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[MUSIC]
In the last few lessons, we have discussed the scientific revolution,
and the impact that this revolution had on the world and on humankind.
We saw that the last 500 years
have witnessed a breathtaking series of changes.
The Earth has been united into a single economic and historical sphere.
The economy has grown exponentially.
And humankind today, enjoys the kind of wealth
that used to be the stuff of fairy tales.
Science and industrial, and the Industrial Revolution, have
given humankind super human powers, and practically limitless energy.
The social order, has been completely transformed, as
have been politics, daily life and human psychology.
But are we happier? Did the wealth humankind
accumulated over the last few centuries, translate into
more happiness? Did the discovery of inexhaust,
inexhaustible energy resources,open before us inexhaustible
stores of bliss? Going further back in time, we can expand
this question and ask about the entire hist, human history.
The whole 70,000 years of history.
Did these 70,000 years of revolutions and changes
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revolution, made the world a better place to live in?
Are we today eh, happier than the hunter-gatherers
that lived here tens of thousands of years ago?
If not, if the answer to this question
is the negative, we're not happier than our ancestors.
All these revolutions and changes did not, did not
make the world a better place to line in.
Then what was the benefit?
What was the point about all these changes?
What was the point of inventing and discovering, agriculture, and cities.
And writing, and
money and empires and science and industry and all that.
Isn't the bottom line, we are not happier than our ancestors?
Historians seldom ask such questions.
They do not ask for example, whether the citizens of Babylon were happier
than the hunter-gatherers that lived in Mesoptamia 20,000 years ago.
Historians seldom ask whether the rise of
Islam, made Egyptians more pleased with their lives.
Historians seldom ask whether the collapse of the European empires in Africa
eh, made people in Africa happier or more miserable than they were before.
Yet these are the most important questions that we
can ask about history. For what could be the purpose of
achieving economic growth, or political freedom, or social equality,
if it does not result in making people happier?
Now, few have studied seriously in a
scientific way, the long term history of happiness.
But, almost every scholar and layperson, has
some vague preconception about the history of happiness.
One common view, points out that human power,
the human capabilities, have increased dramatically throughout history.
Since humans usually use their power to alleviate
miseries and to fulfill their aspirations.
It follows according to this view, that we will have much more
power than our ancestors, we must be happier, than our medieval ancestors.
And they in turn, must have been than happier, then say stone age
hunter- gatherers. But this progressive view of the
history of happiness is not very convincing.
As we have seen many times during this course, more power and new kinds
of behaviors and skills, do not necessarily make life better and happier.
For example, when humans learned how to farm during the agricultural revolution,
the collective power of humankind, to shape the environment.
And to control what is happening in the world, definitely increased.
Human were far more powerful after the agricultural revolution.
But the fate, the living condition, the daily life of individual humans after
the agriculture revolution, was in many respect worse than previously.
Peasants had to work harder than foragers,
and received in return a less nutritious diet.
Peasants were far more exposed to disease and to exploitation.
And to
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from their hunter-gatherer ancestors.
So the agricultural revolution, it definitely increased the
power of humankind, but not necessarily its happiness.
Similarly, this is not the only example.
Another example is the rise and spread of the European empires in the modern age.
The spread of the European empire, certainly increased
the collective power of humankind. By circulating
ideas, circulating technologies and crops. And opening
new avenues of commerce and industry. Yet all
these developments and changes. And all these growing power of humanity,
was hardly good news for the tens of millions of Africans and
Native Americans and aboriginal Australians, who found themselves, eh,
eh, enslaved by the Europeans. Given the
proven human tendency to misuse power, not
to use power to the best ends. It seems very, very naive to
believe, that there is a direct line leading from power to happiness.
That the more power humankind has, the, the happier it must be.
And therefore the increase in human power throughout history,
must have been accompanied by an increase in happiness.
It's very, very naive to think along such lines.
Some critics of this positive view take actually a diametrically opposed position.
They argue that there is not a positive correlation
between power and happiness. There is actually an inverse
correlation between power and happiness. Power corrupts.
As humankind gained more and more power through history, it
created a very cold, mechanistic world, which is ill-suited
for the real needs of Homosapiens. Evolution,
according to this view, more than shaped our minds and
bodies for the life of hunter-gatherers. The
transition first to agriculture, and later on to industry,
actually condemned human beings to live unnatural lives.
That cannot give full expression to our inherent instincts.
And cannot satisfy our deepest yearnings and needs.
Life may be very comfortable today, but nothing in the comfortable life
of the urban middle class, can approach the wild excitement.
And the sheer joy experienced by
a forager band on a successful mammoth hunt.
This is a romantic view of history.
Yet this romantic insistence on seeing the dark side of
every invention. And every you, in every development in
history, is as dogmatic as the belief in the inevitability of progress.
Yes, it is true that perhaps today we are out of
touch with our inner hunter-gatherer, but
it's not all bad. All the developments of history are not
necessarily all of them bad. For example, over the last two centuries,
modern medicine has decreased child mortality from about 33% to less
than 5%.
