I am requesting your opinion

Hi Pascal, I too liked @Renée  🐝 Cormier response, and only just noticed that I did not say so.  She points out the very clear reality of choosing your own perspective on life and your activities.  It places the idea of “better” more clearly into the subjective versus quantitative.  

Hello @Franci 🐝Eugenia Hoffman, you have a point.  Life is very much a do it to yourself project and if you take the time to do it well you have the benefits of your efforts.  This question has across multiple platforms developed into two areas of answers, the person with personal choices and societal and the effects on society.  Each answer has merit and has opened more questions than answers.  Both you and Ken have brought up the main focus in both areas.  Well, they say jacuzzies are a great place to think.

@Ken Boddie you sir have hit the proverbial nail on the head.  The question that I was finding very hard to put into words was very much along the line of your statement.  Where is the or was the line of balance?  Where is that point of technological benefit balance with physical and mental health?  While I fully agree with you in that I have no desire to return to some of the more difficult days, but there were some significant benefits in those days that we no longer have.  My curiosity like a cat can get me into hot water.  

Well, Greg, optimism aside, and since you prompted us to probe deeper, I’m guessing that your average Joseph and Josephine Blo, living in one of our modern mechanised megacities, has a poorer diet (due to processed sterilised carcinogenic food) has a poorer posture and a generally poorer weight to height ratio (due to less exercise and more reliance on mechanical people movers and work facilitators) than our forefathers and their forefathers. As our medical capabilities advance, our average ‘healthstyles’ retard, and the gap between the have’s and have not’s widens. Yet, although for many, lifespans appear to be increasing, it also appears that the price of our modern comforts, for those who can afford them, may be higher than we might conceive. Yet, surely very few of us would advocate that homo sapiens retreat to the days prior to our current AI revolution, or, prior to that, the industrial revolution, or the preceding agricultural revolution, or indeed to ascend back into the trees. It appears that we may indeed be victims of our own success as an evolving species. This begs the question of whether we are on a course (or is it curse) of successful advancement and expansion (along with our waistlines) or are hell bent on not only destroying our own species, but also the majority of species with which we share our ailing planet? 🤔

Time indeed will tell!

Hi @Ken Boddie, I agree that the need for recognition is consistent but reduced in availability.  I also agree that we believe that we are improving regardless of what the truth or facts might say.  Which is one of the reasons I asked the question.  Our ability to self-deceive is amazing.  Now, I am not saying that everything is bad or necessarily going bad.  I am simply looking at some of the changes that are commonplace and wonder at the reality behind the results brought on by these changes.  Side effects. 

Thank you @Zacharias 🐝 Voulgaris for the book title.

Regrets I've had a few but so far in my life I've done it/it's gone My Way.

There is a saying Like the Curates Egg good in parts. That's our true life. Hopefully the good parts far out weigh the bad.

Those hen's teeth suggest the following to me.

Well done particularly when you is added I find patronising, mainly because a friend over uses it, to the extent of saying it to my son when he came “first” in a competition for which he was the only competitor.

Equally Good job is often a grudging recognition of my efforts

Thank you however is the understated recognition I respond best to.

In the carrot and the stick, the stick is always a stick, but the carrot is when used properly something you appreciate.