Does Technology really make us Unhappy?

[auroraglacialis]

So I obviously will say something here that contradicts some of what was said.

I do however agree to the full extent that consumerism, an invention by capitalist businessmen in the midst of the 20th century is a major source of the unhappiness. What is happening there is that consumption, buying, shopping has become a mimickry for other things that make us happy - the idea is simple - you work hard, earn a lot of money and then can buy happiness. In the meantime that process eroded away interpersonal relationships (friends become co-workers or competitors in the race for wealth and money, children become a financial burden, relationships to parents are going away as they are put in the best retirement homes the family can afford, the children put in childcare while both parents labor away). What also goes away is spirituality and connectedness. Individualism is ranking high and it is a state of being that only for a short time is appealing to humans - underneath we are social beings.

These things we are missing then - social connection, spirituality, family, friends, connectedness are then sold back to us in a mimickry - as social networking websites, yoga classes, internet forums (sorry, ToS ), as being a "apple person" or a "volvo driver". Consumerism is the apex of using psychology to leech on every human desire and need and replace the things that could fulfil these needs to satisfaction with a mimic that sells good and does not sate the hunger. The result is a society of people who are deeply lacking the regular human needs and feat on replacements that do not help. It is like people craving for apples and being served flavored styrofoam instead - it looks good, it tastes good, it fills the stomach for a while but eventually it does not satisfy the hunger and eventually makes us sick.

But I am also not convinced that "technology is neutral" and it solely depends on the use, because the use is also influenced by technology. Some technologies have a detrimental effect all by themselves - it may be balanced by upsides, but the downsides are there. An example are cellphones - the downsides are social isolation in real life because people are walking by each other staring at their little screens, people call each other instead of meeting, they text each other instead of talking. No "wise use" or non-consumerist society can really eliminate these effects. The upsides are of course a more convenient way to call someone and access to information and emergency calls - but the two areas play in different ballparks. One is a deeply emotional aspect - human personal face-to-face or voice-to-voice contact that is changed often to the negative. The other is a nonemotional but rather intellectual benefit in terms of effectiveness and information. Technology often does that - it trades emotional, spiritual, inter- and intrapersonal connection for gains on the level of comfort, convenience, intellect and information. And that I believe contributes to the unhappiness as well, because we as humans are evolved to be social, emotional, spiritual beings and this is what makes us happy, not information and comforts.
I am not saying that being comfortable makes us unhappy - but that the way technology often works is that it takes away something in return. It is a deal and the question is what is the price and are we willing to pay it.

I do not know that statistics on happiness that supposedly has steadily risen up to 1950, I'd like to see that and how far back it goes, but one explanation is what is called the law of diminishing returns. If I am living in a village in prehistoric Australia and I eat some good fruit. I take the seeds of that fruit that I cannot eat anyways and bury them next to the village. 5 years later there is a tree with that delicious fruit and I just have to go over there to pick them. I invested little but gained a lot. As "development" progresses, the efforts rise and the returns diminish. Grain agriculture will give the chance of a surplus, of a grain storage, but to tend to the fields takes a lot of physical work and I spend a lot more time and energy keeping that up, still the return is worth it for some. But at some time in the development a point is reached at which each increase in payback requires a ever larger investment and there is a threshold where that cannot work out anymore. And I think we have in many parts passed that point.

Another example for that is alcohol. If you know a bit on chemistry, you can distill wine to get alcohol. At first, you get something with 60% alcohol, distill it again and it will be 80% and if you continue distilling it all over again with the same effort for each run, you get to 90%, 95%, 99%, 99.5%, 99.8%, 99,9%,.... so with every round, the increase in comparison to the previous one is less and less for the same effort.

The reason why there was such a boost in the 20th century was because fossil fuels were found - that allowed for an increase in quality/quantity without having to notice the cost so much. Basically the oil and coal did the work and we got the benefits, the oil runs the distillery and it is not a lot of effort to run it 3 or 4 times now compared to before. But we quickly got used to that new level and now we are hooked on that energy subsidy. As we are now facing a time in which we cannot ramp up energy production easily and we notice that after all there was a price for that benefits (in terms of global warming, ecological destruction and diminishing our environment) the gains become questionable. We still like them of course, but we become aware of the true price we have to pay for them. And that surely contributes to unhappiness.