[southernplaces7]

The vastly overwhelming body of evidence clearly indicates that today humanity is materially and by nearly all concrete measurements of human well-being better off than at any time in all its long history. This paints a powerful case for humanity also being psychologically and emotionally better off, on average, than at any older time in history since, as should be obvious, dodging starvation, random war, plague and een minor medical problems becoming deadly isn't exactly conducive to being as happy as you could be without these things.

If you want to make a case for the "natural" life of simple pleasures, sure, it could be attractive contrasted against the cacophony of modern digital and other distractions, but here's a basic thing: If you want that kind of life today, within the relative safety net of modern medicine and economic support in a wider sense, you're free to pursue it as intensely as you like, and more safely than you ever could have before.

If on the other hand, you, living in some grimmer, dirtier past, wanted any other sort of life, the choice didn't even really exist unless you were one of an incredibly tiny minority that formed the elites of society. And even among these people, the slightest infection could randomly kill you, losing your eyesight with age was a gradual sentence into blindness, and god help you if you ever were to have any major dental or surgical needs that are today fixable with little fuss.

Whatever you might think of Steven Pinker, the guy's fundamental argument is broadly true even if some specific details might be cherry-picked(and i'd like to see which one's you're referring your suspicion to)

Again though, feel free to list the stuff we've lost. I'd love to see what you refer to and balance it against what we've gained.

[harimau777]

Speaking from a US perspective, a lot of people have lost their connection to society and to a sense of meaningful cultural identity.

There's a crisis of singleness that hasn't been present in much, although not all, of human history.

Home ownership is way down. At various points throughout human history it was common for people to own their own homes.

Most people have very little autonomy in their day to day work. In the past most people worked on small scale farms and cottage industries where they didn't have layers upon layers of middle managers micromanaging them.

[deanCommie]

At various points throughout human history it was also common for people to forage/hunt/grow their own food, too.

I resonate with the rest of your post - I do think having a connection to society is vital, and I also think that the US has become too much of a me-first, get-ahead-at-all-costs hustle culture that devalues social bonds. But I see people still forming very deep cultural identities.

I also agree with you that pride in one's accomplishments and a sense of purpose is important and home ownership is ONE way to achieve that - to have control over at least that facet of your life.

But it's far from the only one.

[DaoVeles]

John Michael Greer has a great term for this.

Lenocracy. The first part of that word comes from leno, the Latin term for a pimp.

https://www.ecosophia.net/beyond-lenocracy/

Like most of Greers writing, it makes you think and also wonder what is in the water at his house.

[mjamesaustin]

Interesting to find the author focus almost entirely on the public sector aspect of this. When I read the definition, my mind went immediately to the private sector and how almost every startup or big tech success story is chasing the ideal of being a pimp.

The service economy is all about taking a whopping cut of everyone else's work, and it seems like venture capital is only interested in funding companies who will be able to do that. Uber, Doordash, Task Rabbit, the App Store, etc.

[DaoVeles]

Yeah, JMG's writings are fascinating but don't take them too seriously. Generally seem to lean a lot more right wing as time progresses. Also on his other blog a lot of anti-vax and occult magic stuff.

Never have I come across an author I simultaneously agree and disagree with.

[kiba]

That is caused by people making decisions decades in the past, and the inertia persists to the present day.

In other words, it didn't start with social media. Rather, social media exacerbate what was already happening for decades at this point.

[southernplaces7]

>Speaking from a US perspective, a lot of people have lost their connection to society and to a sense of meaningful cultural identity.

Aside from this being one hell of a subjective thing to measure vs. the past, and aside from it not necessarily being a bad thing (cultural identity has been used for centuries by demagogues to foment grotesque acts of religious and political violence, compared to what you see in many modern pluralistic liberal societies), it's also a very minor thing compared to all the colossal negatives of life in the past.

We can find our own voluntary cultural associations and create connections to society in all sorts of ways. Modern living, modern technology and modern conveniences don't hinder this. If anything, they make it easier. In a ridiculous irony considering the occupations of so many people on HN, and their lifestyles, there's a lot of hypocritical hate for social media and digital connectivity, but one part of it that's unfounded is the idea that it can't be used by those who are creative for expanding their own personally chosen connections to certain communities more widely.

