Good book - The Progress Paradox

[Telly]

Subtitled "How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse". Written by George Easterbrook.

I've never seen a book with so many quotable lines. Even the Introduction is good! In the back of the book are 37 pages of notes linked chapter by chapter to the text referencing them. I found the best way to read it is to keep a second bookmark in the Notes section, moving it as I went along.

Here are half of the chapter titles:

1. The great story of our era: Average people better off.

2. Practically everything getting better.

3. Why good news scares people.

4. Portable carpeted dog steps.

5. More of everything except happiness.

6. Stress-It's nature's plan.

Here is a clip:

"Problems are inflated into crises in part because, during a crisis, elites gain stature. World War II was a crisis; the current Middle East situation is a crisis; 99 percent of the issues facing the Western world are not crises. But in contemporary public discourse, everything is a crisis - a notion talk shows and media outlets have an interest in promoting. The other day, I heard a foundation president being interviewed on CNN proclaim a 'serious crisis.' What the 'serious crisis' was doesn't matter here; what mattered is that the word 'crisis' has been so devalued by overuse that now we must speak of the 'serious crisis.'"


So maybe we all have evolved into a bunch of whiners, because we now have the luxury of whining. The big problems that faced our ancestors have been long solved for most people, and now we focus on little stuff.

An interesting book! Puts modern life into perspective.