From the moment we are born we are taught by our parents what it means to be happy, and we follow these ideas, and sometimes change them to achieve a good state of mind.

In different historical periods, happiness has meant different things. For example, 

  • At the beginning of humanity, happiness was about having something to eat and a safe place to stay. 
  • Once we developed, food became more easily accessible and our reasons for happiness, in general, switched to overcoming other problems. For example, during wars, people enjoyed peace, and health during health epidemics.

With the advent of technology, our needs have been made even easier to overcome as medicine developed itself and has brought us solutions to simple problems such as fever that killed a lot of people, and even solutions to deadly problems such as blood clotting, severe diseases caused by various viruses and bacteria (as tuberculosis and hepatitis, etc.), diseases caused by imperfect DNA replication and cell duplication (that cause various tumors), and so on.

  • Today we live in times when we have easy access to food, we have a roof over our heads, we have medicine that helps us to get over various problems and have a longer lifespan (the average in the world being 72-73 years, compared to the 1900s when people died at an average age of 39 (Dr. Carrel, 1935)). We have the technology and science to give us access to information; we have peace, at least in Europe, North America, and much of Asia. However the rate of diagnosis of people with depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses that show unhappiness is increasing.

The World Health Organization tells us on January 30, 2020 that the number of people of all ages in the Whole World, who have had the opportunity to go to a doctor and have been diagnosed only with depression is of 264 million people and that almost 800.000 commit suicide each year.

Then, a study conducted in 2019 by Twenge, has shown that from 1973 until 2015 the degree of happiness in the USA has been steadily declining, and that is in the country with the highest GDP in the World.

The World Bank shows us that even worldwide the GDP has been growing steadily since 1960. 

So, we have more and more of what we need and yet we are more and more unhappy. Where is our problem?

We will analyze in the next article how we ended up being unhappy although having everything.

Sources:

Dr. Carrel Alexis. (1935). L’homme, cet inconnu. Paris: Librarie Plon.

Roser Max, Ortix- Ospina Esteban, Ritchie Hannah. (2019, 10 01). Life expectancy. Retrieved 05 12, 2021, from Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy

Twenge Jean. (2019). The Sad State of Happiness in the United States and the Role of Digital Media. World happiness report, https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2019/the-sad-state-of-happiness-in-the-united-states-and-the-role-of-digital-media/.

World Bank. (2021). GDP (current US $). World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD.

World Health Organization. (2020, 01 30). Depression. Retrieved 05 12, 2021, from World Health Organization: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/depression