What makes a person happy? I was reading this
article in the New York Times titled, "The Happiest People". The article stated three different ways that rank countries by happiness. The World Database of Happiness (lists countries in order of happiness based on surveys), tracking "happy life years" (scholars that calculate the self-reported happiness from the World Database of Happiness with life expectancy), and Happy Planet Index (combines happiness with longevity and environmental impact), are ways to check out America's happiness. Out of these three lists, the US ranked 14th, 19th, and 114th respectively. But I had to ask myself, are these ways of calculating happiness truly accurate? Do you think people can simply fill out a survey and then scholars can tell if the country is happy? I personally believe that a survey does not do justice to the whole country. I guess what I am saying is that I disagree with these rankings and the ways in which they created them. I don't think happiness is has anything to do with longevity or environmental impact. So, what do you think? How do we, as Americans, measure happiness?
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I personally belived that the best measure of happiness is to simply ask yourself how happy you truly are. If you think of yourself as a happy person and feel happy, then you are happy. Different methods of achieving happiness can be more fleeting than others, but I think happiness is a feeling that can be measured only by the person themself.
ReplyDeleteI think a survey measuring happiness is ridiculous. It is absurd to think you can get an accurate assessment of an entire countries happiness by use of surveys (or by any means really). The article you posted shows that the World Database of Happiness ranked Costa Ricans the happiest people in the world. I asked my sister, an English in Costa Rica for four months, what she thought of this and she laughed. While in Costa Rica she saw countless homeless children wandering the streets with stray dogs. She said these kids had no means of getting an education and survived by begging and stealing from tourists. I doubt these kids are very happy with life, but they aren't the ones taking surveys. My second beef with the survey system of the World Database of Happiness, by the way I'm shocked someone decided to put time and resources into creating such an absurd thing, is that it doesn't collect data from everyone. I realize that would be nearly impossible, but that should be a clear indication that this survey system is flawed and meaningless.
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