Why We Have More Opportunity Than Our Parents Yet Are Less Happy
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From talking to a lot of my friends who are in their 20s and 30s, I’ve seen a common thread in all of us. The need to accumulate experiences and things. The need to travel to as many places as possible. To collect hobbies. Everyone has new resolutions. Learn a new language. Or two. Or three. Skydive. Change jobs. Go back to school and change careers altogether. Learn to play an instrument. We decide to write novels in our free time or take up a new sport. We spend hours in the gym trying to get our body fat percentage into the single digits. We have the time and means and education to pursue careers and hobbies and personal achievement goals that our parents and their parents before them could never have even dreamed of. Isn’t this the American Dream? Isn’t that why many of our ancestors traveled here to begin with? To give us choices and financial security that they themselves never had growing up? Yet we’re a notoriously unfulfilled generation. Many of us are neurotic, directionless, struggling with feelings of inadequacy, still rebelling against our parents, still trying to find ourselves, constantly struggling with existential angst…why?
Why do we have so much already and still have so many opportunities to accumulate more, yet we’re somehow less personally fulfilled than our parents were at our ages? My parents had a fraction of the education I had. Where they lived felt so hopeless they actually felt like they had to switch whole countries and come to America, a place where they barely knew the language. They had a lot less skills and education and had to take whatever jobs they could get and struggle to raise kids. They constantly had to do without to get by. They stayed with their respective employers until retirement. Sure they had some regrets, but they were nowhere near as consuming as those of many of the young (and some would argue spoiled and self-indulgent) people of my generation, who are already complaining about quarterlife crises. Why are our parents and grandparents so much happier and less regretful, even though they grew up with so much more responsiblity so many less toys?
Two speeches from the TED Conferences may shed some light. Before going any further, what exactly is TED? TED is an international conference that brings together a wide range of thinkers every year to talk about a variety of topics. Here’s a description of the TED Conference from their own website:
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.
The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).
This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. Almost 150 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week. These videos are released under a Creative Commons license, so they can be freely shared and reposted.
Our mission: Spreading ideas.
You can go to their website or check their video collection on Youtube and see many of the intellectually stimilating speeches they have from some very intense thinkers. But I want to focus on two speeches in particular, which I think fit together well to provide the answers we’re looking for in this case. One speech is by Barry Schwartz, the author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
Dan Gilbert’s speech is called “Why Are We Happy? Why Aren’t We Happy” and it’s described on the TED website as follows:
Psychologist Dan Gilbert challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel real, enduring happiness, he says, even when things don’t go as planned. He calls this kind of happiness “synthetic happiness,” and he says it’s “every bit as real and enduring as the kind of happiness you stumble upon when you get exactly what you were aiming for.”
What “synthetic happiness” means is that when we don’t get what we want and we resign ourselves to the fact that we won’t get what we want, our mind adapts and we end up being as happy with the unwanted result as we would have been with the originally desired result. What’s important to realize is that these people aren’t simply lying to themselves to make themselves feel better about the disappointing development. These people actually become as happy with the unwanted result as they would have been with the result they originally wanted. But the problem is, this synthetic happiness only works if you’re trapped and have no other choices.
Barry Schwartz’s speech “The Paradox of Choice” touches on the same issues, and is described on the TED website as follows:
Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central belief of western societies: that freedom of choice leads to personal happiness. In Schwartz’s estimation, all that choice is making us miserable. We set unreasonably high expectations, question our choices before we even make them, and blame our failures entirely on ourselves. His relatable examples, from consumer products (jeans, TVs, salad dressings) to lifestyle choices (where to live, what job to take, whom and when to marry), underscore this central point: Too many choices undermine happiness.
Think of it like Ramen Cup O’ Noodles in college when you’re broke. When you’re in college, you loved the shit out some Ramen noodles. And it wasn’t a case of you knowing you were eating shitty food but pretending to like it. You weren’t lying to yourself. You actually believed in your heart and mind that you loved that salty, chewy mess. Because you were broke and had absolutely no other choices, your mind actually made you love those noodles. You would sit in class craving that shit and daydreaming about those styrofoam expired noodles and stinky powdered broth and you never thought for once that you were settling for junk. It was gloriously uncomplicated. Once you graduated from school and got your first good job and had serious food choices, though, your mind suddenly realized how shitty Ramen noodles are, even though they taste the same as they did back when you were in college. Same goes for the cafeteria food and the greasy spoon ghetto diners you loved back then too.
