If you're well off economically, then maybe.

But outside of the freedom in how you spend whatever money you are able to 'earn', I'd argue that the Western model of life (i.e. work) is pretty damn authoritarian. It's entirely possible that people in the past felt that they had more freedom than they realistically do now.

edit: To the coward who down-voted me without deigning to engage in debate, here's some evidence that when empires (like the west) collapse it can improve the lives of the 99%: https://aeon.co/essays/the-great-myth-of-empire-collapse

>To the coward who down-voted me ...

From the site guidelines: "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

If you have a lot of money, sure. But coming back to reality, prices for everything has risen and lots of people are living harder lives than a few years ago.

There is no meaningful 'best time to be alive' distinct from psychological reality. If people are not adapted to their environment and either don't value it or aren't valued by it, it doesn't matter how much material comfort is available. There is a reason the suicide rate jumps during industrial revolutions.

The suicide rate was never accurately measured before the industrial revolution so we can't make any claims about it one way or another.

The industrial revolution was not a single event. There is enough data since then to say that economic uncertainty is correlated with suicide and that technological upheaval is correlated with economic uncertainty.

The period we are living through is a time of rapid technological change, whatever you want to call it, and suicide rates have been increasing for the past 25 years. Although I would take any studies and statistics on this with a large grain of salt I think it is not unreasonable to consider these things are related.

Yes, it's an absurd situation for so many to be so unhappy when, by all measurements, this is "the best time to be alive. But do you really think that Americans are simply that spoiled and stupid? When an entire nation sinks into a despair, surely there must be a better answer than "ignorance"? So I am positing that there must be some underlying problem, something that is difficult to quantify, dare I say it, some kind of mass psychological-spiritual disfunction at play.

> Yes, it's an absurd situation for so many to be so unhappy when, by all measurements, this is "the best time to be alive.

Considering the United States only for a moment; the distribution of national income has not been so unequal since the robber baron days. At the same time the visibility of wealth to make upward comparisons has never been greater due to complete permeation of media, both traditional and social. If my share of income in real dollars was slipping as is the case for many, while watching the .1% pocket it, I’d be pretty doggone dysphoric.

Most would agree the 21st century is better than the 16th century, but is 2025 better than 2019 or even 2010?

Well, there aren't any signs of a worldwide multi-year pandemic starting that will shut down every economy, force governments into extreme monetary devaluation via supply expansion to pretend everything is okay, and an extreme loss of trust in many medical and scientific institutions.

So, yeah, I'd rather carry on as we are than go back and live through it all over again.

A bit like investing the graph looks straight when you zoom out but close examination shows many peaks and troughs.

It would be nice if our wellbeing increased monotonically but events (covid, the financial crisis, the war in Ukraine) get in the way.

If you ignore future developments that seem impossible to avoid, I’m talking demographics mostly, then you might have an argument.