As for the crisis of singleness, that's more complex, but maybe no longer forcing younger people into marriages of convenience and religious prudery about how the neighbors might be "scandalized" has something to do with fewer marriages. I see little wrong with that. The society I live in pursues marriage less than at any time in its history, but at least today you see nowhere near the frequency of young men and women being shotgunned into youthful marriages for absurd religious and social reasons that later lead to those marriages being abusive, unhappy and stagnant.

I agree with worries about your point on home ownership, but like anything else, it too has its caveats and complexities. One of these being that many younger people want to live in places that are trendy but also own their own property there. Market pricing for high-demand areas isn't something that can be magically wished away.

Finally, >Most people have very little autonomy in their day to day work. In the past most people worked on small scale farms and cottage industries where they didn't have layers upon layers of middle managers micromanaging them.

I'm sorry, have you actually read about how many hours people working in cottage industries and farming in particular (what the vast majority of people did for a living before industrialization) had to pull off just to stay afloat? I'd be willing to bet that they'd pick shorter hours with a manager or two over that existence.

On the other hand, the amount of autonomy and freedom an average modern person in the developed world today has is vastly greater than it was in this past existence you seem to be idealizing without closer examination. This applies even if you include all the middle managers you like over this modern worker's head. This is the case because, very importantly, it's their free time outside of work that matters most.

It's incredible to think a 17th century farmer of mid 19th century cobbler had more autonomy than a modern white collar worker in, say, Pittsburg, or Oakland California or Lyon, France does today just because you don't like the management culture in which the modern workers work their relatively moderate hours.

[harimau777]

Perhaps it is possible to restructure things so that people find voluntary cultural associations and some alternative to traditional marriage like you are talking about. However, my focus is on how things are not on how things might be in some future which probably won't arrive until long after I'm dead.

You seem to be missing my point about autonomy. Certainly your average peasant was in a much worse economic situation than most modern people and has less human rights. However, they likely also had less moment to moment micromanaging. As long as you deliver your quota at the end of the season, your feudal lord probably isn't dictating your daily work.

Human beings are not purely logical creatures. While from an objective standpoint people are certainly better off today, it's possible that the things that we've given up are more important for subjective emotional/psychological wellbeing.

[hattmall]

>major dental or surgical needs that are today fixable with little fuss

I guess perhaps that's true in some countries, but not for the US. People put off major medical needs for years and even decades to wait until they can get on medicare.

Dental issues are even worse. Yes, the availability of the treatments is nice, but the majority of people are deeply stuck in modern society to have access to those treatments.

[southernplaces7]

Truly? You're comparing problems in access to smooth insurance coverage among a certain percentage of the U.S. population to a total lack of existence for anything resembling modern medical and dental care in the world of the pre-industrial era?

I could make a large list of all the ways in which this comparison is laughable.

[darby_nine]

Dental insurance in the US is more like a subscription service than actual insurance. It only really covers preventative care, and only to a very limited extent.

You should make a list. I would find it very helpful. The people claiming the world progresses in a single direction will eat their words one day.

[southernplaces7]

Dental care at least exists in the modern US, along with antibiotics and cavity fillings and of course, anesthesia. Comparing it, with its defects, to anything passing for dentistry or medicine from the preindustrial past is simply foolish.

> The people claiming the world progresses in a single direction will eat their words one day.

That's a completely unfounded assumption on your part. It may end up being true, since the future is uncertain at all times, but at least right now anyone can say that the world has improved for humans like never before in measurable ways from those of earlier. That's a hard fact.

[somenameforme]

It's a completely reasonable assumption on his part because it is literally 100% guaranteed that society must fundamentally change due to fertility rates alone. Perhaps some think that fertility decline means populations will gradually decline on a scale of centuries or something? Which I agree would be generally just not that big a deal. But unfortunately that's not how it works. Fertility rates are exponential system that kick in hard once they start going.

