That our elders had it better than we do

"Let's make it clear that I did define the topic, that "had it better" means having better lives and greater opportunities."very vague - what's a better life? better opportunities to what? that could mean jobs but it could also mean speak their mind or god knows what.. I made my interpretation for "better life""One person might hate being a child care worker, whilst another might absolutely love going to work there everyday."yes but that hasn't changed, what has changed is how ok it is to be a certain job or another. You say a person choose, but if I would feel fulfilled being a milkman, and yet this job would not only be underappreciated by everyone, but also not bring enough bread to feed a whole family. Am I really free to make this choice? I'm "free" to make a choice to be a doctor, or a salesperson, or an accountant. But am I really free to make any choice I want to?Do I really not get pressured by my 4 generation of doctors family? Not only am I not free to make my choice today of what job I want to do, the jobs are much more demanding and take over your entire life. You could live nicely just being a guard in the past, today you have to thrive for complete excelence if you want to eat, and because you aren't free to make this choice, you end up in many accepted jobs of today's society, which is when the website comes in. It tests people's self reported happiness of the existing job, not if they would be happy if they were doing this job, but within the people doing a certain job, how many of them are happy. postmen in my country are underpaid truck/mototrcycle drivers. Like I mentioned above, the fact that you technically can choose anything, doesn't mean you really are free to choose everything. In this society if you are poor and need to eat you'll be a postman, and if you are rich and have doctor parents, you will most likely be a doctor. Sure there are exceptions, but that's the rule. I'm saying in the past, being a postman was as good of a job as being nearly anything else there was, the world was more equal in that sense and therefore you were more free to choose. Mlikmen not being a proffesion is also exactly my point - it used to be a proffesion and people -used to- be very happy doing it.You also don't have a full choice today what you study, it depends on how well you did on certain tests, and if you did bad, if your parents are rich enough, you can still study what you want, if they aren't - you can't. Today's society is basically ruled by money, rich get richer. In the past you couldn't study what you want, but you were born into a "place" you were, going back to that example, a postman, that was who you are, and people knew you and liked you and you valued yourself for what became you. "because the people who are likely to be happy with their professions, will not bother to participate."Your claims are absurd and wrong. Many studies are done over the world, if they are done correctly, then they make sure to gather very specific criterias. If you say happy people won't answer the survey, that still doesn't explain why a lot more people working as accountants reported themselves miserable than people working as postmen, considering that in a proffesional research you have to test the same amount (or very similar amounts) of people from each criteria. Self reports today are -the only- way to define and recognize depression. Proffesionals ask their patients how they are feeling, and by their answers decide if they are clinically depressed or not. Some of the questions in the survey might have even been 'are you diagnosed as clinically depressed?" which they might be if they see a therapist. So that claim is just irrelevant."Also, as to current generations having better lives, there is a much better healthcare system in place now than there ever used to be. The mortality rate is lowering, meaning that people have a greater life expectancy" studies actually show that elders are within the most miserable of them all. http://www.suicide.org...go to the statistics by age, you will notice a major increase in suicide rates in people 65+. People at that age start being ill, and they can survive with modern medicine, but they still suffer pain, they can barely function, they are very dependant and feel they have lost their independence and are like children again. They grow more and more depressed, and I've personally heard more than one person over the age of 80 that told me people weren't meant to live that long. We do increase our life span, I don't disagree about that. Is it for the better though?"Instead of dying at 35"???? I'm protecting about 3-4 generations back, so we are talking about birth year of 1900 at most. So first I want to make a distinction between death under the age of 10 and death over that age. I say this because life expectancy includes peopel who died really young, and there was a high mortality at young ages, although those who survived those young ages made it through a lot more than the average life expectancy. It's important therefore to differe life expectancy and life span.Your argument does not indicate that it's better to have a larger population, so I'm going to ignore the mortality under the ages of 10, and over the ages of 5 show you that the decrese is only those years that people life in depression and misery. http://www.infoplease.com...so by this chart, in 1900 you would live to be 58 if you survived up to the age of 10 (and 60 if you lived to be 20), and in 2004 you would live to be 76 if you survived to be 10. (for white males, taking them as an example and also they years, the numbers between 2004 and now haven't changed much)If we go back to our suicide chartshttp://www.suicide.org...you will notice that suicide rates increase between the ages of 55-64, exactly those ages that we now increased people living to.So in fact, modern medication forcing us to live longer, has kmade us more miserable and suicide prone people.also, you have not given an answer as to my claim that it's hard for a person to find himself in such a large society, and he can never be the best, and therefore can never be happy.I want to sum up because it became a bit of a mess:happiness- in the past we could feel we are the best at something and therefore be more happy-it was easier for us to find ourselves and our meaning, because everyting wasn't as big, because there weren't so many options and ideas around- we lived to the perfect age for happiness, and modern medicine makes us more miserable by unnecessarily prolonging our lives.more oppurtunities/being free to choose what to study or work at - we still aren't free to choose because society still limits our thinking, through our parents telling us what they want of us, and becaues certain jobs can't provide for a family anymore.- even if we did have mor oppurtunities, it would be a bad thing because choosing between so many things leaves a person not knowing who they are and where to take their self worth from. and for all those reasons, I yearn to live like our past generations.