we should be... i guess more in awe of what defines a lower or middle class existence, but I guess it's hard to be in awe of things you need to function

Yes, your description is evocative and shows that we haven't arrived at a perfect, carefree society. I say that the car is an "option" for you in the sense that you at some point made a decision that life is better -- less difficult -- with a car than it would be without. In the past you would not have had this option because automobiles did not exist. We might have discussed the inconvenience of keeping a horse shoed and fed and healthy, and the problem of feces piling up in the streets.

You may be relatively less well-off than many other people today, but you are absolutely better off than almost everyone in the distant past, when many people did not even survive childhood.

Of course, it's natural to compare ourselves to more fortunate contemporaries, and the resulting aspiration probably drives a lot of the progress in society. I just find it curious that there seems to be a determination to ignore or even deny this forward progress, and focus on pessimistic measures of human well-being.