> I don't think people then were 1/100th as happy as us on average. Your user name is oddly appropriate for that topic. In ancient Greece, the Epicureans (a f

> I don't think people then were 1/100th as happy as us on average. Your user name is oddly appropriate for that topic. In ancient Greece, the Epicureans (a form of Hedonist) supposed that people's pleasure and pain depend on the satiation (or lack thereof) of their appetites. Related is the idea of "Hedonic Adaptation" which has it that people's appetites tend to adapt to conform to their expectations and that, as a consequence, different people in wildly different circumstances tend to be about equally happy. Perhaps you knew all of that already. But you seem to be rejecting the idea of the Hedonic Treadmill without properly mentioning it.