I have similar veins of thought, but more around how these people understood the arcs of their lives, what constituted unusual challenge or reasonable success (

I have similar veins of thought, but more around how these people understood the arcs of their lives, what constituted unusual challenge or reasonable success (during a much more difficult time period to be alive), what their thresholds for happiness and suffering were, and what constituted 'a good life'. Given life was so much more harsh for the average person living in Cambridge then than it is today, I wonder what the hedonic equivalent of having secured enough food to eat (for the foreseeable future), would be for today. You'd have to assume that just having food and shelter secured would generate a very high level of baseline satisfaction in life.