history is a mystery

I wonder if people were happier in the middle ages. They didn't really have much besides disease and poverty and organized religion to rely on, but they didn't have as much to worry about then. No weapons of mass destruction, no car accidents, no drugs. There was war, but it didn't have the same massive effects as nuclear war today. Did they believe that happiness was having a nice roof over your head, enough food to eat, and family and friends? Most of the people had hardly any time to think about anything because they were working most of the time. They hardly travelled, and things must've seemed a lot more exotic whenever they moved 20 miles away from their home village or city or whatever. In that respect things must've seemed more exciting then. And how did they live without all of the medicine and anti-depressants and drugs that we have now? Or did they have their own sort of form of those? What did they find?

But were they happy? I'm curious. What did they consider to be happiness exactly? Would they be happy if they were put into the current present, life as it is now? There were the same sorts of simple pleasures in life, I suppose, but did they appreciate it the same way we do now? And what about that whole God thing? I've always wondered what religious faith was like. To believe so wholly in something...it's hard for me to imagine spiritually. Not much science to complicate matters with germs and atoms and wave-particles. The only thing you really could believe in was God, whether you be Jewish or Christian or Muslim.

I'm just curious about these things. It'd be rather hard to find out, though.