Buried in the darkness of 2015: the seeds of hope for a better 2016 | Adam Lee

If you look beyond the tumult of sensational headlines and atrocities, there's a quiet trend of improvement throughout the world

The year that's past was a season of fear. Next to the onslaught of anxiety, hope and optimism seem powerless, if not downright foolish. As a motivating force, hope is more fragile, harder to inspire, easier to lose sight of. Fear is a powerful motivator and easy to conjure - but only hope can lead us into a better world.

In 2015, the brutal violence of the Syrian civil war, which gave rise to a wave of refugees on Europe's doorstep, metastasized into bloody terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino. In the US, fear and xenophobia is now the theme of the Republican presidential primary. Donald Trump led the way, openly appealing to bigotry in his call to bar all Muslims from the US, but the other candidates weren't far behind.