For me, mental health is a notable topic because it is one of the few downsides of modernization. I have a pretty grim view of humanity, and I’ve talked to a lot of people about how I think the median human living 5$ a day probably has a terrible life.
The response is always something along these lines: they’ve never experienced anything else, so for them it’s really not that bad of a life. That is, people have some underlying intuition that there is always hedonistic adaptation to new “quality of life”, and that someone’s perspective on their own life matters maybe even more than their actual life.
In rich countries, this looks like mental health issues. People get so used to their physical needs being taken care of that any emotional struggles in their life feel amplified, leading to anxiety and depression.
So I think it is accurate that the most important issues in this world are global health, poverty, etc., simply because so much of the world is underdeveloped. However, if we want to get to a really great world, a world approaching perfection, we will have to tackle mental health issues.
For me, mental health is a notable topic because it is one of the few downsides of modernization. I have a pretty grim view of humanity, and I’ve talked to a lot of people about how I think the median human living 5$ a day probably has a terrible life.
The response is always something along these lines: they’ve never experienced anything else, so for them it’s really not that bad of a life. That is, people have some underlying intuition that there is always hedonistic adaptation to new “quality of life”, and that someone’s perspective on their own life matters maybe even more than their actual life.
In rich countries, this looks like mental health issues. People get so used to their physical needs being taken care of that any emotional struggles in their life feel amplified, leading to anxiety and depression.
So I think it is accurate that the most important issues in this world are global health, poverty, etc., simply because so much of the world is underdeveloped. However, if we want to get to a really great world, a world approaching perfection, we will have to tackle mental health issues.