Will future humans enjoy greater happiness than today due to increased wealth and advances in scientific understanding of happiness?

It is likely that future humans will enjoy greater happiness than we do today due to increases in the total amount of wealth and advances in the scientific study of happiness. Wealth is positively correlated with happiness to some extent, and biochemical research is uncovering ways to induce happiness. This will make future societies happier overall.

 

Humans have long strived to lead happy lives. People believe that happiness comes from setting goals for themselves and achieving them. As such, the word “happiness” is a concept that is always on people’s minds, whether consciously or unconsciously, but its abstract nature makes it difficult to define concretely. The Google dictionary defines happiness as “a feeling of having enough satisfaction and joy in your life.” However, concepts like “satisfaction” and “joy” are not objectively defined. Happiness can vary depending on the cultural, historical, and social environment in which a person lives and their personal values. For example, in the United States, the words “excited” and “happy” are often used interchangeably. As such, the value of happiness is not an easy topic to discuss, even for us today. However, the human race of the future will be happier than the human race of today, thanks to increased wealth and advances in our understanding of happiness.
First of all, happiness is closely related to wealth. The first thing that comes up when discussing happiness is whether the value of happiness can be objectively measured. Those who argue that happiness can be determined by an objective standard often point to wealth. In the modern world, there is a clear correlation between wealth and happiness. According to Yuval Noah Harari, wealth and happiness are positively correlated, up to a point. This is because there are certain conveniences that come with wealth in a capitalist society. Of course, we can’t say that “happiness is solely determined by wealth”. As Easterlin’s paradox states, it is well known that unlimited wealth does not lead to unlimited happiness. However, as the overall amount of wealth increases, the overall level of happiness will increase, as people who were previously unhappy due to poverty will be able to enjoy basic amenities. In fact, if you look at a scatter plot of GDP per capita and happiness in each country, you can see a clear correlation between total wealth and happiness. If the total amount of wealth in future societies increases and everyone has access to a certain level of wealth, the total amount of human happiness will increase proportionally.
So, will humanity have more wealth in the future? When comparing the past to the present, it is undeniable that the total amount of wealth enjoyed by humanity has increased exponentially. Yuval Noah Harari explains that in 1500, the total value of goods and services produced by humanity was about $250 billion in today’s U.S. dollars, while today’s total annual output is about $60 trillion. This represents an increase of about 240 times. Even accounting for population growth, the average wealth per capita is more than 10 times greater than in the past. Since humanity’s science, technology, and industry are still advancing rapidly, it’s likely that future humans will have much more wealth than they do today, and if this increased wealth is distributed appropriately, it will lead to better quality of life and overall happiness.
Second, advances in our understanding of happiness will make future humans happier. As mentioned earlier, defining happiness is very difficult. However, humans have been trying to understand the nature of happiness for a long time. Happiness has been studied in various fields, including the humanities, philosophy, and natural sciences, and people have been able to quantify happiness through surveys, taking it from an abstract concept to a quantifiable one. Education has also been used to help people stay mentally healthy and pursue happiness. Scientific research is uncovering the biological and chemical substances and phenomena that make us feel happy. Yuval Noah Harari says we already know that human emotions are determined by the interaction of nerves, neurons, and synapses, and biochemicals such as serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin. In medicine, attempts are being made to treat mental illness by regulating hormone secretion. By the same principle, if we could artificially increase the amount of biochemicals that make us feel happy, we could use scientific methods to make us feel happy even in unhappy situations. Of course, this raises the question of whether this happiness is true happiness. However, from a mechanistic point of view, humans are, after all, organisms that are driven by certain algorithms. If the process of human happiness were implemented by biochemical substances, it wouldn’t be much different from the happiness we normally feel.
Some have pointed out the potential for biochemical happiness to be morally problematic. Yuval Noah Harari uses Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World as an example to question whether it would be desirable for governments to try to make people artificially happy. However, the novel is fiction, and it’s highly unlikely that anything like Brave New World would actually happen. Of course, there are concerns that happiness-inducing drugs could be abused. However, if people who feel unhappy find relief through drugs, just as depressed people find relief through medication, there is no moral problem.
This increase in wealth and advances in our understanding of happiness will make humanity happier in the future than it is today. Of course, we can’t say for sure that we will have a society where everyone is happy. We need to continue researching happiness and addressing the gap between rich and poor in order to achieve a truly happy society. But it’s certainly possible that the human race of the future will be happier than it is today.