We have jobs. We have a place to sleep. We have families who understand and support us. Technologically speaking, we live better than any medieval king, our food stays fresh in the fridge, we drive eco-friendly electric cars, we can reach the whole world from a screen in our pocket.
So why are we unhappy? Are we ungrateful? Don’t we know how to be thankful?
Hahahaha. That word. Gratitude. Never leaves the mouths of the rich.
History has shown us that gratitude is a bigger sin than pride.
Anyway. Let’s take a closer look at what we actually have.
We have jobs. Yes. Jobs that pay badly, offer no security, demand endless overtime, and pack us into stress-filled buildings with everyone from the chronic yes-man to the active bully.
That first item pretty much settles everything.
But let’s continue.
I pay a third of my salary for a forty-square-meter apartment. When I cook, the whole place smells. The heating doesn’t work. The fact that this is considered acceptable — charging this much for this little — says everything. No need to elaborate.
I’m expected to get married, have two or more children, find a partner with a good career, and move into a bigger place together. If we can’t do that yet, we should be patient and save up, because “it’s an investment in the future.” Since my family assumes the reason I haven’t done this is personal failure rather than economic reality, in their eyes I’m incompetent and ungrateful.
Yes, we have more than a medieval king. The fridge works. Hot water comes out of the tap. True. But how valid is that comparison, really? I don’t think any king in the Middle Ages set an alarm for 7 AM. Or paid a small fortune to rent a shoebox apartment. He didn’t have electricity bills with absurd environmental taxes baked in. He rode horses for days — but not every day. Not every single weekday, plus Saturdays if there’s overtime, for years, until you retire or drop dead from a stress-induced heart attack.
I saw a tweet. A man in a suit on the train, eating a sandwich and crying. Someone from a completely different country quoted it and wrote that they had lost their sense of purpose — that working until they die just to survive was exhausting them. They were dreaming of a simple life that was enough.
I grew up on Hollywood movies. I was handed the dream that I’d be a rockstar after high school. They told me I’d fight robots. I’d travel the world with the love of my life. Realizing none of that would happen was a hard slap. Still — dreaming was good. Deep down we always knew these things were unlikely. But even if we couldn’t travel the world, we’d get a decent job, come home in the evening, put our feet up, watch something, and continue the adventure in our dreams. That’s what the older generation told us. The movies were fiction, but their lives were real.
Now the politicians I voted for are planning to raise the retirement age. And the new generation is dreaming of a life that’s simply enough for them.
That one hit harder.
Why Are We Unhappy?
Let’s start with the older generation. I understand why they call us ungrateful. They can’t keep up with the times. They compare us to their own circumstances.
Their purpose in life was sacrifice and usefulness. Sounds like a noble mission. They made their sacrifices to companies, they were useful to those companies. They were raised that way, so they never questioned it — and since they could buy houses with their retirement bonuses, they never needed to question it. They saw it as a win-win. They also didn’t have too many choices, so their heads never got crowded.
Because that’s how they were raised, they accuse younger people of being selfish. What they can’t see is that they are the selfish ones.
“Sacrifice Yourself. Work for Society.”
Society is made up of individuals. If the individual is unhappy, it affects society. The older generation worked hard to prevent any of that from surfacing. Overwork stops thinking. Stops questioning. You don’t have a moment to scratch your head. They said society matters — and instead of solving the individual’s problems, they asked the individual to suppress them. (They’re still doing this today, just dressed up as mindfulness nonsense.) To justify it, they glorified sacrifice. Living this way for decades now blocks younger people from questioning their own problems too. The older generation thinks the world is still the same as it was. They believe that even if things are bad, you should be grateful. And they force individuals into sacrifice for the sake of “society.”
Ignorance-fueled happiness is short-term.
Their advice always circles back to sacrifice. And without realizing it, they contradict themselves. Take children, for example. They bring a child into the world and say they work for that child. They say they sacrifice their own lives. But when the child grows up, they expect them to carry on the tradition. If you sacrificed yourself for your child, that child should now get to live comfortably. Why does the child need to sacrifice too?
Is there a sacrifice leak somewhere? Or was the sacrifice never really for the child?
Because their capacity for critical thinking was stripped away, we need to explain this to the older generation: what was sold to them as “society’s happiness” was actually the happiness of the wealthy. And by wealthy, I don’t just mean employers — politicians too. They worked for these people. They sacrificed their lives for them. And now they expect the same performance and sacrifice from younger generations.
