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Life gets better, yet people feel worse, by Janadas Devan
YOU'VE never had it so good, Harold MacMillan told the British electoratein the late 1950s. They believed him and voted for him resoundingly. TheSecond World War had ended barely 15 years earlier; people could stillremember bombed-out London; they could tell old Mac was telling the truth.
But if Harold Wilson had repeated the same statement in 1970, say, or MrTony Blair this year, few in Britain would have agreed, though both wouldhave been telling the truth also.
Progress is measurable and quantifiable. The statistics prove beyond doubtthat people in the industrialised world - which includes much of Europe,North America, Japan, Australia, and newly industrialising economies likeSingapore and Taiwan - are far better off than they were not only five to10 years ago, but better off than human beings have ever been in history.And yet, why are so few of us happy? Why do so many of us go through life fervently believing that if only things were a little better - the car atad more posh, the house a trifle bigger, the sofa just a little deeper,and so on and so forth - we would finally, really and truly, promise, behappy? And of course, when the car is a little more posh, the house alittle bigger, the sofa a little deeper, we persist with ourdissatisfactions.
Each shiny and alluring ceiling of material existence, once it is attained,turns almost instantaneously into a tawdry carpet underfoot. Get rid of thecarpet! Replace it with marble! But the marble, too, will, in due course,turn - or seem to - into cheap linoleum. Get rid of... The cycle repeatsitself endlessly, and will always end where it began - in disappointment.
It is amazing to reflect, but I remember Singapore's political leaderstelling the young not to forget how much better off they were than theirparents as far back as 1970, only five years after independence. Thirtyyears later, the politicians who were young then are telling today's youngthe same thing, and meeting the same incomprehension. Of course, I'm not better off. Of course, I will be satisfied if you politicians made my lifejust a little better. And of course, I won't be when you do.
Part of the reason few of us are convinced we are better off is thatprogress may be measurable but it cannot be directly experienced. It ispossible, of course, with the application of just a modicum of imagination,to recall how it felt living in a three-room Housing Board flat when one isnow living in a five-room HDB flat or a private condominium. But it takeseffort; the past is always a passing experience; and what occupies theforeground of one's mind is almost invariably the altogether imperiouspresent - and that bungalow I just saw in Queen Astrid Park.
Imagining progress over a longer timeframe - 100 years, say, or 500 - isvirtually impossible. You can tell a Londoner, for instance, look chum, 500years ago, your sewage system consisted of pigs, dedicated to St Anthonyfor some reason, roaming the streets, chomping on the muck. He might thank you for the information, but it wouldn't make an ounce of difference to his appreciation of the present.
Just 150 years ago, Londoners were still dumping everything - faeces,rotting vegetables and dead cats, not to mention 'the foul and gory liquidsfrom slaughter-houses' and 'the purulent abominations from hospitals anddissecting rooms', as one contemporary document put it - into stagnantpools that stood, as eternal as the Styx, between homes. It was not tillthe end of Victoria's reign, just 100 years ago, that all of London, richand poor, got a sewage system. One contemporary writer called it 'thegreatest achievement of our age'. And so it was.
But would it strike a contemporary Londoner as still great? Unless he issewage engineer, he wouldn't have given more than a moment's notice in his entire life to where his shit would go today after he flushes. Where itdidn't go to a hundred years ago would be a matter of profound indifference to him. He can flush now; it disappears; end of story. To all intents and purposes, that describes too our experience of progress: Time flushes it from our memories, both personal and historical.
Is it any wonder that progress, especially over long stretches of time, hasmade nobody happy? It is altogether real; economists and historians canprove its existence; but we can't experience, taste, feel or see it - soobviously, it has no power to move us. 'All told, except for the clamourand speed of society, and for trends in popular music, yourgreat-great-grandfather might say the contemporary United States' - orBritain, France, Japan and Singapore, for that matter - 'is the realisationof utopia'. Yet, virtually nobody in these countries feels that to be thecase.
As Mr Gregg Easterbrook notes in his learned recent book, The ProgressParadox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, 'the percentage ofAmericans who describe themselves as happy' has not budged since the 1950s, though the typical person's real income more than doubled through that period. Happiness has not increased in Japan or Western Europe in the past half-century, either, though daily life in both those places has grown fantastically better'.
Mr Easterbrook, perhaps one of best writers on science today, citesnumerous studies that show that the most efficacious way to gain happiness today is for people to focus on the present. Citing what he calls the emerging science of 'positive psychology', he presents evidence that people who make an effort to be optimistic, grateful, forgiving, public-spirited, self-sacrificing and kind are more likely to be happy.
It's astonishing that after all the progress humankind has achieved overthe centuries, all of wisdom should boil down to something so simple even a child can understand it: Just try to be a little kinder, folks. It mightactually make you happier than owning a Lexus.
