Upon first listen my reaction was probably like a lot of peoples' -- "Wow, this is not only really funny, it's also a great critique of our age and culture." "Man, he's so right." But after further reflection, I've come to think that Louis actually has it entirely backwards.
The problem lies in seeing humans as creatures with discrete and finite wants that can be met by discrete and finite technologies or services. I have a desire to communicate with various friends and family members, whenever the mood strikes me, and at nearly instantaneous speed. A cell phone of five years ago should still satisfy all of these desires perfectly. And yet, what happens now that cell phones have thoroughly infiltrated daily culture? We just want more. Greater speed; wider coverage; more minutes; cooler ringtones. And that's just the phone service. We have also come to expect movies and music on demand; speedy internet connections; constant access to email; GPS capability; and on and on, all from these little handheld devices. The very existence of all these services has not satiated our needs, it has only made us more needy. The astounding levels of convenience we now have available to us on a daily basis do not make us happier -- they actually may detract from our happiness. For we do not in fact have discrete or finite wants; the great secret fueling the advertising and marketing industries is that our wants are malleable and infinite. When one is satisfied it is simply replaced by a new one, and the more of them that are satisfied, the more that arise. Desire is like that arcade game where you hit one groundhog with a mallet and up pops another.
Another problem with Louis's logic is that it is based on the assumption of what I will call "rational gratitude." We should appreciate all that we have, because we should be able to look at our lives and recognize that we have it really easy. We ought to feel grateful because it's so plainly obvious to anyone with a sense of perspective that we have things so good. But gratitude is not a conscious, logical conclusion, it is a deeply visceral emotion, and emotions are not arrived at through rational reflection. Emotions are felt, not thought, and are by and large beyond our control. You truly appreciate something not when you've given it a lot of contemplation, but when you have gone without it. A man who just gotten out of prison feels grateful for his freedom; a teenager who has known only comfort and excess does not. Louis C.K. appreciates his cell phone because he used to have only a land line; how could we expect some kid whose knowledge of telecommunications does not extend further back than her iPhone to somehow appreciate how good she has it?
Haven't we all noticed this trend in our own lives? It's visible on a daily basis. In the early '90s when most internet hookups were through a 56K modem, I thought nothing of waiting a minute or more for some particular image to download; now if a web page takes more than a few seconds to appear my blood pressure starts to rise. Before cell phones and email became ubiquitous, if you tried to contact someone and were unsuccessful, you just calmly went about your business and tried again later; now if we don't have immediate recourse to voice mail or an Inbox we rage against the gods. When cars had top speeds of 20 mph, no one expected to go any faster than 20 mph; now if a car in front of me slows down and causes my speed to dip to 60 I swear eternal vengeance on the moron. Fundamentally, then, this whole phenomenon has to do with expectations: as our capacity to do more stuff more quickly has grown, our expectation of being able to do so has grown along with it. Expectations are not rational, thought-out memes, they are subrational feelings. And as any Buddhist will tell you, misplaced expectations lie at the heart of most human unhappiness.
The more that we can do, the more that we assume we ought to be able to do, and the more that we want to do. So as the flood of digital wonders grows ever deeper, our unwillingness to consider a life without their services deepens right alongside it. And here we see where Louis C.K. got it backwards: It's not that no one is happy despite the amazing amenities we have access to; it's that no one is happy because of them.
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