Even as the modern world has dramatically improved our material lives, many of us are feeling increasingly worse.
By Gregg Easterbrook
Gregg Easterbrook's new book is "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse" (Random House).
February 23, 2004
By practically every objective measure, American life has been getting better for decades.
Standards of living keep rising, with the typical house now more than
twice as large as a generation ago; middle-class income keeps rising,
though more slowly than income at the very top; more Americans graduate
from college every year; longevity keeps rising; almost all forms of
disease, including most cancers, are in decline; crime has dropped
spectacularly; pollution, except for greenhouse gases, are in long-term
decline; discrimination is down substantially. Yet despite all these
positive indicators, the percentage of Americans who describe
themselves as "happy" has not increased since the early 1950s, while
incidence of depression keeps rising — and was doing so long before the
morning of Sept. 11.
This is the progress paradox: Life gets
better while people feel worse. Many explanations suggest themselves.
One is the depressing effect of excess materialism, which I call "the
revenge of the credit card." Another is fear that Western society will
break down, which might be called "collapse anxiety." A third is the
uneasy feeling that accompanies actually getting what you dreamed of.
Today, tens of millions of Americans have things their parents or
grandparents could only dream of — nice houses, college educations.
Though that is obviously good, Americans are finding that merely
possessing the good life does not ensure happiness. This may tell us
there is a "revolution of satisfied expectations" — that general
prosperity brings with it an empty feeling.
Here is another
possible explanation of the progress paradox: that along with getting
better at manufacturing cellphones, DVD players and SUVs, society gets
ever better at manufacturing stress.
Stress is hardly a new
phenomenon. To have been a pioneer prairie farmer in the 1800s,
cracking hard soil with a hand plow; to have been a seamstress working
14-hour days for starvation wages in a sweatshop in the 1800s; these
and many other past life circumstances were surely stressful. But the
contemporary increase in stress is not in your mind; researchers
believe Americans suffer from ever-higher levels of nervous tension.
Higher stress, in turn, may be offsetting our appreciation of a better
life.
Consider, first, that nature designed us to experience
stress. "Stress is inevitable and not necessarily bad," says Bruce
McEwen, a researcher at Rockefeller University in New York and a
leading authority on the biology of stress. In reaction to noise,
sudden movements or perceived dangers, an area of the brain called the
amygdala secretes a hormone called cortisol that engenders stress.
Stress hormones heighten the awareness of surroundings, while slightly
improving vision and hearing.
Researchers believe the stress
response evolved in mammals because stress decreases the odds of being
caught and eaten by something. Today, the stress response is no less
important as an evolutionary "adaptation" than it was in the era of
saber-toothed tigers. Drive at 75 mph with other vehicles only a
car-length away, and you'd better have heightened awareness of sudden
small movements.
Stress is also a coping mechanism for the
demands of life. At the workplace or at school, the stress response
helps people be on guard regarding problems, and helps them work
harder. Studies show that successful or high-income individuals tend to
have more cortisol pumping through their systems. (Whether the
pressures of their positions cause the stress or the stress-response
helps them attain their positions is not known.)
However,
research also shows that those who enjoy career success and exhibit
stress symptoms are twice as likely as the population at large to
describe themselves as "very unhappy." That the stressed-out are likely
to be unhappy is a warning sign, because stress, measured either by
emotional state or by cortisol levels, is rising in American society.
One reason is that the media get ever better at presenting us with
information to worry about.
The 1800s prairie farmer would
have fretted a great deal about the weather and the arrival of the
Wells Fargo wagon, but he would have known hardly anything about crimes
in distant cities or angry chanting mobs in other nations. Today,
everyone gets minute-by-minute readouts of killings, natural disasters
and social unrest the world over. Even as most things get better for
most people, there are ever more entries on the list of worries,
activating more stress.
The contemporary lifestyle also fosters
stress. Americans now spend an average of almost an hour per day in the
car, and being stuck in traffic is stressful compared to walking, which
can be relaxing and pleasant. A century ago the typical American walked
three miles a day; today it's well less than a quarter of a mile.
Ever-decreasing physical exertion coupled with ever more calories means
that, today, the typical American is overweight. Stress and weight are
related, as overweight people have a higher proportion of cortisol in
their bodies than the lean.
The national decline in sleep is
another factor in rising stress. Cortisol production stops during
sleep; one of fundamental reasons that mammals sleep may be to give
their bodies a break from stress hormones. Researchers believe 10 hours
of sleep nightly was the norm for most of human history. By a
generation ago, the U.S. average had fallen to eight hours per night;
the average is now seven hours and still falling.
We don't
sleep well, either, owing to bad habits such as eating or watching TV
just before bed. Those who watch TV until lights-out often experience
interrupted sleep, researchers say, whereas our ancestors, who read or
knitted before bed, slept more soundly.
What can we do to
reduce stress? First are short-term lifestyle changes. Cut calories;
engage in 30 minutes of physical activity daily; turn off the
television at least an hour before bedtime.
Long-term goals
should be more ambitious. Society needs to find ways to make society
less of a rat race; to render the economy less tumultuous and ease job
anxiety; to slow the hectic pace of existence so that we can step back
and appreciate our own lives. If living standards and stress continue
rising in sync, we'll endlessly be better off but not happier.