They see individualism as selfishness and want younger people to continue their legacy of sacrifice — all while ignoring the scale of income inequality, dismissing economic instability, and turning a deaf ear to unemployment. That is the real selfishness.
They need to realize the times have changed. You can’t buy a simple hamburger for a few coins anymore. Buying a house with a retirement bonus isn’t even a conversation worth having. Retirement pay is so low that people are literally working until they die.
Greed and incompetence are driving our world into catastrophe from every angle. In their time, cutting back on groceries meant investing in the future. Today, people cut back just to make it to the end of the month.
YouTube video idea: We made elderly people live for a month on today’s average salary.
Fast Forward to Now
The older generation did give their children at least a slightly better life. Many people got to go to university. They had free time to think. People started asking: why am I working unpaid overtime so my boss can buy his kids new cars?
The older generation wasn’t ignorant — they weren’t stupid either. They were aware of employers’ greed. But back then, income inequality wasn’t this extreme. Rents hadn’t gone through the roof. There were no climate-related taxes baked into every bill. They were taking home decent money. That kept them from complaining.
Right now, people are working over forty hours a week with mandatory overtime. And they still can’t make it to the end of the month. The system keeps people too exhausted to think. But when you can’t bring food home, you start asking: why does this system work this way?
The Life Template
Finish a good school, get a job, get married, take out a mortgage, retire.
This template runs against the entire diversity of human nature. Everyone is forced into this mold — and even those who manage to fit it reach the top and fall into the void of: “Okay, I did everything I was supposed to do, and I’m still unhappy. Is this it?”
This template was invented by the older generation. They were taught it. They were told it was the better way. After long working hours, they had no time to sit down and ask themselves whether they were actually happy.
The Greed of Those in Power
The wealthy aren’t just disconnected from ordinary people — they’re greedy. Thanks to the internet, we’ve gotten to know them better.
The advice they give is absurd. Completely out of touch. Some of them don’t know what they’re talking about — they just think they’re smart because a microphone was pointed at them. They criticize people for spending twenty-eight dollars on a meal. But they never ask why a meal costs twenty-eight dollars. Or why something that simple is considered a luxury. Or mention the prices at their own restaurants. They don’t do the math on how saving twenty-eight dollars doesn’t add up to anything meaningful at the end of the month. Either they’re complete fools, or they’re deliberate about it.
I don’t think “deliberate” is too strong a word. Being aware of people’s economic suffering and hiding it for personal gain — that’s deliberate cruelty.
In companies run by people like this, it’s not just our labor being exploited. It’s our souls.
Uncertainty and the Fear of the Future
The economy has always had problems. The world has always been in trouble. But there were brief periods of relative comfort. And the old world was more predictable — a past invention would open new doors, create new jobs. Today, AI is taking entry-level jobs, and CEOs smugly tell fresh graduates to “find their place on the AI train.”
Economic crises, AI eating through the job market, climate collapse, global instability… Younger generations will never fully feel what the older ones had — that sense of my future is secure. Not knowing what tomorrow will bring creates a kind of chronic anxiety that never quite goes away.
The Slavery System
Let’s say you managed to find a job. Now you have to deal with what’s inside the job. “Flexible” hours. Toxic environments. Financial pressure. The AI countdown. Burnout.
Finding a job is its own problem. Doing the job is another. Our situation isn’t that different from medieval serfdom — except our hands aren’t cut off, and because stress and depression are invisible, they’re not taken seriously.
“If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life…”
Oh, go to hell. How are you supposed to love your work in an environment like this?
I’m an engineer. There’s liquid iron at 1,500 degrees outside. I add elements to it. It becomes steel. Cast iron. Stainless steel. It’s like magic. But I can’t love it — because the people around me never leave you alone. They talk about teamwork while stabbing you in the back. They lecture you about responsibility while deflecting every mistake onto someone else. They say we’re all in the same boat while climbing on top of each other. These things are what stop us from loving our work.
I was let go from my last job for being “incompatible.” Not joining fake conversations. Pushing back on unpaid overtime and asserting my rights. Refusing to pass the blame or patch things with temporary fixes — asking for actual solutions. Those were my incompatibilities.
“Point the Finger at Yourself Too”
Is all of this the system’s fault? Do we bear none of the responsibility?
The system is the main source of the problem. But we make mistakes too.
