Stephanie Coontz: How can it be that 85% of us are satisfied with the way things going in our lives, but only 17 % of us? She says evolutionary explanation is if you have three good things that happen in a day and three bad things, or three things that might threaten your life. "Maybe you should disproportionately allocate your conscious awareness to the bad things," she asks. But why do we only say, oh, my gosh, you are going to hell in a hand basket as a country, but my own life is pretty good?, coontz writes.