> a more fitting defition of 'better' for the human condition is the amount of happiness
So, instead of measuring the objective/empirical things that:
1. Keep people alive
2. Keep them from going hungry
3. Make them healthy and pain-free
4. Keep them warm (or cool, where appropriate)
5. Etc etc etc
You instead are suggesting that we measure some subjective mood that no one can define well, test for, or detect with instrumentation? That would be the better measure?
> Depression and sucidides in first world countries, the ones that tick all the intial boxes, are a highs
I would not argue that these are insignificant, but there are methodological problems with both.
Suicide may have been traditionally undercounted for religious reasons. If you're investigating a suicide in the 1950s, it might just have been a gun-cleaning accident instead. Saves the family grief, means the deceased can be buried in the cemetery the family wants, etc.
Depression, while real, might still be subject to the sort of contagious hypochondriac panics that describe the late 20th century and early 21st so well.
Or, alternatively... it might have been undercounted until recently. We're not seeing an increase so much as that people are merely aware of it.