Don't worry, be Happy

[RE]

Happy days are NOT here again for an increasing number of Amerikans, despite our supposedly robust economy and status as the #1 destination choice for global refugees from climate change, economic collapse and failed state status of their home countries.  One they arrive, they find out it's not really Beverly Hills 90210 for everyone in the land of wage slaves and debtors.



https://www.axios.com/2024/03/20/world-happiness-america-low-list-countries

U.S. hits new low in World Happiness Report

RE

[K-Dog]

From the report

Today's young people report feeling less supported by friends and family, less free to make life choices, more stressed and less satisfied with their living conditions, Lara Aknin, an editor of the report, told Axios.
    People under 30 today also feel less confident in government and have increased perceptions of corruption, she added.
    The report also found that older people are now happier than young people in North America — the opposite of many other regions.

"older people are now happier than young people in North America" 

Yes motherfuckers, so far we have survived.

RE, your recent postings on the horrors of underpopulation suggest the young have no purpose.  Most people can't find purpose on their own.  Families gave that purpose.  Children for the most part give parents purpose.  With that purpose gone, most people will have a tall glass of unhappiness.  Not everybody, just most.

[RE]

RE, your recent postings on the horrors of underpopulation suggest the young have no purpose.  Most people can't find purpose on their own.  Families gave that purpose.  Children for the most part give parents purpose.  With that purpose gone, most people will have a tall glass of unhappiness.  Not everybody, just most.

I think finding purpose has become difficult for all age groups, but since young people are just starting out in life, having it all out ahead of you without purpose seems like a really long way to go without a destination in mind.  Sort of like looking out on desert in all directions around you and trying to pick which way to go.  All you can do is just start walking.

It's one of the reasons I think Zombie movies are so popular.  People see themselves as Zombies, just blindly walking in a daze looking for flesh to consume.  When you look at other people on the subway, sitting in traffic, waiting on the checkout line at the supermarket, sitting on a park bench with their face inches from their cell phones...they all seem like Zombies too.  Politicians are Zombies...literally, Biden and Trump look like the Walking Dead.  Not only do we individually seem to lack purpose, we lack it as a civilization.  What is the purpose of all this running around to buy new things, see the latest movie, the endless pursuit of "progress"?  For 99% of the population also, it's a constant struggle just to pay your next mortgage payment or car loan.  What is the point of this never ending treadmill?  Even having sex isn't that much fun for young people anymore.

Back in the 60's, hippies had a purpose.  "Turn on, Tune In & Drop Out."  Now, even dropping out doesn't seem possible anymore.  So you take a Gig Job, and you just keep walking toward the horizon.  Everything's the same in front of you, behind you and to either side.  There's nothing there.

RE

[RE]

Oh come on!  Can this author or anybody on the Reddit Millenials subforum really be that clueless that they think the feeling of dread about the future and what is coming down the pipe is just PTSD from Covid?  Really?  The APA suggests we need "collective healing" to overcome the sense of impending doom.  This is what some idiots pay Psychiatrists $250/hr to tell them, then prescribe a bottle of Xanax on the way out the door.  Unbelievable.

No wonder these folks can't figure out if they're boys or girls.     We have rocketed past hopeless and now just need to be put out of our misery.

https://www.upworthy.com/gen-x-perfectly-explains-millennial-problems

Gen Xer explains sense of 'impending doom' that seems to define the Millennial generation


RE

[K-Dog]

No wonder these folks can't figure out if they're boys or girls.

Which would be fine.  But they are stupid on our time.

[jupiviv]

Hi everyone, just joined. Was a fan of this space/scene back in the 2010s. Good to see you guys are still around!

Re all time low happiness, I don't put much faith in these studies because their definitions of "happiness", "freedom" etc are usually several degrees removed from objective criteria and made up by humanities postgrads senselessly clawing their way up the neoliberalized academic hierarchy.

No doubt "happiness" is at an all-time low in the US but it is so the world over and there's an abyssal gap between the wealthiest 40-ish percent of the country vs the rest. And happiness studies tend not to reflect that because the wealthy/comfortable classes wanna be savvy and concerned about the future for various reasons, without that knowledge translating into real anxiety bc they're doing more than fine.

