The role of happiness and prosperity has been well documented in our history. Misery, however, only shows up in the records as an anomaly, even if it’s still quite widespread across the world. While there’s no doubt that there are still many countries living in the most peaceful times of their history, there still seems to be more misery around than should be normal. Despite having progressed enough to develop modern ideas of human rights, democracy and liberty for all, for some reason, deprivation and hardship are still a regular part of life for many people.
The reason for that isn’t that we’re unable to eradicate misery, but that it’s an irreplaceable part of our story. It has shaped up our civilization and evolution in more ways than most other factors in our history, some of which may not be that obvious to most of us.
This is an encore of one of our previous lists, as presented by our YouTube host Simon Whistler. Read the full list!