Why are people still unhappy in a world of progress?

Progress cannot solve mental disorders (or at least it has not done so yet)

So many people that meet and talk to are convinced that the world is going to hell. Then when I tell them that my book series, Substack, and YouTube channel are about progress, they get a big look in their eyes. It is as if I dropped in from another planet. You cannot be talking about the world that I live within, they must be thinking. I believe that these people are incorrect, but I cannot entirely dismiss their point of view.

There must be some reason that there are many people who are unhappy while living in a world of prosperity. I have already listed a number of plausible reasons in previous articles and my book From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement:

• Ignorance of the facts

• A psychological Negativity Bias

• Unreasonable standards for comparison (i.e. utopian ideals or false nostalgia)

• Generational Reset

• Progress is smooth, but problems are spiky

• Negative media coverage

• The self-interest of politicians and interest groups

• The rise of the ideological news media

• The relentless negativity of political ideologues

In this article, I want to deal with an additional factor: mental health.

I believe that human beings need two basic things to be happy (or perhaps contentment is a better word for it):

1. Material progress

2. Mental health

I do not deny that other things matter: family, friends, hobbies, love, marriage. All of those things matter, but I believe that if you have the material progress and mental health, you will very likely be able to get the other things that matter.

Material progress is a fact. I am sorry if you do not believe it, but that is just how it is. By any of dozens of metrics, we are better off materially than we have ever been in our history. If you do not believe me, then look at the metrics of economic growth, human development, freedom, slavery, poverty, agricultural production, literacy, diet, famines, sanitation, drinking water, life expectancy, neonatal mortality, disease, education, access to electricity, housing, and violence (to name just a few), and in virtually every nation. And there are plenty more in my book.

If the above metrics do not convince you, then quite frankly, you are immune to factual arguments.

There is also an enormous amount of evidence that material progress increases levels of happiness. Progress also leads to lower levels of happiness inequality. In other words, progress raises the happiness of those who were previously unhappy more than the rest of society.

In addition, it is very clear that nations with the highest per capita GDP also have the highest levels of self-reported happiness (and vice versa). For example, the graphic below shows the results of the World Happiness Report of 2023.

But we cannot ignore the obvious fact that material progress does not lead to happiness for everyone. And there is a pretty clear trend of increased happiness topping out, and possibly even declining in Anglo nations and some other Western nations since 2010.

What is up with that?

As I was writing my first book, From Poverty to Progress: Understanding Humanity’s Greatest Achievement, I noted the data, but it was too early to tell if this was a break in the trend or just a few outlier years. Now a few years later, I am convinced that something real is going on here, but I could not figure out what it was.

The answer came from my wife (as it so often does). My wife is very interested in psychology. She is not credentialed (for those who care about that), but she is very familiar with the literature.

After discussions with her, I came to realize that there is a very real difference between:

• The reality of material progress

• Our individual perceptions of that material world

The Post-Modern Critique of Progress

Post-Modernism is a worldview that I do not find very persuasive, but I think that we all can learn from a watered-down version of it. Post-Modernists essentially argue that we cannot see the world as it actually exists and that our personal self-interest interests color our viewpoint.

I believe that the above is a factual statement. But Post-Modernists then make the unsubstantiated leap that therefore the world is all about power, domination, and the narratives that the powerful weave to justify their rule. Most of them reject the belief of human material progress as just another narrative that the rich and powerful weave to dominate over the rest of us.

I reject that belief, although I can support a watered-down version of Post-Modernism. It is important to realize that there is an intervening variable between our material world and what we perceive: the human brain.

I consider myself a fairly rational guy, so to me, it was obvious that material progress was a real thing. It was hard for me to understand why the metrics listed above were not enough evidence to convince everyone.

But after talking to my wife, I realize that every human being is trapped with their brain and they cannot get out. For most people being trapped within their brain is a pretty good experience. It clearly beats the only real alternative of being dead.

But for some people, being trapped within their brain is a living hell. For others, it is just unpleasant.

Unfortunately, despite at least a century of research on human psychology, we still know very little. I remember back to the 1980s, when I decided to take a crash course on human psychology. I read a large number of books on the topic. I came away with the conclusion that little of the literature was very useful.

Fortunately, from discussions with my wife and my more recent research, I realized that the discipline of psychology has come a long way in the last 40 years. And so has brain science. We still have not done much to find cures, but at least we understand the human brain much more.

One treatment that does seem to work is Cognitive Bias Therapy (CBT).

Progress has solved, or at least lessened the severity of some many problems. But it has done little to treat mental disorders and personality disorders. Note: for the purposes of this article, I will use the term “mental disorders” instead of the more cumbersome “mental disorders and personality disorders.”

Radical ideologies

I believe that radical ideologies feast on mental disorders. Rather than soothing mental disorders, as CBT does, political ideologies spike mental disorders. I have come to believe that ideologies are the intellectual rationalizations of non-rational human psychology, and radical ideologies are the intellectual rationalizations of mental disorders.

