I’d grown up reading stories throughout history and was intimately familiar with how new and different my current lifestyle was. I was happy I wasn’t working in coal mines, or under threat of war, and that there was no famine. I viewed it as a normal feature of human existence-
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That you had to set aside your feelings and use willpower. This is the way everyone had to live in history, this was a default of existence - and anything more than this was luxury. I felt hyper aware of how unusual our state of civilization was, how luxurious my life was already
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And this is why I feel a little confused when people get really angry at stuff like the minimum wage, or having to work two jobs and live in a shitty apartment. People are complaining at working conditions that I went through with actual gratitude.
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It seems very clear to me that the issue is not absolute working conditions and living standards, it is narrative and contrast. People have been much happier with much less, but these people are less happy with more. And I can’t help but think - have you tried being grateful?
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Nobody had to give you your job. Nobody owes you anything. You are incredibly fortunate to be living this far into an advanced civilization at all. This is a matter of perspective - and sure this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to improve your life, but the entitlement is bizarre.
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Maybe not bizarre. Just as I was grateful by paying a lot of attention to the state of past humans, I think a lot of the dissatisfaction with living conditions comes from paying attention to the more fortunate. We have some idea that inequality is *inherently* wrong.
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There’s a good chunk of people who would like to lower the wealth of the very rich even if this benefited nobody else, even if the wealth didn’t get redistributed at all!
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You can't expect everyone to be happy with less just because you're happy with it or it's relatively more than in the past
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No, but my point is the unhappiness is really more due to the narratives they're using than due to any sort of objective injustice.
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If you think that people who are worried about wealth inequality and poor living conditions is because of narratives and not objective material conditions. I don't know what to say
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Got it. So we can't expect anything to get better just because it's relatively better.
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