History

I think it's a bit short sighted to look at "new" problems we're "uncovering" as technology improves and ignore the mountains of benefits. Healthcare has improved by an insane degree. Is it a problem that for-profit health insurance exists? Absolutely. Does it mean we should forsake advances in health care? No!

We have more free time now than we have had in the past. A pessimistic counter argument may be that people need to work multiple jobs to have enough income. Does that mean it would be better the way things were? I don't think so. Before you'd have a man working tons of hours and have tons of kids to help and a stay at home mother to do household chores because they were so time consuming.

Take another view, mental illness seems to be in the rise. I'm reality I believe these problems have always been around but we're easy to ignore because there were more pressing things to deal with. This isn't even about autism diagnosises or something. Take depression. In a hunter gatherer type of society you'd be forced to work all day so you literally don't starve. And even then you might have to uproot your entire family and move because an area is out of food. You wouldn't have time to think "damn, sometimes I feel really sad and don't have motivation" because your life depends on it. That doesn't mean the hunter gatherer lifestyle is better. Take the Victorian era. There were certainty the beginnings of people starting to realize they were different mentally and I believe it's because they had more free time to sit and think about these things than before. (What they did with such people at the time wasn't exactly good either lol, but for the sake of argument, that didn't have anything to do with the available technology, so I'm not going to count it as a negative.)

The ruling class, whatever you view that as, not necessarily trying to sound leftist, just the people in control -- whoever you believe they are, have many new tools today to manipulate us. True. And that's awful. Social media algorithms make us angry. Advertisements make us wanna buy things. It's not good. I don't think people are saying it is. But don't make the mistake of believing that things like this didn't happen in the past. In the days of feudal society you'd be a literal slave as a serf, more or less. Sure there's some nuance to it, but unless you got lucky and were born as a noble your life was basically terrible in every way. They'd control you with weapons. Which to be honest still goes on.

Don't mistake me as saying all technological progress is good. There is bad too. But I don't think I'd want to be alive in a time period that's substantially less technologically advanced than today. Maybe go back to the '90s, but in the grand scale of human history that's honestly not too different than today.

It seems like the forbidden fruit of knowledge is giving us problems instead of only solving them.

Assuming you're not homeless right now and located in most of the western world, consider the absolute luxury you have of having a solid roof over your head right now, a climate controlled room to your preferred temperature, some amount of long life shelf stable food in your kitchen, light, an infinite amount of clean drinking water on tap 24/7, a bed not made of agricultural products that were still growing outside in the last 3 months, the ability to read and write from a young age, vaccines against diseases that used to wipe out entire families, and healthcare (while expensive) can save your life from extremely critical injuries and maladies.

The most powerful kings of ages prior would trade everything to have what you have right now.

Or just imagine you were a person of color or a woman even 75 years ago.

I am not so sure that "rulers of the past" were quite as concerned about whether their subjects were happy as you are making it seem they were.

I’m old and have studied history extensively. Life on our planet has improved. Life expectancy is way up, hunger, slavery, discrimination much less - multiple studies show this. We are on the brink of a world war. In 10,20 years from now, you will think about today as the happy times - make a note of it.

What time and which people?

It's doubtful. Perhaps not as miserable as one might initially suspect from material circumstances, considering that mankind has an immense ability to mentally adjust to our current environment, but the past is filled with material miseries that are hard to simply 'adjust' to.

When you read about children died in the first few years since they were born, and their aristocratic parents mourning those lost children for all of their life, it's hard to imagine that losing five or six children that way is a net gain in happiness, or that it's something one just 'adjusts' to. Perhaps you reach a point where it doesn't ruin you, but where it's marginal? No.

Hunger, malnutrition, disease, childhood mortality, broken families, banditry, lawlessness, state oppression that makes modern authoritarian states look merely 'average', endemic warfare, fear of the divine, repressive local community cultures...

Modern society is pretty structurally fucked. But past society was even more structurally fucked, and materially fucked in addition.

It seems like the forbidden fruit of knowledge is giving us problems instead of only solving them.

It does often feel that way. I take comfort that understanding we have problems is the first step to improving things.

But also - the 1990s were way better than any era before, or since. (Edit: Since tone is hard to convey in text: This is a joke. Treating LGBTQ+ folks with any decency has come a long way since the 90s. I wouldn't go back.)

It has a bit to do with age, I fondly remember the 90's but that was also my HS and college years so of course the memories are good

We have such a freedom of concerns that we can care about, and put effort towards, issues that have nothing to do with us personally.

At an individual level, the more you know, generally the more miserable you are. This likely operates at a societal level too.

"Ignorance is bliss", The ignorant are always happier than those who are in the know, except for when there is no bad to know of. Fix the problems greed exerts on society and everyone would be happier than the most ignorant person on the planet.