Call me naive or cheesy, but I truly think that happiness is the most important part of life. Now, while you might say that with money comes happiness, or that societies that are happy are usually wealthy, but some of the world's happiest countries are monetarily poor.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Poverty
I would have to disagree with the assertion that the relative socioeconomic status of a society is the main indicator of a "healthy" or unhealthy society. Affluence, I believe, can be an indicator of a healthy society, but not in all cases. What I think makes a healthy society is the happiness of the people that make it. If a people aren't happy, then what's the point of living, much less being in a society? I think happiness should come first in a society because people function better when in a state of happiness.
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2 comments:
I would have to agree with you that happiness should rank higher than wealth when ranking a society's success. However, while looking at the list of the 5 happiest nations provided by your link, I noticed that they are in fact some of the most violent and chaotic societies in the world. Mexico, El Salvador and Venezuela are riddled by corruption, and drug wars consistantly grant them the highest murder rates in the world. Nigeria is frought with sectarian and ethnic violence, as well as guerrilla warfare over control of oil production. Puerto Rico has more crime than any state in the Union. So I am really perplexed as to what grants people real happiness, and whether that happiness comes from something distinct within society, but separate from it as a whole, such as spiritual wellbeing or powerful familial ties.
Is there a level of material well-being, or even material security, below which one can't really be happy? Or are the two (material resources and happiness) completely disjoint?
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