Underrated Reasons to Be Thankful

This. Our scientific understanding on how humans cooperate to not simply feed each other, but prosper with endless creative opportunities of cultivation, demonstrates we are at a tipping point to potentially permanently limit the recurrence of violence inter-generationally. Think of it as reversing unjust hereditary trauma. So many humans being born now see a path to their own prosperity, this century will be remembered as leaving the Planet of the Apes behind.

I also have seen friends from east europe leaving their home countries for opportunity in the west, even when judging from my warm, cosy, settled place, i thought, that their jobs were crappy. But it was opportunity for them.

And now they also judge from their warm, cosy, settled place. and try to make working conditions better for for their fellows.

No. It means that the emotion of gratefulness isn't always a simple reduction to what you have there. Similarly, I think thwave who replied to you is also wrong. The emotion doesn't have to always follow such a simplified framework or be legibly caused. Of course it has to have some causal chain, but I think the legibility could be as opaque as "X is grateful for Y because Z suggested that maybe they should be" where Z didn't have anything to do with Y, Y doesn't necessarily do much for X, and so on. It doesn't make the emotion of gratefulness any less valid. I expect the ways the emotion could come about is varied enough to avoid these simplifications.

One major factor was population growth. This was due to the coming of American crops (corn, potatoes, etc) and the green revolution (fertilizers, machinery, etc.).

Another major factor (say in Ireland, where I'm from) was a change in the social-political system. There was a shift from old the old lordship order to a more modern landlord order. Relationships (rights, obligations) between lords/landlords and the landed an unlanded peasantry... Today we might call it rural unemployment and/or a small farm debt crisis. The latter half of this change is known in Ireland as "the land wars."

There were also "pull" factors. These are more complicated, because they do involve choice. Cities offered a lot of hope. You might do very well in a city. Many did poorly though, and food/sanitation was often worse. A lot of the migration was (for example) adolescents sent to work as domestic servants... so thinking in terms of "homo economicus" is best tempered with some visualisations... say Oliver Twist.

Similar things happen today in developing economies. Rural unemployment and stagnation. Cities that offer shiny opportunities in a game with few winners and many losers. Hence urban slums, 80 hr workweeks, etc.

Working conditions in factories was also a 200+ year process. Unions played a big role. Politics played a big role. Revolutions and fear of revolutions played a big role. In Ireland, Soviet and pre-soviet revolutions were the threat that catalyzed land and labour reforma immediately before independence from the UK and after it. The Irish independence war was contemporary to the Russian Revolution, so the politics were naturally intertwined.

For the most part, material conditions for the poor were a lot worse in the cities for most of the industrial era(s). Education was better and people became more worldly in cities. Rural peasantry tends to be culturally stagnant by default. Marx, in his day, saw this migration as the preceding factor to revolution. He was snobbishly dismissive of peasants' ability to evolve culturally, so revolution had to wait until a generation or two was seasoned by city life.