It's easy to intuit this by thinking about society in terms of generations. Since a peak fertility window is around 20 years, a generation also tends to be around 20 years. So how much will population rates change as one generation dies, every ~20 years? It's easy to work out by example. Imagine a fertility rate of 1. That means each woman is having 1 child on average. You need to have 2 for replacement. It generalizes to a factor of fertility_rate/2, so with a fertility_rate of 1 the population will decline by 50% per generation, per 20 years. If you start with a generational population of 8, then you'd have child populations of 4, 2, 1. Once that 8 generation starts dying, the 4 generation will start dying about 20 years later. And when the 8 generation dies you lose 50% of your total population, and 50% again when the 4 generation dies, and so on every 20 years. That's going from 8 population to 1 in 60 years! This also emphasizes why immigration is obviously not a solution, the scale is simply far too large.

Also bear in the mind the vicious cycle these outcomes will create. With a growing population your economy also naturally grows, even if it stays (proportionally) the exact same size - because there's more people, more consumption, and so on. The exact opposite is true in cases of population decline. So you're going to be trying to encourage people to have more children at the same time that your economy is collapsing. You will also have totally screwed up age ratios - in our example your 60-80 year old group will make up 50% of your population, forever! So you also have a lower labor forces, extremely high costs in terms of social security/healthcare/etc, and so on.

So there is no way that any civilization can persist on any reasonable timeframe with a subreplacement fertility rate.

[mxkopy]

> Again though, feel free to list the stuff we've lost.

The first thing that comes to mind is dependence on other people. Modern life has made it possible for the average person after a certain age to live without meaningful interaction with others. In the same vein one’s ability to choose one’s company has been greatly increased, which leads to superficial relationships and the isolation of those that no one chooses to be with.

> This paints a powerful case for humanity also being psychologically and emotionally better off, on average, than at any older time in history

This is not at all obvious for the reasons listed above, after a certain point material abundance does not cause psychological well-being. I’d argue that point was well within the reach of most of our ancestors, since we have had happy ancestors of modest socioeconomic status.

> Whatever you might think of Steven Pinker, the guy's fundamental argument is broadly true

The only broadly true statement that can be made about this topic is that modern life is generally incomparable how it was historically.

I find that the sentiment underlying these arguments is usually masturbatory in nature.

[DaoVeles]

> This is not at all obvious for the reasons listed above, after a certain point material abundance does not cause psychological well-being.

I have been trying to find a news interview for years. It was on Fox news just before Christmas about 15 years back, they had someone from an anti-consumption group. Needless to say, the interviewer did not take kindly to the position they had "It's un american to not buy Christmas presents!". But the last point the interviewee made as they played the music over them was something along the lines of "Consumption is three times high per capita than the 1950's and we are no happier because of it!".

Fair point to be made.

> I’d argue that point was well within the reach of most of our ancestors, since we have had happy ancestors of modest socioeconomic status.

While they aren't the only ones, folks like the Jainists, Taoists, all manner of Buddhists, Hindu's have lead very happy lives living on a tiny fraction of the material needs that we have. Not saying they didn't appreciate some of the new things but it isn't a case of living in squalor for millennia.

[darby_nine]

> The vastly overwhelming body of evidence clearly indicates that today humanity is materially and by nearly all concrete measurements of human well-being better off than at any time in all its long history.

I mostly agree, but my point was that materialist analysis has obvious limits. It also naturally favors industrial society as industrial society optimizes for material production (not necessarily material satisfaction, mind you, hence why I mostly agree)

> If you want to make a case for the "natural" life of simple pleasures

If you presume superiority by comparison to our modern "complex" pleasures, sure, you're not going to find much interesting in the past.

> If you want that kind of life today, within the relative safety net of modern medicine and economic support in a wider sense, you're free to pursue it as intensely as you like, and more safely than you ever could have before.

You will still be haunted by what you have seen of other humans and heard from their lips—there's no escaping that.

[anal_reactor]

> Again though, feel free to list the stuff we've lost. I'd love to see what you refer to and balance it against what we've gained.

The will to live.

The depression is rampant. People are lonelier than ever, and they eventually kill themselves. Despite the fact that the world is objectively a better place to live, for the first time in history of any species people don't want to reproduce because it sucks.

Human happiness is directly correlated with relationships. Not with technological progress. But with relationships. Which are under fire in modern society.

But hey, here's a new iPhone. Go browse tiktok on it or something.

