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Comment by comboy | Hacker News Reader

So what do you guys think: hunter-gatherers, then feudal farmers and then now - how does median/average suffering per capita compare?

We all have better luxuries now than kings had hundreds of years ago. Less famine, life threatening situations and so on. But we do have a way to compare ourselves with best parts of lives of many interesting people around the world. We have antibiotics and painkillers, but we also seem to have way more options and anxiety.

I'd assume there's much less physical pain. But what about suffering that can be caused by things like depression?

Do you think it's about the same, much better, slightly worse?

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We have the luxury of operating at much higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs than generations past. I would much rather worry about whether my life truly matters than worry about whether my life will immediately come to an end if I can't kill or grow enough food. Depression was probably always an issue, today we just have the privilege of it being the most pressing problem for many of us.

Many of the most memorable, meaningful, and exhilarating experiences in my life are derived from times that were desperate, physically gruelling and dangerous. I think it's what we're designed for. A ship is safe in harbour but that's not what ships are for.

The periods of depression in my life were quite safe and comfortable, and strongly associated with wondering if my life really matters, and you can't think about that too hard because when you do, you recognize that, no, your life is actually pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things.

Hunter Gatherers didn't have that problem, because their whole world revolved around their one little tribe, and at that scale, yes, their actions and choices really did matter.

> A ship is safe in harbour but that's not what ships are for.

What a powerful little phrase I’d never heard before. Thanks for sharing this!

For background on the quote: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/12/09/safe-harbor/

"The periods of depression in my life were quite safe and comfortable"

The problem is many find a way out of depression via suicide, so that is a very real danger for the chronically depressed.

> I would much rather worry about whether my life truly matters than worry about whether my life will immediately come to an end if I can't kill or grow enough food.

I cant help but think negotiating those situtations is exaclty what the human needs to avoid depression. Maybe you chances of dying young are much higher, like 30% vs 1%. But die young or die old, those humans really lived.

You can still really live. You don’t need society to change to allow you to live a life of subsistence. But don’t forget those people suffered dearly. Infant mortality, disease, crippling injuries, etc. They would have killed for your luxuries. The grass is always greener on the other side.

> We have the luxury of operating at much higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs than generations past.

IIRC, there's is strong reason to discount Maslow's heirarchy as an explanation of anything across different times and cultures, as the number, identity, and order of groups of needs had been shown to not consistently match his and to vary both culturally and, within a culture, in response to changing circumstances.

His work was never peer reviewed if I recall so it is suspect. Can anyone provide more info on the validity of his work and research methodology?

I am certain it is not that simple.

There is a cartoon where a scientist travels to the future and finds the world has become an utopia. A friendly host shows the scientist the wonders of his world, and then says something like "no one is poor or hungry anymore, we have everything to cover everyone's needs, even a beautiful house for each". The scientists asks "Why not two houses?". The end panel is the scientist getting back into his machine while a nuclear mushroom looms in the background.

My point is, people doesn't seem to be made to be fully happy. Yes, we enjoy the high of happiness, but soon we come down and take it for granted, then something else we don't have is what will make us happy. I think this an asset, what makes us human and what encourages us to strive for something more. This is also a liability, as we easily lose perspective and purpose.

Do you have a link or name of the cartoon?

SMBC: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/time-machine

This was the one. I still think the version in my head is better.

Thanks for the link!

This is just my personal perspective for the most part, but I think a lot of the anxiety I feel stems from innate, primal survival instincts that have no real need anymore in my life position. For instance even though I could support myself and probably a small family on my current compensation, but I still feel the urge to get a raise. I still worry about my motorcycle getting stolen off the street even though it's a leisure vehicle and is a used, small bike that costs less than what I make in a week. Neither failing to get a good raise nor having my motorcycle stolen has any significant impact on my basic needs (heck, the latter would statistically improve it), but I think a primal urge to acquire and keep resources fueling my anxiety over these things.

These urges used to be necessary - the cave man that didn't worry about feeding himself and didn't worry about having his stuff stolen probably had a tougher time surviving - but I think the urges remain but there's no real outlet in many developed parts of the world.

