Almost every time I have a discussion with the older generation on living standards, I get the impression that those of the newer generation like myself are both privileged and disadvantaged at the same time.
The previous generations had a sense of certainty, an existential grounding that came from clear national narratives and shared challenges.
Numerous times, I've heard of grandparents who lived through the World War II speak of hardship, but with a sense of pride in their voices, part of something larger than themselves.
Unlike the generations shaped by shared national sacrifices, I think we've become softer, in the sense that life seems easier on the surface.
We have immediate access to entertainment, the ability to order anything with a tap, and also unprecedented comfort in daily life.
The latter has become some sort of a norm so much so that I take for granted conveniences that would have seemed miraculous just decades ago.
Beyond the surface however, there's a tangible sense of living in tough times, as in facing a fragmented world where the path forward isn't clearly marked.
For all its existential dread, I think the Cold War at least provided a binary worldview.
Today's multipolar world with threats ranging from climate change via extremism to artificial intelligence, offers no such clarity.
I know everything is relative but these two almost contradictory aspects of modern life has me constantly questioning my own perception of hardship and privilege.
"Times were tough, so we were tough." is a saying that encapsulated a communal resilience rather than just individual grit.
The key word here is "We". Extended families lived closer together. Neighborhoods were communities where people knew each other's business, for better and worse.
Nowadays, we have unprecedented access to psychological language and mental health awareness, yet somehow experience greater isolation.
Previous generations experienced trauma, of course – war, economic devastation, social upheaval – without language to name it or permission to address it.
I don't think the stoicism praised in earlier eras meant suffering often went unacknowledged but it's easier to observe today's greater psychological awareness as genuinely progressive, compared to the emotional repression that characterized previous generations.
Sometimes, I think the main undercurrent is just an erosion of certainty itself.
My grandparents had clear narratives about their place in the world, irrespective of the objectively harsh conditions they were facing at that time.
Work hard, follow the rules, and prosperity would follow. Fortunately, the institutions around them, however flawed, seemed solid.
We of the modern generation inhabit a psychological landscape where institutions from government to religion to capitalism itself are questioned constantly.
We're told we can be anything but find limited economic paths to realize those possibilities.
This comparison with the old isn't necessarily about who had it "harder", that misses the point almost completely.
Previous generations navigated material scarcity amid narratives of certainty. We navigate material abundance (at least in terms of consumer goods) amid uncertainty about almost everything under the sun.
For me, this uncertainty sometimes manifests as a strange nostalgia for times I've never experienced, romanticizing a past that was, for many groups excluded from power, far less idealistic than remembered.
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