Posted on 03/02/2004 6:03:05 AM PST by Mr. Silverback
Have you ever thought about what life was like for your great-grandparents? If you really have, you'd agree with Gregg Easterbrook of the Brookings Institution that our great-grandparents would consider the world we live in today to be some kind of utopia.
Yet, all of the progress we enjoy hasn't made Americans any happier. In fact, the opposite is true -- it's made us more unhappy.
In his new book, THE PROGRESS PARADOX: HOW LIFE GETS BETTER WHILE PEOPLE FEEL WORSE, Easterbrook begins by telling us just how good we have it: The average Westerner lives better than 99.4 percent of all the human beings who have ever lived.
For instance, life expectancy has nearly doubled in the past century and continues to increase. Real per-capita income has doubled since 1960. But even that understates the rise in income, since the price of food and many durable goods keeps falling.
Our standard of living has risen to levels our great-grandparents couldn't have imagined. In the period following World War II, the average new American home was 1,100 square feet; today it's 2,300. For most of our history, the average home had one room for every two people; today there are two rooms for every one person.
By any measure of affluence -- health care, leisure, technology -- the average American enjoys a quality of life beyond anyone's wildest dreams even a few decades ago.
We have more of everything except, of course, happiness. The percentage of Americans who characterize themselves as "happy" hasn't changed since the 1950s, and the percentage of those describing themselves as "very happy" is down and continues to decline.
During the same period, the percentage of Americans and Europeans who suffer a bout of depression has climbed to 25 percent and shows no signs of abating. An estimated 7 percent of all Americans suffer at least one incidence of major, debilitating depression a year.
For some people, depression is the product of genetic and other biological factors. But for many others, being depressed in the midst of unprecedented prosperity can be traced to spiritual, cultural, and moral factors. For the former, medical treatment is indicated. For the latter, what's needed is a change in worldview.
And a good place to start is a sense of gratitude. As Easterbrook tells us, the Roman orator Cicero called gratitude not only the "greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others." Similarly, the philosopher Immanuel Kant called ingratitude the "essence of vileness."
Knowing that we are better off than nearly every other human who has ever lived should inspire, as it does with Easterbrook, a daily prayer of thanksgiving, not a sense of dread. And it should prompt us to generosity, rather than a desire for more.
For that to happen, of course, we must first overcome the cultural factors that contribute to our dread and unease. I'll tell you about these over the next few days. Be sure to keep reading.
While there are certainly reasons to worry about the direction of American life, there is also so much to be thankful for, and Christians should be able to distinguish one from the other.
In all seriousness, there are many reasons for the unhappiness, I'm sure, but one of them is this:
"The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD , "when I will send a famine through the land- not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD. Amos 8:11
Hard to be chipper when you're starving.
If anyone wants on or off my BreakPoint Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.
ProLife Ping!
If anyone wants on or off my ProLife Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.
The "good old days" were not too good.
The "good old days" were not too good.
Some things are better and some things are a lot worse. Technology is better but crime and political corruption are worse. Public education is worse and in many ways people don't behave as well.
Stroll through any graveyard that old and you will often see several infant and toddler graves per family. One of the reasons abortion took hold when it did was that there were still a lot of people who had experienced this, and so as a defense mechanism did not hold children to be so precious. Even a lot of religious people could be pretty cavalier about the lives of children since so many did not make it to adulthood.
A lot of the unhappiness we feel has to do with not being busy. We have tons of free time to contemplate what we don't have and dwell on our problems. We have electric lighting that extends our waking hours into the night when our moods tend to be much more somber. And we have a lot of television channels serving up depressing garbage.
I think that he's making your exact point. Sure, a lot of things are really cool, but the society is really screwed up compared to when my Great-Grandad came over from Scotland to Canada around the time of WWI.
Douglas MacArthur had it right: If we don't have a spiritual revival, we will be headed to the end of the Republic in not too many years.
The truth is that each generation faces up to their own technology, climate, economy, and set of social mores (or the lace thereof). In this respect each generation must create a life with as much "happiness" as can be managed.
I have a problem with measuring our worth with happiness. A lot of things that aren't worth much can create happiness, like winning a baseball game, getting intoxicated. We should use reason, not emotions to evaluate society. We shouldn't ask how happy we are. Better questions would be: How secure are we? How educated are we? How moral are we?
You have a good point, but the article was concerned with misery in the midst of plenty
And he claims it is a paradox. But I say it isn't really a paradox because happiness is not the yardstick to measure progress. Happiness and misery are temporary conditions related to recent events.
This is apparently the first of a series of articles by Colson. I would like to see where he is going with this premise.
Good point, but I would submit that a people who are secure (to the extent they can be secure without sacrificing their freedom) well educated and moral will be happy. How could they not be?
I would submit that a people who are secure (to the extent they can be secure without sacrificing their freedom) well educated and moral will be happy. How could they not be?
It is the nature of humans to pursue perfection -- we are never fully satisfied with our current condition (no hope for the satisfied man). Security is a relative term because there are always some dangers. We may be safe from attack by wolves but totally vulnerable to asteroids. We therefore adjust our acceptable level of security until we have something new to worry about -- as a result, the author can cite polls showing that people aren't getting happier. I don't think this is any kind of pathology. It's just the way humans think.
They would: he refers to the material part of life only. Reread the article.
Very close, but it's not the time derivative. Don't frown at the source, but marketers know well that "satifaction is the quality delivered minus quality expected."
When a person has a false (utopian, distorted --- you chose the word) view of the world, it leads to unreasonable expectations, which cannot be met.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.