4 ms·

A lot of statistics say that we are getting less happy over time. Sure, numerically, we are living longer, infant mortality is declining, but we are less happy

by fnid 17y ago

A lot of statistics say that we are getting less happy over time. Sure, numerically, we are living longer, infant mortality is declining, but we are less happy. Isn't happiness the goal? Are we really better off if we are unhappy?

petercooper 17y ago
I can't speak for humanity but I'd guess we're less satisfied with all the great stuff we have rather than less happy in an absolute sense. As greed and entitlement grow, so do the chances for feeling let down. Also, it's easier to measure people's discontent nowadays thanks to mass media - who surveyed the miserable folks of antiquity? Improved communications and the mass media also make it easier to compare ourselves against others. Once upon a time I might have deemed myself the best woodworker in the world (if all I knew were the people in my town) but as soon as you get online, you get put in your place!
gloob 17y ago
My attitude has generally been that if a person is sufficiently passionate about being unhappy that they can even do it when surrounded by the unadulterated opulence that is normal life for a middle-class citizen of a first-world country, I'm not going to try and stop them. The Internet is ridiculously cool. WiFi is too, as is, for that matter, most modern technology. We are veritably surrounded by awesome stuff. I'm not going to get in someone's way if they are insistent on their discontent, but I probably will laugh at them.
mynameishere 17y ago
I think I was 10 or 11 when I realized that things can only make the tiniest and most temporary changes in one's level of happiness. (No kidding; it's not an especially novel idea.) Anytime you're dealing with "doomsayers", you can almost bet that that person actually wants their variant of doom to occur, often for the tremendous corrections required. The effect of a real economic collapse would be: 1. A great reduction in "things" (read: toys) available. 2. A greater day-to-day struggle for necessities. 3. A replacement of humanity's highly variable yet trivial problems with one big, common problem. There's every reason to believe that the above three things, if not taken too far, are actually a prescription for happiness. There's a forth one, of course: 4. A fundamental change in the ruling class. That, of course, could be bad or good, but it explains why the government is happy to spend 100s of billions to fight every dip.
- gruseom 17y ago
  Anytime you're dealing with "doomsayers", you can almost bet that that person actually wants their variant of doom to occur That is an excellent observation.
varjag 17y ago
I'm not sure people are less happy now than before. There was no golden age.
pg 17y ago
What statistics, exactly? If you want to know how happy people were the good old days, try looking at old photographs. Most people don't look happy at all. Not even rich people. It wasn't just that the convention wasn't to smile in photographs. You can tell by looking at people's eyes. Life was hard.
- fnid 17y ago
  Once a year for quite a while now the National Opinion Research Council has asked Americans whether, on the whole, the are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy. Since the early 1950s the percentage of people who counted themselves "very happy" has steadily dropped. From the book "Deep Economy" http://jamestravels.com/2008/01/deep-economy-growth-and-decline-in.php http://jamestravels.com/2008/01/deep-economy-growth-and-decl... I've noticed the looks on faces in old photos too. Yes, today, we all smile, but they are forced smiles. "Say cheese!" They didn't do that in the early days of photography. Photos were expensive and were a serious endeavor. I think a lot of the smiles in photos are fake. We smile for the camera whether we are happy or not. Yes, life was hard, but I feel happy when I'm working hard and being productive and I feel life is worth it. I think today, we are filling our lives with material goods and sacrificing a lot of the earth and resources and invading other countries and killing people to take their oil and things like that take a toll on people. Even more, we pop pills to alleviate our depression. The unfortunate side effect of these pills is that they also limit the upside of happiness. They flat line us at a normal mood. Not a happy mood -- a not depressed mood. Add to this the migration out of families and into more individual lives. We are isolating ourselves from the group. We are gregarious animals by nature, but living independently in little square boxes all alone violates our natural drives to be with others. We need more community. A push to materialism comes at the expense of community.
  - jimbokun 17y ago
    Interesting that it's been dropping since the 50s. The article posted a few days ago arguing that innovation since 1959 has been much less significant to peoples lives than the innovation from 1909 to 1959 comes to mind. Ending many infectious diseases, an affordable, stable food supply, wide spread home ownership, telecommunications and automobiles seem unambiguously positive, or at least would have in 1959. But when you start getting traffic jams and long commutes, high fructose corn syrup as the main ingredient in the food on supermarket shelves, the constant temptation to stare at one screen or another rather than interact with the world around you, the interruptions enabled by ubiquitous communications, the lack of exercise due to going from bed to car to cubicle to car to couch to bed again, the benefits from advances in technology seem more ambiguous. I know this makes me sound like a Luddite, but I just think those of us who like technology and gadgets for their own sake should step back once and a while and consider whether more technology is always better or if there are also potential downsides.

