38 pages • 1 hour read
Eric WeinerThe Geography of Bliss
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Happiness and Place
Aided by scientific research into what makes people happy, and with an index of the world’s countries ranked by self-reported happiness levels, Weiner travels around the globe to see how happiness looks in places at the top and at the bottom of the list.
He finds that happiness is often rooted in how connected a country is to other countries. Several countries, like the island of Iceland and remote and hard to access Bhutan, that isolate themselves from the rest of the world both geographically and through their ideas, are able to maintain a sense of happiness from an incredibly strong sense of communal culture and social bonds. On the other hand, countries built in ways that emphasize comparison with the outside world, like the poor European nation of Moldova and the resource-rich Qatar, find that the national fixation on money does not bring their populations much happiness.
Happiness is also rooted in the social bonds of a country’s people—something that has a lot to do with a county’s history and response to outsiders. India, a place that has traditionally absorbed at least some of the cultures and customs of invaders and visitors, thrives because of its diversity. However, Moldova, a country often overrun by occupiers who imposed their own culture on its people, does not a cohesive social network and thus suffers from lower happiness levels.
The Science of Happiness
Weiner frequently discusses recent scientific advances in the study of positive affect. For much of human history, people have been unhappy, and people have only discussed happiness in more general terms. Recently, psychology and sociology have investigated positive emotions with data derived from science.
The science of happiness includes studying statistics on what makes people happy. The World Database on Happiness, in the Netherlands, contains large amounts of information, data Weiner references to develop his bliss atlas. One finding of the science of happiness is that money can only increase happiness to a certain point. Often, people find happiness in other people, instead of in money.
People’s happiness adjusts, forming a “hedonic treadmill”. After becoming rich, an individual or a country reverts to previous levels of happiness. People who have some type of belief are statistically happier.
Each person has a preference for individualistic or collectivist culture. Social science says that a correct fit for the individual in their appropriate society produces happiness. For people who care more about the group, a collectivist culture should be sought. For those who care more about individual happiness, a individualistic society is better.
Envy and Happiness
Countries that have cultures that promote a lack of envy do well on happiness scores, whether those countries are poor or rich. It turns out that it is not the absolute level of wealth that creates happiness, but the sense of one’s wealth relative to others.
On the rich country side of the spectrum, Switzerland and Iceland do not have much envy, and both have high happiness scores. The Swiss do not flaunt their wealth. Icelanders share their wealth. This lack of envy contributes to these respective cultures’ collective happiness. With that being said, both countries are, overall, rather well-to-do and their populations are extremely homogenous; in Iceland, so many people are distantly related that their sense of themselves as one community is extraordinarily strong.
On the poorer side, Bhutan and Thailand also encourage a lack of envy through their cultures. Bhutan does this through their national happiness policies, which pursue happiness growth in favor of economic growth. Thailand does the same thing through a cultural philosophy that prizes letting go of hurts rather than dwelling on them and becoming at peace with not having a lot of power over one’s environment.
Countries where envy is high, like the extremely wealthy Qatar or the poor and miserable Moldova, do very poorly on happiness rankings. In Moldova, people envy each other and lack trust. Moldovans don’t feel a part of a common culture and instead conflict over their national identity. Qatar has created a culture of wealthy idleness by paying its citizens profit shares from its resource wealth. People who have no purpose in life and no occupation find their only outlet in shopping and other material pursuits—a lifestyle that brings very little happiness.
