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Only if you live in a country with national health care guaranteed to every citizen. Health care that isnt affordable isnt health care. And NO, guarantee of emergency healthcare with resultant mega debt following you around isnt health care. Its great if you get shot or bus runs you over. Not so good for chronic diseases.
I mean, that's fair. I was just referring to the quality of care in general. Anyone remember bloodletting?
Kind of why this is a complicated subject in general.
We can appreciate many advances that we have in modern times, but saying "we should all be happy!" is ignoring many problems that still do exist and the ways in which things could be better.
Which is a problem, I think, in much of the deliberate polarization of minds, at least in America and probably other countries, too. You can simultaneously appreciate and celebrate progress and still recognize areas that need improvement.
They say that ignorance is bliss, but I think that few people would prefer to be blissfully ignorant when a problem exists that could instead be resolved.
I often hear that people today live in luxury compared to people 150, 200, 400 years ago, etc — but why is it so hard to appreciate this luxury without making relative comparisons to only people around us today?
Even the bottom 20% in the US have luxuries that people 200 years ago couldn’t fathom…television, radio, cell phones, internet, cars, modern medicine, fast food, etc, etc.
Why is it so hard to really appreciate modern times knowing how so many people lived for thousands of years?
I find myself getting fixated on little things I don’t have compared to someone else yet compared to billions of people that came before me I have lived like a king from birth.
You have to remember that "we" are going to be that 150 years ago crowd in 150 years. Everyone adapts to their own "time" in life. The pioneers with no running water didn't care, they lived with what they knew and had, they didn't know that we would have running water later in years. A caveman didn't worry that he was born in an era that was not so popular. Being lunch for a T-Rex was just the way it was.
Kind of why this is a complicated subject in general.
We can appreciate many advances that we have in modern times, but saying "we should all be happy!" is ignoring many problems that still do exist and the ways in which things could be better.
Which is a problem, I think, in much of the deliberate polarization of minds, at least in America and probably other countries, too. You can simultaneously appreciate and celebrate progress and still recognize areas that need improvement.
They say that ignorance is bliss, but I think that few people would prefer to be blissfully ignorant when a problem exists that could instead be resolved.
I think the overall point is that, short of the extremes of abject poverty and achieving your dream of playing in the NFL, you can be thankful for what you have and actually that it's really hard to say who has it better.
My childhood best friend, his mom worked at the local supermarket and the father passed away young (kids already grown then though). And my parents see her, and she still works there.
She has 3 kids though, and they seem to get along. They struggled some as a household growing up with them, and she always seemed happy.
My sister is a MD, and works for a top hospital, she's stressed out all of the time. Every hour of her life is accounted for between work, sleep and activities with kids. And her and her husband are West Coast liberals and they create a lot of mountains out of molehills.
It's hard to say who has the happier life.
I know some people want to think ... 'I worked harder to get where I am and therefore I have more, and I'm happier than you'. But that's not really the way it works.
I know some people want to think ... 'I worked harder to get where I am and therefore I have more, and I'm happier than you'. But that's not really the way it works.
I think there's actually another thread on this, but haven't read into it. People have a deep, inherent need to justify their choices to others. I think, in a lot of ways, we're all just seeking validation when we do this sort of thing. We want other people to tell us we did the right thing.
But you're right. That validation is fleeting, it does not create long term happiness. Case in point: Buying a relatively pricey home in a nice, walkable area turned out to be a huge contributor of my stress. I thought the walkability and proximity to bars/restaurants would make me happy. Turns out it was just a band-aid on a deep, bloody wound. The weird thing is, we've lived here for about two years and I'm already fantasizing about moving to a small town or somewhere a little more rural and low key.
Kind of why this is a complicated subject in general.
We can appreciate many advances that we have in modern times, but saying "we should all be happy!" is ignoring many problems that still do exist and the ways in which things could be better./
/They say that ignorance is bliss, but I think that few people would prefer to be blissfully ignorant when a problem exists that could instead be resolved.