[K-Dog]

Welcome to the Diner jupiviv.

definitions of "happiness", "freedom" etc are usually several degrees removed from objective criteria

Not here.  I have been a disciple of Richard Wilkinson for a long time.  I have this book.

Objective Criteria is what measurement is all about if the science of happiness is going to mean anything.  If you are not objective you can't find causes and correlations.

Objective measurement reveals happiness is strongly tied to inequality.  People are social.  Unequal societies put up barriers between people and isolate them from each other.  Studies reveal that happiness is largely determined by healthy social connections.  Isolated people die sooner.  It is a fact.

Humans are social.  Society defines us.

[RE]

Hi everyone, just joined. Was a fan of this space/scene back in the 2010s. Good to see you guys are still around!

Always a pleasure when an old timer finds us again.    Since we didn't launch the original doomstead Diner until Feb 2012,  I'll assume by "2010s" you are talking about the whole decade.  Unless you were with us on my Reverse Engineering Yahoo Group, which I began in around 2009 I think after being booted off of the PeakOil.com website and a couple of others as well.  Do you remember the ScreenID you used bacck in those days?  I don't recognize your current one.

Personally, I think stretching the term "wealthiest" to 40% of the FSoA population puts too many people in the category of living the "American Dream" comfortably enough to be really "happy", which also is a kind of nebulous, hard to define idea.

However, if you look at FSoA income distribution, just to make the Top 20% of earners, you have to be making $100K/year.



Can you own a McMansion, have 2 late model carz in your garage and have enough money left over to pay your medical insurance, college tuition for your kids (at least helping them out if not fully paying for it), cover emergency expenses like major car repairs or a new roof on the McMansion, and take the occasinal vacation or go to a nice restaurant once a month?  Do you have 6 months worth of money to pay your bills if you lose your job?  Are you actually happy with the job you do have even if it is reasonably secure?

These are just the basic financial bellweathers for happiness, because if you don't feel secure financially, it's tough to be really "happy".  Then there are the less tangible things, like your marriage.  Are you and your spouse still happily married after 20 years with a great sex life (with each other, lol), and neither of you depends on antidepressants, legal or illegal drugs or alcohol to take the edge off a few times a week or even every day?  Your kids are both doing well in school and are happy with the sex equipment they were born with?  They have decent social lives where they actually meet people IRL, not just text each other all day on their iphones?

IMHO, I think few people in the FSoA who earn $100K/year would characterize themselves as happy.  Compared to another person of the same age and stage of life who is making min wage and grossing $50K working 2 jobs they are probably happi-er, but not really happy.  Perhaps they are satisfied with where they are if their debts aren't too big and they have a netflix subscription to keep them entertained after work, but I don't think that qualifies as happiness.

Finland is supposedly the happiest country, where their incomes are lower, but much more evenly distributed across the population.  They still have some sense of community in Finland I think, at least based on one documentary I saw while waiting in the Pain Clinic for my mnthly appointment to renew my opiates scrip.

So, IMHO, I think to have a reasonable shot at being happy in the FSoA, you need to be in the top 10%, not 40%.  But again, it's hard to say because it's hard to define happiness.

RE

[jupiviv]

Objective measurement reveals happiness is strongly tied to inequality.  People are social.  Unequal societies put up barriers between people and isolate them from each other.  Studies reveal that happiness is largely determined by healthy social connections.  Isolated people die sooner.  It is a fact.

I agree that happiness and freedom are parasitic on substantive equality, i.e equality in the holistic, classical meaning of equal decision making power on all levels of socialised production. As opposed to mere redistribution/welfare/charity. Nowadays both mainstream and alt media are cynically peddling the latter as one of the solutions to the crisis of our capital system. But 'more equality' is not and can never be equality.

Besides which, the point you made is precisely why these happiness studies are bs. They consistently erase class and even when not, elide its role into other stuff like 'perceptions of corruption' and 'feeling less supported by family'. So while I'm def with you on equality=happiness, I also think these positivistic studies are pseudo-scientific. If next year's report shows rebounding 'happiness' for the US or any other country, would that indicate actual improvement? Nope, it'd mean their data sets (borrowed from other, actually useful UN agencies) lined up a certain way; sanctioned astrology.

