Happiness in the modern world

[Sethomas]

So this morning I was reading through Spinoza's Ethics for the first time, and one thing that caught my eye was his insistence that suicide can only happen by external influence, exemplias gratias bereavement or shame. He flat-out said that it's impossible for the mind to wish for non-existence according to its own nature. Having read De Civitate Dei a number of times and that Spinoza was a huge fan of patristic literature, I realized that Spinoza was simply lifting this idea from Augustine.

I'd already created a thread, long long ago, about Augustine's arguments about the irrationality of suicide. It strikes me as odd, however, that in the 1100 years from his time unto that of Spinoza, the opinion hadn't changed between the two. I know that suicide was a problem in the middle ages, but all the instances of which I've read were associated with what Spinoza would consider an external influence. This begs the question: has anything changed in the human psyche since the 1600s, and if so, why?

When I thought about it, I realized that happiness has undergone a drastic overhaul of definition in the past few centuries. Reading Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, it becomes clear that, at least among the Stoics, the ancients held happiness to be nearly antithetical to temporal joy. Happiness to them was satisfaction in having lived a worthwhile life, and little more. Ad hoc joy was associated with folly or ignorance. Two and a half years ago, when I warned my priest about my mental collapse and eventual suicide attempt on account of never experiencing any satiating sense of joy, he just said "So what? Joy is transitory."

Today, however, happiness is considered the possession of sound mind, the fulfillment of all pertinent needs, and the attainment of lasting somatic joy. If any of these is lacking, it's considered a serious defiiciency, hence being poor is considered a social evil.

Having studied biology, I highly doubt that there's been any shift in the frequency of depression-related imbalances in the past three millennia. However, coupling these imbalances with social norms that imply that its unhealthy to not smile and see rainbows all the time probably leads to a new evolution in depression. Depression becomes more palpable because social norms posit it as being abnormal.

I've never read papers on the subject, but I just had to rant a bit.