What Is Happiness? Most often today when people are asked what makes them happy, they instantly reply money, clothes and cars. In particular with the younger generation, their concept of happiness Has been fabricated with music videos and false value to materialistic items. Notably not all parts of the world have the same options or opportunities as someone else may have on the opposite side of the planet. Some believe money brings happiness whereas one may see happiness as being with family and friends.
A recent study done by World Happiness Report, developed by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, analyzing the levels of appiness in 158 countries, which in result are indicators of the countries social development. Just like every culture is different in its own particular ways, happiness to one may be disgraceful to another in a different country. Yet humans always will seek for true happiness in their lifetimes, but will never figure out it’s always been the simple little things in our daily life that bring joy and happiness.
One of the hardest concepts humans will always argue about is what is true happiness. Happiness is one of those words where it has a different meaning to everyone. You can feel it when your happy by emotions of pride, joy and love. Yet to understand its causes and effects is a subject that was researched well by Ruut Veenhoven who once said, “Happiness is conceived as the overall appreciation of one’s life as a whole”. The concepts of happiness around the globe over generations has changed very much over the past 50 years.
Happiness is the feeling of being satisfied, yet it is not the meaning that has changed but the desires a human requires to Keep their satisfaction. However, in countries like North Korea, Somalia, and so on, they aintain repressive laws which strip them of their most basic god given rights from expressing views to assembling peacefully for speaking their mind. Yet in Canada we are allowed to gather around in a peaceful manner to protest our beliefs and thoughts at any time, the same cannot be said about other regions of the globe.
All humans require happiness to live a long and healthy lifestyle, so we all in some way or another have similar requirements that makes us Happy. Happiness has two sides to it, the subjective and objective Meanings, expressed by Rutt Veenhoven. Feeling happy about your life and everything you have is the subjective sense Of happiness due to one’s state of mind, further on objective happiness is how good the living conditions are and also having peace and freedom.
In an article done by the Forbes, it has been said that America, land of freedom and opportunity only came at 10th in the rankings of World’s Happiest Countries. A country where the whole world is well aware of its caliber yet it falls short to a country on the opposite side of the world, Denmark. For the simple fact that each income per person is an astonishing $57,000 a year. This creates a whole different objective sense of happiness, where it would ssist with making your own path you’d like to achieve in life.
So does that mean that money is the only reason that makes Denmark happy? In a sense yes, but money does also create more opportunity to provide for your family or invest in future establishments. Even though Denmark creates more of a income for the families who live there, the similarities is that America and Denmark both have Freedom to do as they please. People in both countries have the same opportunity to live a happy life. A question that has always been asked in curiosity, is, does happiness vary across Different cultures?
In some cultures, mostly non-western cultures according to Dan Weijers from his article called Journal Of Happiness Study, states happiness in non-western parts of the World, is a less valued emotion compared to in America or Canada. Researchers from The University of Wellington in New Zealand say that being raised in a culture where happiness Is not encouraged, creates a feeling of voidness. Yet if you carefully examine Western Civilization it is clear to see that humans attempt to increase their personal happiness so that they could forget about anything negative.
It is such a part of everyone’s life to be a happy camper that not showing signs of joy, raises concern of something wrong. In contrast with for example in East Asia where the people are told to believe that it is inappropriate to show emotions of joy. In some cases it is said that strong beliefs in karma and others viewing you as selfish for your thoughts, that you will be cursed with myths of supernatural beings that resent your current happiness and might punish you. There are many factors that affect happiness in a whole, with this in mind, any of these factors can be a negative or positive mpact.
Happiness in a society is very critical to a person’s social life and overall appreciation for being alive. If a society is happy, that will create an atmosphere for those who are friendly and open to coincide with one another to have a happy social life, opposite for a society that has poor social development. It is nearly impossible to be happy in an unhappy environment, that is why this is an important necessary factor for what true happiness is. That being said, we still as one, face disasters we all must encounter which in turn affects a society’s happiness.
From hanges in climate, poverty, increase in crime, hunger, and so many more issues that a strong community or society would be able to tackle. Fatih Muslu from her book, Strong Society Vs Weak Society, states that countries with strong states in power usually over power the weaker societies declining them to flourish into a society with freedom and choice. For example the weak power of democratic ways in Arab is so bad that it is one of the world’s most discussed topics. Muslu also states that social scientists have researched in depth to figure out that in middle eastern regions, “Middle East is considered culturally