As an addendum, I think a good way to mitigate this is to find things that satisfy these urges when possible, and be serenely introspective about the things you can't. When I stress out about material resource, I calculate how long I can live comfortably with no income and try to tangibly see hoe wide my safety net is (granted, this is not something that may result in reduced stress for everyone). But some things just need to be accepted as a part of myself. For instance when I feel the temptation to sleep with other women I just have to accept that this a part of an innate instinct to impregnate as many women as possible, instilled through hundreds of millennia of evolution in a society vastly different from the one I currently live in.

I would contest the conflation of financial security with loss aversion / primal urges:

- Loss aversion for me for physical goods is today defined by value of the item relative to my income. I probably won't fret over losing a water bottle or tearing a t-shirt, but losing my house is a real problem. 1 week salary worth for me is a ton of money since it has the potential to add up quickly - while I have gotten to a point where I have to lose way more water bottles than I got to get to a worry state. When I lost one of my bicycles - I was pissed but thankfully it didn't break it. I still followed up with cop reports etc. because it worried me about the garage safety. This doesn't tie into urges / financial security at lower levels.

- Financial security chase is innate - probably the closest to a primal urge. But I worry about calling it that because I don't know if having enough resources for the long term was a real concept. I can see how animals look at short term need addressal, I don't know if they really have a safety net mentality. That is a new one - but I may be splitting hairs. My theory is that it is a harkening to 'retirement' - something that's out of reach for more and more folks every day.

- primal urges for me are the base drives, the lower level of Mazlow's Hierarchy + progenies.

RE Anxiety's link to anyone of these: I am assuming that comes down to your current life situation + personal makeup.

Finally I always assumed folks talk about 'Medical depression' as a diagnosed scientifically + possibly treated mental issue. I wouldn't conflate that with Anxiety either. Anxiety might have you feeling down - but that isn't depression. The fact that we naturally tend to call feeling down as 'depressed' is probably one of the reasons depression doesn't get the attention it needs. (Again I don't understand depression myself thankfully, I am placing my trust in the doctors here).

I still worry about my motorcycle getting stolen off the street even though it's a leisure vehicle and is a used, small bike that costs less than what I make in a week.

Dude, that one's easy. Look at your cheap crappy bike and laugh. "Hah! What kind of self respecting thief would even bother stealing a crappy bike like this?"

That's essentially what I do. I deliberately park it next to more expensive motorcycles. As my MSF instructor told me, "By far the best theft deterrent is to park next to the Harley-Davidson".

Then don't worry about it anymore, you're covered :)

Peasants in a feudal society are constantly getting abused by the “nobles”. That is: beaten, robbed, property destroyed, forced into involuntary labor, tortured, raped, killed, often just for looking at one of the nobles the wrong way or for sport. Life was precarious, and everyone was constantly stressed about it.

Not to mention famine was common, and parents would e.g. go hungry for long stretches of time so their kids could subsist on half-rations of nutrient-poor staples. In such an environment, domestic violence is common, and it is difficult to make any kind of long-term plans. You just try to survive day by day.

Then there’s also literally backbreaking labor, poor sanitation, poor healthcare, parasites, the equivalent of smoking a few packs a day by sleeping next to a wood fire, infant mortality of >50%, and so on.

Source: this stuff was still rampant in the 1960s in rural southern Mexico, and still happens today in many countries around the world. You can still interview people who grew up with that kind of terror.

Back during WW1, what we now know as PTSD was called "Shell Shock". I wonder what the depression and anxiety rates would be if we used modern psychiatric diagnosis techniques against say, a WW1 soldier, or maybe a medieval peasant.

Given the research on blast induced brain damage, shell shock probably was significantly caused due to physical damage.

i don’t think we are anywhere close to having the requisite tools for such a comparison. the subjective conscious experience is complicated.

>We all have better luxuries now than kings had hundreds of years ago.

If by luxuries we mean trinkets, then yes.

But power is also a luxury, and kings had it.

A nice house is also a luxury, and kings had the best (and actually, several).

Free time is the biggest luxury of all, and kings had it (what with personal cooks, a ton of attending stuff, etc).

The ability to influence your society is a luxury, and kings had it in spades.

