I mean it also includes 2008, COVID and the Ukrainian war. I’m talking about material hedonic adaptation, not have things ever sucked in the past 100 years.
Suicide rates are also up and s/alcoholism/fentanyl addiction/. Funny you bring up gambling because gambling is also up. Rural areas famously peaked in the like mid 20th century and haven’t recovered.
My argument isn’t the typical “gosh the good old days”. It’s more just like the iPhone didn’t make us happier. I might also predict many of the trends you identified are more correlated with economic success than technological evolution.
If we keep on the trend we’re on and America has lost its post war economic domination, those numbers are going to keep looking worse, cute cat videos be damned.
Gadgets are not making us happier, but technological evolution is not just gadgets. It allows us to be less in pain, because we can cure diseases and injuries the way we could not before. Ability to avoid domestic abuse is also related to technological evolution - because it allows you to control the number of kids and it allows women to live independently.
My point is that hedonistic treadmill is a theory that holds only for the less important things. Yes, I get used to new better headphones and they do not fundamentally change my situation. But, when the evolution allows me to live with less pain or without disability, gives me more agency, then yes, I will be more happier and it will be durable result.
> Suicide rates are also up and s/alcoholism/fentanyl addiction/
I did not said it goes up all the time, I said it goes up and down. Despite growth of alcoholism it was much worst in some past periods.
> If we keep on the trend we’re on and America has lost its post war economic domination, those numbers are going to keep looking worse, cute cat videos be damned.
America does not need economic domination over the whole world to be happy. The unhappy people have nothing to do with overall world economic dominance. America could have happier people, if that was its political goal.
> I mean it also includes 2008, COVID and the Ukrainian war.
2008 does not compare to great depression, COVID and the Ukrainian war do not compare to WWII and Holocaust. Not even when we judge by what is going on in the Ukraine itself (as bad as it is, WWII was worst there). And specifically Americans did fought in WWII, bud did not in Ukraine.