Said Matias From, 18, quoted in "The Finnish Secret to Happiness? Knowing When You Have Enough.The Nordic nation has been ranked the happiest country on earth for six consecutive years. But when you talk to individual Finns, the reality is a bit more complicated" (NYT).
This happiness does not look much like an America stereotype of happiness:
While people praised Finland’s strong social safety net and spoke glowingly of the psychological benefits of nature and the personal joys of sports or music, they also talked about guilt, anxiety and loneliness. Rather than “happy,” they were more likely to characterize Finns as “quite gloomy,” “a little moody” or not given to unnecessary smiling.
“‘Happiness,’ sometimes it’s a light word and used like it’s only a smile on a face,” Teemu Kiiski, the chief executive of Finnish Design Shop, said. “But I think that this Nordic happiness is something more foundational.”
And:
The Finnish way of life is summed up in “sisu,” a trait said to be part of the national character. The word roughly translates to “grim determination in the face of hardships,” such as the country’s long winters: Even in adversity, a Finn is expected to persevere, without complaining.
Posts
36 comments:
"The Finnish Secret to Happiness? Knowing When You Have Enough.
I get the sense that hyping the virtue in diminished expectations will be a strong establishment media narrative going forward.
Get used to it.
Remembering sunny days, cholesterol consumed, and Vitamin-D was plentiful, naturally.
From the sounds of it, they determined the Finns are happiest by defining happiness in a way most suitable to Finns. Which is a different meaning of “determined” than you would normally expect in this context.
Like Wisconsinites suffering winters in silence.
" ...not given to unnecessary smiling"
In my travels to Europe, and even more to Third World, I'm often struck by this contrast with American character. Public smiling is much more a default here than most everywhere else. Almost as if the Constitutional "pursuit of happiness" has translated into a requirement that we all pretend to have attained happiness. Ironically, the smiley faces may exaggerate the depression in Americans, making the unhappy feel more alone than they are.
I used to visit upstate New York a lot, usually for the holidays when it was terminally gray and bitterly cold.
There are a lot of Indian tribes in the area.
I always joked that the smart Indians were the ones like the Seminole who relocated to Florida...
I call this the "southernmost border effect." People stuck in countries with long winters find a way to survive and to transform their negativity, even if it's not actually a relaxed and happy place. Scandinavia is home to world's highest concentration of dark heavy metal music groups. Iceland is home to harsh, cruel, and sarcastic humor, as they can't rebel and survive the winter. Seattle people need constant coffee to get going. The Russians...adopted Communism...
A Canadian said this to me about their weather:
"Americans think they are at the North Pole when they visit Vancouver, B.C. while Canadians think they are in the tropics."
Arctic coastal rain and gloom is indeed better than the bitter continental winters of the Canadian midwest, but still not that great and they still flock to Florida and the Caribbean as winter snowbirds.
That NYT article fails to make the point that, however anyone wants to weigh in on the question of what, really, happiness should be said to consist in, the survey instrument used by the United Nations (etc.) group that did the survey asked a bunch of people in a lot of countries the same set of questions. Those questions encode certain assumptions about what happiness is like. On those questions, the Finns scored the highest for the sixth year in a row. The reporter might feel like the survey instrument didn’t have enough nuance in it, although I bet that looked at in isolation, most of us would agree that it hit the main points around happiness/joy/content/sense of satisfaction or reward. My net sum of happiness this morning was slightly reduced by this article falling to grasp or articulate this point.
Happiness is a relative thing to measure. A resident of Marth's Vineyard might be unhappy because he can't afford a beachfront mansion, while a resident of Mumbai might be unhappy because he can't afford meat for a stew.
How does one measure happiness? These surveys usually aren't of subjective feelings and states of mind. Rather, somebody decides that with all their money and their social safety net Finns or Danes or Swedes or Swiss must be the happiest people in the world. I don't think they're all morosely meditating suicide, but I doubt they're all jumping for joy all the time. Scandinavians don't seem especially joyful.
Maybe it's the absence of emotional highs that makes the absence of lows possible -- a kind of equanimity, a feeling that one has money in the bank, so one is taken care of, a network of relationships that is possible and beneficial because one doesn't put too much into them or expect too much out of them. And of course, the surveys don't talk about the ethnic homogeneity that makes the social welfare system work and society run more smoothly.
There is a whole literature of happiness studies and it's a mess. No accepted definition exists for this "subjective well-being", so there is no consensus on where it comes from or how to get it.
Oh joy. Another "lower your expectations" article. Makes me wonder what things may come.
Happiness = contentment
Its crazy to take a survey that is supposed to be extrapolated to millions of people, and then ask a handful of individuals to explain it. The survey is just an average, and finnish average was higher than most.
Its like taking a worldwide poll and finding Americans liked pork chops more than anyone else, and then asking 6 people in NYC to explain why America likes pork chops!
But anyway, perhaps Finns are happier because they have a homogeneous country, full of smart white people, without massive income inequality. Of course, that has to be false, since 'murica is the greatest country ever and diversity is our greatest strength. Plus, Free Enterprise Rules!
I can remember how the Conservatives hated the Swedes and Scandinavians during the cold war. "THose damn socialists", and would also talk about how they were depressed and committing suicide. Y'know because of the socialism.