In particular, they feast on Cluster B personality disorders.

I believe that radical ideologies:

• Rationalize mental disorders (i.e. transform unorganized mental impulses into something that can convince other people who do not have those same disorders)

• Organize mental disorders (by bringing people together for a common cause)

• Create targets for mental disorders (by blaming a specific group for problems in society).

• Legitimize anti-social and self-destructive behaviors as being for a higher cause.

When we combine the power of radical ideologies with modern media and, particularly, social media, we have a toxic stew. Now instead of seeking treatment for their disorders, ideologies, media, and social media organize those with mental disorders together to lash out at society. And they focus on the demographic group that the ideology blames.

To most people, I come across as a pretty confident and optimistic guy. My focus on progress seems to reinforce that. But I really worry that human beings might not be able to psychologically handle living in a world of great prosperity. I fully acknowledge that progress has its bad sides.

I believe that human psychology is a combination of the rational and the non-rational. The non-rational establishes our goals, but the rational enables us to accomplish those goals. Humans naturally prefer to use the non-rational part of our brains because it requires less effort. It is only when we are forced to confront the reality that the non-rational part of our brains, do we force ourselves to use the far more energy-intensive and time-intensive rational parts of our brains.

I believe the above is true for virtually all humans, but some people have great difficulty controlling the non-rational part of their brains. We call this a mental disorder.

Mental Disorders

According to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). The DSM is essentially “The Bible” for the Psychiatric profession. Definitions of mental disorders in the DSM-5 consider these 5 factors:

1. A behavioral or psychological syndrome or pattern that occurs in an individual

2. Reflects an underlying psychobiological dysfunction

3. The consequences of which are clinically significant distress (e.g., a painful symptom) or disability (i.e., impairment in one or more important areas of functioning)

4. Must not be merely an expected response to common stressors and losses (ex. the loss of a loved one) or a culturally sanctioned response to a particular event (ex. trance states in religious rituals)

5. Primarily a result of social deviance or conflicts with society

I believe that what enables most humans to keep the non-rational parts of their brain under control is:

• Being forced to interact with the material world to survive. Throughout most of history, this has been the need to consume enough food to eat.

• Disciplinary actions by more rational actors within society (parents, law enforcement, and other institutions).

I am afraid that we are losing both. The digital world is almost completely unrestrained by material reality, and more and more teenagers and young adults are spending a very large percentage of their waking hours in that world.

But did progress create this?

Yes and No.

The more material progress that we experience, the less that we are encumbered by our need to interact with the material world in ways that we find inconvenient. For most people, this is a good thing. It enables us to concentrate on more important things, like making progress work in our day-to-day lives.

But for those with mental disorders and tendencies in that direction, progress empowers them to embrace their mental disorders. In the digital world, there are almost no restraints on one’s ability to embrace one’s own mental disorders.

Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff, and Jean Twenge have done excellent work cataloging a serious decline in mental health, particularly among young people who consume lots of social media. I agree with most of their conclusions, but I think social media is only one part of the cause.

I believe that this decline in mental health, particularly among young girls and women on the left is caused by a hornet’s nest of:

• Underlaying predispositions by some people toward mental disorders, which are largely though not exclusively, caused by genes.

• The heightened vulnerability of young people, particularly teenage girls and women under 30 years of age, to peer pressure and the desire to project an image of caring and compassion to fit in with the group.

• High use of social media starting in the 2010s, particularly among females 14-30.

• The rise of left-wing ideologies, particularly Woke critical theory, climate change activists, and feminism. These ideologies started to spread among young people in the late 1960s but then accelerated rapidly in the 2010s.

• The algorithms imposed by social media corporations to increase “engagement” by reinforcing pre-existing belief systems. Rather than soothing people’s mental disorders, the algorithms “spiked” them (i.e. made them much worse).

• The infiltration of American institutions by activists who abuse their discretionary powers from their administrative jobs to forward the cause of their ideology. They abuse their power by amplifying left-wing ideologies and punishing their opponents, particularly in K-12 education, universities, media, social media, and Hollywood.

• The over-centralization of power in the federal government. This enables the enormous flow of money and jobs to those who think correct thoughts but otherwise make few contributions to society.

All of these forces have come together to:

• Intensify the mental disorders of people, particularly young females

• Incentivize and moralize those people to attack the rest of society for causing their problems.

• Force the rest of society to stop their daily efforts to create a better life for themselves and fight back against people with mental disorders.

Now, let me be clear. I do not believe that progress will lead to increased mental disorders for us all. I believe that ideologies and underlying predispositions towards mental disorders are the driving forces. Modern technologies, particularly social media, just make the propagation of those ideologies to the most vulnerable much easier and more cost-effective.

I hope that sometime within the next generation, we invent true cures for mental disorders, but for now, that looks like a distant hope. For now, we just have to realize what is going on and not cave into those with untreated mental disorders.

Until we learn to deal with the impact of mental disorders, social media, and radical ideologies, I am afraid that more and more people will be unhappy despite living in one of the most prosperous societies in history.