There was a conversation I had almost every week for the past year.
The world is going crazy. AI will take everyone’s jobs. People don’t want to work anymore. Everything is expensive. Politicians are bad.
All in the same conversation. The conclusion is always the same: life was better 10 years ago.
Maybe it was. Maybe not.
But here’s what I know for sure. Investing your mental energy in this question is one of the most valuable things you can do.
That’s what this article is about.
Whether life is actually worse or not.
But why do we think this and what can be done about it?
Your brain is lying to you
Before you buy into the narrative that things are getting worse, consider the following. The human mind is not a reliable narrator of history.
A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking. A mental label that distorts how we see reality. We all have them. They are not a sign of weakness or stupidity. They are how brains work. The problem is that some of them are very good at blurring the present.
There are three things worth knowing.
The first pink flashback. It is a tendency to remember the past better than before. Research on this goes back decades.
We consistently evaluate past experiences more positively in memory than when they happened. Your brain regulates boredom, anxiety, and uncertainty. What’s left is a sight you’ve never experienced.
The second decline It is the belief that society is in decline, that things are getting worse and worse. Historians and psychologists have documented this for centuries.
Each generation believes that the previous one is better. The Romans were worried about the collapse of society. Medieval scholars mourned the loss of ancient wisdom. And yet here we are. Declinism seems true because there is always evidence for it. If you look hard enough, you can always find something going wrong.
The third negative bias. Bad news gets more attention than good news. Always have. Our brains evolved to sense threats. A tiger in the grass was more noteworthy than a lovely sunset.
This wire has not changed. But the media has already figured it out and has been feeding it ever since. The world you see through your news feed is not representative of reality. It’s the worst, fixed and delivered directly to your nervous system.
Put these three together and you’ve got a car that’s sure to feel worse than it does right now. Not because life is bad. Because your brain does exactly what brains do.
As psychologist Daniel Kahneman pointed out, we are not thinking machines.
We feel like thinking machines.
Emotions are color memory. And memory colors how we see today.
To be honest, I’m not sure life is any better either
Here, I want to be straight with you.
Until recently, some people confidently asserted that life was objectively improving every year. Crime is going down. Cars are safer. More discretionary income. Global poverty is falling. And so on.
It’s hard for me to make that argument today with the same conviction.
The previous decades had a clear story. Since the 1980s, each decade has brought significant improvements.
Technology has improved. Opportunities have been expanded. Life has become more convenient and connected. Every decade something has really changed.
What has changed in your daily life in the last ten years? You have a smartphone. Big TV. Energy efficient car. Netflix. Online shopping. Such things were also available in 2015.
The basics of daily life have remained largely the same, but the cost of living has risen and so have worries about the future.
So I’m not here to tell you it’s okay. I’m just saying whether things are better or worse is not the right question.
What really shapes how you see the world
One thing I’ve come to believe is that your worldview is largely formed when you enter the workforce.
I finished my master’s degree at the end of 2010. The world economy has entered a deep recession. Negativity was everywhere. There were few jobs.
I remember that there was no place after I finished my education years. It shaped how I view economic risk to this day.
People who entered the workforce in 2015 or 2016 had a very different picture. Full growth mode. Opportunities are everywhere. Optimism was easy.
Neither view is objective. Both are real.
Many graduates now face something similar to what my generation faced, but with a new twist.
Their years of training careers are ruined by the AI before they even begin. The dream fell between the first and last year of their degree. It’s really hard.
But that’s the nature of life. It rarely goes as planned. If you prepare for it, the world will not stand still.
This is where stoicism has helped me more than anything else I’ve ever studied.
The Stoics did not live in easy times either. Marcus Aurelius ruled during a time of plagues, wars, and constant political instability. Seneca was forced into corruption, exile, and ultimately suicide. Epictetus was born a slave.
And yet, their message was consistent: focus on the things you can control. Not depending on the situation, but on your attitude towards them.
In his personal journal, Marcus Aurelius wrote to no one but himself:
“Understand that you have power over your mind, not external events, and you will find strength.”
Epictetus puts it more bluntly:
“Make the most of what you have and take the rest as it happens.”
These were not motivational posters. They were survival tools in really tough times. That’s why they work.
Dwelling on the past is a waste of energy
Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that life really was better in 2015. The world has indeed become more difficult and uncertain.
How does this thought improve your life today?
It’s not like that. This is not possible. The past is defined. You can study it, learn from it, and use it as context. But you cannot live in it.
And when you spend your energy lamenting a version of the world that no longer exists, you’re wasting the only resource you need to act on the version that is.
I have had such conversations. People who spend an hour talking about all the things wrong with the world and feel worse than when they started the conversation. I understand the impulse.
But at some point you have to ask: What does this do for me?
The Stoics called it the discipline of desire.
Wanting things to be the way they are is the source of unnecessary suffering. Not the situation itself, but the opposition to them.
Seneca, writing two thousand years ago, put it this way:
“Not because things are difficult, but because we don’t dare.
This is not an instruction to be passive. The Stoics were not passive people. This is a guide to channel your energy where it can make a difference.
Stop fighting reality and start working with it. Ask yourself the question that comes back to me when I find myself in one of these conversations:
Is it worth my time to focus on the state of the world?
Often, the answer is no.
Not because the world doesn’t matter. But because your energy is more important. And the best thing you can do with it is build something, help someone, or improve yourself.
You can control it. Everything else is noise.
