[lit-ideas] Re: The Big Book of Happiness
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 13:56:04 EDT
Andy Amago had written:
>Americans are _not_ the happiest people in the world,
>_literally_. ... We might even be below some African
>nations.
I'm grateful for his references:
>For starters:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/12/24/M
N165379.DTL
>I couldn't [locate] the study that surveyed African
>nations as well. It may have been mentioned in
>passing wherever I read it that they are surprising[ly]
>happy (obviously those not war torn). AIDS is changing
>everything now [implicature: making them not so happy
>as they should otherwise be]. Search rating countries
>happiness on google. If I find anything else, I'll send it.
Okay. Shall be waiting. "Happiness" is a special interest with me --
especially the Seeking of It.
I note that the link provided by Andy Amago makes a reference to a new
journal
"The Journal of Happiness Studies, edited by sociology professor Ruut
Veenhoven of Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands."
It goes on to survey what the happiest 'regions' in the USA could be:
Could it have something to do with the high levels of
happiness reported in rural parts of the United States?
Hagerty [Professor of Quality of Life in UC/Davis]
points out that rural states -- "the heartland" --
are consistently the happiest: "There's not a lot
of migration out. Families stay stable." The happiest
states are what Hagerty calls "the TVA (Tennessee
Valley Authority) region" -- [including] Tennessee.
-- the land of Geary. Incidentally, his brother, moved to Denmark, mentioned
in the source:
The happiest _countries_, Hagerty finds, tend to
have relatively small populations and to be situated in
northern Europe. Denmark ranks far and away as the
happiest nation on Earth. People there have a similar
world view and a similar religion, so that it's easier for
them to communicate and to understand each other's
motives," Hagerty says. "They don't have race problems."
-- and their families are stable, he forgot.
A note on the 'survey':
The surveys had one question in common:
"How happy are you?" They covered hundreds
of thousands of people in more than 20 nations.
I hope they did some good research as to how 'happy' translates. For
example, I'm not sure what's 'happy' in Danish (something related to 'glad'?).
In
Romance languages, it's 'felix', as in 'Re-Hab':
playing checkers with a roadie from Save Ferris
then she hit Los Feliz with some homemade earrings to sell
but the hip gift shop assistant led her back to hell
"Los Feliz" (The Happy (Few?)).
Grice has an essay on happiness. He concludes that the Greeks were probably
right in calling the thing eudaimonia, since to be happy (eudaimones) is all
about having a good daemon.
"Commentators have disagreed about the precise interpretation of the word
'eudaemonia', but none, so far as I know, has suggested what I think of as much
the most plausible conjecture; namely, that 'eudaemonia' is to be understood
as the _name_ for that _state_ (or _condition_) which one's good _daemon_
would (if he could) ensure for one; and my good _daemon_ is a being motivated,
with respect to me, solely by concern for my well-being or happiness. To
change the idiom, 'eudaimonia' is the general characterisation of what a
full-time
and unhampered fairy godmother would secure for you. The identifications
regarded by Aristotle as unexcitingly correct, of _eudaimonia_ with doing well
and with living well, now begin to look like necessary truths. If this
interpretation of 'eudaimonia' is correct (as I shall brazenly assume) then it
would
be quite impossible for Y's life to be more desirable than X's, though X and
Y are equal in respect to _eudaimonia_; for this would amount to Y's being
better off than X, though both are equally well-off." (Grice, _Aspects of
Reason_, lecture 6: Some reflections about ends and happiness', Clarendon
Press,
p. 116).
Cheers,
JL
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