Can anybody, can anyone seriously doubt that
this made a huge contribution to the happiness.
Not only of chose children who would otherwise have died from diseases,
but also to the happiness of their parents, and families and friends?
A third position about, a third common position about
the long term history of happiness, takes a middle road.
It argues that until the scientific revolution, there
was indeed no clear correlation between power and happiness.
Medieval people may indeed have been more miserable than our hunter-gatherer
ancestors tens of thousands of years ago. But according
to this position, in the last few centuries, after the
scientific revolution, or during the scientific revolution, humans have
finally learned how to use their power more wisely.
The triumphs of modern medicine are just one example of this.
Other unprecedented achievements of humankind, following
or during the scientific revolution, include the steep decline in violence.
And the virtual disappearance of international wars
,which we discussed in the previous lesson.
And also the near elimination of large scale famine, of
fewer and fewer people on average that die today from starvation and famine.
So this is a middle, a middle eh, approach to the history of happiness.
Yes, until the scientific revolution, increasing the power
did not lead to a increase in happiness.
But science has given us the ability,
the wisdom, to finally link power and happiness.
And in the last few decades and centuries, an increasing power does indeed cause a
significant increase in human happiness. Yet this too, is an oversimplification.
First, because this view bases its optimistic assessment of the
modern age, on actually a very small sample of years.
The majority of humans began to enjoy the
successes of modern medicine no earlier then 1850.
And the drastic drop in child mortality is a 20th Century phenomena.
It's only a phenomena of the last 100 years.
Mass famines continued to plague much of
humanity until the middle of the 20th Century.
[COUGH].
International wars to became rare, as we saw in the last lesson.
Only after 1945, largely thanks to the new threat of complete nuclear annihilation.
Hence, even if the last few decades have been some kind of unprecedented golden age
for humanity, this is a very short time. And it is too
early to know whether this represents a fundamental shift in the
currents of history. Or, an ephemeral wave of good fortune.
Secondly, the second problem with this over
optimistic view of modern, of the modern age.
Is that even if this brief golden age of
the last half-century eh, eh, was very good for us,
it may have been during this period that
we sold we sow the seeds of future catastrophe.
Over the last few decades, with all our good fortune, we've also been disturbing
the equil, the ecological equilibrium of our planet in numerous new ways.
with what is likely to
be very difficult and dangerous consequences for ourselves.
There is a lot of evidence indicating that we are destroying over the last few
decades, the very basis for human prosperity,
in a kind of *** of reckless consumption.
So this golden age of the last few decades.
What, what's happening is
that maybe we are experiencing very good years.
But we will be paying for them a very,
very high price in the next decades and century.
Nobody really knows what are going to be the consequences of the dramatic
ecological disturbances that we are responsible for in, in, in, in this age.
finally, another reason to eh, eh, to be cautious about this overoptimistic
view of modernity. Is that we can congratulate ourselves on
the unprecedented accomplishment of modern homosapiens,
only if we completely ignore the fate of all other animals.
Much of the material wealth that shield us today
against disease and famine, was accumulated at
the expense of laboratory monkeys and dairy cows.
And millions and billions of conveyor belt chickens.
Tens of billions of such animals, have been subjected over the last two centuries
to a regime of industrial exploitation eh, whose cruelty has no precedent
in the annals of planet Earth. If we accept even just
a tenth of what animal rights activists are saying, then
modern industrial agriculture may well turn out to be the
greatest crime in history. Which caused massive suffering.
When we come to evaluate global happiness, it is of course wrong to count
only the happiness of say, the upper classes.
Or only the happiness of Europeans.
Or only the happiness of men, and not take
into account the happiness of say, women or Africans.
Perhaps it is also wrong to eh, consider only the happiness of humans, when
we try to assess global happiness levels. And forget all about
the happiness or suffering of other animals.
So this are the problems with this third option of eh, eh viewed modernity.
As an era in which happiness really began to rise
thanks, thanks to the rise in, in, in human power.
Another problem with all the views which we have discussed
so far, is that they discuss happiness largely as a product
of material factors.
Such as your health, your diet, your wealth, and so forth.
If people are richer and healthier, according to
this approach, then they must also be happier.
But is this really so obvious? Philosophers and priests
and poets throughout history, have thought about the nature
of happiness and the causes of happiness.
And many of the greatest minds of humankind for
the last centuries and millennia, came to the conclusion
that social, and ethical, and spiritual factors have as
great an impact on our happiness as material conditions.
Though nobody could argue with the fact that the material
condition of people, at least today, are much better than in the past.
But if happiness depends not only on material condition,
but also on social and spiritual factors, and so forth.
So it doesn't necessarily mean that we are happier than our ancestors.
Perhaps people in modern affluent
societies, suffer greatly from alienation and
meaninglessness, despite their prosperity.
And perhaps our less well-to-do ancestors did
manage to find a lot of contentment and
joy in community relations, in religion, in
a bond with nature, and things like that.
We will try to tackle these questions in the next segment, that will be dedicated
to understanding different theories about what really makes people happy.
And how these theories reflect upon human history, and the history of happiness.
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