why bother with mediation?

Meditation makes sense because crumbles of tragedy are baked into the (current) human condition. We did not evolve to be happy. We evolved to find our moments mostly mediocre so that we’re maximally susceptible to the carrots and sticks our genes try to manipulate us with. Our bodies including our brains noticeably wear down starting early in life. We’re predisposed to ruminate about our mistakes and not our blessings because doing so helped our ancestors survive and reproduce. We’re helplessly obsessed with sex and romance, but the sexes evolved meaningfully different attitudes towards them. Minds are such complex soups of evolving memes it can be difficult to understand others or feel understood by others, because each mind really is quite different.

That said, I’m sure some non-negligible percent of people would be better off not ever bothering with meditation, especially given the crudeness of the existing techniques.