The Happiest Country in the World is Hiding a Dark Secret

hey 42 here scandinavia home of pickled herring endless winter and rain this ladies and gentlemen is apparently the happiest place on earth between 2013 and 2017 the world happiness report ranked denmark as the happiest nation on the planet and in the 2018 report finland overtook it denmark dropped to third place and norway took the second spot but the countries that have consistently topped the charts in these surveys haven't changed the scandinavian or more aptly nordic nations finland norway denmark iceland are consistently at the top of the charts year on year except for sweden which has remained slightly lower come on sweden what's the matter other surveys conducted over more than 20 years have found the same thing that the vikings at the top of europe are happier than larry or should i say olaf and when one examines nordic life and customs objectively it's easy to see why they enjoy one of the best work-life balances of any nation average hours worked per week are between 35 to 40 and in denmark most jobs permit employees to work at home at least one day per week their work hours are usually flexible too and if a danish person wants to leave work early on a friday to go out drinking with friends they straight up tell their boss i would like to leave work at 3pm because i'm going out with friends this evening whereas in the uk or us we might make up some superficial lie such as i have a dentist appointment and here lies another reason why scandinavians may be so happy they trust each other the world happiness report uses different metrics to measure happiness such as social security job satisfaction health freedom generosity of a nation's citizens and how much they trust one another being able to trust your neighbors and strangers tends to lead to a happier existence denmark finland sweden and norway all rank in the top 10 for trust alone and it's easy to see that as nords leave their doors unlocked more often than in other places and they report feeling totally comfortable to leave their coat or backpack or even their baby unattended in a coffee shop when popping to the toilet i dare you to try that in new york or london and see if your belongings are there when you get back and then of course there's social security a big reason why the nordic realms consistently top the happiness charts there's no doubt that they enjoy some of the best social services in the world the oecd lists some although not all the nordic countries in the top 10 for healthcare environment and safety all products of their heavy welfare states but my gosh do they pay for it they have some of the highest personal income tax rates in the developed world danes pay 56 to the tax man but really it's 60 percent when adding in all a little extras like property tax the finished a country currently ranked as the happiest pay 51 tax but what is astonishing is how happy scandinavians are about paying so much tax when asked 9 out of 10 danes say they are content giving 60 of their money to the government it's all very well having great public services and feeling safe in your own country but does that really equate to happiness it's odd to think of finland holding the title of the happiest nation i mean when was the last time you heard someone say this year honey i think we should holiday in helsinki or perhaps jutland no people usually opt for destinations such as france or italy instead even though neither of those country ranked particularly high for happiness parisians could probably expect a rate in people's coffees and tourists would still flock there in their millions finland is a hostile environment the temperature in helsinki is almost always below zero throughout the winter and it is usually buried under a blanket of snow a quarter of finland lapland is within the arctic circle and therefore it can be dark all day long for as many as 50 consecutive days throughout the year and most of the country spends half the year in darkness and majority of the day anyway as the sun sets in the early afternoon throughout the winter as it's perishingly cold and dark for half the year it's no wonder that the finnish are rather dour people it's not common that finns are described as exuberant and bubbly they are friendly once you get to know them don't get me wrong they just don't go about their day showing it usually the opposite in fact they have a national word for their shy stoicism sisu but then it's no wonder when your city is a black and gray refrigerator doesn't quite sound like living conditions that scream happy to me and the terrible metric rather reflects that their suicide rate finland has an inordinately high suicide rate it's not the highest in the world as some people have been led to believe in fact it's not even in the top 10. it's currently ranks number 32 just above the united states with 13.8 suicides per 100 000 people as of 2016. but surely the reported happiest nation in the world shouldn't be near the top end of the scale furthermore there's a macabre underlying trend here the data shows that the higher a country is ranked on a variety of happiness indexes the higher its suicide rate is there seems to be a dichotomous positive correlation between perceived happiness and wanting to take one's own life which for obvious reasons makes very little sense so perhaps there's something else going on in denmark and finland which could throw a shade of doubt on the results of happiness surveys and there could be an aspect of nordic and especially danish and norwegian culture that outright rigs the results so that they will always come on top no matter what the first issue is how does one measure happiness happiness is not absolute and therefore it's really difficult to quantify with statistics happiness is an umbrella term that encompasses a range of positive emotions such as joy contentment well-being success and safety if you were to hand out an award for the people who seem the happiest on the surface we would surely give it to a south american country the gallup emotions report ranks countries based on the negativity or positivity of their emotions such as how often they cry frown smile and laugh the results the smiliest most emotionally positive nation in the world is paraguay every year latin american countries dominate this poll colombia el salvador guatemala costa rica ecuador and honduras are all consistently in the top ten also every year canada ranks highly somewhere amongst the latin countries but that's no surprise it seems canadians really do live up to their reputation but as we all know there's a lot more to happiness than positive emotions as maslow illustrated in his hierarchy of needs there are other requisites humans need to feel happy such as safety friendship food and housing it's on these other metrics on which the south american nations fall down they may be smiley but they have the highest homicide rates in the world whereas the nordic countries host some of the wealthiest citizens in the world and are some of the safest and most secure places to live especially norway with an average gdp per capita of over 70 thousand dollars mostly because of its oil wealth off the back of the immense wealth that the nordic region has been able to generate over the past few decades they have all been able to fund the world's most prolific social welfare systems every need is taken care of so much so in fact that the scandinavians are statistically some of the worst savers in the world because there is an inbuilt assumption that the state will take care of them the heavy welfare providing governments