Technological advancements have greatly improved our lives, but the question remains whether these changes have had a positive impact on our mental well-being. By comparing happiness in the past and today, we can argue that technological advancements have contributed to material happiness but may not have had as much of an impact on mental happiness.
Technology has been improving endlessly since humans started using tools. We started with the most primitive tools – stones and twigs – and have since created increasingly sophisticated tools. This journey of technological advancement hasn’t just led to the development of tools, but to major changes in all aspects of human life. This has been the case for nearly 10,000 years, from the Stone Age to the Iron Age to the Industrial Age, and continues to be the case. For example, during the Iron Age, the use of iron led to a dramatic increase in agricultural productivity, which led to population growth and urbanization. During the Industrial Revolution, the invention of machines replaced human labor and maximized productivity, laying the foundation for the modern capitalist economy.
These technological advances have had a profound impact on the history of human life. Technological advances in early agrarian societies increased food production and made settled life possible. Furthermore, the development of transportation allowed people to travel beyond geographical limits, and medical advances extended human lifespans and improved quality of life. Technological advancements have allowed humans to live increasingly comfortable and secure lives. But there’s another side to the coin. It is questionable whether technological advancements have contributed to increasing human happiness.
While technological advancements have enriched our lives, they have also increased anxiety and stress. For example, changes in the post-industrial work environment have left many people without jobs, and the digitization of modern society has created new problems of information overload and invasion of privacy. Has technological progress made humans happier? This is a complex question that cannot be answered easily.
Happiness is a subjective value that is still difficult to measure objectively. Philosophers and psychologists have discussed how to define and measure happiness, but we still don’t have a clear answer. I think the key to measuring happiness is to distinguish between mental and material happiness. Mental happiness is literally when a person feels happy. Material happiness is when the things that surround a person or that he or she owns are supposedly capable of making him or her happy.
I think the most objective measure is the OECD’s GNH (Gross National Happiness). GNH measures living standards, leisure time use, health, ecosystem health, education, community activity, and the health of governments, among other things, but it’s not perfect. It looks at the material values that can make a person happy, but it doesn’t tell us if that person is actually happy. It’s not easy to answer whether technological advances from the past have made humanity happier. This is because we can’t directly examine the happiness of people in the past. We can only speculate and look at historical records.
As a general rule of thumb, it seems likely that a Neolithic man living in a hut would be happier than a modern man. This is true not only for Neolithic people, but also for people from later periods.
But is this really the case? Happiness is not a special phenomenon, but simply a hormonal adjustment. To put it simply, there hasn’t been much physical change since the birth of modern humans, so there shouldn’t be much difference between us and the first modern humans 20,000 years ago. According to Yuval Harari, there is a certain upper and lower limit to human happiness, but the level of happiness is the same for both objects. If you compare a person in the past who was happy and a person in the present who is unhappy, you will find that the former is happier. In the end, it doesn’t matter how advanced the technology is, it matters which people in which situations you’re comparing.
People in unfortunate circumstances in the past, such as bad harvests or foreign invasions, would have been unhappier than most modern people. Conversely, people in happier times may have been similarly or even happier than happy people today. So are we as happy now as we were then? What’s certain is that we have more years of happiness than we used to. We have more people today than ever before, with higher life expectancy and lower infant and child mortality rates. When we do get sick, it’s usually curable. In other words, we can live longer and safer than in the past. Except in some third world countries. Since we live longer than in the past, the total amount of time we spend feeling happy has increased simply by thinking about it. In this sense, technological advances have contributed to happiness.
But has technological progress contributed to happiness if we look at happiness over the same period of time without considering longevity? Today, most people don’t struggle to feed themselves. Unlike in the past, fewer people are starving to death, and industrialization has made clothes affordable. Compared to the past, we are more comfortable. However, this is not proof that modern people are happier than people who lived in the past. Happy people would have been happy in any period, and so would unhappy people. But what about comparing material happiness through objective metrics?
If we were to compare the GNH of an average farmer in Joseon and modern times, the modern farmer would have a higher GNH. GNH is measured by income level, education, health, and leisure time, as mentioned above. If we take the income level of both farmers as the income of the average farmer in their respective time periods, the modern farmer will naturally have a higher income level. The modern farmer will also be better educated and will have more leisure time due to more advanced agricultural technology. The quality of leisure time is also expected to be better for the modern farmer, who has more things to do. Health is likely to be better for a modern farmer who is better nourished, less exposed to such threats, and easier to treat than a Joseon farmer who was exposed to many diseases and parasites. While we don’t have exact GNH numbers to compare, we can speculate that the modern farmer would have a higher GNH number if we think about a few things. According to GNH, modern farmers are happier than farmers of the past. Of course, this doesn’t mean that modern farmers are also happier psychologically.
Many people place a higher value on mental well-being. The argument is that if material happiness is at a similar level, the person who has achieved mental happiness, such as self-actualization, will be happier. This is a valid argument. However, if we are comparing past and present happiness, I don’t think we need to put much weight on the comparison of mental happiness because material happiness is clearly different. We don’t know if technological advances make people happier psychologically today than in the past. As Yuval Harari argues, people with pleasant biochemistry will be happy in any era. However, if we were to extrapolate physical happiness, which is based on the environment that surrounds a person, we would expect modern people to be happier because they are more educated, healthier, and have fewer ritualistic problems. Mental happiness is literally mental. But if you lack material things, it’s hard to say you’re happy. To summarize, technological advances have played a huge role in increasing material happiness. While it hasn’t contributed immensely to mental happiness per se, it has contributed to some extent to the increase in material happiness. Therefore, technological progress has increased the overall happiness of humanity.
