Brian Lam, from the excellent resource
the wirecutter, drops some knowledge about what it's like to
live a bit more meaningfully. "I owe my livelihood to technology and I love the raw capability it offers us as a tool, but I fear it a bit more than most people do. It's a tool, but it's not quite a hammer, because a hammer doesn't seduce you into sitting around lonely in your underwear for 6 hours at a stretch clicking on youtube videos and refreshing Twitter.
posted by pwally
on Feb 2, 2012 -
15 comments
Back in October, NYT columnist David Brooks asked his older readers (aged 70+) to send him "life reports." He wanted them to appraise their lives, in an effort to glean some life lessons for all of us to learn by. After receiving thousands of replies, he published his assessment of them a couple weeks ago, in two columns (
Part 1: Nov 24, 2011;
Part 2: Nov 28, 2011). He's also selected specific ones and published them
on his blog.
[more inside]
posted by crunchland
on Dec 6, 2011 -
61 comments
The Harvard Study of Adult Development is the longest prospective study of mental and physical well-being ever conducted. For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been following 824 individuals through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Designer
Laura Javier took ten of those cases and visualized them in the
Elements of Happiness.
[via flowingdata]
posted by anifinder
on Jun 27, 2011 -
13 comments
Denmark is the happiest place on Earth! At least according to
24/7 Wall Street, which has released their list of the
10 "Happiest" Countries in the World. Determined using "11 measurements of quality of life including housing, income, jobs, community, education, the environment, health, work-life balance, and life satisfaction," the United States did not make the cut. The US, however, made it to #1 on the list of the
10 Countries with the Most Millionaires. [more inside]
posted by eunoia
on Jun 6, 2011 -
98 comments
Recent research on children. (1) Brothers and sisters who argue a lot can improve their language, social skills and outcomes:
Guardian article;
paper on part of the research (pdf). (2) First findings from
Understanding Society. Conclusions include: the unhappiness of children’s mothers with their partners affect children’s happiness, but this is not the case if children’s fathers are unhappy in their relationships; having older brothers or sisters doesn’t appear to affect children’s happiness, but having younger brothers or sisters is associated with less happiness; not living with both natural parents has a greater negative impact on a young person’s life satisfaction than their material situation. (3) A longitudinal study on people now in their forties has found that for these people reading is linked to career success, though not necessarily to better pay, whilst playing computer games and doing no other activities was associated with less likelihood of going to university. In particular, those who owned a ZX Spectrum or Commodore C64 were less likely to go to university.
thinq interview with researcher.
Guardian article.
Telegraph article. (4) Poll about children’s attitudes to losing in sport.
Press release.
Data from children’s survey.
Data from parents’ survey. (All three are PDFs.)
posted by paduasoy
on Apr 9, 2011 -
30 comments
"Affluence breeds impatience, and impatience undermines well-being." Avner Offer is the
professor of economic history at the University of Oxford, and he is interested in the well-being of people and families in liberal market societies. His latest work,
The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain since 1950, is an empirical socioeconomic history of the effects that liberal and neo-liberal economics has had on happiness, relationships, and social welfare. Specifically, he argues that
Reaganism/
Thatcherism catapulted forward the ability to produce new goods and services, and to create the desire for them, far ahead of society's ability to cope. Reagan and Thatcher "
smashed the family to pieces;" the result of market liberalism is societies of ever-more dissatisfied, atomized, unhappy communities of
dual-worker consumerist families.
posted by r_nebblesworthII
on Nov 19, 2010 -
51 comments
"We infer that beyond about $75,000/y, there is no improvement whatever in any of the three measures of emotional well-being." Two social scientists at Princeton,
Angus Deaton and Nobelist
Daniel Kahneman, have a new paper in PNAS about money and the determinants of happiness. Increased income above $75,000 is not associated with higher subjective happiness, though it is associated with superior scores on measures of overall life satisfaction. Other tidbits: "Religion has a substantial influence on improving positive affect and reducing reports of stress, but no effect on reducing sadness or worry... The presence of children at home is associated with significant increases in stress, sadness, and worry."
posted by escabeche
on Sep 8, 2010 -
49 comments
On money and happiness Takeaway: buying stuff doesn't make you happier, although investing in experiences that strengthen social and familial bonds can.
Interestingness: savings increased to 6.5% this year and some experts think this is permanent; conspicuous consumption is shifting to calculated consumption; “There’s massive literature on income and happiness. It’s amazing how little there is on how to spend your money.”
