The Most Spoiled Generation in History: How We Forgot That Even Our Homeless Live Better Than Yesterday’s Kings! By Mrs Vera West

We are the first humans in history who have completely lost the plot of how good we have it.

A homeless man in Berlin or Toronto can wake up under a bridge, wrapped in a synthetic sleeping bag that keeps him warm at -20 °C, drink from a public fountain that delivers cleaner water than Louis XIV ever tasted, charge a smartphone that gives him access to more information than the Library of Alexandria, and — if he wants — walk into a clinic and get antibiotics for an infection that would have killed Caesar in a week.

A caveman, a medieval serf, or even a 19th-century factory child would have murdered their entire tribe for a single one of those things.

Yet we call this a crisis. We call this "late-stage capitalism." We call this oppression.

Toby Ord is right: when you actually trace the unbroken chain of generations that dragged us out of the filth, cold, and early death that was the default human condition for 300,000 years, the only sane reaction is stunned, speechless gratitude. Derek Thompson is right: progress is the ejection seat from history's torture chamber.

But most Westerners today react like trust-fund teenagers who scream that their parents are monsters because the Wi-Fi is slow.

A Short, Brutal Reminder of What "Normal" Used to Be

Life expectancy at birth in 1800: ~31 years (and that's inflated by the few who survived childhood).

Child mortality before 1800: 40–50 % dead before age 5.

Average height in Europe 1650–1800: ~165 cm for men (chronic malnutrition).

Caloric intake for a medieval peasant: often under 2,000 kcal/day, mostly bread and pottage.

Pain relief: alcohol, opium if you were lucky, or nothing.

Dental care: pull it yourself with pliers.

Winter: freeze or burn the furniture.

Summer: pray the harvest doesn't fail or you starve by spring.

That was the baseline for 99.9 % of human existence.

Now compare:

A homeless American today has a higher life expectancy than the average Englishman in 1900.

The poorest 10 % of Americans consume more calories than the average European in 1960.

A modern sleeping bag is warmer than anything a Roman emperor could buy.

A $10 course of amoxicillin beats every physician in the year 1800.

A public library card gives you more knowledge than 99 % of humans who ever lived could access in their entire lifetime.

We didn't just climb out of the pit. We rocketed out on a pillar of fire built by dead people we never thanked.

The Luxury of Self-Loathing

Here's the cruel irony the West refuses to face: only a civilization this rich, this safe, and this comfortable can afford the luxury of hating itself.

In North Korea, nobody writes essays about how evil their society is. In 14th-century Europe, nobody marched against "feudalist oppression" while sipping oat-milk lattes. In the Congo, people aren't debating whether their country's history is problematic — they're trying not to get murdered for the cobalt in their soil.

Only when your biggest problem is no longer starvation, plague, or war can you invent new problems like "microaggressions," "cultural appropriation," or "the patriarchy still exists because some CEO made a joke in 2013."

This is what I called the supply-side effect of self-criticism of "The Enlightenment's Gravediggers." The demand for grievance is universal — humans love to complain. But only free, rich societies supply the oxygen: free speech, endless leisure, and the caloric surplus required to turn "I'm bored" into a political movement.

The Homeless Caveman Test

Next time you hear someone say modern life is unbearable, run the Homeless Caveman Test:

Take everything away from a random homeless person in a Western city—sleeping bag, phone, free clinic, soup kitchen, public toilet, winter coat — and drop him naked into France in the year 1200.

He lasts maybe three days before dying of cold, hunger, or dysentery.

Then give a medieval French peasant the life of that same homeless man today.

He would weep, fall to his knees, and declare it paradise.

We have inverted the human condition so completely that our bottom 5 % live better than yesterday's top 0.01 % — and we still manage to convince ourselves we're oppressed.

The Final Indictment

Every time we whine that life is too hard, that the system is rigged, that we're all traumatised victims of late capitalism, we are spitting on the graves of the billions who clawed humanity out of the mud so that we could be born into a world where the worst thing that happens to most of us on a given day is a delayed train.

We are not just ungrateful.

We are the most ungrateful creatures who ever lived.

And the tragedy is that we are so drenched in comfort we can't even recognize the miracle we're drowning in.

So, the next time someone feels the urge to burn it all down because of some perceived injustice, they should try this:

Sleep on the floor tonight without a blanket.

Drink only water you can find outside.

No phone. No medicine. No police if someone decides to hurt you.

Do it for one week.

Then come back and tell me how unbearable the 21st-century West really is.

They won't make it past day two.

That's how good we have it.

That's how much we owe the dead.

And that's how little we deserve any of it if we can't even say thank you.

This is what the Left is seeking to destroy, in an act of self-annihilation.

https://quillette.com/2025/11/19/the-ingratitude-of-the-well-fed-poverty-progress-capitalism/