How happy are you… really? Life’s never been better — so why does it feel worse? | Jimmy Carr

How happy are you? Well, [music] it's it's your quality of life minus envy. That's how happy you are.

I think that we suffer in the West a little bit from life dysmorphia. A lot of people think their life is terrible [music] because there's kind of the the hedonic treadmill. You get used to [music] how great your life is. No one had a hot shower until 50 years ago.

So, I try and do this thing when you stand in a hot shower. George Mack, my friend, [music] pointed this out to me. Well, look, when you stand in a hot shower, just for a moment just go, well, no one that you admire from 100 years ago [music] had this simple pleasure in life.

And when you look at the world that we live in, there's been [music] 100 billion people ever, right? We are in the top top percentile [music] in terms of the luck that we have had. And yet life has never been objectively better and subjectively worse [music] because the nature of humanity is our desires are mimetic.

So we've got this thing where we we sort of, you know, how happy are you? Well, it's it's your quality of life minus envy. [music] That's how happy you are. And it's easy to look at everyone else and how they're doing [music] and and not take pleasure in what you have.