Falling Into the Social Media Trap
Our phones show us the filtered lives of the wealthiest, most beautiful, most successful, most well-traveled top one percent of the world. Our brains can’t register that this is an illusion, so we’re left with a constant sense of inadequacy. We compare other people’s “best moments” to our own “ordinary days” and feel miserable.
This nonsense mirrors the template pushed on the older generation — everyone gets told the same thing: “You’re not really living. An ordinary life is death. Real life looks like this.” But we all know real life doesn’t look like that. We know how much even a small vacation costs. And yet we still fall for it.
What makes it worse is that the old template was actually achievable. This one isn’t. It’s a carrot in front of a donkey. They plant inadequacy in you, then tell you the only cure is to work harder — or buy their training course.
Dopamine Obesity and Impatience
Instant gratification has made us its slaves. We tap once and expect delivery tomorrow. Something no king could ever have. And it’s not inherently bad — we built this technology, we earned it. The problem is when we try to apply that logic to every part of life. For anything that requires long-term effort, we get bored fast, we quit, we feel like failures — because we’re running a race we didn’t know we’d entered, and we’re constantly told we’re falling behind. Everyone is ahead of us. Everyone passed us. We think this because forty-second transformation videos tell us so.
Someone with stick-thin arms posts a workout video. Someone with no drawing ability shares their first sketch. Years go by. 2020… 2023… 2026… The arms thicken. The drawings improve. Six years compressed into forty seconds. Our brains don’t register the numbers at the bottom of the screen.
Some things take time and real effort. That’s just how it is.
Consumption Madness
Everyone knows this. What goes unnoticed is the production side. Not just online — in every sector, there’s an almost incomprehensible volume of output. We produce to consume. To keep up with rapid consumption, production has to be even faster. That means cutting corners on the value of what’s made. And this hollows us out from both ends: the things we make at work are worthless; the things we consume at home are worthless.
So naturally, we become worthless too. And we rent our freedom — our time — for these worthless things.
Adding real value in production isn’t a one-person job. If management isn’t even bought into the brand, if all anyone cares about is profit, one person can’t infuse meaning into mass-produced goods. The most you can do is do your own job well and feel okay about it.
But you can control what you consume. Especially what you consume online. What appears in front of you is what the algorithm chose to show you. You can seek out what it didn’t show you. You can shape the algorithm. You can even reduce consumption. You are not obligated to consume what is served to you.
Conclusion
“You should be grateful and—” No. Hell no.
We should be angry about the things beyond our control. We should be asking why there’s poverty amid plenty. Guillotines get built. Employers and politicians get brought to their knees. AI is still in development. And we are the customers — if we don’t buy, there’s no production. No production, companies collapse. No labor, no taxes. No taxes, governments fall. Of course, for any of that to work, we’d need to be united. To actually do the “teamwork” we’re always being lectured about.
One thing I’ve been thinking about: don’t politicians think about this? The wealthy do everything in their power to avoid taxes. If working people disappear, who exactly are they going to tax?
So What Can We Do — Individually?
I’ve changed jobs four times. Each one had different problems. Instead of tolerating them, I was willing to move to different cities. I even applied abroad. My current workplace is less stressful. No manager over my shoulder. No one on the team working to undercut me. But the pay is low. And since I’ve decided I want to be a writer, I can’t bring myself to fully invest in the job. So I’ve organized my life around that. When work ends, I start writing. I have plenty of time. Most white-collar work gets done in thirty hours a week — but old-school managers want you present. Even when there’s nothing to do. Especially when there’s nothing to do. Genuinely a psychological condition.
I’ve reduced the stress at home. I used to dread starting narrative games. Instead I’d log into counter strike 2, scream at cheaters and smurfs and the idiots who quit when we went 2-0, and then need medication for the leg tremors the stress caused. That was my cycle.
I deleted cs2. Because I was done with it. I don’t rage anymore. I don’t swear at the screen or shake my leg mid-game. But I also can’t win anymore — so there’s no point. I shifted to story-driven games instead, to actually enjoy my time and feed the part of me that wants to write.
I only use social media at work anyway. At home I don’t even think to open it. For news and cat videos. I genuinely don’t care about what celebrities are doing.
In short: I’m trying to eliminate my sources of stress, one by one.
Am I happy right now? Not particularly. But I’m fighting my way out of this swamp. Not shutting my eyes and pretending to be grateful. Not accepting the so-called fate handed to me. Fighting.
That feels good.
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