To ask if you think coming into existence is a good thing for every human

What point are you trying to make? You don't seem very happy now, and yet you are saying times have never been better?

All people are trying to tell you is that people through the ages have managed to find joy in their lives. Not always, and not about everything, but to think that everyone before now was miserable is pretty strange.

I love The Good Life and before having children I had visions of living off the grid, growing my own food and make do and mend! I am quite minimalist and try to only buy if I really need something but I live in a city and have some mod cons.

To be honest I’m sorry I was ever born but I’m here now so I just have to get on with it.

Haha yeah it's because the camera aperture is open for a while so they had to stay still. This is a bonkers thread and it's so strange to focus on toilets and showers. So the human race should have stopped by Neolithic times because they failed to invent flushing toilets?? It's just life. People get on with it. People used to have different lives to you. People in different countries have different lives to you. They might look at your life and think it seems solitary and too focused on commodities, as with a lot of the modern world. They might look at children and see they are living mainly virtually and conclude that they have no quality of life. People can be happy in all sorts of living situations.

How’d you know I don’t have sense of humour? Some people who know me think I’m fucking hilarious. Some don’t.
I would say we just have different senses of humour. I don’t find your posts remotely funny - were they meant to be??
And what remarks have I made that make you not want to exist? Your threshold for not wanting to exist is pretty low.
You moaned about how joyless everything must have been. People disagreed. I offered a different perspective. You moaned a bit more and people disagreed again. Poor you.

You sound judgemental. Perhaps if you projected better energy you’d get more of whatever it is you want - empathy? - For what I don’t know, I don’t even know what you’re wanting me to empathise with for fucks sake, we are all going to die - but I dont agree with your miserable take and you just sound pretty fucking miserable altogether.

I've had some truly horrible things happen to me. I was trafficked, I was homeless, I was an addict, I worked on the streets to be able to eat. I had nearly a decade of it.

Still feel joy, still glad to have been born, still think life is very beautiful.

I never once stopped finding things in life that were lovely. I think that's why I'm still alive.

I studied the medieval period at university. They weren't sat around waiting for Christmas and Easter, they had loads of holy days and celebrations that added excitement and interest to their lives. Far more than we observe now.

And, whilst life was hard compared to what we are used to now, they definitely weren't all miserable all the time. They fell in love, had friendships, raised children, enjoyed singing, dancing, storytelling and art (look into church frescos from before the reformation, life was a lot more colourful than you might think). If you read church reports on different parishes, you'll find that regular people were having fun (even if the church didn't always approve of hangovers getting in the way of church attendance).

Saying they would have been miserable without indoor toilets is just daft. It was their normal. Do you hate your life because you can't 3D print a new car (or whatever the people of the future will see as normal)?

To answer your question, I don't think existing is in the best interest of everyone. Babies and children who have medical conditions so severe that they are in incredible pain, or those that are killed through abuse or neglect for example. But I think the bar is a lot lower than not having indoor plumbing.

On the subject of medieval life OP - what is it about modern life you enjoy? I personally feel tied to my day job and have limited freedom to live an outdoors lifestyle. I dont grow my own food and have a happy extended family set up around me. There’s a lot I actually envy of older and more simpler times.

Life was “bearable” when people smoked. Obviously people didn’t know the health risks like we do now. A lot of people liked smoking in the past, it made them happy!

Humans have always been able to smell but as we became cleaner due to better hygiene and sanitation we would’ve noticed more.

@Pavementworrier "There is a reason nobody smiles in early photography"

Yes, and that's because the subjects had to stand very, very still for a long time. Old photography wasn't instant and was a drawn out and uncomfortable process. I think you're also failing to grasp the lack of contraception in days gone by and so people had very limited choice but to have children. Child mortality rates were also extremely high and so the more children you had, the greater your chances of some surviving to help on the farm, with the family business, or to just go out and earn money to put into the pot. Finally, humans have always found joy. Consider the wonderful Stone Age cave paintings, or Bronze Age jewellery.

You would’ve known no difference. For most of human existence babies and children have slept with their parents and didn’t really spend much time alone.

Where’d I say that?
I said that despite our lives being better, we are not necessarily happier.
I mean, no offence OP, you don’t sound like your life is a barrel of laughs right now, for starters.

ETA: no idea what is going on in your life, you just don’t sound very happy. Which I’m sorry to hear of that is the case.

I have a feeling you are engaged in a bit of light ribaldry here, you cheeky scamp! Your posts have given me a chuckle anyway so thanks for that.
In the vanishingly unlikely event that your posts are actually in earnest, might I recommend, in the spirit of the season, a timely perusal of A Christmas Carol. A novel which, if you take out Scrooge's redemption arc, ghostly visitations and time-travel shenanigans, is also a book which depicts people finding joy and camaraderie in the bleakest of situations. The happy, loving and cheerful home of the financially poor Cratchett family and of Scrooge's impecunious nephew Fred, are juxtaposed with the rich but miserly Scrooge's profound misery and poverty of spirit. Pretty sure indoor plumbing had nothing to do with the varying contentment levels of the characters, rich or poor since the whole story takes place before such a thing was even available to the very rich. There's still plenty of parties and glee going on though. I know it is a work of fiction but I'm pretty sure Dickens didn't invent the concept of fun and it was something of which he had personal experience despite himself having to use a chamber pot!
Being unable to imagine how people who don't live exactly the same way you do could ever be happy is, frankly, a trifle silly. I imagine there are gen Z'ers who believe that life before the advent of the smart phone must have been intolerable, as it's all they've ever known. However, I had a very happy childhood even though we did not get the internet until I was a teenager and, even then, it was only dial-up at first! Kids today just couldn't imagine such hardship!
Why is it that the 'Four Yorkshiremen' Monty Python sketch keeps popping into my head while reading this thread?

I think people might’ve been happier in the past before central heating as families would’ve heated one room and they would all congregate there. Children only slept in bedrooms so would’ve been downstairs with their family. We are more isolated now.

If you read her letters and diaries you'll see she got a great deal of pleasure out of many things. She was astute and often quite unexpected in her views. She liked flattery, jewels, Scotland, John Brown, dogs and ponies and meddling in the lives of her offspring. There are photographs of her smiling.

No.
😊