[more inside]
posted by erikvan
on Aug 9, 2010 -
57 comments
I'm just not sure that "happiness" is supposed to be the stable human condition, and I think it's punishing that we're constantly being pushed to achieve it. Screw Happiness, an essay on the folly of using happiness as a measure to define women's lives.
posted by desjardins
on May 10, 2010 -
84 comments
Pandora, Prometheus, and Pessimism. "Pessimism deserves serious consideration in today’s culture of Oprah-quick-fix happiness, Prozac induced euphoria, and unjustified optimism for our species. Unlike Oprah and Prozac, pessimism is not easy to swallow. It is time we consider this tradition in a culture steeped in farcical, puerile conceptions of happiness; an environment where every person who is able to grin on a book-cover can tell us how to achieve happiness now; where angels or god or some other fairy-tale character cares about our actions in this world. Life is not a grand, heroic narrative with a happy ending. It is not a place where we are overcoming obstacles in order to achieve a time in our lives of perfect serenity. In order to combat such serious obstructions to clear-thought, boundaries to reality and gateways to delusion, pessimism can help us shape our thoughts on matters which resonate with all us rational, bipedal apes."
posted by homunculus
on Apr 15, 2010 -
65 comments
Everybody Have Fun. In 1978, a trio of psychologists curious about happiness assembled two groups of subjects. In the first were winners of the Illinois state lottery. These men and women had received jackpots of between fifty thousand and a million dollars. In the second group were victims of devastating accidents. How happy had they been before these events? How about now? How about expectations for the future? These and other results have shown that hitting the jackpot fails to lift spirits along with a whole range of activities that people tend to think will make them happy (getting a raise, moving to California, or having kid). Is the United States a nation of joyless lottery winners? And are there implications for public policy decisions?
posted by bluesky43
on Mar 19, 2010 -
47 comments
We think it’s normal to work all day every day at a dead-end job. It’s normal to fight with our spouses and our children. It’s normal to eat and drink and drug ourselves to escape, to veg out and stare at a screen for hours a day just to dull the pain. It’s normal to hate our lives and be miserable, it’s normal to be lonely, it’s normal to feel hollow. The Freak Revolution Manifesto.
posted by fiercecupcake
on Oct 2, 2009 -
97 comments
Children Full of Life - grade 4 students in Kanazawa, Japan learn deep life lessons from their incredible teacher and from each other. I strongly recommend this as awesome, but one caveat: keep tissues handy. (5 parts, 40 minutes total, English)
posted by madamjujujive
on Jul 25, 2009 -
48 comments
When Money Buys Happiness.
List the ten most expensive things (products, services or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most happiness. Count how many items appear on both lists. [more inside]
posted by zinfandel
on Jul 2, 2009 -
82 comments
Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. What Makes Us Happy?
posted by allkindsoftime
on May 12, 2009 -
57 comments
Do you remember those days when mom and dad used to pack you up in the back of the station wagon and drive you to
grandma's and grandpa's? Or when you were a dreamer with nothing else on your mind but to escape from the
one street town to the big city? Have you ever dreamed of
going back, maybe to settle down, get in touch with your roots, and start a new life for yourself. Well,
here's your chance. Why not just
get up and do it this time. Sure, it's not going to be easy, but maybe it's the change you've been
looking for. On the other hand, maybe not, so be advised. But whatever you decide, it sure does look like a
way of life that does hold a lot of potential.
[more inside]
posted by hadjiboy
on Apr 11, 2008 -
42 comments
In Praise Of Melancholy.
We are eradicating a major cultural force, the muse behind much art and poetry and music. We are annihilating melancholia. Does an overemphasis on the pursuit of happiness cause us to miss an essential part of a full life?
Via.
posted by amyms
on Jan 16, 2008 -
83 comments
How depressing is your job? The Office of Applied Studies, a division of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, released a report ranking various occupations in order of the number of depressive episodes experienced by workers. "Personal Care & Service" occupations (defined by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics
here) top the list. One wonders if these are the occupations contributing to the growth of the so-called "service economy," and if so, are we heading for a deepening national malaise?
posted by univac
on Oct 13, 2007 -
51 comments
The Happy Planet Index presents an alternative to GDP for measuring standard of living. It ranks countries by measuring life expectancy and self-reported life satisfaction against an "ecological footprint" needed to support that country's lifestyle. The
press release claims that well-being is not based on high levels of consumption, but
many don't agree.
Full report in PDF here. Vanuatu tops the charts, while Zimbabwe and Swaziland lie at bottom. Critiques
here,
here,
here, and
here. A critique of happiness indices generally
here.
posted by shivohum
on Jun 3, 2007 -
19 comments
Three small classes of high school students, one in Watsonville, California, one in Jos, Nigeria, and one in Dharamsala, India, are
currently collaborating on "Project Happiness". The students are "
exchanging their thoughts about what happiness is, and how to behave in ways that promote happiness all around them," drawing on the Dalai Lama's
Ethics for the New Millennium (useful 50-page pdf study guide; positive review from Christian Century magazine). In their work creating a curriculum for the book, the students communicate via email, a
blog, and videos
(an instructor in India describes the project's focus; a "what life is like here" video from India). The
podcast section of the
official site currently features just one introductory video posted a few weeks ago. The project will culminate in a meeting of all three classes in March 2007 in Dharamsala. A book and a PBS documentary are planned.
posted by ibmcginty
on Dec 28, 2006 -
5 comments
Danes top world happiness ranking. "Piecing together information from more than 100 studies in the growing field of happiness research, a British psychologist has produced what he says is the first
world map of happiness." The study ranks each country based on it's SWL (Satisfaction with Life, calculated from data published by the New Economics Foundation) and contrasts it with statistics such as Life Expectancy, GDP per capita and the level of Access to Education.
posted by heylight
on Jul 30, 2006 -
61 comments
