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> I have not doubt those tribes are happier than 90% of the people belonging to advanced civilizations. I have just spent a year in 16 countries in West Africa
by grecy 9y ago
> I have not doubt those tribes are happier than 90% of the people belonging to advanced civilizations.
I have just spent a year in 16 countries in West Africa.
On the whole, people here are extremely happy / content / friendly.
In all honesty, they make Canadians look unfriendly and unhappy.
I know you strongly believe everything we have invented in the modern world makes us happier (almost everyone does) You really, really, REALLY need to see with you own eyes, not just listen to what you have been told.
- artursapek 9y ago> I know you strongly believe everything we have invented in the modern world makes us happier It also raises our threshold for happiness in the long term, and we spend more and more of our time working to sustain that. It's kind of like a never ending drug addiction. I'm not surprised to hear people living simpler lives appear happier.
- lloydde 9y ago@grecy you seem to have reversed the meaning of the parent post. You are strongly agreeing with the parent.
- Brockenstein 9y agoHappiness wasn't invented in the last decade of the 20th century... or at any arbitrary point in the development of civilization. Pretty much any time things aren't just horrible and desperate, people are more than capable of being happy. People are very adaptable in that regard. The other thing we tend to do as human beings is tell ourselves that people who are better off can't be (that much) happier. Or people who are better off convincing themselves that because their lives aren't perfect that all circumstances are essentially the same as far as happiness goes and that people with less or who are living closer to the edge are actually happier than they are. There's a wide range of circumstances people can live with and still find happiness. Very few of us have a hard requirement of being on the very top rung of the ladder to be happy. And there's no particular rung on the ladder where happiness becomes possible.
- bb101 9y agoWhich countries or regions did you find the most happy and friendly? I'd love to hear about your experiences.
- grecy 9y agoI mean, there are happy people in every region of every country. Very happy people in Togo, in Gabon, in Congo. But that just might be because I connected with them. Also Burkina Faso. Ahh, there are so many. Lots of details on my site if you want to know more theroadchoseme.com
- mcguire 9y agoI personally am much happier than I would be as a hunter-gatherer.
- mcguire 9y agoNo, really. My eyesight is very crappy and I have spent some asthma related evenings in the emergency room. Assuming I survived infancy, I would not have survived to adulthood and I wouldn't have enjoyed the process.
- WalterSear 9y agoThe OP would argue that we know myopia is chiefly caused by childhood visual experience and that Hygiene Hypothesis may explain asthma, which is definitely exacerbated by air pollution. IMHO, however, people who talk about how happy people are in subsistence and developing societies haven't actually spent much time in them.
- grecy 9y agoYour mistake is thinking the alternative to the life you have now is 'hunter-gatherer'. Hundreds of millions of people live with a lot less technology and stuff that you, are extremely happy, and are not hunter-gatherers.
- mcguire 9y agoThe article in question concerns an "uncontacted" Amazon tribe, and these discussions usually lead to paeans to the pre-agricultural life. I'm sorry if I jumped to conclusions. On the other hand, the Symbicort I inhale daily to avoid COPD (and the emergency room treatments I received when I was younger) are pretty high tech.