Always a pleasure when an old timer finds us again.    Since we didn't launch the original doomstead Diner until Feb 2012,  I'll assume by "2010s" you are talking about the whole decade.  Unless you were with us on my Reverse Engineering Yahoo Group, which I began in around 2009 I think after being booted off of the PeakOil.com website and a couple of others as well.  Do you remember the ScreenID you used bacck in those days?  I don't recognize your current one.

Definitely not the whole decade, like 2015 to 2018. I meant the collapse scene in general - economicundertow, ourfiniteworld, and of course your channel and forum. I remember your youtube streams with Steve from economic undertow and others, good times. I'm mostly catching up. Ourfiniteworld is still very active, as is energyskeptic. Not much going on over at economicundertow seems like. Any news on good ol Steve btw? I guess now that 'collapse' is reality, there are a lot of people talking about it but within different paradigms, all/most of which are often deeply flawed. Like a lot of online 'discourses' these days people agree on a distorted version of reality, then disagree on the particulars. The resource depletion and energy cost based approach is still a niche apparently. My thing has always been to combine Marxism with those two.

Anyway I don't think I was registered to the forum, or I was but never posted. I did occasionally post on ofw and undertow, as did you. We probably never interacted directly, so it's a pleasure.

Can you own a McMansion, have 2 late model carz in your garage and have enough money left over to pay your medical insurance, college tuition for your kids (at least helping them out if not fully paying for it), cover emergency expenses like major car repairs or a new roof on the McMansion, and take the occasinal vacation or go to a nice restaurant once a month?  Do you have 6 months worth of money to pay your bills if you lose your job?  Are you actually happy with the job you do have even if it is reasonably secure?

The last item on that list easily applies to the top 10%. And the (objective) answer to the rest would depend on location and various circumstances. Are mammy and daddy helping out somehow, and are you expecting a windfall when they finally kick it? What kind of job? How many kids? How many ex-wives/baby mamas/sugar babies? Which college and discipline for your menagerie of tots? These aren't new considerations, but were somewhat uncool to discuss in the broader culture. Nowadays people discuss them but indirectly. For example, the nexus of mammy and daddy, family connections, peer group etc = 'support system'.

Anyway so I'm not really focussing on whether people's lives are worse (duh), rather that the happiness crisis type stuff you're seeing in the news is feeding into a new cultural thing where going through hard times makes you cool and real. Performative trauma as it were. I've seen 'studies' where people earning >150k are saying they're barely getting by apparently. Of course shit is fucked, and the trauma culture is part of and stems from that, but it's also not a good basis to understand that.

And since you mentioned marriage, let me point you to what imo is solid objective social science:
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/middle-class-marriage-is-declining-and-likely-deepening-inequality/

Actually they sort of misrepresent their own findings. They say middle-class marriage rates have declined since the 80s but if you look at the excel files with the raw data for each year they've included under the graphs, the marriage rate for the 2nd highest wealth quintile (20 to 40 %) has been stable at ~75% since 1990. And for the highest quintile it has increased (~76 to 80 %) during that time. For the lower quintiles the gap and progressive decline since the 90s is precipitous. Also note that they specifically controlled for 33 to 44 y.os so that things like generational difference and teen mom aren't relevant.

Let's be honest, the middle-class was never the literal middle, even in the west/USA. Idk if marriage is happiness but the ability to be married at 33-44 y.o is definitely happiness versus 'my girlfriend is an anime character on my pc who talks to me via an AI language model' which is where a lot of the poorest 60% are at. Like I know you old timers aren't necessarily enamored by the trans thing (personally I'm fine with most of it) but that's not even on the radar of why most people are miserable. Nor is worrying about the college fund (they wish they were in that position). There is a sharp 40-60 (maybe 30-70) split that I believe is more important than 10-90 let alone 1-99. Of course, if you're talking globally I'd agree it's a 10-90 split.

[K-Dog]

Happiness may be hard to define.  To get around that objective measures are used.

Are divorced people in general more unhappy?

