The Geography of Bliss

Eric Weiner is on a quest. That in itself is not surprising, given the fact that he has spent a decade as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR). What is unusual is the object of his quest. He is searching for the quality that has been the Holy Grail of philosophers and religions alike - happiness. The main culprits, says Eric with a tongue firmly in cheek, are the philosophers - brooding white guys from Europe, they hung out, alone, in cafés, pondered the universe, and—surprise!—concluded it is an unhappy place. But is it really so? Which country is the happiest on Earth? Which one is the least happy? And why? Can we manufacture the conditions for happiness? In search of answers to questions like these he went around the globe. The book he wrote - The Geography of Bliss - maps his journey.

The first stop Eric makes is at the World Database of Happiness (WDH) based in Netherlands. Researcher Ruut Veenhoven and his colleagues have been working on happiness and although they themselves do not look ecstatic,  observes Eric, they do have the most solid data on who the happiest and who is not. He spent a couple of weeks mining the data and deciding his next destinations. He found conflicting reports - often counter-intuitive. Like people who attend religious services are happier than those who do not but the countries that are on the top of happiness list are secular. Wealthy people are happier than poor ones, but only slightly so. Money can make you happy up to a certain point and no further.

One of the surprising entries in the elite club of happy countries is Iceland. It shatters many of the myths about what is required for happiness, especially if you look at it from the point of view of tourism industry. No sunlight or more precisely no Sun at all for most of time, no warm beaches and the whole island is unstable with sky varying from chocolate dark to pitch black. The place resembles the Land of Mordor. Why should anyone be happy in such a place? (Incidentally, Eric was staying in Hawaii at the time, a place that has all those purported elements of happiness in abundance.)

A closer look reveals that Iceland has a tradition of unusual attitudes that contribute towards it's happiness reserve. For example, failure is very much an option in Iceland. Teenagers starting a band in garage are actively encouraged by their parents. It's quite normal for a person to have several different careers. Larus Johannesson for instance, has earned a living not only as a chess player but also as a journalist, a construction-company executive, a theologian, and, now, a music producer. No one expects you to stay married to a career that you chose decades ago. Failure does not have a stigma attached to it. This is exactly opposite to the specialization mania that is followed religiously in the rest of the world. Da Vinci would have heartily approved. Everyone in Iceland is a poet because there is no one to say that you cannot be one. The popular joke is that if they find an Icelander who is not a poet, they will put his statue in the main square in Reykjavík. Alas, they have not found the person yet. The myth of unhappy artist - propagated by giants ranging from Dostoyevsky to Jimi Hendrix - does not hold in Iceland. All the Icelandic artists are happy. Even when they are sad, they do not brood over it, they don't need to be that way in order to be creative.   

Next stop - Bhutan. Why? Because it's the only country in the world that has a policy of Gross National Happiness (GNH). It seeks to measure the progress of the nation by looking at how happy or unhappy people are. The Bhutan King made headlines in 1986 when he said that GHP is more important than GNP. GNH, it seems, means knowing your limits. Free-market economics has brought much good to the world, but it goes mute when the concept of “enough” is raised. As the renegade economist E. F. Schumacher put it: “There are poor societies which have too little. But where is the rich society that says ‘Halt! We have enough!’ There is none.” Every decision that the government takes is examined through this prism.

Then there is Qatar, where money flows like water but people do not seem any happier. And there is Moldova that does not have any money and people are gloomy. Moldova is the saddest country according to data. Thailand is happy and one of the reasons for it could be 'mai pen lai' - never mind - the Thais do not take life seriously.

Eric also meets people he calls 'hedonist refugees'. People who have come from far and settled for no other reason than 'it just felt right'. Linda came from US to settle in Bhutan while Jared, another American, stopped in Reykjavík while on his way to Europe, fell in love with the dark skies and came to live there. He has 'gone native', Eric notes, as he uses "we" and not "they" when refereeing to Icelanders.

Eric has a unique style of writing, looking at everything through a lens that is distinctly satirical, although sometimes he crosses the line and it comes across more like sarcasm. It takes some time getting used to his humor, just like you eventually get used to Seinfeld. You also discover along the way that he is brutally honest with himself as well. Lest all this humor give you an impression that the quest is not a serious one, he proceeds to prove the opposite by going to extreme lengths like eating the popular dish of Iceland - harkarl - that is made of rotten shark, quitting coffee for a while in an ashram in India or buying a ridiculously expensive pen (he does not disclose how much!) to see how it feels like to be a nouveau riche from Qatar. He takes every experience without prejudice, and later tries to simplify it to a formula, trying to figure it out in his own, American way.

One wonders if the humorous front is kind a defense mechanism because at times the armor cracks a bit and you see a different person. Like the time when he slips a hundred dollar bill in his Moldavian landlady's dictionary, next to the word schaste, the Russian word for happiness. He says,

All of the research, not to mention my time in Qatar, concludes that one hundred dollars will not make Luba happier in the long run. But it just might in the short run, and sometimes the short run is good enough.

He appears distinctly uneasy reporting this, as if embarrassed to have been caught making a rather melodramatic, Dickensian gesture in these supposedly post-modern times.
------
Image credit : Amazon.