human life has advanced thanks to science and technology. distances have become shorter, processes have become faster, convenience is rapid, deliveries are instant.

the special thing about human life is that we’ve achieved whatever biology programmed us for. food and shelter and reproduction are solved. but evolution didn’t prepare for the law of unintended consequences. creating the human brain looked like the perfect solution. but the brain has relative programming.

what matters now is not whether you can eat enough food or live longer. what matters now is how good your life is compared to other humans.

life is becoming faster. because people feel happy when they’re ahead of their peers, irrespective of the absolutes (after a minimum threshold).

it has always been this way. but for most of human history, there weren’t much choices. and there wasn’t a way to speedrun agriculture or hunter gathering. it made no sense to work harder and kill 5 deers a day instead of one because you didn’t have food storage. then during agriculture, you couldn’t speed up how fast your crops grew. they grew the same way for everyone else. so that equality was the nash equillibrium.

21st century though is wildly different. just in terms of career, you can go for consulting, or start a business, or go for VC/PE, or join a startup, or start one yourself, or do a masters, or go abroad, or take a travel year. the choices are enormous. human brain never had to deal with so many options. yes it’s plastic but it has its limits.

with so many things to do, staying put at one place has higher and higher opportunity costs. my conjecture then is that the current and the next generation will be fast. average time at a company will reduce. number of trips in an year will increase.