You don't look at questionnaires.  You don't get a caliper out to measure smiles.  Instead you look at the mortality tables and you find out that children of divorced families live on average four years less.  If the children themselves become divorced add another four years.  Is there a relationship between happiness and life expectancy?  Last I knew bears were still shitting in the woods.

If you found 1000 men who all own tools to turn wood and split the men into groups A and B by some criteria.  Something that does not interfere with turning wood, and ask which group is happier? 

Group A made 20% more things than group B last year.



Depressed people would make the difference.  And you never measured depression.  You don't know how to do that, but you can count wooden bowls.

It is counterintuitive, but by measuring indicators you get objective results that are far better than asking someone if they are happy or not.  The key to getting good results is to find a lot of indicators.

In 1907, Sir Francis Galton asked 787 villagers to guess the weight of an ox. None of them got the right answer, but when Galton averaged their guesses, he arrived at a near perfect estimate. When I first discovered this factoid it seemed supernatural but it is not really.

Shoot a couple dozen arrows at a target, average the position and you likely have a bulls eye.

Science done right is a good thing.

[RE]

Happiness is so subjective that you could make a case for just about any percentage, so any kind of study trying to determine such a thing isn't very useful anyhoww.  I mean, if you supply a heroin addict with enough supply and he had a nice place to shoot up safely, he's gonna be happy, right?  then there was that book back in the 70s, the "Happy Hooker".  Are any prostitutes happy?  The expensive Call Girls who only take the best clients and only have to flatback a few times a month to make a 6 figure income?  Maybe they are happier than Elon Musk's A List Vagina wives who work as baby factories for him?

Even dieing young doesn't necessarily mean you were unhappy.  Some folks live by the motto, "Live Fast, Die Young, leave a Good Looking Corpse".  Gven the divorce rate and the fact that rich men often go through several wives indicates they are never really happy either.  Money doesn't buy happiness, but neither does poverty.

The best you can do are look at some statistics on objective things, like how many mass shootings there are, how many suicides, how many homeless.  While there may be Happy Hookers out there, I don't think anyone who is homeless is happy about it.

Far as the rest of the collapse blogosphere goes, we've discussed that here and for the most part the old websites are gone or they've become repetitive in their content.  I try to keep things fressh by looking at the latest trends like the falling birthrate and the gender dysphoria that seems to be on the increase.  There's always some new manifestation of collapse popping up, so you don't have to stay glued to one concept and beat it to death, as some trolls like to do.  lol.

RE

[jupiviv]

Money doesn't buy happiness, but neither does poverty.

Takes the sting out of being poor though.

Far as the rest of the collapse blogosphere goes, we've discussed that here and for the most part the old websites are gone or they've become repetitive in their content.  I try to keep things fressh by looking at the latest trends like the falling birthrate and the gender dysphoria that seems to be on the increase.  There's always some new manifestation of collapse popping up, so you don't have to stay glued to one concept and beat it to death, as some trolls like to do.  lol.

RE

Yeah, collapse is a sum greater than its interconnected parts. I see it (the phenomenon itself) as a critique of the capital system. Not just capitalism but the whole thing, the rule of alienated wealth over society for millennia all leading to this glittering nightmare; unless we 'somehow' manage to transform the whole thing, like the metabolism of it not just the structure, into one of substantive equality.

I guess a lot of people can't deal with the interconnected aspect especially related to collapse. They want a linear story with one ending which is probably less depressing if you can't/refuse to see the plot holes. I don't know. But hey been nice chatting with y'all. I'll try to post when I can. Have a good one.

[TDoS]

Money doesn't buy happiness, but neither does poverty.

Takes the sting out of being poor though.

Define "sting"? Those of us born into the condition didn't even really think about it, or consider ourselves that. In part because there was also someone poorer down the block. By comparison, with a working man in the family at a factory rather than just a farmer, we had a TV and some rabbit ears and sure looked "rich" to some other in the holler. They only had a radio. Nobody had health care, black lung was knocking off the miners regularly so we attended family funerals couple times between the age of 10 and 15 that I remember, what college educations handed out with unlimited loans to anyone who wanted them, so they could major in ethnic studies or symbolism in prehistoric art of whatever passes for upper level education nowadays. We were 14 years old and most already smoking because it was cool. You want protein? Here is a trap and a gun..go figure out how to get some meat or go hungry.

