Fewer, Richer, Greener

20“He Shall Laugh”: Why Weren’t Our Ancestors Miserable All the Time?

On Hedonic Adaptation

If less than a century ago young Calvin Coolidge Jr. died of a blister on his foot, after receiving the best medical care in the world, because there were no antibiotics; if Grimm’s fairy tales were not horror stories intended to entertain but realistic depictions of medieval German life; if Stephen Jay Gould’s graves of dead children (Chapter 3) were the rule rather than the exception—why weren’t our ancestors miserable all the time? How could life be any fun?

In thinking about this question, I am reminded of the Old Testament story of Abraham and Sarah. Aged 100 and 90 (although their years probably did not correspond exactly to ours), and barren up to that point, they produced a son whom they called Yitzhak, or Isaac in English. We do not think much about the original meanings of familiar words, but Yitzhak in ancient Hebrew means “he shall laugh.”

The modern conception of life in the Holy Land of 3,500 years ago is one of extreme deprivation and struggle in the desert sun. But on learning of the meaning of Yitzhak our mental image of Isaac immediately shifts to that of a man seated at a primitive dinner table with his friends, sharing a joke and laughing his ass off. Life has always been a mixture of the sweet and bitter. Isaac had fun.

Let’s consider Geoffrey Chaucer, the incomparable fourteenth- century English poet. He wrote:¹

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote

When ...