Posted by Rachel on: 08.20.2007 /
“According to a global survey, three out of four of the happiest people groups in the world are not rich consumers. Using a scale where 7 marks the maximum of happiness, Forbes magazine’s richest Americans came in second (5.8), tied with the Pennsylvania Amish. Close behind them (5.7) were the Masai of East Africa, a tribe without electricity or running water who live in huts made of dung. Happiest of all - ahead of America’s richest - were the Inuits of Greenland (5.9).
All this research suggests that a climate of warm, cohesive community and its attendant values are more important than material comfort or other external factors (like climate - in view of the Inuits!) in producing happiness.
Even seeing the numbers, though, how many of us believe what they’re telling us?”
– Brian McLaren, from a preview of Everything Must Change
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Comment by: joe
1 08/20/07 5:00 AM | Comment Link |According to the subtext of the Will Smith film The Pursuit of Happyness (which bizarrely I watched over the weekend), the aim of every right-thinking and struggling father should be to get a job earning megabucks. I am extremely concerned that society in general - and Christians in particular - seem to have been sucked into this nonsense.
I’m not even sure that persuing happiness is a laudable aim of life in any case.
Comment by: David H
2 08/20/07 4:46 PM | Comment Link |I have been wondering for a while as to what happiness even means and whether it is something that can be pursued? Is it kind of like “cool” (apologies Benjamin), that harder you try to get it they less likely you are to succeed?
As part of the Declaration of Independence, the term seems poetic rather than literal. Certainly life and liberty can be construed as inalienable rights. But happiness? It seems even more absurd since US society has conspired as hard as any other society in the history of the earth to make sure that such pursuits come more naturally to privileged Americans than to citizens from other countries (if they granted by the creator doesn’t that mean those rights transcend national boundaries?).
Happiness is a strange term. Check the dictionary, it seems best defined by itself. Ergo, if you don’t have it, then you may not even know what it is.
Comment by: Rachel
3 08/20/07 5:57 PM | Comment Link |David, here is the definition from the American Heritage Dictionary:
hap·py
1. Characterized by good luck; fortunate.
2. Enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure, satisfaction, or joy.
3. Being especially well-adapted; felicitous: a happy turn of phrase.
4. Cheerful; willing: happy to help.
5. a. Characterized by a spontaneous or obsessive inclination to use something. Often used in combination: trigger-happy.
b. Enthusiastic about or involved with to a disproportionate degree. Often used in combination: money-happy; clothes-happy.
Comment by: David H
4 08/21/07 9:11 AM | Comment Link |So God gives all men (w/ the caveats set by the declaration’s framers, i.e. white, property-owning men) the undeniable right to pursue fortune, pleasure and clubs that may be enthusiastically over-committed to? I see joy mentioned, but it has similar numinous definitions. Is this what the founding fathers thought of as happiness?
I tried finding this study and couldn’t. How did those conducting the study define happpiness or did they allow those questioned to define it? Would happiness be a warm feeling in Winter for an Inuit, contentment in community for the Amish and the sense that I own everything for rich Americans? I’m not sure what the survey is actually telling me and I still doubt that God gives me the right to PURSUE this nebulous thing called happiness.
Comment by: Rachel
5 08/21/07 9:43 AM | Comment Link |David, here is a link for that study: Culture and Subjective Well-Being
I think that’s a great question. The study does say this: According to these researchers, the very concept of emotion may differ across cultures.
Jesus tells us how to be happy but his definition of happiness is quite different than that of our culture. In the Sermon on the Mount, the word commonly translated “blessed” means “blissful, fortunate or happy.” And some translations do render it as “happy.” So Jesus tells us that the path to happiness is to be poor in spirit, to mourn, to be meek and merciful, to hunger for righteousness, to be pure in heart, to make peace and to be persecuted for the Kingdom.
Comment by: David H
6 08/21/07 9:07 PM | Comment Link |Blessed provides a definition I can embrace. Happiness is emotive, ephemeral, transitory. Blessed offers the promise of being spiritual, more lasting, transcendental. The happiness of the poor, the hungry, the persecuted, the mournful and the meek are not purely in this time, this place or their situation. While their may be some reward in their suffering, their blessedness seems equally based in the process of endurance and the place to which they are going.
I doubt the happiness mentioned in the declaration or referred to by people I know on a regular basis has anything to do with their right or even desire to be without or put-down or sad.
Based on the study criteria, the criteria for blessedness mentioned by Jesus in the Beatitudes would probably be considered negatives. According to the study: