Chapter 19: And They Lived Happily Ever After

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Welcome to the Deep Dive.

Today we're tackling a question that, well, it sits right at the heart of the human story.

A really big one.

Yeah, and it often gets lost, you know, the big narratives of progress and power.

It's this.

With all the advancements of the last five centuries, I mean, the explosion of wealth, the leaps in science, the way societies have been completely reshaped, are you personally any happier?

It sounds simple, doesn't it?

Deceptively simple, but it might just be the most crucial question we can ask about our journey as a species.

And that's exactly the fascinating territory we're digging into today.

You shared some really compelling material from Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens, specifically his chapter, Looking into the History of Happiness.

He really pushes us to look past the usual stuff, you know, GDP, technology, and ask if all these collective gains have actually meant more contentment for individuals.

Exactly.

So our mission in this Deep Dive is to, well, unpack Harari's main arguments about this very slippery subject.

We want to look at how he thinks happiness has been seen across history and what that might mean for us today, trying to find it.

Okay, all right, let's dive in.

Harari starts by kind of taking apart what he calls the progressive account.

What's the core idea there?

So the progressive account, as Harari describes it, is basically the common view, the assumption, really, that as humanity got better at things, technology, science, our collective power, we just naturally got happier along the way.

The logic is, you know, we can solve more problems, ease suffering, get more of what we want, so life gets better, more joyful.

Simple as that.

It makes intuitive sense, doesn't it?

More power, more knowledge, fewer problems.

That should equal more happiness, right?

But Harari's not buying it wholesale.

Not really, no.

He immediately brings up the agricultural revolution.

Great example.

I mean, it undeniably boosted humanity's power, our ability to feed larger populations, control the environment.

But for the average person, the shift to farming often meant, well, much harder work.

Right, longer hours.

Longer hours, a much less varied diet, actually often less nutritious, plus more disease, more social hierarchy and exploitation.

So humanity's collective power went way up, but individual well -being didn't necessarily follow.

It might have even gone down for many.

That's a key point, isn't it?

Progress isn't always like a rising tide lifting all boats.

The agricultural revolution, this huge step, actually made life worse for a lot of individuals.

Precisely.

And he uses the spread of European empires as another example.

Okay, oh, so?

Again, you see this massive increase in humankind's collective power and reach, global networks, exchange of technologies, goods.

Sounds like progress.

But it came at an absolutely devastating cost for millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people in Africa, the Americas,

Australia, Asia, just immense suffering.

Yeah.

So it really hammers home the flaw in that simple equation.

More power automatically equals more happiness.

Our track record just doesn't support it.

It seems almost naive when you put it like that.

Well, yeah, given how often power has been misused throughout history.

Okay, so that's the critique of the straightforward progress equals happiness's view.

Yeah.

But then there's the flip side, what Harari calls the romantic reverse correlation.

What's that about?

So this is pretty much the opposite idea.

It suggests that progress has actually made us less happy.

The argument is that as we moved further away from our hunter gatherer roots, we built this artificial mechanistic world.

And that world just doesn't fit well with our basic psychology, our instincts, which evolved for a totally different lifestyle over millions of years.

Ah, so this is the sort of lost golden age or garden of Eden idea that every invention, every bit of civilization just pushes us further away from some natural state of contentment.

Exactly that.

People who hold this view might say, you know, nothing in our modern comfortable lives can truly match the deep satisfaction, the joy of a foraging band after a successful hunt or meaningful community ritual.

And each technological step is a step further down the That's the idea.

But Harari is quick to caution against this view, too.

He sees it as just as dogmatic, just as simplistic as the blind faith in progress.

Okay, so neither extreme really works, not simple progress, not simple regression.

Where does he find a more, let's say, nuanced middle path?

Well, he suggests things are more complicated.

He thinks that up until the scientific revolution, maybe around 500 years ago, there wasn't really a clear, consistent link either way between humanity's growing power and individual happiness.

So like a medieval peasant wasn't necessarily happier or unhappier than a Stone Age hunter gatherer could go either way.

Pretty much.

He suggests medieval peasants might very well have been more miserable than their foraging ancestors, despite some technological advances.

But the scientific revolution,

that changed things, potentially, that's the argument.

Yes.

Harari suggests that in the last few centuries, especially since maybe the mid 19th century, humans have actually started using their growing power in ways that have genuinely improved well being for a lot of people.

Okay, like what the big one he points to is the dramatic drop in child mortality, thanks to modern medicine and sanitation.

Yeah, that's huge.

It's hard to argue against the massive positive impact that's had on, you know, reducing suffering and bringing joy to countless families.

Absolutely.

You can't overstate that one.

But Harari, being Harari, doesn't just leave us with that warm, fuzzy feeling, does he?

No, not at all.

He immediately throws in some important caveats, big ones.

First, he points out that this golden age of improvement, especially things like medicine significantly reducing child deaths, and the relative lack of major international wars,

that's all very, very recent.

How recent?

Mostly happening after 1850, and the really big strides in child mortality are more 20th century.

The period without massive global wars is really post 1945.

So historically speaking, it's just a blink of an eye.

A tiny sliver of human history to base such an optimistic view on.

Exactly.

And second, he really emphasizes perspective.

It's easy for us, you know, sitting here in the 21st century, probably relatively comfortable Western influence.

It's easy for us to look back and see progress.

But that wasn't everyone's experience.

Not even close.

He says, you know, try asking a 19th century Welsh coal miner working 12 hours underground if he felt happier because of the Industrial Revolution.

Or a Chinese peasant addicted to opium pushed by Western powers.

Or a Tasmanian aborigine like Trugnini whose entire people and way of life were destroyed in the name of progress.

Their experience was drastically different.

That really drives the point home.

He also brings up a really worrying point about,

well, whether even our recent gains are built on shaky foundations.

Yes, the Seeds of Future Catastrophe idea.

He's talking about the huge ecological price tag of our progress.

Right.

Climate change, resource depletion, mass extinctions.

Right.

Are we basically just borrowing happiness from the future, racking up environmental debt that could undermine everything?

A really critical question.

And there's another layer, an ethical one he insists we confront.

The fate of other animals.

Yeah, this is a point that Harari really emphasizes and it often gets completely ignored in these discussions about human progress and happiness.

What's his argument?

He argues that a huge amount of our modern material prosperity, our comfort, our cheap food has been achieved through the unprecedented industrial exploitation of billions upon billions of farm animals.

Factory farming labs.

Exactly.

Lives often filled with immense suffering and treated purely as machines.

He asks, can we really make a fair assessment of global happiness over the last two centuries if we completely ignore the suffering of these billions of sentient beings?

That's profoundly challenging.

It forces you to widen the scope entirely.

It really does.

Who counts when we're counting happiness?

Okay, so we've looked at these broad historical views, the critiques, the complexities.

How does Harari then pivot to actually measuring something as personal as happiness?

This brings us to subjective well -being.

What is that exactly?

Right.

So this is where psychologists and biologists come in.

Subjective well -being, or SWB, is basically,

well, it's how you feel inside.

Your own assessment of your life.

Are you experiencing pleasure?

Are you content, satisfied with your life overall?

So it's subjective.

It's about the individual's internal state.

Precisely.

And the main way they try to measure this is, well, pretty straightforward.

They ask people.

They use questionnaires.

Like, rate your happiness on a scale of one to 10.

Kind of, yeah.

Or rate how much you agree with I am satisfied with my life.

Or I feel optimistic about the future.

Things like that.

And then researchers take this data and try to see if it connects to objective things, like how much money people have or their health or political freedom.

Exactly.

They crunch the numbers, look for correlations.

Do people with higher incomes report higher subjective well -being?

Do people in democracies report being happier than those in dictatorships?

Are married people happier?

That sort of thing.

Okay, so what have these studies found?

Let's start with the big one.

Money.

Does money buy happiness?

Well, the finding that comes up again and again is yes and no.

Or rather, yes, but only up to a point.

How does that work?

For people who are really struggling, you know, living in poverty, lacking basic necessities, then yes, more money can make a huge difference to their happiness.

It relieves major stresses, provides security.

You have the example of poor single mother winning the lottery.

Right.

That kind of change can significantly boost well -being.

Exactly.