I don't think choosing to be happy in spite of a troubled society is the same as ignoring problems or being ignorant. For me I'd rather be a happy problem-solver even if I fail than tell myself I live in a "meat grinder" every day. It seems like a grim approach to life.
But I'm not sure why some people feel the need to do that . Maybe for some personality types it's a necessity? It's a puzzle how you equate being happy in the face of problems wrong.
I was a pessimist for half of my adult life and one day I just got tired of always seeing the glass half empty and decided to see it half full instead. It takes a health toll after a while.
The human problems I worked with at work were nearly unsolvable but it never stopped me from wanting to help people. It just made me feel happier doing it. I could have gone to work every day saying to myself Only about eight percent of the people I try to help today will benefit or I could have just quit, I suppose.
Faced with a meat grinder the best you can do is try to make hamburgers. LOL.
Which is a problem, I think, in much of the deliberate polarization of minds, at least in America and probably other countries, too. You can simultaneously appreciate and celebrate progress and still recognize areas that need improvement.
Yep. It's also known as "chewing gum and walking at the same time".
I can recognize that I was born in to the wealthiest and most technologically advanced society in the history of the planet ... and at the same time decry its many inequalities and injustices and point out that it is becoming increasingly unhealthy to exist in it. For example we have skilled doctors and nurses and medical researchers, but overall life expectancy is declining in the US and the gap with other countries in the West is increasing. Our prescription drugs routinely cost several times what the exact same drugs do in other countries. These are all facts. It is not negativity or gloom and doom to point them out. But there are a lot of people and vested interests that will do their best to get you to shut up.
One mechanism they deploy is The Fallacy of Relative Privation. This thing isn't so bad because it's worse somewhere else. Be grateful / satisfied with what you have. In truth -- there's absolutely no reason to be "satisfied" with something that's gratuitously less than we're capable of, even while acknowledging that it's better than nothing. I'm not sure when this country's motto became "it's better than nothing" but it is probably going to end up being the epitaph on our collective gravestone.
I don't think choosing to be happy in spite of a troubled society is the same as ignoring problems or being ignorant. For me I'd rather be a happy problem-solver even if I fail than tell myself I live in a "meat grinder" every day. It seems like a grim approach to life.
But I'm not sure why some people feel the need to do that . Maybe for some personality types it's a necessity? It's a puzzle how you equate being happy in the face of problems wrong.
I was a pessimist for half of my adult life and one day I just got tired of always seeing the glass half empty and decided to see it half full instead. It takes a health toll after a while.
The human problems I worked with at work were nearly unsolvable but it never stopped me from wanting to help people. It just made me feel happier doing it. I could have gone to work every day saying to myself Only about eight percent of the people I try to help today will benefit or I could have just quit, I suppose.
Faced with a meat grinder the best you can do is try to make hamburgers. LOL.
I'm sorry, we're miscommunicating here. I'm not so much talking about blithely ignoring problems today, I'm talking about the flaws in the underlying foundation of this thread starter, comparing now to 150 years ago.
Like for instance, if at some point in the past we didn't know that there were such a thing as microscopic germs that caused sickness, then we wouldn't bother doing anything to mitigate them like washing our hands or trying to keep fecal bacteria out of places it shouldn't be. They didn't know better. Now we do, so we go to the relative "bother" of enacting good hygiene standards. You could say that life was simpler and more innocent with less overall knowledge about lots and lots of things, that we have today. When a podunk farmer didn't know anything about geopolitical tensions or global climate change, he only knew that it was a rough year for tomatoes.
But personally I would not go back to the "simpler times" if the supposed happiness that everyone supposedly had (which I question how true that even was anyways) was based on relative ignorance.
I wholeheartedly reject the idea that life was better when we didn't have so many choices, because I feel that's rooted in the premise that keeping people ignorant is to their benefit. It's not. It only benefits those who have the power of knowledge that they withhold to control people by artificially restricting their understanding of what is possible while telling them they have it good and ought to be grateful.
