Perceptions of wealth and quality of life over time

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In medieval Europe everyone expected to die fairly young. Nobody had a fraction of the health care now available to almost everyone in Europe. Nobody ate out at restaurants at that time although many inns where travellers stayed did serve food - which of course was far worse in choice back then with nationalism, a lack of free markets and old-fashioned transport restricting food supplies.

Wars were frequent and were a lot more barbaric at the time than today. Rape, pillage and looting were the order of the day. When the first restaurants opened after the medieval period, initially they served very little to their local patrons. The first restaurant of France, the country that made cuisine an art form, only sold stews. At the time that was a luxury.

Today if you offer someone a stew it's not considered generally a polite thing to do. It's associated with soup kitchens for the homeless, food for the poor. That in itself is a miraculous sign of progress. Homeless people without an income now have access to the very same food the wealthy in France once paid handsomely for. Those rich French folk were waited on because they were powerful but the homeless today are waited on out of love. Things do seem to get better over time and yet the perception always is relative and so people keep on wanting more. A good thing no doubt to ensure progress continues. But if we could all remember this paradox more often we'd probably be more content.

So true. Even now, imagine what one can get today compared to just 30 years ago. The average car is more fuel efficient, safer, and has more features than the average car of the 60s. You can buy a computer more powerful than any government could afford 15 years ago. Standards have been rising relentlessly.

A true barbarian knows that rape, looting and pillage is the optimal sequence.

1) It is not inherently rude to serve stew to your guests ... the trick is to linguistically upscale the cognitive presentation by calling it something other than a stew or slop (eg, chili, bouillabaisse, jambalya, gumbo, etc).

2) There has been progress, but it is not uniform or unidirectional. Adult onset diabetes is now epidemic among children, and the generation that is in childhood today is probably going to have shorter lives than than their parents, due to the mysterious outbreak of obesity, diabetes, hypertension, heart and kidney disease. All of which coincides with an incredible increase in transportation and free markets.

3) If a person in mid-centuries Europe made it past the first few years, they had a good shot of living to their 50; if they made it to 35, they probably lived to their 60s and possibly 70s. High infant mortality did more to reduce the 'average' lifespan than most people realize, as the zeros and ones and twos will pull down an average to 40 very quickly. Most of the improvement in lifespan is due to 3 relatively simple things: sanitation, antibiotics, and vaccines.

4) Wars may have been more frequent (there were more city-states in days of old) but there is no evidence that the wars of my generation are any less barbaric. Because all war is hell, and modern wars are large-scale with industrial strength killing.

5) Throughout history, there were times when food was tight, and then population adjusted in a rather painful way. Then changes to agri-culture allowed more food to be produced, people got comfortable and population increased, which meant food was in tight supply. We will see another tightening in the next decade or two, as the population goes to 9 billion people and the oil that fuels our agriculture becomes less plentiful and more expensive.

The more people have, the more people want.

I forget the term in biology, but when the brain is stimulated long enough, it grows bored and needs newer or stronger stimulation to get the same effect.

Same thing with lifestyles. We must consistently have a healthy perspective of how well we have things and what we really need in life because as we are blessed with more, we become bored with it and demand even more to keep our senses "entertained."

There is nothing wrong with getting what you want as long as it does no damage. If you enjoy having a wide variety of information, education, foods, fun activities, social activities there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. The pseudo religious disdain for enjoying a life rich in variety and delight is idiotic nonsense.

I don't recall saying anything that invokes any kind of "religious disdain" into the topic.

It is a simple neurological FACT that when we grow bored with something, we want more in order to remain stimulated. Unless we deliberately keep a healthy perspective on things in life, we need ever changing and increasing new things to keep ourselves entertained or we are unhappy.

A good deal of the elevation of poverty and deprivation into a virtue has its roots in religion but your indication that it is unhealthy to become sated with one activity and therefore requirements arise for more interesting and perhaps more sophisticated outlooks strikes me as only something worthwhile. A developing personality requires more detail, more depth, more quality of analysis in its stimulation and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The implication that one should be permanently fascinated by stale ideas and outlooks strikes me as a program for static stupidity.

