To some people, the future will always be behind them. Rarely, however, has such gloom covered most of the western world at the same time. Even during those brief moments — the stagflation of the 1970s, for example — it faded with the crisis.

Today’s pessimism is more troubling in two ways. First, economics does not fully explain it. In the US, which is in its fifth year of recovery, the share of those who think their children will be worse off is the same as stagnant Italy. The trend predates the 2008 meltdown. Second, the rise of miserabilism coincides with the west’s latest technological revolution. Rarely has personal freedom, the west’s creed, been less stoppable. Yet our gloom appears to deepen. Is the west losing its grip on reality?

It would be tempting to say yes. The average westerner lives far longer, is far less affected by war and has vastly greater choice than any people in human history. To be alive and free ought to be a giddy privilege. Perhaps we are so historically ignorant in our bliss that we do not appreciate what we have. Maybe something deeper, the continuous distraction of technology, perhaps, has so altered our neural wiring that we are less capable of appreciating what is under our noses. Or perhaps we are so unimpressed with the quality of public life nowadays, we suffer that misery that can come only from self-knowledge. All are types of depression. Each, in one form or another, has been suggested as an explanation for the west’s gloom. None strikes me as a killer diagnosis.