[alchemist1e9]

Global poverty at 100-year lows, US murder rate half the 90s, you’re more likely to die from obesity than starvation or violence. Objectively the cushiest moment in human history.

Yet “mental illness is the only rational response.”

Happiness = Reality − Expectations

Most of material Reality is fine. The part of Reality that’s broken is spiritual/emotional. The expectations causing unhappiness aren’t for more money or stuff, they’re subconscious, millions of years deep, baked into the species of tribe, offspring, transcendence, cosmic order.

Leftism spent half a century screaming that those instincts are bigotry, that family is oppression, that religion is a mental illness, that wanting roots or rituals or a legacy is fascism.

You can’t propagandize the human soul out of its own operating system. The subconscious still demands what it demanded in 200,000 BC. We just demolished every institution that used to answer the call and replaced them with therapy, porn, and corporate pride slogans.

That’s the real insanity. Not climate change or late-stage capitalism. The soul shows up for duty and the building’s condemned.

[baubino]

> Global poverty at 100-year lows, US murder rate half the 90s, you’re more likely to die from obesity than starvation or violence. Objectively the cushiest moment in human history.

Averages are just that - averages. They say nothing about any given individual’s experience. And probabilities aren’t assurances of a particular outcome. Just because the average person is more likely to face obesity than starvation doesn’t mean that there aren’t millions of people facing starvation in the world. Your argument is based on an incorrect use of statistics.

[alchemist1e9]

We can use deciles and the story is the same. I was just keeping it simple and my use of statistics for my point is fine.

The bottom decile in all western countries has a objectively better material conditions yet I don’t dispute they may feel less “Happiness” which the formula explains and if you drill into the components of Reality which are causing the unhappiness and it’s absolutely non-material as I explained.

[baal80spam]

Very well said, thank you for this. I would add though, that money (or lack thereof) causes unhapiness as well, because people want to live how "they" live on Instagram, and they can't.

[alchemist1e9]

Instagram moved expectations up significantly for a large portion of global populations so yes what you say is absolutely true but isn’t the Reality part but the Expectations part of the Happiness formula.