Happiness: A Reflection

Bhutanese children

Throughout this semester, my group and I delved deep into uncovering the true meaning and overall understanding of “happiness”. We grappled with complex questions of what happiness really is, how can happiness be measured, what makes one country happier than another and who has the right to define one country as the happier of the two. For our research, we isolated three regions of the world based on information retrieved from happiness polls such as the Prosperity Poll, Gallup Poll and UN Happiness Poll. We then focused in on analyzing the innermost workings of three countries and their overall well-being and happiness levels. Bhutan, Denmark and Mexico, although extremely different in culture, geographic location and governmental policy, are considered to be some of the happiest countries in the world. Despite their differences, upon further research our group began to see similarities between these countries and thus was able unravel some possible reasons as to why some countries are overall so much happier than others. We discovered that the happiness of these countries was largely affected by their governments, geographical location/weather, strong religious and/or cultural presence, homogeneity and overall positivism of the country and its people.

To begin our research my group and I focused on analyzing the information we received from the three happiness polls listed above in order to narrow our topic. From these three different findings and means of evaluating happiness, our group decided on the three countries we were to go into depth about. We then went on to get most of our research from online articles and recent news such as The New York Times, Huffington Post, NPR as well as other sources, all the while keeping our three original sources (the happiness polls) as our primary information. Once we found information about certain factors that could lend to the overall higher presence of happy people, we researched those aspects more closely. For example, Bhutan’s presence of GNH (gross national happiness index) was the main factor that contributes to the Bhutanese people’s overall satisfaction in their everyday life. We went into depth with these concepts to analyze and perhaps understand what does and does not work within these types of systems. Working as a group proved to be challenging at times, but also was a great way to incorporate different opinions and inputs into our posts. It was nice to have five people working hard to research in depth and understand the concept we were working with as well as having five sets of eyes to make sure our posts were cleanly written and ready for posting. Because scheduling proved to be very challenging, our group mainly worked on a google docs page where we posted all our sources and findings as well as worked together to write the blog post and edit each others writings. It was helpful to have multiple people doing research because everyone has different research methods and abilities when finding strong sources, thus we were able to get a nice spread of well-rounded and informative sources.

The semester is coming to an end and we are now left with an even more complex question: how can we begin to move towards an overall happier world? Well, I honestly don’t think that question can ever be easily answered and as I wrap up my thoughts on this project I’ve realized that there is never one finite definition or experience of happiness. Every state and culture views their individual self or community life satisfaction differently, the problem we then face is who has a right to say that one view is more valid than another. This abstract concept of “happiness” can fall under the ideology of ethnocentrism or in other words what we learned about in class as exclusive knowledge, which is “the idea that some group, usually ‘our’ group, has unique and superior knowledge about how the world works” (Inayatullah 457). This is because of some group’s  belief that their idea of happiness is superior to that of another, which is yet another thing that adds to the separation of our world. I’ve realized from doing this project that so much of our modern association to happiness comes from our consumerist society, and how from our Western perspective, countries that we classify to be less happy are those without access to the materialistic stuff people think is essential to leading a happy life. But what happened to true human life satisfaction and happiness, the kind of happiness that comes from human connection, strong cultural presence, traditions, family or simply the weather? With all the recent violence and segregation in our world I think it is so important that we stop looking to outside sources and mass amounts of stuff to make us happy and start looking to each other, human to human connection, to find peace and satisfaction in life. Maybe then, we will be able to truly live in an overall happy world.

References

Clifton, J. (2013). People Worldwide Are Reporting a Lot of Positive Emotions. Retrieved November 2, 2014 from http://www.gallup.com/poll/169322/people-worldwide-reporting-lot-positive-emotions.aspx

Edkins, J. & Zehfuss, M. (Ed. 2). (2008) Global Politics: A New Introduction. New York, NY: Routledge

GNH Bhutan. What is Gross National Happiness? Retrieved December 4, 2014, from http://www.gnhbhutan.org/about/.

Helliwell, J., Layard, R., & Sachs, J. (2013). World Happiness Report 2013. UNSDSN.org. Retrieved September 12, 2014, from http://unsdsn.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/WorldHappinessReport2013_online.pdf.

Legatum Institute. (2013). The 2013 Legatum Prosperity Index. Retrieved September 12, 2014, from http://www.prosperity.com/#!/.