Were People Happier in the Good Old Days?

One habit of mind that I do not have – and which I think does not contribute much to happiness – is the tendency to regret the “good old days.”

This way of thinking is partly related to age, but not completely. I know many people, quite young, who say things like, “People are so much more materialistic than they used to be,” or so much more narcissistic, or so much more self-indulgent, or so much less engaged with other people, etc.

Well, maybe so, could be. But I’m skeptical of generalizations like that. For thousands of years, people have been decrying the present and pointing to a more noble past.

For example, take this sentiment: “It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.” Sounds very current, right? I read someone express exactly this sentiment on Twitter about thirty minutes ago.

So when was it said? In 1783. Richard Burke, to Samuel Johnson.

* The New York Times now has its own happiness blog: Happy Days: The Pursuit of What Matters in Troubled Times. HAPPY minds think alike.

* There's a lot of interesting debate on the Facebook Page. Join the discussion!

Comments

[Vi]

I don't think people were happier in the good old days. I think we just romanticize it. Even with our own past, we tend to forget the bad times and remember the good.

[Positively Present]

I agree with Vi. I think we tend to romanticize the past. I'm sure in some ways people were happier, and in others they were unhappier (think of modern conveniences and how great some of those things are... plus our ability to connect with others via social media, etc.). This is a really great topic to ponder so thanks for bringing it up. And thanks for mentioning the NYT Happy Blog! I can't wait to check it out. :)

[Queenie]

Hm, I agree with you Gretchen & Vi, it makes me a little suspicious when people talk about the past like it's a lost golden age.

Older people here in England always talk about how they used to be able to leave their front doors unlocked and there was no crime... and then we hear about how during the Second World War, people frequently discovered their houses had been robbed while they were taking cover in air raid shelters! So much for the glorious past.

There are always inconsiderate people, criminals & bad stuff happening ALL the time, throughout history. And so it stands to reason that happiness and unhappiness is fairly constant too. For every new good thing we have (unlimited food, technology, advanced medicine) we also have new bad things (pollution, global warming, urban alienation)... It's not a scientific analysis, but logically that does seem like it should set us on a fairly constant path. I wonder if people of the future will be talking about the early days of the 21st century like it's a lost golden age? Probably :-)

[hannah]

Oh! I stumbled upon a TED talk the other day that mentions how we tend to romanticise the past but imagine the future as dark and ugly, where "human history is seen as a downhill slide from the good old days."
It's only a really sort video. You might be interested: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/pete_alcorn_s_vision_of_a_better_world.html

[Becky]

Oh Gretchen, you've hit one of my pet peeves! Assuming things are getting worse and worse is just a habit; and it's such a damaging one. I read an article a few years after 9/11 in which a woman bemoaned how how sad she was for her children, that they had to grow up during such an unsafe time, so she couldn't give them a "normal, carefree" childhood.

Um, 150 years ago it was normal for children to be born into slavery. A mother seeing 5 or 6 of her children die before reaching adulthood was normal. Children witnessing the death of siblings was normal. Illiteracy was normal.

Anybody who thinks a carefree childhood during a peaceful era is normal needs to read more history.

[Christopher]

history repeating itself.

[Jan C.]

I think of my parents and their siblings when I read this post. They were born between 1915 and 1925, raised on farms during the Depression. I think they were happy in that they had large close families and knew what it was like to work together as a team for something (survival!). But at the same time, they were raised in an atmosphere of constant worry. To this day, my mom can't bring herself to throw out a ziploc bag unless it has been reused, and I thought she was going to stroke out when the home care nurses who were helping her for awhile used too many paper towels. Even though she has plenty of money and is comfortably situated in life now, her upbringing in the "good old days" has definitely left something of a negative mark on her.

[Everything Counts]

I think life has become much more busier and hectic than it used to be. We rarely pause to think about the little aspects of happiness. The means to be happy have increased but not the users. Contentedness is the fundamental thing lacking in our lives now.

[HappinessnLove]

Hi Everyone,

I feel that happiness is something that springs from inside.The times and circumstances are important factors but not the realy important ones.Otherwise people who are rich or people who enjoy an easy luxurious life would never be unhappy.
I believe happiness is a state of mind,and for me it springs from being myself ("Be Gretchen" :-))

[Alex Fayle]

Good old days? Nope - the good days are now because that's the only time where I can act. I could live in the past or the future, but the now is the only place where action occurs.

And to me action and choices equal happiness.

[io]

Sometimes I think of my University years, I regret old friendships and passions and it seems it was the best period ever. Then I remember one of my parents was an alcoholic and is now recovered. All the shame, the worry is gone - should I regret those years? Only *some things* from that time, the ones I kind of "choose" to remember.

[Pia]

I think the major difference is that in the 'good old days' people simply didn't have time to think about being happy or unhappy. They lived in the now, worried about the now and dealt with the now (one of the keys to a content and happy life though).

When you're busy with family, busy with work, busy with survival, busy enjoying the little luxury you get, you simply don't have time to realize if you're happy or unhappy.

Isn't a large part of all our unhappiness that we have way too much time to think about those things instead of just acting?