It can be life -changing in terms of reducing suffering and increasing opportunities for joy.

Odd.

But for people who are already reasonably comfortable, financially secure,

more money doesn't seem to add much more happiness.

So the millionaire executive who gets a huge bonus.

They might feel a temporary thrill, sure, but their baseline happiness level isn't likely to shift much in the long run.

Why?

Because their expectations adjust incredibly quickly.

The new level of wealth becomes the new normal.

Okay.

That makes sense.

What about health?

Same kind of pattern.

Pretty similar.

Yeah.

Obviously getting sick, especially suddenly or painfully, definitely decreases happiness in the short term.

Nobody enjoys being ill.

Sure.

But the research suggests that unless the illness involves chronic, severe pain or is constantly getting worse,

people show this remarkable ability to adapt.

Adapt even to quite serious long -term conditions.

Often, yes.

Over time, people with chronic conditions frequently report levels of subjective well -being that are surprisingly close to healthy people.

Expectations adjust.

They find new sources of meaning or coping mechanisms.

They use that twin example, Lucy and Luke.

Right.

One becomes paralyzed.

The other wins the lottery.

But years later, their reported happiness levels might be quite similar.

That's the kind of finding he points to illustrating this adaptation and the power of our baseline.

So if money and health have limits, what factors do seem to have a more consistent, stronger link to happiness?

Well, the research consistently points towards family and community.

Strong social bonds.

Really?

More than wealth or health?

Often, yes.

Having strong family ties, being part of a supportive community.

These things seem to have a really significant positive impact on subjective well -being.

Good marriages, in particular, show a very strong correlation with high happiness levels.

That's fascinating.

And it raises a potentially worrying thought Harari brings up.

Which is?

That maybe the decline in strong families and communities over the last couple of centuries, you know, with industrialization, urbanization, mobility,

maybe that has actually offset some of the happiness gains we thought we were making through material progress.

That's a very real possibility, he considers.

We might be richer and healthier in some ways, but also more disconnected and lonely, which could be pulling down our overall happiness.

We have more freedom to choose partners, jobs, locations.

But that freedom comes with instability too, right?

Relationships break down more easily.

Exactly.

The freedom to choose also means the freedom to leave or be left.

It creates its own anxieties and potential for loneliness.

But maybe the most important finding Harari discusses, the real kicker, seems to be the role of expectations.

Yes.

This seems absolutely crucial.

He argues, very persuasively, I think, that happiness isn't determined so much by our objective conditions, how rich, healthy, or free we are, but by the match between those conditions and our subjective expectations.

What we expect versus what we get.

Precisely.

If you expect very little, and life delivers that or a bit more, you can be quite content.

But if you expect the world, even significant improvements might feel like disappointments.

That's the bullet cart versus Ferrari analogy he uses, isn't it?

Yeah, it's a great illustration.

If you live in a village where everyone expects to get around by bullet cart and you get one, you're satisfied.

Job done.

Okay.

But if you live in a world where everyone dreams of a Ferrari and you only manage to get a brand new Fiat,

even though the Fiat is objectively way better than the bullet cart, you feel deprived because your expectations were set on the Ferrari.

Right.

So it's all relative to expectations.

Yeah.

It seems to be in large part.

And this helps explain those surprising findings.

Like why winning the lottery or having a terrible accident might not change long -term happiness as much as we think.

Our expectations just recalibrate to the new reality.

It really brings home that ancient wisdom, doesn't it?

About being content with what you have.

It seems there's some solid psychological data behind it now.

Absolutely.

It's not just philosophy anymore.

And this is where things like mass media and advertising come into the picture, potentially making things worse for our collective happiness.

Harari certainly suggests so because what do media and advertising constantly do?

They bombard us with images of perfection,

of unattainable lifestyles, beauty standards, levels of success.

Setting the expectation bar impossibly high.

Exactly.

Which can make us feel dissatisfied with our own perfectly decent lives.

He contrasts like a teenager in an isolated medieval village who only compared themselves to other villagers versus a teenager today who's constantly seeing highly curated images of global celebrities and influencers online.

Yeah, the comparison pool is infinitely larger and more idealized now.

Right.

