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by shorttime
3513 days ago
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This is a relatively new problem, finding "happiness". It only becomes a problem after basic needs are met, food, roof over your head, steady income, low debt, healthy. People in the past had very little time to prioritize "happiness" against basic survival. Just to have the problem to begin with is a blessing in disguise, you're not struggling. I see it as a hierarchy of needs, similar to Maslow's. |
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I don't think this is really true except in times of turmoil or famine. Reading history you find plenty of people who are unconcerned about meeting their basic needs and who had a lot of free time.
This goes for lots of agricultural societies, for many hunter-gatherer societies, and even some more 'advanced' societies, though you do generally start getting class issues there.
People imagine the past as some kind of eternal, miserable struggle for existence - it wasn't like that. There were definitely bad times, bad times we can hardly even imagine today - but it wasn't the norm. Most people got along fine most of the time and often even had more free time than we do. When people are trapped in a perpetual, miserable struggle for existence - that's when you end up with revolutions and war.