Thoreau was a victim of the Optimism Gap (the “I’m OK, They’re Not” illusion), which for happiness is more like a canyon. People in every country underestimate the proportion of their compatriots who say they are happy, by an average of 42 percentage points.

Steven Pinker, Enlightenment now: the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress, New York, 2018, p. 268