-crazy-2e06821a2470.

National Center for Health Statistics. “U.S. Overdose Deaths Decrease for Third Consecutive Year in 2025.” *Centers for Disease Control and Prevention*, May 13, 2026. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/releases/20260513.html.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “2025 Traffic Death Estimates & 2024 FARS.” April 1, 2026. https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/traffic-deaths-2025-early-estimates-2024-annual.

Pew Research Center. “Americans See Their Smartphone as Helpful for Staying Informed, Connected; Some Say It Hurts Their Sleep.” September 1, 2026. https://www.pewresearch.org/chart/americans-see-their-smartphone-as-helpful-for-staying-informed-connected-some-say-it-hurts-their-sleep/.

Reuters. “Oil Prices Rise on Trump Timeline for Iran Peace Deal: After US Elections.” September 23, 2026. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/oil-rises-slightly-ahead-potential-us-iran-talks-2026-09-22/.

Thompson, Nick. “Why Can’t People Be Normal in Public Anymore?” *VICE*, February 5, 2024. https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-are-people-acting-out-in-public/.

Zhang, Xi, and Rebecca Steinbach. *2025 Traffic Safety Culture Index*. Washington, DC: AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, 2026. https://aaafoundation.org/research/2025-traffic-safety-culture-index/.