[Leah]

I agree with you that the "good ol' days" were definitely NOT good in many ways for many, many people.

Sometimes I do find myself regretting the old days though and I'm not sure if it's because I'm romanticizing them. I think that if I had been lucky enough to be born in the 1800's in the country, and to live through childhood in an American middle class family, I might have been a happy person. I suspect that there must be something so much more satisfying about doing physical work everyday for your subsistence, and having the help of your entire family.

It would be hard, surely, but I also think it would be satisfying. This coming from a person who is stuck in an office in front of a computer and under fluorescent lights everyday. Sigh!

[Lexi]

Romanticizing the past, even if it's not a time period you were actually alive, is just another way of not living in the moment.

Avoiding the present leads to sacrificed happiness.

I am saying this mostly to myself, by the way, because I have a tendency to drift from dwelling on the past to dreaming about the future.

So hard to find the middle.

[L.]

I wouldn't say that people were happier in the old days, who really knows, but one thing is for sure as far as I'm concerned........they were less stressed by the 'million plus' demands made on them and their time.

I grew up with my grandparents and it was a much slower paced life with time for socializing with neighbors over a cup of Java (as my grandmom used to call it) and time for relaxing in the evenings after a hard days work. The stories I've been told and the books I've read show a society where your job was clear cut and the hours in a day to do it were there for you to utilize each and every one.

For instance, there were no telephones, no cell phones ringing, no matter where you are or what you're doing, the phones are NOW ringing. Anyone can get in touch with you at any given moment and interrupt what you were doing before that phone rang. This goes on many times each day for people in our day and age, and many of the calls create more and more stressed out people.

Another thing is that there was a clear cut division of responsibilities in the old days. The schools did their job and the parents did theirs...the two did NOT intertwine except if there was a problem with your child or he/she needed extra help, then and only then did you have to trek to school.

Now you are expected to volunteer out the ying yang at school for everything from playground duty to office duties if needed and all this (in some cases) while paying a hefty amount of tuition and school taxes.......our parents and grandparents were NOT expected to take the time from their jobs to jump in and volunteer at their child's school! Sorry, but there it is.

The pressure and stress of our days is growing ever more over bearing upon each one of us. We live in a society that believes that 'more, quicker, less sleep, go faster', etc. is the be all and end all and believe me, if one doesn't keep up they'll be trodden under foot, even if only in the sense of being looked at as a slacker in our automated, unbelievably fast paced world, or worse, getting laid off from their job.

Oh yes, Gretchen, you picked one subject that got me right up and firmly planted on my soapbox, LOL. I appreciate the opportunity to vent and I for one, say, "Let's hear it for the good old days, when men and women didn't fear losing their job from one minute to the next, thus tremendous pressure, and when it came time to sit down and relax, they could do so without the phones ringing off the hook to plan for more work yet to come. Now, of course, I'm not talking about the years of the depression, but prior and thereafter.

[David Kim]

Some excellent points above.

I've certainly spent my time navel-gazing about what I should've done. ;)
I note that most people have a hard time separating the personal from the environmental. I believe this is because they are inextricably linked.

In counterpoint to angst about how bad the world has become, I remind myself of some positive trends in society, of increasing respect for the individual and the value of life. The bad situation of children prior to recent history has already been pointed out by another reader.
Even the brutality of war is shaped by our public values: In the "good old days" of World War II our government used to target civilians in war. Now that is unacceptable.
Maybe my consumer purchasing power isn't what it used to be, but there are some trends that point towards greater moral growth.

On a lighter note:
Although this is probably apocryphal, I think it's pretty funny:

"Our earth is degenerate in these latter days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching."
-attributed to an Assyrian stone tablet circa 2800 BCE

[Janice]

In replying to L's post above... What if you didn't fit into the "box" of that society? What if you were not white, straight, or Christian? Where I grew up, just living on the "wrong" street made you ostracised in school. Or getting pregnant before finishing high school meant you were expelled.

You control your electronic devices. Turn them off! Take a break! Say "no" when you are unable to fit something in. Don't like to help out at school? Take control of our government to put money and local control back into the schools!

Live in the now-- while it might or might not be easier than the past or the future, it's where you are.

[jordan shoes]

There was a lady from the countryside who came to the city and checked into a hotel. Then she said to the bellman, "I refuse to take a tiny room like this, with no window and no bed in it! You can't treat me like a fool just because I don't travel much! I'm going to complain to the manager!" So the bellman said very politely, "Madam,this isn't your room. It's the elevator!"

[Kat]

@Janice--agreed! The "good old days" were NOT good for alot of people: people of color, women who did not want to have unlimited children and stay at home with them, gay people, non-christians, etc. Maybe white men and children had it pretty good. Look how far we've come. NOW is the "good old days!"

[Martine Brennan]

What I see all around me is that the happiest people are those who know what they enjoy doing and do lots of it. I think many people make happiness complicated. Happiness is not complicated, expensive or difficult to achieve. I wrote a small book about it, Happiness it's just a habit. It's available at http://www.happinessitsjustahabit.com