in denmark norway finland iceland and sweden means that the people are content but that is precisely the issue that fools happiness surveys into a false sense of nordic security scandinavians are happy about just being content scandinavians are the kings of self-affacement it's a huge social faux pas in nordic countries to brag about your income or material possessions it is considered wrong to even desire material possessions even if one can afford them and most notes definitely can scandinavians all take part in a huge daily game of who can lift the most frugally hugely and who can pay the most tax you see scandinavians live by a set of strict unspoken laws they aren't real laws but a set of social etiquette rules come ideology by which almost every nord lives they call it yantalovan it originates from norway but it's followed by all the nordic countries yantalovan or the law of yanta dictates that one should put society before their own personal needs and desires one should never boast about their accomplishments or material possessions and one must never be jealous of another in fact there are actually 10 written and widely disseminated commandments of yantalovan including you're not to think you are anything special and you're not to think you are good at anything to put it simply one should be content with what they have and nothing more that is the lore of yanta it's more than just a national stereotype like the british love queueing yantalovan is an ideology that has become indoctrinated into the scandi youth and thus is firmly woven into the fabric of nordic society the antilovan is pretty much the polar opposite of the individualist way we live in the us uk and most other western capitalist societies where we always desire bigger houses and more premium cars than our neighbors contrary to popular belief all the scandinavian countries are not socialist they are unarguably free market capitalist societies but they are underpinned by a collectivist mentality neither of these contradictory ways of living is necessarily any better than the other there are pros and cons of living within both of these ideological frameworks they are just different and this huge culture gap between the us and scandinavia also goes a long way to explain why a scandi economic model could never work in the u.s but that's a topic for another time it's exactly this difference however that explains why the nordic countries are consistently reported as the happiest because scandinavians are on the whole extremely content and they don't desire much their bar for happiness is far lower than other ethnic groups and in a way that's a really nice thing but it also explains how a far higher percentage of nordic folk may report being happy compared to those in other countries yanta law also affects many other criteria by which we rate our personal satisfaction take housing the antelope dictates that a norwegian shouldn't desire larger houses than their peers so when asked they are bound to say that they are satisfied with their modest households whereas an american living in an identical house to the norwegian may deem that house far too small or inadequate and thus have a lower level of life satisfaction because americans are brought up to believe in the american dream practically the opposite of the antelope which suppresses the potential greatness of an individual therefore all these surveys that reportedly place the scandinavian countries at the top of the happiness league tables may have overlooked the fact that scandinavian culture favors selfless contentedness over selfish and hedonistic happiness i may not have met every dane and finn in the world but in my experience they are no friendlier or happier than the british or americans they're simply more content with less and that's absolutely fine furthermore there is a self-perpetuating trend for danes and finns to report greater levels of happiness than they actually feel the danes in particular are extremely patriotic people good on them they have a lot to be proud of but as part of their patriotism danes are now well aware of their reputation as one of the happiest nations in the world this causes danes to report higher satisfaction scores than they may otherwise also it's in the very nature of nordic culture to not admit when one is unhappy after all that would be putting one's own needs before the collective mass scandinavians are more likely to report happiness even if they are unhappy due to the social conditioning of their own culture the sisu mentality in finland i spoke about earlier has a lot to do with this as well and the nordic happiness bubble may be coming to an end mental health issues are on a steep rise across the region norway has seen a 40 increase in reported mental health issues in young people over a five-year period and over recent years vastly increased immigration into the region is threatening the previously high ethnic and cultural homogeneity of all the nordic countries after all it is this shared culture that provides these countries with their close social bonds etiquette and high levels of trust in their communities all these attributes create happy communities erode those values by introducing other cultures and we may start to see a shift in the satisfaction levels of the nordic people research has shown that ethnic minorities living in denmark and sweden are the least happy people in the country and i'm not exclusively talking about eastern immigrants those statistics include white expats because they don't share the same culture they don't believe in yantalor or fully understand the weird pleasure of hygge scandinavian countries want to think of themselves as the most inclusive in the world but they have such strong cultures that the truth is wide scale inclusion of others may never be possible without sacrificing the very culture that makes them who they are and makes them so happy whilst it's interesting to analyze ultimately we shouldn't judge the happiness of nations based on surveys and various data points because happiness means something entirely different to everyone the best way to find out if a nation is full of happy people is by visiting and spending time with those people even then you may not get their unique breed of happiness because you're simply unable to understand their bizarre culture and customs but that doesn't mean that they aren't happy the world is too diverse to say that any one country has a monopoly on happiness thanks for watching do you know what would make me happy if you check out my new book which i'm crowdfunding over on unbound if you haven't already watched a launch video then head over to unbound by clicking the link in the description and pledge today to get your signed first edition copy thank you

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 1,076,708

Keywords: scandinavia, happy, happiness, finland, norway, sweden, iceland, denmark, thoughty2, happiest country in the world, thoughty 2, the happiest country in the world, denmark happiest country in the world, finland happiest country

Id: tckVx_kaYco

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 30 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/acloudrift]

Janteloven (a set of cultural 'norms') "be content with what you have and nothing more"
(10:04) You're not to think...

1 you are anything special.
2 you are as good as we are.
3 you are smarter than we are.
4 or imagine yourself better than we are.
5 you know more than we do.
6 are more important than we are.
7 you are good at anything.
9 anyone cares about you.
10 you can teach us anything.
8 Don't laugh at us.