I do not however imply that we presently must go around long faced, clutching our pearls and wringing our hands in despair. Quite the contrary. I'm a very optimistic person even when things seem bleak. Part of that is a general faith in humanity and what we are CAPABLE of even if I don't see it happening as much as maybe I would like. I think that we (the planet, species, country, community, whatever) are worth working for, arguing for, fighting for.
But when I hear others say that they are exhausted, depressed or struggling...at the same time, I do acknowledge them, I do see them, hear them, and grant that there are perfectly reasonable reasons why they might feel that way. If anything, I feel that those of us who still have some energy and "fight" left in us can at least temporarily pick up burdens from those who are exhausted or struggling. Because otherwise, what is the point of being a social animal in a community?
I often hear that people today live in luxury compared to people 150, 200, 400 years ago, etc — but why is it so hard to appreciate this luxury without making relative comparisons to only people around us today?
Even the bottom 20% in the US have luxuries that people 200 years ago couldn’t fathom…television, radio, cell phones, internet, cars, modern medicine, fast food, etc, etc.
Why is it so hard to really appreciate modern times knowing how so many people lived for thousands of years?
I find myself getting fixated on little things I don’t have compared to someone else yet compared to billions of people that came before me I have lived like a king from birth.
I can only speak for myself, but I find that when I have something to work towards I am less depressed, especially when I am making progress and experiencing little successes. Just having everything without a sense of purpose or anything to look to can be somewhat depressing to me.
There are also plenty of other factors at play and I'm sure it is a bit different for each individual. Paying a lot of attention to different forms of media as images of beauty, prestige and materials is one factor. Seeing people living the type of life you may desire but feel is out of your reach is another factor.
I think there's actually another thread on this, but haven't read into it. People have a deep, inherent need to justify their choices to others. I think, in a lot of ways, we're all just seeking validation when we do this sort of thing. We want other people to tell us we did the right thing.
But you're right. That validation is fleeting, it does not create long term happiness. Case in point: Buying a relatively pricey home in a nice, walkable area turned out to be a huge contributor of my stress. I thought the walkability and proximity to bars/restaurants would make me happy. Turns out it was just a band-aid on a deep, bloody wound. The weird thing is, we've lived here for about two years and I'm already fantasizing about moving to a small town or somewhere a little more rural and low key.
Things often look better in between our ears than they end up being in reality.
When we moved to our present home it was the first one built in a new subdivision and we imagined (though to a much lesser extent than many neighbors) that we'd make new friends in this little community of 19 homes and 10 townhomes, all very close together with only a driveway between us, and the standalone all having nice old fashioned Victorian front porches. After all the dusty / noisy construction was finally done, It is a nice-looking neighborhood (though it's now nearly a decade old) but we barely know our neighbors because the social forces that used to bind neighborhoods together are now largely gone. Professional and volunteer associations (including churches) and other non-neighborhood forces are a more powerful glue now than the days when we used to watch (and even discipline) each other's kids.
The reality it that the neighbor on one side of us only associates with people his own age (he's 75 and I'm 65, but whatever) and on the other side they are just unpleasant people I'd rather not live next to. Literally the 3 people in the 'hood that we hit it off with managed to die of cancer in the past 3 years, and many of the homes are being bought by speculators and filled with student renters anyway.
And everything's a tradeoff. As a software developer, being in one of the few neighborhoods with last-mile fiber optic Internet service was compelling, but the property taxes are truly back breaking (over 4x what I've paid anywhere else), the $100/mo for the HOA buys very little, and as we age, we wish we'd held out for a floor plan with a first floor master bedroom, just in case.
The only reason I don't move again (or even, given the political direction in this country, to another nation altogether) is inertia and the understanding that every location has its problems and downsides, coupled with age, and the "devil you know is better than the devil you don't know"
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