why is everybody so unhappy?
i noticed during covid that half the people i interacted with were having the worst day, week, month or possibly year of their life
this remains true and i’m not sure why. did we all forget how to be happy?
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Things like MKULTRA and the hegemony of neoliberalism are decades old.
We're living through the decline and fall of a civilization.
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possibly, there are certainly signs
but people have felt that way for the whole history of civilization, so i tend to discount it a little
why are my acquaintances so glum, right now?
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No, they have not. That's a frequently-stated hand wave that doesn't bear scrutiny.
We're not talking about doomsayers proclaiming the coming of the flood or old people nostalgic for the good old days.
Pre-WW1 late Victorian Europe, e.g., would seem delusionally optimistic now.
There have been many times throughout history where people in positions of relative stability or privilege would have been enormously happy to be alive.
Still a bit of this energy left in my home country, as Norway is lagging in (but not above) indicators of stagflation etc.
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I think you’re right that the period you mention was optimistic, but it was an anomaly, made possible by the very fast growth of the Industrial Age
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In most periods standards of living don’t improve noticeably fast, and there’s some random cultural change, and everyone always hates cultural change, so people are pessimistic (or at best neutral in times of cultural stagnation)
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