A sense of purpose is also a luxury, and kings had it handed to them (e.g. leading their nation, etc).

Luxury is also comparative, and you don't miss what you don't even know (e.g. a 16th century king wouldn't miss not having internet). On that comparative level, to their peers, kings were above everybody else.

So, yeah, they didn't have Advil and iPhones, but their lives could be very much better than someone who had.

Hunter gatherers didn't necessarily suffer that much. Sure, they faced a lot of environmental challenges like bugs, a lack of air conditioning, hunger, and serious diseases like malaria and smallpox, but they arguably had much easier social customs than we do now.

There were no clothes, no laws, no social signaling for the most part. If you didn't like your tribe, I'm sure you were free to run away and eat berries in the forest and try to figure it out yourself.

These days being homeless is illegal and they face a lot of harassment. You are forced to conform and commute to a job to pay for a bed to sleep in.

>There were no clothes, no laws, no social signaling for the most part. If you didn't like your tribe, I'm sure you were free to run away and eat berries in the forest and try to figure it out yourself.

What archaeological or anthropological evidence are you basing these assumptions on? Why would hunter gatherers not wear clothes, when they can offer useful protection against the elements? Why would they not have common customs or taboos ("laws?") at least at the level of families and clans when even gorillas have some semblance of it?

It seems as if you're just assuming the past was some idyllic and anarchist inversion of modernity.

I agree with your comment.

> Why would hunter gatherers not wear clothes, when they can offer useful protection against the elements?

I was curious about this and looked it up. Apparently there was some period of time during which humanity did not wear clothes. This has been determined by looking at the DNA of hair lice versus clothes lice and seeing where they diverged: http://news.ufl.edu/archive/2011/01/uf-study-of-lice-dna-sho...

That went in a direction I didn't expect! Very interesting, thanks :)

The occasional brush with a health condition, serious injury, and/or surgery hints to me that we have become so well protected from physical pain that we barely remember what we are so lucky to avoid.

The threat of disease became much higher when cities appeared.

I think we exchanged physical suffering for emotional suffering, but maybe its about the same.

Wheaton needs to lift heavy. Exercise is known to cure male depression and many people on HN (myself included) can testify to it's effectiveness and the positive outcome in their lives.

It's nice there are some treatments now, however modest.

Also nice is that the illness is sufficiently accepted that a guy who works on TV can talk about it publicly (though perhaps uniquely and I suppose with some risk)

The notion that we live better than the kings of old is absurd. Even materially one can ask Where is my castle? where are my tracks of land? where are my ships and armies? Where is my gold and gems? Where are my servants and slaves?

Here is your tea, sugar, salt, and spices each for a pittance. Here are your 600 thread count sheets, your satin for a song, your comfortable house that heats & cools itself. Your telephone and computer, which do the work of an army of couriers & mathematicians. Your Netflix subscription, which can keep you endlessly entertained.

And, if you want ships and armies, you can always join the military and pursue a command. Remember, many kings of old were not just politicians with military powers bestowed on a purple cushion, they were war figures who rose to the top of the bloodshed. Think Andrew Jackson, Washington, Grant.

Perhaps my tastes are too low but for food there is nothing better than cooked meat of which the kings had in abundance. Netflix is a (virtual) substitution for real drama, real romance , and real violence. If your gonna count the netflix you might as well just say The Matrix is material utopia.

OK, but you can eat fresh corn-fed beef, grass-fed beef, chicken, bison, venison, kangaroo, turkey, tuna, salmon, halibut, duck, swordfish, pork, lamb, sheep, eel, clam, oyster, mussel, lobster, crab, ... shall I go on?

I myself have a pretty basic palate but the kings did enjoy quite a variety of foods. http://www.picturebritain.com/2012/11/whatdidhenryVIIIeat.ht...

Either way the point is that Materially the kings were exceedingly wealthy and if you just translate what they had to today they still remain so.

> hunter-gatherers, then feudal farmers and then now - how does median/average suffering per capita compare?

I think as a man you have evolutionary pressure to spread your seed as much as possible, that pressure manifests itself as depression. I don't think that has changed.

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