Choices fuck you up. Now instead of eating Ramen noodles every night and loving them, you’re a young professional with a real income and an active social life and are surrounded by tons of restaurant choices and a recent Zagat’s guide to help you sift through them and each place has a million affordable entries on its menu to choose from. Now you’re sampling different gourmet cuisines mutiple nights a week and you’re nitpicking them to death, whereas before when you could only afford one shitty food consistently, you really believed you loved it.
And not only do choices fuck you up and make you miserable, but now we’re programmed to gravitate towards them. We choose neighborhoods based on how many different restaurants and bars are around us. And how culturally and financially diverse are social circles will be in those neighborhoods. And how many different clothing stores and supermarkets we’ll have to choose from. And among those restaurants we’ll have a dozen different ethnic cuisines available to us, and each will have a large menu selection. The bars will have 10 different vodkas and 30 different scotches and 40 microbrews to choose from. And the supermarket with have 24 different types of flavored gourmet mayo to choose. And we’ll feel pressured to have our social circles look as diverse as a Benetton ad in order to make sure we’re living an open-minded, full unbigoted life. And our disposable income and leisure time makes us feel pressured to cram hobbies into our lives as well. We not only actively seek choice, the dilemma that causes us our existential angst, but we actually expect it to solve our existential angst, leading to an incredibly vicious circle.
So now it becomes harder to feel fulfilled because now no matter what we choose, we’re convinced there’s something better out there that we’re missing out on. As soon as we get our ideal apartment, we hear about a better complex that’s going up in a better hipper neighborhood. Soon as we order Thai, we think maybe we should have went with the new Italian place with the celebrity chef we read about in New York Magazine last week. We can go to our usual lounge to chill, but it was just okay last time. Let’s try this hot new lounge instead. But once we get there and it’s utterly wack, suddenly we imagine how good a time we’d probably be having if we went with our original plan instead. Of if we tried that other new lounge we heard about. Even when we’re content with our decisions we find ourselves daydreaming about trading up.
Even TV is a big dilemma now. Growing up we only had three major networks and a few cable channels that sucked ass. You chose something from those big networks, went to school or the water cooler, and everyone discussed the same shows because we all watched the same shit. We had no choice.
And that’s why we’re doomed to be less happy than our parents. They had a gloriously uncomplicated life, similar to those long gone Ramen noodle days I described, but they chose to upgrade us to the overstimulating and cluttered life of Zagat’s guides, gourmet supergroceries and megamalls thinking they were doing us a favor. Ironically, while having no choices isn’t always a picnic, having a nonstop of glut of them is turning out to be worse.
Don’t get me wrong, though, I’m no communist. I’m not against competition. I don’t believe striving for upward mobility is anything to feel guilty about. I think rewarding yourself materially now and again is a great thing. I think wanting more for yourself is what drives progress, which is the very engine of capitalism. But do we really need a bar with 200 fucking types of scotch to choose from?!?!
The full speeches are here if you’re curious:
Daniel Gilbert:
Barry Schwartz:
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Lovin’ the new site, T.
Gigi’s last blog post..It’s not that I don’t want to write…
Funny cuz.. i was just thinking something along these lines… My girl and my parents are asking me what i want for christmas… and I have to make shit up cuz i can’t think of anything.
i feel like i should want stuff… but i go to places lke Best Buy and look around and think; Do i not want this stuff because i can’t afford it… when i have the money to blow will i suddenly need an Iphone? A plasma?
Bobby Rio’s last blog post..Hilarious…. This is Your Competition
my mother has been to TED a few times. she’s brought me back all kinds of wacky swag.
to your original question, i think everyone in our generations (X + Y(or whatever)) was just born 20 or 30 years to late. all of the cake has already been eaten.
minijonb’s last blog post..The best holiday song ever: “Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues
@Bobby Rio - the Iphone and plasma TV wont make you much happier, but most people will buy them anyway, simply because they can, and people are willing to try anything for a chance to feel better.
