The grumpy self deprecating Miami-based NPR journalist goes on a personal quest for the source of happiness, visiting many countries, and interviewing locals and experts on the study of happiness. There is a surprisingly extensive scientific literature and research into what makes people happy and several official listings of countries based on data collected from surveys, the most common one being the World Happiness Report, updated annually.
Holland, Switzerland, Moldavia, Bhutan, Kuwait, Qatar, Iceland, Thailand, India, Great Britain and his native United States are the main countries he visits and discusses, but he includes notes and quotes from philosophers, scientists, and academics from many others, old and modern.
The very different cultures and norms of the countries he visits are captured with informative characterizations and unique comparisons.
He only obliquely acknowledges the problem of establishing linguistic equivalence of words for various emotional states across different languages, and the limitations of data comparisons based on the demographics of populations surveyed and the survey questions. One Moldavian interviewee claimed that happiness and unhappiness coexist in his brain. (I guess that is possible if one is fond of moroseness.) In English there are far more words to express unhappiness than for happiness.
The cultures of the countries he studies are described accurately as far as I can tell having only spent any appreciable time in three of them (Thailand, Qatar, and the U.S.) I enjoyed reading about the dour, trusting, humourless Swiss, the permissive Dutch, the morose despairing Moldavians, the happy atheistic weekend drunks of Iceland with many myths, the uptight regimented stiff upper lip Brits and the surprisingly happy spiritually-minded Indians, although these are all obviously generalizations and at best only a snapshot at one point in time.The Bhutanese monarchy encodes a dress code for men and the pursuit of Gross National Happiness as government policy.
The writing is full of apt analogies and metaphors with quirky twists. In an Indian Hindu ashram the lotus position is described as the HOV lane to bliss.
“God is currently not taking complaints. His inbox is full.”
“The problem with finding paradise is that others that might find it too.”
“Soviets did for architecture what Burger King did for fine cuisine.”
There is at least one error common to U.S. writers. The U.S. is described as the wealthiest country on earth. By any conventional measure Qatar is wealthier and has been for many years.
To check out the ranking of countries on the World Happiness Report go to World Happiness Report 2022. As usual, Finland is #1 with other Nordic countries, and Iceland, Luxembourg, Israel, and New Zealand also in the top ten. Canada has fallen to #15 of 145 but is still ahead of the U.S., Great Britain, Australia, and Ireland.
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Thanks, Neil.
The Passionate Reader 