by fnid 17y ago

petercooper 17y ago

I can't speak for humanity but I'd guess we're less satisfied with all the great stuff we have rather than less happy in an absolute sense. As greed and entitlement grow, so do the chances for feeling let down. Also, it's easier to measure people's discontent nowadays thanks to mass media - who surveyed the miserable folks of antiquity? Improved communications and the mass media also make it easier to compare ourselves against others. Once upon a time I might have deemed myself the best woodworker in the world (if all I knew were the people in my town) but as soon as you get online, you get put in your place!

gloob 17y ago

My attitude has generally been that if a person is sufficiently passionate about being unhappy that they can even do it when surrounded by the unadulterated opulence that is normal life for a middle-class citizen of a first-world country, I'm not going to try and stop them. The Internet is ridiculously cool. WiFi is too, as is, for that matter, most modern technology. We are veritably surrounded by awesome stuff. I'm not going to get in someone's way if they are insistent on their discontent, but I probably will laugh at them.

mynameishere 17y ago

I think I was 10 or 11 when I realized that things can only make the tiniest and most temporary changes in one's level of happiness. (No kidding; it's not an especially novel idea.) Anytime you're dealing with "doomsayers", you can almost bet that that person actually wants their variant of doom to occur, often for the tremendous corrections required. The effect of a real economic collapse would be: 1. A great reduction in "things" (read: toys) available. 2. A greater day-to-day struggle for necessities. 3. A replacement of humanity's highly variable yet trivial problems with one big, common problem. There's every reason to believe that the above three things, if not taken too far, are actually a prescription for happiness. There's a forth one, of course: 4. A fundamental change in the ruling class. That, of course, could be bad or good, but it explains why the government is happy to spend 100s of billions to fight every dip.

gruseom 17y ago
Anytime you're dealing with "doomsayers", you can almost bet that that person actually wants their variant of doom to occur That is an excellent observation.

varjag 17y ago

I'm not sure people are less happy now than before. There was no golden age.

pg 17y ago

What statistics, exactly? If you want to know how happy people were the good old days, try looking at old photographs. Most people don't look happy at all. Not even rich people. It wasn't just that the convention wasn't to smile in photographs. You can tell by looking at people's eyes. Life was hard.

fnid 17y ago
Once a year for quite a while now the National Opinion Research Council has asked Americans whether, on the whole, the are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy. Since the early 1950s the percentage of people who counted themselves "very happy" has steadily dropped. From the book "Deep Economy" http://jamestravels.com/2008/01/deep-economy-growth-and-decline-in.php http://jamestravels.com/2008/01/deep-economy-growth-and-decl... I've noticed the looks on faces in old photos too. Yes, today, we all smile, but they are forced smiles. "Say cheese!" They didn't do that in the early days of photography. Photos were expensive and were a serious endeavor. I think a lot of the smiles in photos are fake. We smile for the camera whether we are happy or not. Yes, life was hard, but I feel happy when I'm working hard and being productive and I feel life is worth it. I think today, we are filling our lives with material goods and sacrificing a lot of the earth and resources and invading other countries and killing people to take their oil and things like that take a toll on people. Even more, we pop pills to alleviate our depression. The unfortunate side effect of these pills is that they also limit the upside of happiness. They flat line us at a normal mood. Not a happy mood -- a not depressed mood. Add to this the migration out of families and into more individual lives. We are isolating ourselves from the group. We are gregarious animals by nature, but living independently in little square boxes all alone violates our natural drives to be with others. We need more community. A push to materialism comes at the expense of community.
- jimbokun 17y ago
  Interesting that it's been dropping since the 50s. The article posted a few days ago arguing that innovation since 1959 has been much less significant to peoples lives than the innovation from 1909 to 1959 comes to mind. Ending many infectious diseases, an affordable, stable food supply, wide spread home ownership, telecommunications and automobiles seem unambiguously positive, or at least would have in 1959. But when you start getting traffic jams and long commutes, high fructose corn syrup as the main ingredient in the food on supermarket shelves, the constant temptation to stare at one screen or another rather than interact with the world around you, the interruptions enabled by ubiquitous communications, the lack of exercise due to going from bed to car to cubicle to car to couch to bed again, the benefits from advances in technology seem more ambiguous. I know this makes me sound like a Luddite, but I just think those of us who like technology and gadgets for their own sake should step back once and a while and consider whether more technology is always better or if there are also potential downsides.