People weren't happier, back then. Unhappy people just died faster.
Discussion
I didn't realize this until I loved in a village and started tending a grave. You start looking around at the other graves and talking to the people tending them and you find out what life was REALLY like.
Survivorship bias is real.
Some other possibilities:
Happiness is only relevant once you are certain of survival.
Focusing on happiness is a sign that you have reached the end of your journey (be that an individual or the state).
Happiness is a binary state in an analogue world. A good meal eaten by a starving man is equal in happiness to a private jet purchased by a freshly minted billionaire. And the happiness lasts equally as long.
Also, you are correct, decreasing mortality is the primarily cause of population growth which is due to peak in 2050 at 11 billion before starting a gradual decline.
Yeah, we're not living longer as much as we're not dying young.
And, yeah, nobody thought about being happy, back then. You just did your duty and were genuinely grateful to wake up in the morning.
Lots didn't wake up.
"Happiness is a binary state in an analogue world."
-magical sentence. ✨️
There's been a fixation on happiness as if that is or should be the desired state of the populous. Happiness is and should be fleeting. It comes and goes like hunger or thirst.
~Tear swelled eyes stare wistfully at their own Smiling faces reflected off foggy mirrors.
Dreams tethered to aspirations manufacutered by corporations lie in thought. ~
Nah, western developed nations certainly have a disproportionate amount of unhappy people. It's because we lack responsibility and thus, meaning in our lives.
You underestimate how shitty human existence used to be and how many died young.
And that isn't even accounting for the wars, with their mind-boggling casualty numbers.
No I know how shitty human existence was, and not that long ago. But they had a reason to keep going. People forget, the wild West was only a couple hundred years ago. We were savages. Life expectancy and suffering don't equate to happiness. I suppose when I say happiness, I really mean "meaning"
People would be a lot happier today if they had more kids. Again, people in undeveloped nations, with low life expectancy, very very hard existences, are happier than a lot of westerners that have nice cushy lives.
They actually have a weird, temporary advantage over us, as they have many of the things that actually improved our well-being (canalisation and sanitation, basic medical care, adequate food supplies, electricity, widespread literacy and understanding of fertility, etc.) without as much of what the Germans call Wohlstandsverwahrlosung.
