Humans will complain. It’s in our nature. From birth, we learn that we should pretty much always at least attempt to manipulate our surroundings through language because sometimes it results in us getting a cookie. As long as we don’t overdo it, there’s rarely a negative consequence for complaining – so we do it all the time.
The upshot of this is that whether or not someone complains isn’t a good measure of their well-being, and whether or not people as a whole complain a lot isn’t a good measure of society’s well-being. If an individual or a group is doing amazingly, they’ll still gripe.
What is a good measure of a person or group’s overall prosperity is the content of those complaints.
If a person’s complaint is that they might not have enough food to keep their kids from dying of starvation this week – that person has a genuinely rough life! If a group’s complaint is that a portion of their population is being carried off by wolves in the night, that group is in a tough spot!
But if a person’s complaint is that their iced cappuccino didn’t come with as much whipped cream as they normally get or a group’s complaint is that their grocery store has too many options for hummus so it’s hard to choose, then hey, guess what? Their life is amazing!
If anything, the number of complaints usually runs counter to prosperity. The better off you are, the more stuff is in your life – so the more little things you could find to complain about if you want to. But people will front-load the worst complaints they can; whatever someone says first is usually the worst thing in their mind. So if someone’s worst thing is that the climate-control system in their house required minor repairs, then congratulate them! Their life is good!
The news is filled with complaints, and every day they grow more absurd. There are problems, and I won’t pretend that there aren’t. But it’s also absurd to pretend that things aren’t wildly, amazingly better than they used to be, and getting better all the time. You can tell just from what people complain about.
The Opportunity Machine 