And this might also explain rising discontent in, say, developing countries.

Even if their objective conditions, lifespan, nutrition are better than their ancestors, they're now comparing themselves to the lifestyles they see beamed in from the wealthiest boats of the world.

Like his example of Egypt under Mubarak versus seeing life in Obama's America on TV.

Exactly.

Objectively, maybe better off than ancient Egyptians, but subjectively.

Feeling deprived because the goal posts the expectations have shifted so dramatically due to global media.

It's a powerful mechanism.

It even leads Harari to speculate that something seemingly wonderful like achieving immortality through science might not make us happier.

Yeah, it's a fascinating thought experiment.

Imagine regenerative treatments become available, but only for the super rich.

You'd likely have massive resentment and anxiety among those left behind.

And even for the immortals.

They might develop entirely new anxieties.

Like if death from disease is off the table, suddenly dying in a stupid accident becomes infinitely more terrifying.

You have everything to lose.

So maybe not eternal bliss after all.

So chasing external improvements seems like a tricky path to lasting happiness because our expectations keep moving.

This pushes Harari towards the biological perspective, what he calls chemical happiness.

What's the core idea there?

So biologists basically argue that our entire mental and emotional world, including happiness, is governed by our internal biochemistry.

It's about nerves, neurons, synapses, and chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin.

Okay.

From this perspective, happiness isn't caused by events like winning the lottery or falling in love.

Those events might trigger certain biochemical reactions.

The release of those chemicals.

Exactly.

And it's the resulting flood of those chemicals, those pleasant physical sensations in our bodies that we experience as happiness.

The feeling is the biochemistry.

So happiness is fundamentally a biological process located inside our bodies.

That's the core argument.

Yes.

And crucially, biologists suggest our internal biochemical system has evolved to keep our happiness levels relatively stable, sort of hovering around a particular set point.

Like an air conditioning system, keeping the temperature steady.

That's the analogy Harari uses.

It might fluctuate up or down briefly in response to events, but it's programmed to return to its baseline.

Evolution, they argue, didn't select for constant bliss.

It's selected for survival and reproduction.

So temporary pleasure might motivate us to eat or mate, but then it fades.

So we seek it again.

Something like that.

And this leads to the idea that different people just have different biochemical set points.

Some people's internal thermostat is just set higher.

They're naturally more cheerful.

We all know people like that, right?

It just seems generally upbeat no matter what.

Exactly.

And others have a lower set point.

They tend towards melancholy or anxiety, even when good things happen.

So external events, good or bad, might only have a limited temporary impact on this underlying biochemical baseline.

That's the implication.

The naturally cheerful person might bounce back quickly from setbacks, while the naturally gloomier person might not get a lasting boost from successes.

This biological view must kind of challenge the findings from psychology and sociology then, like that link between marriage and happiness we discussed.

It definitely offers a different interpretation.

A biologist might say, well, maybe it's not that marriage makes people happy.

Maybe people who have a naturally happy biochemistry, high serotonin levels, perhaps are just more likely to get married and stay married and report being happy.

Ah, so the biochemistry could be the underlying cause of both the happiness and the stable relationship.

Correlation, not causation from the marriage itself.

Exactly.

It flips the presumed causal arrow.

Wow.

Okay, if this biochemical view holds weight, what does it mean for how we understand history,

all those revolutions, empires, technologies?

Well, the radical implication is that maybe most of history has been largely irrelevant to human happiness in the long run.

How could that be?

Because while history changes the external circumstances, what triggers our biochemical reactions,

it hasn't really changed the fundamental internal biochemical system itself.

So like a medieval peasant felt a surge of serotonin when they finished the harvest successfully.

And a modern banker feels a similar surge when they close a big deal.

The triggers are different fields versus finance, but the underlying internal chemical reward, the feeling, might be pretty similar in quality and intensity governed by the same basic biology.

Even massive events, like say the French Revolution,

might not have actually changed the average happiness level of French people much.

That's the provocative conclusion Harari draws from this perspective.

The revolution changed everything externally, politics, society, economics, but it didn't rewrite French DNA or brain chemistry.

So the distribution of happy and unhappy people might have remained pretty similar before and after.