Perhaps you have already realised that happiness through consumerism is an ever receding mirage. That’s the easy part. The hard part is finding a more meaningful and substantive source of happiness.
ohhh i loved this post. i was thinking about the same things yesterday after reading a chuck klosterman article that mentioned the ‘paradox’ book (i’ve read stumbling upon happiness and it’s very good).
this notion that we have so much choice so that the differences between things make their value interchangeable and so less meaningful. the fact that we think there are so many people to date that potential significant others are diminished b/c we think someone more perfecter for us will come along. the idea that there are so many experiences to be had, we are somehow less of a person unless we experience them all.
i am reading a book on spinoza and leibniz. and it strikes me sometimes that folks pre-scientific revolution were happier than we are in modern times. they had no choice: god was in charge. so they were happy with life because it wasn’t theirs to control. now we have all this control (and blame?) over our happiness, so we take up the burden to be happy as much as possible, as if life is less because we experience a range of emotions. of course, free will and opportunity are not something i’d want to give back now that science helped us to them…. still and all, i love that you put this out there. fascinating. something i’ll be thinking about for a while.
jess’s last blog post..i wish i had two more wishes
and isn’t it funny? I like to visit other countries every couple years to remind me how much joy can come from living simply. Come back to the States with fresh eyes–and be appalled by our own ridiculous greed.
Of course, I try not to think about how much those plane tix cost in the first place…
Gigi - Thanks.
Bobby - I used to have a shitty little TV and had no problem with it until different girls I dated complained about it. My girl eventually pushed me to get a big TV and I hated it. After a while, suddenly I couldn’t stand the small one anymore. Then I got an even bigger flat screen. And suddenly even that looks small. Between that and computers, I’ve gotten bitten by the gadget bug bad.
Minijonb - I don’t think it’s just that all the cake has been eaten, everyone is content recycling the old crumbs instead of baking a new one.
xoc - i think part of the problem is the mindset where we obsess over finding happiness in the first place. My parents for example just didn’t obsess over finding happiness or their calling because their choices were limited and they had families to support. They didn’t have the money for gadgets, the time to buy them, the internet to make purchases a snap (meaning they had to travel to shop) and there just weren’t that many cool gadgets to buy anyway. Choices in all those categories changed everything.
jess - Great comment. Sucks that I discover your blog right after you stop fucking posting for good! Ah well, I can always read your back stuff I suppose.
I’d argue that in some ways we only have the illusion of more free will, but in actuality have less (due to overregulation of every aspect of our lives) but that’s for another post.
tavolini - you know, I don’t really buy into the whole “we’re greedier than everyone else” mindset, even though my post may make it seem like we do. i just think we have the opportunity to activate and exercise our greed more than past generations and other countries thanks to our success. My parents, for example, if they had the luxuries and advancements and disposable income I had, I think they’d be the same way as I am. I think past generations and other countries are less greedy due to circumstance and opportunity, not due to any higher moral ground.
I dunno. My wise uncle once said that “a monkey knows which tree to climb.” That has a number of interpretations, i suppose.
I feel like the minds of every member of a generation are appropriately hardwired for their age. As if people are always in tune with the current zeitgeist. Maybe that seems kind of obvious…and i’m not exactly sure how it fits into this argument but i know that it does.
I think part of the problem is the rate of advancements in various human endeavors and the speed of information dissemination. We’re at the point where both surpass a person’s ability to consume and digest them on a fundamental level.
Humans are highly adaptive and intelligent, to be sure. But I wonder if there isn’t a limit to the degree of growth or progress we can truly and full assimilate into our consciousness. Like how many weeks, or months or years did it take for people to understand, fully, ALL the implications of the telecommunication of Alexander Bell. One might argue that it took over a century or up until the present age.
Any form of human advancement carries with it deep socioeconomic, environmental, and psychological implications. But we live now in an age where within 3 mos. an aspect of human knowledge will take 2,3, or 4 generational leaps. I mean weren’t we JUST getting used to ipods everywhere and blackberries everywhere? Then one day you have IPODS everywhere! I feel like our minds didn’t even ‘gasp’ when it happened.
I guess my point is I feel like they should, at SOME point. Otherwise it’s impossible to stay grounded. I’m gonna stop now becuz i’m not sure if i’m making sense and this quick comment is becoming longer than the post.
