There are certainly lots of extra ways for your life to end in the past.
Bit of a silly comparison, though. Material comforts do not make one happy, poke around the internet inquiring about mental health if you are unconvinced. The more relevant comparison to past times wouldn't be a middle class worker vs a king, it's vs being a peasant. Give me the king job any day and twice on Sundays, I'll feel way more alive. I'll get used to the garderobes.
So then the question is... how have we let ourselves, in some of the richest nations in history, re-invent mental misery despite physical comfort? Work in an office job for 40-60 hours a week and then ferry your kids around to scheduled extracurriculars in the evenings and weekends to make their college applications look good so they can replace you in the middle-class-robot-drone-job. Is that the best we can do? Hustle 24/7, but in more comfort than scrabbling in the dirt for a historical king?
Bit of a silly comparison, though. Material comforts do not make one happy, poke around the internet inquiring about mental health if you are unconvinced. The more relevant comparison to past times wouldn't be a middle class worker vs a king, it's vs being a peasant. Give me the king job any day and twice on Sundays, I'll feel way more alive. I'll get used to the garderobes.
So then the question is... how have we let ourselves, in some of the richest nations in history, re-invent mental misery despite physical comfort? Work in an office job for 40-60 hours a week and then ferry your kids around to scheduled extracurriculars in the evenings and weekends to make their college applications look good so they can replace you in the middle-class-robot-drone-job. Is that the best we can do? Hustle 24/7, but in more comfort than scrabbling in the dirt for a historical king?