That's a pretty stark view of history's impact on the individual experience.

It is, and it leads to an equally provocative conclusion about the future.

If happiness is all about biochemistry, maybe we're focusing on the wrong things.

Maybe social reform, political revolutions, economic growth.

Maybe those are inefficient ways to increase happiness.

So what's the alternative, according to this view?

Manipulate the biochemistry directly,

understand the brain's systems, and develop ways, maybe through pharmacology, maybe genetics, who knows, to adjust that internal thermostat upwards.

Like better living through chemistry.

Prozac for everyone.

That's the logical endpoint, yeah.

Harari points out how the New Age slogan happiness begins within gets interpreted very literally, very biologically from this standpoint.

It's about managing your internal chemical state.

Which of course immediately makes you think of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Inevitably.

The society where everyone is kept content through the drug soma.

No suffering, no discontent.

But also, maybe.

No real meaning, no struggle, no depth.

Right, it raises that fundamental question.

Is there something inherently wrong or missing in a world where everyone is just happy biochemically all the time, what gets lost?

That's the perfect transition to the next perspective Harari explores.

Maybe happiness isn't just about pleasant sensations, whether triggered naturally or chemically.

Maybe it's about meaning.

The idea that happiness is about seeing your life as meaningful and worthwhile.

Exactly.

Even if that life involves difficulty, struggle, or even pain.

He brings up Daniel Kahneman's research on parenting.

Ah yeah.

Changing diapers, sleepless nights, endless worries.

Not exactly pleasant sensations moment to moment.

Not at all.

Lots of objectively unpleasant work.

Yet most parents report that raising their children is a primary source of happiness and fulfillment in their lives.

Why?

Because they find it deeply meaningful.

It fits with that Nietzsche quote Harari uses.

If you have a why to live, you can bear almost anyhow.

Perfectly.

A life perceived as meaningful even amidst hardship might ultimately feel more satisfying, more truly happy, than a life of comfortable, easy pleasure that feels empty and pointless.

And what counts as meaningful can change drastically, right?

Depending on the culture or the time period?

Absolutely.

Think about medieval Europeans.

Their lives were often short, brutal, full of hardship by our standards.

But they might have derived immense meaning from their deep religious faith, their belief in internal afterlife, their place in God's plan.

So even with less objective comfort, they might have reported high life satisfaction because their lives felt meaningful within their

It's certainly possible.

Which leads Harari to a really mind -bending idea.

Uh oh.

What if all these grand narratives that provide meaning, religion, nationalism, humanism, capitalism, whatever, what if they're all just stories, collective delusions we agree to believe in?

Whoa.

So happiness is just about

syncing up my personal delusion with the main delusion of my society.

That's the provocative thought.

As long as your personal story, your sense of purpose, aligns with the dominant collective story.

You feel like your life has meaning and therefore you feel happy or at least satisfied.

Even if the whole structure is built on, well, a shared fiction.

That's a pretty bleak way to think about meaning and happiness.

It's definitely unsettling.

But then Harari pushes even further.

He questions a core assumption shared by both the biochemical view and the meaning -based view.

And what assumption is that?

The assumption that happiness is fundamentally a subjective feeling, whether a pleasant sensation or a feeling of meaningfulness.

He points out how modern liberalism really puts subjective feelings on a pedestal.

If it feels good, do it or listen to your heart.

That's definitely a common idea today.

The customer is always right.

The voter knows best.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

My feelings are the ultimate authority.

Right.

But Harari reminds us that historically, many other traditions,

religions, philosophies, were actually quite suspicious of subjective feelings.

They believed in objective standards.

Like the inscription at Delphi, know thyself, implying you don't automatically know yourself just by feeling things.

Exactly.

Or think about Christianity warning against sinful desires, which might feel good momentarily.

Or even modern evolutionary biology suggesting our feelings are just tools of selfish genes, not necessarily guides to truth or lasting well -being.

He uses the example of drug addicts too,

They might report feeling intensely happy while high, but should we take that subjective feeling as the ultimate measure of a good life?

It certainly raises doubts.

And this skepticism about subjective feelings leads him finally to the Buddhist perspective on happiness.

Okay.

