Thursday, July 3

World map of happiness now out

Toping the list is Denmark, with its democracy, social equality and peaceful atmosphere, leading to it being the happiest country in the world, researchers in this World map of happiness project have said.

Yet Zimbabwe a country , torn by political and social strife, is the least happy. I became really sad when I read this and even more to read that as the rest of the world is getting happier, the African continent is becoming sadder .

This is what they say causes happiness:
"I strongly suspect that there is a strong correlation between peace and happiness," said Ronald Inglehart, a political scientist at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, who directed the study.
Inglehart said, "there is a strong correlation between happiness and democracy".

Why Denmark then?
"Denmark is prosperous – not the richest country in the world but it is prosperous."
They add also the following highly ranked countries Puerto Rico, Colombia, Northern Ireland, Iceland, Switzerland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Canada and Sweden.

The united states ranks 16 even if it´s ranked the world´s richest country.The researcher Inglehart said, "Though by no means the happiest country in the world, from a global perspective the United States looks pretty good," . "The country is not only prosperous; it ranks relatively high in gender equality, tolerance of ethnic and social diversity and has high levels of political freedom."

What determined who are happy or not was the extent to which people were free to choose how to live their lives, Inglehart said.

Really sad to read even if Sweden is in the sixth place felt sad for my fellow Africans. To cheer me up though, this is what I watched at got a laugh at least....

Enjoy this courtesy of ZWTUBE
West Africa idol auditions

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

This broke my heart too, taderera kudero here?

Anonymous said...

Why is it that Africa is always at the bottom of everything?

Gerri said...

Africa does seem to be at the bottom of everything but I believe our time will come when we will SHINE!!! It still is very disheartening when you read things like that.

Living Zimbabwe said...

Do you know what, once the turmoil in certain parts of Africa have been dealt with we will be happy. Africans are much easier to please than people in the Western world because they generally arent very materialistic and are very community orientated with everyone kind of looking out for each other. When I was growing up and misbehaving an neighbour from a few houses down would very easily discipline me and my parents would not be phased - I saw that as everyone looking out for each other which shows that they give a damn about wellbeing. That is a sign of love so to speak and to me love is one of they keys to happiness. let stop here before I waffle on too much. God Bless.

Anonymous said...

yep, we are sad Zimbabweans and in fact even though i am like 10 000kms away from home, i find myself deeply affected by events on there and sometimes i jst lush out. God will provide happiness one day.Read this on BBC as well.Read and wrote abt this some four years back. so, four years on we are still the saddest. I guess life is what u make it.

Emilia said...

I agree with all of you that this is really sad news but I really liked one thing that was mentioned in the comments and that is we cannot just judge happiness through one criterion materialism (which this article did not do though if one reads closely)However keep in mind that there are many other factors that determine whether one is happy or not. The fact that in Africa we looked out for one another is a warming thought indeed.

All same still there is huge problem in the whole of Africa that needs to be solved...

Anonymous said...

This just made me sadder.