Um, no. After reading descriptions like http://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/londondisease.ht... I'm quite glad to not have had the misfortune of being born a few centuries ago.

As for the importance of fitting in, I remember one book on pre-Revolutionary France that estimated that at any given time about 1/3 of the population was homeless. Their life expectancy was short, with risks of starvation, being killed by bandits, being killed as bandits, and so on. Again, not really a fun time to be alive.

What you need is time to think, time for health and body, and time with genuine friends.

While some specific purchases can make us happy, for most the initial euphoria is soon replaced by feelings of uneasiness as our new thing becomes old.

Why do you think BMW hit the big time with their model series, a strategy every other car company as copied? Because you start with the 1 series. A first you love it and are immensely satisfied with your new status. Then you go in for servicing, and dammit don't those 3 series look good. Eventually you trade the 1 at a shocking loss and roll over to the 3. Happiness! Now you're really getting somewhere. You go to a party and someone gets out of a shiny new 5 series. This 3 series looks crap in comparison. Better look into trading on a 5. And so on.

The lesson is, if you plan on living a long time, better to get control of your desires now and settle on a standard of living that makes you happy. The alternative is facing an exponential growth in the cost of living, hurtling towards a time when your working life ends with a champagne taste and a 2-buck-chuck budget. Happiness will not result. And if you've neglected health and family all along, your going to be broke, sick and unhappy, and maybe even lonely.

A few centuries ago, when you say people could have fun doing nothing at all, what you call "a great deal of suffering" in contemporary society is actually materially better than even the middle class lived back then. Much better. It's just that people are wired to compare themselves to their community, and by default that's what people base their self-worth and contentment on, unless they do some careful introspection and consciously change their source of sense of self-esteem.

A few centuries ago, the average family lived on a small farm with little education, no running water, no electricity, and little excess. A large fraction of the children would die before their first birthday, and dying of bacterial infection was quite likely at any age. The boys could expect nothing more than a life full of hard physical work on the farm, and the girls could expect to get married or, if they were very lucky, get a profession like nursing or teaching. Yet, this average family was happy, and it wasn't because of their material possessions or adequate healthcare (clearly). It was because they were grateful for what they had, and because of a supportive community who were just like them and were always there for them.

You're missing the point of the quote you pasted. His father had everything he ever wanted because he didn't value material wealth, and was perfectly content with what I imagine you (and probably me too) would call "suffering", because he had friends, family, hobbies, time, and relatively good health. That's really all we need.

That's a huge and unjustified assumption. They likely were exactly as unhappy as a comparable 'average' family today: they would envy their neighbours who owned a better horse, they would fight among themselves (a lot, and with real physical violence among family members), their children would run away and never return, their weakest elements would be bullied mercilessly, and so on and so forth.

Life could be absolutely hellish, even more so for people who did not fit their (fewer and stronger) expected roles.

> It was because they were grateful for what they had

Or rather they were thankful they survived to see another day. That's not happiness, that's just relief.

> and because of a supportive community who were just like them and were always there for them.

They were also ready to judge, gossip, discriminate, bully and cast away anyone who wouldn't fit the strict rules of very hypocritical and moralistic communities.

I can agree that modern consumerism is hardly a paradise, but the past was much worse and there is no reason to look back with rose-tinted glasses. The past was worse in every respect.

However, in regard to the probable happiness of the average 18th century family, I still think most research on happiness would disagree with you. People seem to have a default level of contentment that varies only temporarily when major positive or negative changes occur in their lives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill This suggests that being thankful they survived to see another day, while grim by our standards, actually was real happiness.

Exceptions to this, that is, things that make lasting changes to one's happiness include:

* A supportive community of peers with whom you meet regularly

* Regular physical exertion

* Regular time for quiet reflection

* Marriage

* True and devout belief in a religion.

Our average 18th century family had all of these.

On the other hand, modern society has a greater capacity for a person to self-actualize and get into a path where they are able to regularly enter a state of flow, which is also shown to increase happiness. But this is only an increase capability, not the norm.

What they certainly had more than us, though, was the certainty that they would not get to choose when or how to interact with such elements. They were fundamentally resigned to a life of reaction, rather than conscious action, as it had been the case for millennia. Again, they were content or relieved at the best of times, rather than actually happy. It's an incredible achievement of the XIX and XX century that increasingly large numbers of people can decide what "pursuing happiness" actually means for themselves.

It's not missing only as long as it is available as a choice, but what the parent meant was probably that the majority of people don't live like that anymore.

To me, just making this statement is an indicator that you've allowed yourself to buy into something you don't like. It's just as viable to live by the opposite view, which is that people who place too much value on a "certain set of things" don't make particularly good friends. And people who are constantly chasing trendy purchases to define their lifestyle don't seem particularly satisfied with their lives.

Towards having to have a spa & a large house? Since when has that been a required set of things to be happy?

(Stable job & healthcare, sure, those are good things to have these days)