>>23947271>>23947064A lot of people think their life is terrible because of what’s called the hedonic treadmill. You get used to how great your life is. No one had a hot shower until 50 years ago. So I try to do this thing when I’m standing in a hot shower. My friend, pointed this out to me. Just for a moment, you think: no one you admire from 100 years ago had this simple pleasure in life. We’re in the top percentile in terms of the luck we’ve had. The lives we live, the calorific intake we take for granted, the fact that our children don’t die in the first year, modern medicine, and the entertainment we have. We’re living like kings. And yet life has never been objectively better and subjectively worse, because the nature of humanity is that our desires are mimetic. So we’ve got this thing where you ask, how happy are you? Well, it’s your quality of life minus envy. That’s how happy you are. And it’s easy to look at everyone else, see how they’re doing, and not take pleasure in what you have.