American changed as to even what "poor" means. Look at what "not poor" means to RE. To heck with that, folks feel poor if they don't have the newest iPhone. Whoa is me...I am poverty stricken. So a lifestyle that today might seem Third World in modern America isn't even what "poor" is nowadays. 

So what is the sting of modern poor? Not living up to the lifestyles of the rich and famous, or poor as in how some of us grew up that wouldn't even be recognized by modern welfare recipients? Collecting mailbox money and cards, provided health care, job training, education benefits and help, able to afford TVs and heat and electricity not provided mostly by woodstoves, FOOD STAMPS. We knew some people we referred to as "reliefers", I think that meant they collected something government wise that was terribly embarassing, now THOSE folks were the poor. The rest of us started at age 10 with the trapline, firearms at 12 and were damn proud of helping to support our families because we weren't none of them damn "reliefers"...whatever that ephiphet meant. I just knew it was bad to be one.

Yeah, collapse is a sum greater than its interconnected parts. I see it (the phenomenon itself) as a critique of the capital system.

I think collapse is just the result of humans being human, the way we treat each other, our economic and social systems, the things we strive for and turn to bad ends, the dismissal of the collective good in favor of the individual gain, and all the other mechanisms that have encouraged us to be selfish, mean spirited, dogmatic, anti-science, conspiratorial and just outright self centered "me first" humans. 

[RE]

Nobody despises poor people more than poor people who got rich.

Yeah, back in the day, poor people were really poor.  Today's poor people have it too easy.  They get their tents from Walmart.    MKing slept in a cardboard box when he was a poor kid in Appalachia.  Today's poor kids get SNAP cards and school lunches.  In Appalachia, the poor kids ate bugs and chicken feed.  Alcoholic homeless people today get to drink brand name liquor,  MKings dad drank moonshine made from pigshit.

Yup, we need to go back to the good old days when it meant something to be poor.

RE

[jupiviv]

Define "sting"? Those of us born into the condition didn't even really think about it, or consider ourselves that. In part because there was also someone poorer down the block. By comparison, with a working man in the family at a factory rather than just a farmer, we had a TV and some rabbit ears and sure looked "rich" to some other in the holler. They only had a radio. Nobody had health care, black lung was knocking off the miners regularly so we attended family funerals couple times between the age of 10 and 15 that I remember, what college educations handed out with unlimited loans to anyone who wanted them, so they could major in ethnic studies or symbolism in prehistoric art of whatever passes for upper level education nowadays. We were 14 years old and most already smoking because it was cool. You want protein? Here is a trap and a gun..go figure out how to get some meat or go hungry.

'We' didn't write this post, you did. And it's pretty clear you thought about it a lot. You just don't know what to do about it (for good reason) and rationalise that impotence into some kind of special superpower that you imagine wielding over people who 'don't know what poor is'. Which is patent bullshit. You are/were poor, poor people in the first world are considerably better off now compared to then, without thereby being freed from the shackles of their social betters. This selective redistribution (which is a tautology; redistribution and social welfare within an unequal social system is always selective) is possible at the expense of the vast majority of human beings globally who were abysmally poor then and even moreso now. And no immediately discernible ways to fundamentally alter this state of things. That's all it is.

I think collapse is just the result of humans being human, the way we treat each other, our economic and social systems, the things we strive for and turn to bad ends, the dismissal of the collective good in favor of the individual gain, and all the other mechanisms that have encouraged us to be selfish, mean spirited, dogmatic, anti-science, conspiratorial and just outright self centered "me first" humans. 

There is no innate human nature. If there were, the earliest modern humans woulda created and destroyed industrial civ tens of thousands of years ago. The conditions and processes of social organization which led to surplus accumulating slave society, the one we inhabit, are also the ones that created the potential for a universal humanity. But just because something can happen doesn't mean it will. Just because eggs can lead to chickens doesn't mean they always do. Sometimes an egg is just an egg.