Buddhism has thought about this for a long time.

How does it fit in?

Well, Buddhists would agree with the biologists in one sense.

Happiness, or rather suffering and its cessation, does come from within.

It's not primarily about external circumstances.

So happiness begins within.

They'd agree with that part.

Yes, but with a radical twist.

Because the crucial Buddhist insight is that true happiness, or perhaps better termed serenity or liberation,

is ultimately independent of inner feelings too.

Wait, independent of inner feelings?

How?

I thought happiness was an inner feeling.

Not according to Buddhism.

They see all feelings, pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, as just fleeting, impermanent vibrations.

They arise and pass away.

And the real root of suffering, Dukkha, is our constant craving for pleasant feelings, and our aversion to unpleasant ones.

It's this relentless chasing and rejecting of ephemeral sensations that keeps us trapped.

So the goal isn't to maximize the good feelings and minimize the bad ones?

No.

The goal of Buddhist practice, particularly meditation, is to understand the true nature of these feelings, see them clearly as impermanent and impersonal, and to stop the craving, to stop chasing the pleasant and fleeing the unpleasant.

You reach a state of deep peace, serenity, equanimity, which is independent of the constant rollercoaster of feelings.

That is considered true, lasting well -being, not the temporary high of a pleasant sensation.

So when New Agers say, happiness begins within, meaning cultivate positive feelings, Buddha would say?

Buddha would say something more like, true peace begins within when you stop desperately chasing any inner feeling, positive or negative.

It's about detachment from the feelings themselves.

Wow.

Okay.

If that Buddhist perspective is even partially right,

it completely reframes the whole discussion about the history of hackiness.

Absolutely.

Because if happiness isn't really about fulfilling our expectations or having pleasant biochemical sensations or even finding meaning in potentially delusional stories, but rather about understanding the true nature of our own minds and achieving freedom from craving.

Then our whole way of measuring historical progress by wealth or even reported subjective well -being might be missing the point entirely.

It might be fundamentally misguided.

The key question about history might not be, did people get what they wanted or did they feel good?

But did people understand the truth about themselves and the nature of their own consciousness?

It's a massive shift.

And it really highlights, as Horari notes, how little traditional history is engaged with these deeper questions about individual experience, about suffering and consciousness.

It's a huge gap.

The scientific study of happiness, as we've discussed, is very young.

We're still figuring out the right questions to ask, let alone the answers.

And even related fields like psychotherapy are built on the idea that people often don't really know themselves or understand the roots of their feelings.

So there's a long way to go in understanding this.

Definitely.

We need multiple approaches, diverse perspectives.

Okay.

So just to quickly recap this fascinating deep dive.

Horari shows us the link between progress and happiness is really complex, not straightforward at all.

Right.

And subjective well -being seems much more tied to our expectations, which constantly shift than to our objective conditions.

Then there's the powerful biological view.

Maybe it's all just biochemistry, a set point we can't easily change through external means.

Or perhaps happiness is about finding meaning, even if that meaning is ultimately a kind of shared story or delusion.

And finally, that radical Buddhist idea.

Maybe true contentment comes from understanding ourselves and detaching from the endless pursuit of fleeting feelings altogether.

It's a lot to take It really is.

He paints this incredibly rich, multifaceted, and often quite challenging picture of happiness throughout history and today.

And it leaves us, the listeners, with a pretty profound question to chew on, doesn't it?

I think so.

If our usual ways of chasing happiness, more money, better circumstances, even positive thinking, are maybe based on chasing moving targets like expectations or fleeting biochemical highs,

where should we actually focus our energy and attention if we want to cultivate genuine, lasting contentment?

That's the multi -billion dollar question, isn't it?

Thinking about these different frames, expectations, biology, meaning, detachment,

which one resonates most with your own experience?

Where might the key lie for you?

Definitely food for thought.

This deep dive really just scratches the surface.

If this dark your interest, we absolutely recommend digging into Harari Sapiens itself or exploring the research on subjective well -being, the philosophy of meaning,

or maybe even looking into Buddhist teachings on the mind.

It's a crucial inquiry, both historically and personally.

It really is.

Thanks for joining us on the deep dive.