what if their happiness was just a coping mechanism for their unhappy conditions?
>>18246620I think people mean that they lived in the moment more often than us in the present. Surely that doesn't go for everyone back then or now, and they probably were more worried about food and tribal cuties than anything.
>>18246620The basic principle is nothing ever changes. Happiness and other emotions return to baseline whenever extreme events aren't happening. It's only a question of allotment, what did they do for their happiness. Without drugs, TV, or internet they certainly derived more happiness from social interaction and worldly tasks, more sadness too. They were stronger and healthier because their lifestyle demanded it, but injuries and disease were more critical when they happened. They believed they were chosen by God to rule the world, but they lacked the power, while people today have godlike nuclear superpowers but live in a crowded earth. Nothing about the human condition has changed, just the shape of society.
>>18247064Upvote
>>18246620Nobody was ever happy as a low status person in an agricultural society and anyone who says they were is a retard and using the fact that they couldn't complain on 4chan or take modern antidepressants as evidence that they were "happy" just makes you even more retarded.
>>18247110you jest but some people on this board would actually make such a claim
>>18247441Ya some people claim that people were happier in the past because the people making those claims are retarded
>>18247450It's obviously grug speak for other things that really were different in the past, like the world map being less detailed and the population far lower. A man's individual contribution was probably more important, things like that. I'd say the idea of modern society being better because "I'm not white and I'm a leftist" is more shortsighted in that it doesn't try to understand the past.
>>18247110>>18247450Do you have evidence subsistence agriculturalists were perpetually unhappy?
>>18247110They had sex so they were probably happier than the modern man
>>18246620Their suffering came from actual physical tangible things happening around them, with a solution or a passage of time resolving these things, a lot of people's suffering today comes from believing in certain ideas or established ways that are purely invented and upheld by idea (underachieving in their goals in a certain industry, financial failures etc.) these things can cause tremendous (mental) suffering, as ideas can have their goalposts moved indefinitely
