Comment by ricardobayes
9 hours ago
That's a very interesting point. I'd think the "happyness/contentness" levels are not necessarily tied to life expectancy or poverty.
I would argue despite some global tendencies being way up (like people out of poverty) we are at a local minima right now for happiness for the middle class. It is entirely possible middle-class people had it better in the late 50s/60s despite multiple statistics being much better today (e.g. crime).
In a way it is also entirely possible, that a medieval peasant was happier than an overstimulated, modern human being, despite having a "worse" life.
Tbf I think my view is it's about improvement over your own life. We expect our children will do better than us and that our lot will improve etc.
That sets expectations. We are at a high base, but things aren't getting better thus we can't look back at our own life and see that we have been successful.
I suppose the question is, where are we in the life cycle? In the industrial revolution life was pretty crumby for a lot of the working class. Do we have to wait for society and laws to catch up so we get to that 1950s/60s heyday of life for the working class. Or is this a plateau and the disruption will makes things worse before they get better? Or is the west going to stagnate while china or whoever takes over?
Yes, very true, and I can already thank you for the thought-provoking discussion. I think we are the first generation who don't necessarily expect that children will do better than us, in fact, in many ways we know that they won't: climate change etc.
The current gen alpha is also the first generation since measurements began, who are doing worse at school, measurably, than the previous generation. All research points to the inclusion of digital learning devices in school as the cause of that.