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Comment by temp0826 | Hacker News Reader

I think Harvard students would likely have more opportunities to choose joy so I'd take this all with some boulders of salt anyways.

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I would very much doubt that. Joy is in how you engage with the life you have. You can have a Harvard education and (for example) be envious of the guy next door, or let topics-of-the-day drive you crazy (eg: "I don't have kids because it's bad for the environment" or "I never got married, too busy with my career")

And vice a versa, plenty of poor people find a way to be at peace with what they have (and even strive to do better w/o being resentful) , have families, etc.

> let topics-of-the-day drive you crazy

Oh yeah, chasing fads and news cycles is miserable -

> "I don't have kids because it's bad for the environment" or "I never got married, too busy with my career"

There are, uh, extremely not "being driven crazy by topics-of-the-day." Let alone even being joyless choices.

Being poor is very stressful. I would argue that well-off people have way more freedom to make choices to be happy.

> plenty of poor people find a way to be at peace with what they have (and even strive to do better w/o being resentful) , have families, etc.

There is a definite floor to this definition of “poor” and a ton of people live below it.

That is true. It's also true that truly happy people live in places in Africa with actually the bare minimum calories, barely functioning shelter, and not the best prospects for medicine.

Also note that until industrialism started 250 years ago, all of humanity lived is those conditions.

You and I would NOT be happy there, but they were probably as happy as we are on average.

How do you know they are truly happy? I am sure they wouldn't mind proper food, housing and medical care.

You can react to the hand you're dealt in better or worse ways, and that's important, but that doesn't AT ALL mean the hand is unimportant.

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