Does our technological society breed discontent?

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I am just wondering. All us members live in areas of the world and environments which are influenced by our technological advancements. We all have televisions, mobile phones, computers, electronic aplliances etc, etc. But what about people who live in rural remote areas of the globe? People in some areas of Eurasia for example who have never seen a tv or used a computer. Do you think these people who have simplistic lives and most importantly (I assume) a simple social order live with any of the stressors that we ordinarily do?

Work stress, school stress and general incapability of being content with each other. I wonder specifically about their psychological state of mind. Are we not (living in this environment) more prone to negative psychological impacts as opposed to them? Well this is just a thought. Again I dont state any of this as fact.

How do you think our general social order dictated by our technological advancements has shaped our psyche as society?

I just find it hard to imagine hundreds of years ago, people having anxiety disorders or needing medication for depression. Maybe this is just my lack of imagination. Do what we see as abnormal psychological behaviours influence previous generations of society on the scale it is doing presently? I guess we can never truly know. What do you think?

I don't think anyone really knows the answer, you may find this article interesting:

http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/14091/

Every society breeds discontent. Given any society there is someone in the society that is unhappy because of the way the society is.

ruveyn

thanks to labor-saving gadgets, we're one of the first societies to have time for discontent...

I agree that there is something paradoxically unhealthy about our current society. While we've eliminated a lot of the physical suffering with modern medicine and made life much less labor intensive through our technology.I agree that there is something paradoxically unhealthy about our current society. While we've eliminated a lot of the physical suffering with modern medicine and made life much less labor intensive through our technology there seems to be less and less built in social cohesion. The built in social support networks of extended families and clans/tribes is gone. We’re increasingly expected to find our own support network and so the less socially inclined people often get the shaft from our society. This is the bigger issue I think, and with the current economic climate it’s becoming even more acute.

Another interesting article on this question:

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/AoS/theSun.html