Imagine living somewhere and feeling miserable, and everywhere there are billboards and ads everywhere saying "Remember that you are happy! All the metrics are better! Oh you're not happy, you must be confused or wrong in some way."
So what's wrong with these metrics? That they are an aggregate, synthetic measurement attempting to measure something subjective, or at very least measuring qualities that may not be the causal factors for "happiness".
I'm not suggesting that these are the wrong metrics necessarily, but rather that work may need to be done in the soft and squishy world of "self development" or "spiritually", so that people may be able to create happiness and joy, and eliminate aspects of life that do not support that.
For example, learning about nutrition, exercise, healthy detox pathways, emotional health (through whatever lens appeals to each person), relationships, purpose, and more.
I think honestly there is a bit of a crisis of meaning: humans realized it's a rather challenging place to live, so we/they built technology and civilizations, and now many more people are living more "comfortable," "safe" lives, and in the absence of an external threat, are lacking in purpose. Some people think we need some external threat, so risks like damaging the environment are framed as a "war against climate change", because thus far, external threats have been good motivators. However, I'm sick and tired of being motivated and seeing life as a battle, and I know I'm not alone. In this period of objective peace and prosperity, I'd love if more people shifted their focus inward, to discovery fountains of love and creativity, and use that creative energy to shape the world and life towards further connection and play. This won't happen on a mass scale if most people are physically and emotionally unhealthy, fighting with family, fighting with people in war, and avoiding intentional inner development.
For those of you that think this doesn't matter, imagine trying to build something, and all of people you're working with have PTSD, or can't stay motivated for more than 5 mins without scrolling instagram?
Imagine camping on another planet looking up at an "aurora", or creating your dream movie by talking to an AI, or perhaps even living out your wildest dreams through VR, or for those that think this way, "hacking the matrix" and living it for real.
"Hacking the matrix" could be finding new properties of physics that make the impossible possible, it could be learning that we are in a simulation, or it could be something more "mystical", the real point is making a quantum leap in what is possible as a human.