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Hmm, my grand dad was basically a subsistence farmer, and while it wasn't universally miserable of course, it was certainly a lot more stressful and worrisome than his kids becoming trades people. He had to spend more time tending the farm to get by than he would have in a normal job by a long long way. And that was with fertilizer and a tractor.
The further you go back, the more labor was required to do any basic task. Certainly they still took joy in what they could, but they did so with aching joints and bowed backs.
There is a reason in the rust belt than when you ask many miners do they want their sons to become miners they say no. Because they know it is a crippling, dangerous job. They want to send their kids to college so they can work in an office and not have crippling lung diseases and missing fingers.
In other words we don't have to look back hundreds of years to see that things are better now. We can see it in one or two generations back. Or you can go to see subsistence farmers in China. Humans haven't changed, but the amount of work and danger it takes to live is significantly less than it was. Technology has made material differences to people.
Now perhaps there is an argument we waste that saved time and energy in frivolous ways. But we have it to waste. They might not have had unending hell-misery, but they certainly had more hell misery in a very material way than almost any modern Westerner.
By the end of his life, my grandad in his 60's couldn't walk, was blind in one eye and the massive strong hands that could pull a calf from a cow or wrangle a sheep were gnarled and twisted with arthritis. He was in constant pain. He refused to let his kids take over the farm, because he wanted better for them. His kids are older than he was when he died and they are all much healthier than he was at the end. The human experience really has changed. Our bodies can only take a certain amount of wear, and certainly many technologies since writing have reduced the amount of wear we need to put them through.
Just because lives weren't unending hell misery and that people made do with what they could, does not mean that the very real and material benefits of human endeavour have not improved the human experience.
And we do so with mental illness, narcotics abuse, depression and loneliness. They were happy in different ways and miserable in different ways, but I'm not convinced they were actually fundamentally more miserable than we are in any meaningful sense, or happier either for that matter. Which is better: to lose some of your children, or to never have children at all? The former seems much superior to me, and claims to the contrary seem naïve.
I'm pretty sure those miners thought that their sons could have all the good things of their own life and none of the bad things, with the idea being that the bad things wouldn't simply be replaced by other bad things. But it seems to me that, in fact, they were. Less aching joints and bowed backs. More meth zombies and fentanyl corpses, suicide, mental illness, deep alienation and so on. I am not convinced that the former outweighs the latter.
Life has obviously changed in many ways. There are fewer of old bad things, and more of new bad things. There are likewise fewer of old good things, and more of new good things. Your argument is that there's more units of good and fewer units of bad on net, and if that's your honest impression, fair enough, but it is certainly not mine. I've had a lot of changes in my own life, and a considerable amount of both pain and joy; I note that the sources of both were generally things that were not in any meaningful sense novel. The ways I've been miserable were ways that were, in all essential particulars, available to people five thousand years ago, and likewise for the ways I've found joy. Is it truly different for you?
While fent and meth were nonexistent in that era, suicide, mental illness, deep alienation, and so on were not. Nor was alcoholism, which wrecks you perhaps somewhat slower than fent or meth, but just as well.
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I would suggrst the main difference is that 5000 years ago, you had no choice but to endure the bad things. You couldn't avoid that your life and work and having kids was dangerous. They were inescapable. Today many people can still have the good, having kids and the like, but don't become fentanyl addicts or require mental health care..Many. many millions of people fall into the bracket and have the old joys, less of the old miseries and not much of the new.
Now at least we have that option. You've never taken joy in a truly great book, or video game or movie? Or learned some new thing about the world? Not only would those not exist 5000 years ago, you would not have had the time to enjoy them compared to today.
It seems to me that we have greatly expanded the access of good things, reduced the number of bad things..and yes we have created more bad things, but if my choice is being crippled or having to deal with the ennui of a pointless office job. One of those is worse than the other. And one can be fixed by switching jobs, or homesteading or becoming a lumberjack or whatever. You can do that and still benefit from the good things about modernity.
Thats the key diffetence to me. You can have kids and most of them won't die, nor is your wife at much risk in labour. You can live in a small close knit community. The old joys still exist. And you can not indulge in drugs, you can still worship your God or gods, you can still tell stories around a fire in the woods. Or take your kids fishing.You can just do it with a full belly instead of empty, where your life does not depend on it.
What joys of old have we truly lost? You right now can choose to do anything your forebears did. You just have a lot more options as well. You can farm, and find other like minded people. You can opt out of almost all of modern society if you wish and in varying degrees. Thats why today is better. You have that choice. 5000 years ago you did not have the option of choosing modern devices and medical care and knowledge. Today you can buy some land and a horse and choose your level of advancement. Amish? Or Mennonite? Kacyzynki or Musk? You can choose to have your family live without a washing machine or an oven or a TV. You can choose to be a farmer or to hunt for food, or pick up road kill. All of these things are possible right now today.
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