We are not designed for sustained happiness or optimism. Natural selection had very little interest in our mental welfare – survival was vital. As a result, it seems most of us, regardless of geography or social standing, have a set point that something good might happen, and you will feel good for a while; something terrible might happen, and you will feel terrible for a time; but eventually you will probably return to your baseline, which appears to be set out of your control.
Even if you lived in a mansion, and slept on a bed of gold, and brushed your teeth with bills –if you're miserable, you're still miserable.
We have enough problems today as it is. Whether it be disease and mortality, that's to say nothing of cancer, malaria, and tuberculosis. But slowly, thanks to the conscientious among us, they are on the run. It is conceivable that one day humans will live on a planet free of disease and deaths at the hands of nature.
We will surely stop to cast an eye on that involuntary mental problem as well –the specters of despair, of depression, of anxiety –and wonder if we might banish those, too. Maybe one day, we could say that Misery was an involuntary state of mental distress common to humans of all eras and circumstances. Its eradication marked the beginning of the banishment of the existential horrors from the human condition.
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