[somenameforme]

This article is speaking of the distant past (and perhaps you are as well) but in relatively recent history, I think the losses can be clearly demonstrated. Near to every form of emotional and mental disorder is at record highs in most Western countries, including the US. [1] IQ levels, after increasing ever since it began being measured, have started declining. [2] Testosterone levels are plummeting, obesity is skyrocketing, social divides are reaching catastrophic levels (which I mention since I think it's viable that the digital age is meaningfully contributing to this), and so on. And yes I obviously see the argument re: obesity vs famine, but the issue is malnourishment. One can be obese or overweight and malnourished, and in fact most people suffering from malnutrition are. [3]

Perhaps most importantly of all - fertility rates have fallen so low that we have created literally unsustainable societies. I don't think people realize how catastrophic our fertility rates have grown. You can estimate the impact of a fertility rate (once an entire population shares it) as being a factor of fertility_rate/2 applied every ~20 years to a population. So South Korea, with its 0.68 fertility rate, will eventually start losing about 66% of its population every ~20 years. And this will happen until they go extinct (which is surprisingly rapid at such a scale), or start having more children. And while they have, by far, the lowest fertility rate in the world, most of the world is on a trendline to follow right behind them.

[1] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/505745/depression-rates-reach-n...

[2] - https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a43469569/american-...

[3] - https://cardiology.medicine.ufl.edu/2020/08/13/malnutrition-...

[bsder]

> but in relatively recent history, I think the losses can be clearly demonstrated.

Maybe within the last 30 years but certainly not if you count even just prior to 1970 when heavy manufacturing still provided the primary jobs.

Mill and mine jobs sucked worse than agriculture. Women had zero choice other than homemaker, teacher and secretary. Many Rust Belt men were basically functional alcoholics because life was so damn difficult. For example, a black humor joke at Bethlehem Steel was that nobody ever retired from the car shop (they manufactured railroad cars)--they died of some form of weird cancer long before that.

People complain about how badly we deal with "mental health" now but everybody had to just suck it up and effectively smoked and drank themselves stupid to deal with it in the past. And prior to World War II and the broad distribution of antibiotics, basic physical health was a crapshoot let alone mental health.

I'm not happy about IQ starting to trend down. However, IQ continuously increasing indicates that groups of people were still systematically malnourished up into the early 1990s.

I may have a bunch of problems with the way things are going, but I'm having a tough time coming up with a time when it was that much better than things are right now.

Certainly most of the people sitting here reading HN would have had a really shitty time in the 1950s and 1960s (and probably even 1970s). They've forgotten that smart people had a hard time escaping their local social area and were strongly ostracized up through even the 1980s.

[somenameforme]

Studies on the decline of IQ (and various other issues) normalize for socioeconomic and other obvious factors. So it's not just e.g. malnourishment. Studies in Scandiland (which are easy to carry out due to compulsory enlistment + IQ testing) have even observed the decline within the same family over time! Nobody knows why they're decreasing, similar to the mystery of why testosterone levels are plummeting, autism/depression/anxiety/etc rates are increasing, and so on.

With mental health, the issue is not of how we deal with it, but with the rate of disorders. Rates seem to be perpetually moving upward with no end or even slowing down in sight. As per the previously linked article [1], it's estimated that about 1 in 4 Americans have had such severe anxiety or depression that they'd been unable to continue regular activities for 2+ weeks. That's not the sort of stuff that could be treated with alcohol and cigs. And these rates are all rapidly increasing.

And again the fertility issue, which you failed to even consider, is just so huge. Our society is literally unsustainable. If humanity, at any time, started acting like we are today (and did not meaningfully change) then humanity literally would not exist today. That alone makes glamorizing modern society essentially a nonstarter, because it means it is inherently liminal - temporary, a placeholder as we more onto something else. And I'm not especially fond of what that "something else" may easily be, which is why I think emphasizing that we need to correct this issue is so important.

[1] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/505745/depression-rates-reach-n...

[darby_nine]

> I'm not happy about IQ starting to trend down. However, IQ continuously increasing indicates that groups of people were still systematically malnourished up into the early 1990s.

Eh with access to information IQ has become much less useful. We need a test much less bound to culture than what is currently offered—which includes at least a rework of verbal intelligence, which is literally just knowledge of culture. Knowledge without context is basically useless and certainly has little to do with intelligence.