YOU'VE never had it so good, Harold MacMillan told the British electoratein the late 1950s. They believed him and voted for him resoundingly. TheSecond World War had ended barely 15 years earlier; people could stillremember bombed-out London; they could tell old Mac was telling the truth.
But if Harold Wilson had repeated the same statement in 1970, say, or MrTony Blair this year, few in Britain would have agreed, though both wouldhave been telling the truth also.
Progress is measurable and quantifiable. The statistics prove beyond doubtthat people in the industrialised world - which includes much of Europe,North America, Japan, Australia, and newly industrialising economies likeSingapore and Taiwan - are far better off than they were not only five to10 years ago, but better off than human beings have ever been in history.And yet, why are so few of us happy? Why do so many of us go through life fervently believing that if only things were a little better - the car atad more posh, the house a trifle bigger, the sofa just a little deeper,and so on and so forth - we would finally, really and truly, promise, behappy? And of course, when the car is a little more posh, the house alittle bigger, the sofa a little deeper, we persist with ourdissatisfactions.
Each shiny and alluring ceiling of material existence, once it is attained,turns almost instantaneously into a tawdry carpet underfoot. Get rid of thecarpet! Replace it with marble! But the marble, too, will, in due course,turn - or seem to - into cheap linoleum. Get rid of... The cycle repeatsitself endlessly, and will always end where it began - in disappointment.
It is amazing to reflect, but I remember Singapore's political leaderstelling the young not to forget how much better off they were than theirparents as far back as 1970, only five years after independence. Thirtyyears later, the politicians who were young then are telling today's youngthe same thing, and meeting the same incomprehension. Of course, I'm not better off. Of course, I will be satisfied if you politicians made my lifejust a little better. And of course, I won't be when you do.
Part of the reason few of us are convinced we are better off is thatprogress may be measurable but it cannot be directly experienced. It ispossible, of course, with the application of just a modicum of imagination,to recall how it felt living in a three-room Housing Board flat when one isnow living in a five-room HDB flat or a private condominium. But it takeseffort; the past is always a passing experience; and what occupies theforeground of one's mind is almost invariably the altogether imperiouspresent - and that bungalow I just saw in Queen Astrid Park.
Imagining progress over a longer timeframe - 100 years, say, or 500 - isvirtually impossible. You can tell a Londoner, for instance, look chum, 500years ago, your sewage system consisted of pigs, dedicated to St Anthonyfor some reason, roaming the streets, chomping on the muck. He might thank you for the information, but it wouldn't make an ounce of difference to his appreciation of the present.
Just 150 years ago, Londoners were still dumping everything - faeces,rotting vegetables and dead cats, not to mention 'the foul and gory liquidsfrom slaughter-houses' and 'the purulent abominations from hospitals anddissecting rooms', as one contemporary document put it - into stagnantpools that stood, as eternal as the Styx, between homes. It was not tillthe end of Victoria's reign, just 100 years ago, that all of London, richand poor, got a sewage system. One contemporary writer called it 'thegreatest achievement of our age'. And so it was.
But would it strike a contemporary Londoner as still great? Unless he issewage engineer, he wouldn't have given more than a moment's notice in his entire life to where his shit would go today after he flushes. Where itdidn't go to a hundred years ago would be a matter of profound indifference to him. He can flush now; it disappears; end of story. To all intents and purposes, that describes too our experience of progress: Time flushes it from our memories, both personal and historical.
Is it any wonder that progress, especially over long stretches of time, hasmade nobody happy? It is altogether real; economists and historians canprove its existence; but we can't experience, taste, feel or see it - soobviously, it has no power to move us. 'All told, except for the clamourand speed of society, and for trends in popular music, yourgreat-great-grandfather might say the contemporary United States' - orBritain, France, Japan and Singapore, for that matter - 'is the realisationof utopia'. Yet, virtually nobody in these countries feels that to be thecase.
As Mr Gregg Easterbrook notes in his learned recent book, The ProgressParadox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, 'the percentage ofAmericans who describe themselves as happy' has not budged since the 1950s, though the typical person's real income more than doubled through that period. Happiness has not increased in Japan or Western Europe in the past half-century, either, though daily life in both those places has grown fantastically better'.
Mr Easterbrook, perhaps one of best writers on science today, citesnumerous studies that show that the most efficacious way to gain happiness today is for people to focus on the present. Citing what he calls the emerging science of 'positive psychology', he presents evidence that people who make an effort to be optimistic, grateful, forgiving, public-spirited, self-sacrificing and kind are more likely to be happy.
It's astonishing that after all the progress humankind has achieved overthe centuries, all of wisdom should boil down to something so simple even a child can understand it: Just try to be a little kinder, folks. It mightactually make you happier than owning a Lexus.
:p 
