I think that part of the argument is about happiness -- not about death. I ran around in the woods with a (figurative) loincloth for many years and there is so

I think that part of the argument is about happiness -- not about death. I ran around in the woods with a (figurative) loincloth for many years and there is something to it. :) I'm not arguing that you are completely wrong, but you're also talking about a best case scenario in modern society. Spending time with people further towards the bottom of modern society will give a less positive outlook on modern happiness. This excerpt is interesting: "The colonials occasionally tried to welcome Native American children into their midst, but they couldn’t persuade them to stay. Benjamin Franklin observed the phenomenon in 1753, writing, “When an Indian child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.” During the wars with the Indians, many European settlers were taken prisoner and held within Indian tribes. After a while, they had plenty of chances to escape and return, and yet they did not. In fact, when they were “rescued,” they fled and hid from their rescuers." Sometimes the Indians tried to forcibly return the colonials in a prisoner swap, and still the colonials refused to go. In one case, the Shawanese Indians were compelled to tie up some European women in order to ship them back. After they were returned, the women escaped the colonial towns and ran back to the Indians. Even as late as 1782, the pattern was still going strong. Hector de Crèvecoeur wrote, "Thousands of Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those aborigines having from choice become European." https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/the-great-affluence-fallacy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/the-great-affluen...