The Progress Paradox

Yet despite all of these advancements, we are more discontent than ever. Gregg Easterbrook wrote a book on this very topic entitled The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse. In First World countries, he argues, even as the advances I have just cataloged have materially improved the physical comfort level of everyone in those societies, the rates of depression and psychosis continue to rise.

People feel their lives lack meaning, and they can’t seem to find any remedy to the plague of their own consistent discontentment. A clear example is transportation across…