We are only anxious because we have stuff to lose.
The Nepalese are the same as the Brazilian. Happy generally .
But back to the health insurance issue or homeowner's issue...
Yes, I see a lot of unhappy old people. There is a cruelty at end of life. You have to remember, though, that in past times, people were often "old" and debilitated for decades. John Calvin died at 55 after suffering from illnesses of old age for over a decade. Think about that for a second.
I was hiking in Nepal and we came across a fairly young guy who had a major leg injury, but something easy to fix in the US or UK. My friend (now a doc, but not yet at the time) asked them, "Can you take him to a doctor?" They kept saying no. He looked at me and whispered, "This guy is screwed. He will never walk again."
So yes, we have things to lose, but they are not necessarily our possessions. My fear about losing health insurance is based on the fact that my wife would be dead now without good medical treatment and we would be bankrupt if we hadn't had insurance. $700,000 in medical bills, of which we were required to pay less than $5,000.
As a historian I study a period when people in Europe lived more simply than most people in Nepal live now. There was some degree of "why worry about the future (aside from the salvation of your immortal sould)?" but that was because
- you could die at any time
- there was nothing you could do about it
There was a lot of anxiety about injury and death and a lot of pain associated with watching half your children and possibly 2-3 spouses die over the course of your life.
Check out the title of History 403 at Purdue: Reformation Europe: An Age of Anxiety
Summary: "Economic transformation, social mobility, unprecedented poverty and homelessness, rebellion, the encounter with new worlds overseas, and war, all conspired with religious upheaval to make this epoch an age of anxiety."
https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/history/documents/Syllabus-Spring/403-Farr_Sp2012.pdfThere is a "world we have lost" (famous book by Peter Laslett), but one should not romanticize the "simple" life overly much.
Dating back a long time, but especially beginning in the 18th century, there is a whole literature extolling the virtues of the simple life and how much happier people were. But they are almost all written by people of means. There are some examples of memoirs from peasants who became literate who basically debunk that and say that the life of the poor was mostly a life of toil.
Now, if you go back before agriculture and look at hunting and gathering societies, that's a different deal. There, people really do seem happier and there is virtually no incidence of depression. But you still have to deal with only 25% of births resulting in someone reaching adulthood - 50% die before 1 year, another half before 20. Again, as a parent, think of that.
I threw it in as a "food for thought"
Of course. I am throwing this in as food for thought. The high-level takeway from the fisherman is that one should be happy with what one has. I think a key is to be grateful for the things that wealth brings us, like safe drinking water, for example. That is incredible. That's the other way to take the fisherman's tale.
At a young age (teenager), I started reading Buddhist literature and I realized there are two ways to attempt to satisfy desire. One is to attempt to fulfill your desire, but that process is infinite and doomed to failure and unhappiness. The other is to reduce your desire, which is finite and is the surer path to happiness.