I am not implying that.

Americans (as an example) typically have life pretty darn good...even if they are considered "lower middle class."

Rather than be satisfied with how blessed they are with many of the good things they have, they grow "bored" with them and feel the need for bigger, newer, improved versions of what they already have or just more "new" things to stimulate themselves. This endless downward spiral of materialism leaves people miserable because no matter how much they acquire, they never have enough...they keep needing more.

They lack PERSPECTIVE. They are not grateful for how good they have it and think that their fulfillment or satisfaction can be bought with another trinket rather than having a right attitude and perspective of what is right and what is wrong in their lives.

Most every older person I know has reached the same conclusion about life....less is better. You simplify your life by unburdening yourself of stuff that really doesn't matter. The more stuff you own, the more your stuff owns you. These are the lessons of experience and realizing what really matters versus what is fluff. Things might make you happy for a few days, but real happiness comes from your attitude, your outlook, towards life.

Stimulation may produce euphoria, but it doesn't produce happiness.

Generalities are too vague. I live rather simply and have a rather small income but when I need something to be able to work a bit better or understand things a bit better and that thing, like a computer or printer or scanner or a useful piece of software to let me experiment in a new area, I don't get bored with it just as I don't get bored with a knife, fork and spoon in order to eat properly. I don't expect to get ecstatically overjoyed by having the tools but life is a lot easier and more interesting with them.
Broad generalities about people and what they enjoy and what might be excess are not particularly useful.

Well, the OP was talking about how people had things in medieval times vs. how we'd view it today. Much is a matter of perspective.

In life, one learns that it doesn't take much to have a good life. The more you are used to having, the more you expect. The trap is that you forget that if you abandon many of the "things" we feel we can't live without, you'd find life isn't that bad.

A "good life" isn't determined by technology or possessions. It's about attitude.

It's about whether your kid is dying of cancer or is quadriplegic, if your wife looks like hell in second hand clothing, if you are out of work and can't find anything to make enough to live on, if all your teeth are falling out, if your daughter has HIV or you've been bitten by a poisonous snake. Sure, attitude. You're damned smug platitudes are disgusting. People are individuals and each one of has individual needs and desires.

You're forcing extremes. I said nothing about embracing cancer, disabilities, etc.

People will ALWAYS have to deal with issues of disease, poverty, etc. How you choose to look at life, as a whole, and your attitude towards what you think you are entitled to will determine how happy or miserable you are.

The world owes you nothing. That is the fact. All the blessings you have today can be gone in an instant for any number of reasons beyond your control. Your attitude will go a long way towards how you adapt and overcome such times.

People today take for granted how good they have things...just as I'm sure people likely did 100 years ago. Taking things for granted is a key for why people are miserable.

The miseries I've indicated are nothing extreme, they are a common fact of life for millions of people and if people could take adequate health care for granted they certainly would not be miserable for having that facility. There are millions of people within the USA that have to choose between paying the rent, paying for their health care, eating properly and adequately, losing their homes, etc. Attitude has little to do with it.

I heard a guy over the weekend talking about how the medical situation is holding back entrepreneurship ... he said that people with a knack for starting their own businesses are good about dealing with risk, but don't like taking extreme, foolish risks ... the chance of being self employed and getting screwed over by insurance issues is simply too great today ... medical bills are now a big factor in over half of bankruptcies.

Well, let's take me.

I have no health insurance. Last time I tried to get it, they wanted such broad exclusions, I'd essentially be uninsured. One hospital visit could bankrupt me.

I've been blessed with good health...or, at least, no medical issues I can't deal with out of my own pocket and over-the-counter medications.

I've not tried recently to reacquire health insurance, and I wonder what the monthly cost would be...if I could afford it.

The issue of not being insured for health care matters does concern me, but it does not take away my contentment in life. I refuse to let it do so. That's what attitude does.

Does it bother me that I live in the best country in the world that spends more each year than any other nation for health care but has millions underinsured or uninsured? Yes. Do I think the system needs fixing? Yes. Does that rob me of my joy? No.