How times have changed.
Stoicism is the way.
But there is a danger with complacency.
As Al Smith would say: Let's Take a LOOK.. At the Record
List of countries by suicide rate
Suicide rates by country in Europe
The second one is nice, 'cause it shows a color keyed map.
How does Finland rate with Scandi countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark?
Suicides per 100,000 people per year
Finland: 13.4.. Sweden: 11.1.. Norway: 9.1.. Denmark:9.8
Germany: 9.2... France: 12.3.. England: 6.2.. Italy:4.7
Apparently Finland is HAPPY, because their sad people left.
So, that should mean that US: 21.6.. Russia: 19.5 are happier still!
BUT! we should ALL move to Lesotho:87.5 The Happiest Place On Earth!!!
Wince: "I get the sense that hyping the virtue in diminished expectations will be a strong establishment media narrative going forward."
I get the same sense. It's the alarmist agenda.
I propose a new motto for Canada Board of Tourism: "Canada, - it's not just the weather."
I remember a couple of decades ago when Finland instituted a policy that punished driving infractions based on wealth/income. So an ordinary bloke caught speeding would pay whatever payable fine it was, while the founder of Nokia who got popped was assessed about a quarter million dollars.
I think there are a lot of people in this country who'd get a lot of happiness (n the form of schadenfreude) out of policies like that. Of course, while Bernie Sanders keeps telling us we have to tax the rich, if he was cited for doing 75 in a 65, the fine would be high enough to make him squeal.
I wrote a background report on the International Day of Happiness movement. Started in Bhutan, it is a United Nations project which, like many, was designed to conceal human rights abuses (in this case, racial cleansing by Bhutan) and put the U.S. in a bad light in comparison to totalitarian, socialist and communist nations. The annual event is celebrated on March 20 with the release of the UN Sustainability Goals National Happiness report purporting to compare levels of happiness by country. The GNH of each country is measured according to UN Sustainability surveys in order to supplant GNP measurements. Of course, this is entirely propagandistic, and of course it is still imposed on American schoolchildren to make them feel bad about themselves.
Vermont and Seattle, in particular, totally got on board and engaged in activities such as nude parades.
But it all worked out happily for Bhutan.
How can you tell when you're talking to a Finnish optimist?
While you're talking to him, he stares at your shoes instead of his own.
Thirty years ago Morley Safir did a piece on "Sixty Minutes" depicting Finland as the world's most depressed and morose nation.
So what happened to turn that completely around, into the country being a land of smiling, HAPPY people?
NOTHING, as it turns out. It's all based on skewed polling.
See this:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/04/finland-happiness-lagom-hygge.html
"As reported by multiple media outlets, the Finnish spiritual equivalent to hygge [the Danish concept of comfortable conviviality and all things cozy] is something far less convivial and much more difficult to pronounce: kalsarikännit, which translates as “pantsdrunk,” refers to the practice of binge drinking home alone in your underpants. If this is a secret to happy life, let’s keep it that way: a secret."
So can we strangle this canard in its crib?
And as others have noted, the NY writers write crap like this---inviting US to lower our expectations---before running off to the Hamptons on weekends.
Basta!
Finland’s fertility rate is 1.37
So their social safety net is dissolving.
Soon they will be extinct. I hope their Happiness was worth it.
All the Finns I know - there are many - are depressed, cynical, and cry at parties after drinking.
I'm convinced they keep winning this "happiest" title because they expect that life will suck, and so they're never disappointed.
Finland- and the Norway and Sweden, the other Nordic countries with high happiness ratings, have higher suicide rates then the rest of the the western European nations.
For some odd reason, I suspect that the ratings used to determine happiness are at odds with the evidence. As a rule, happy people don't kill themselves.
Stereotypes are the broad brush that denies individuality and free will. Useful as a general thing, but useless when you get into the details.
Lifted from Ivan Doig’s The Runners:
At a Scandinavian party, the Finns are drinking, the Swedes are fighting, the Danes are dancing, and the Norwegians are leaning against the wall, terrified that someone might talk to them.
Finns drink more than any other population in the world.
More than Russians.
But they don't drive drunk.
That's the Finns.
Scandinavians have a high average IQ. They pick up what is being asked. They don't want their country to look like a bad place. They want to keep up the reputation of their side. They feel obligated to say they are happy.
Do not trust subjective judgements of their country for reputational points, not from Israelis, not from the Japanese, not from Canadians, not from Ecuadorians. Look at objective data, like suicide rates.
One would think this would be obvious, but I have been pointing it out for forty years (I was once Scandi Lutheran) with little effect.
As Mr Micawber said:
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery."
In Milwaukee the white community used to [pre-Covid] have a large number of suicides plus a few murders and this number worked out to about the same as the number of murders in the black community. So which was happier: Milwaukee's Germanic/Nordic/East European community or its African American community?
And yet, if you are Nepalese or Burundian or Bolivian and have similarly modest expectations from life and are equally contented with what you have, the happiness experts will tell you that you are miserable.
Anomie
Interestingly, a word used in the article, sisu, is also the title of an ultra-violent action movie to be released later this year, about a Finnish gold miner who wages a one-man war against the Nazis: Sisu.
Hegelian,
It's supposed be "... a Finnish extrovert"!
Post a Comment