Smash’s last blog post..Introduction
I love this post. I spent much of my 20’s in pursuit of something, anything, everything, and nothing. Now, at 33, I’m almost starting over but am a lot more ready to live this time around without all the “trying” to live that I went through before. I will, however, check those 2 books out as soon as I can.
jason’s last blog post..News Flash!!!
Jason - it’s so good to find another 33 yr old blogger, I’ve been feeling like an old man in this game lately.
“Humans are highly adaptive and intelligent, to be sure. But I wonder if there isn’t a limit to the degree of growth or progress we can truly and full assimilate into our consciousness.”
My theory is that the more we improve in one area, the more we worsen in another area. For example I have an encyclopedic knowledge of celebs, comics, tv show episodes, blog sites, gadget hacks, anime, trivia, everyday technology, etc. But simple home repairs and carpentry and tire changing skills that my dad took for granted were challenging for me.
There are tons of articles about how Generation Y, the first generaton born after the advent of the personal computer, are hypercapable and savvier in many ways than previous generations and know how to multitask, use tech, etc., but simple things likehandling criticism or maintaining an attention span or dressing up to work confuse them. In many ways progress is an illusion, the improvement you see on the surface often masks an underlying deficiency that may not be obvious yet. Like for example in my college there was a 14 year old chem prodigy doing high level work. But his social skills and knowledge of simple things we take for granted was so lacking that it was almost a wash and I think he lost more than he gained.
“My theory is that the more we improve in one area, the more we worsen in another area.”
But that’s just a function of a natural limit to brain capacity. Our father’s had encyclopedic knowledge of a host of things that were relevant in their time but not necessarily in ours. In the same way, 17th century men in agrarian communities had encyclopedic knowledge of soil types, ’smithings’, the personalities and proclivities of their tax collectors or regents…or whomever was running around in charge of things back then. But that info, or having their minds focused towards that type of info doesn’t necessarily make them more whole or happier than our fathers were or than we are now.
My point with the rapid advancement thing is that something better/faster/more productive comes out next month and we immediately feel the need to get it without reflecting on if we even NEED it. We’re conditioned to want the new thing but our concsiousness hadn’t even fully assimilated our full need/use/implication of the thing it’s replacing. So now there is still unfinished business for the consciousness in “generation N”. But we move onto “GN+1″, then build “GN+2″ on top of that and on and on and in that way we lose our grounding. We don’t know who we are what, what we want, or even what we need? We just become conditioned consumers with no substance to define and guide us.
Smash’s last blog post..Introduction
Smash - I don’t think our parents were as miserable as us because unlike us, (1) they didn’t think of happiness, fame, fulfillment and individual destiny as some kind of birthrights and (2) they didn’t have the time or resources to compile all that junk because they were too busy working and trying to support families. They didn’t really have the inclination or free time to get existential. They didn’t torment themselves about not having their ideal job because their minds just didn’t operate that way. They didn’t exist in the cult of individuality, you were just happy being a part of a whole that was bigger than just you. Now everyone feels that they are bigger than the whole.
Consider this: the army was once the greatest example of suppressing your individuality to become a well-oiled cog in a fine-tuned machine. Now to attract young people of this generation, their slogan is “Army of One,” trying to sell the army as an instrument to exercise your individuality!
My feelings are (1) our parents’ encyclopedic knowledge was usually geared toward making a living or being useful (cooking, fixing shit, farming) and ours is geared toward narcissism, trivia and materialistic self-fulfillment, and (2) even if our parents had the same gadget and lifestyle choices we had, they lacked the disposition and free time to binge on them.
this post really relates to the book i’m reading now called “The Millionaire Next Door.” It talks a lot about how most millionaires are first generation and get there by being frugal, but their offspring tend to be big spenders and thing they are entitled to certain luxary items. strange how that works.
Ava V’s last blog post..Uninspired
Not that strange Ava. The self-made millionaire understands the value of money because he knows what life is like without money. He has a point of comparison. Because his kids are born with money, they have no point of comparison and don’t understand its value and take it for granted. For example you can’t understand and value beauty if you’ve never seen an ugly person. You can’t appreciate a great body until you’ve seen a fat one. And so on…