[HN Gopher] World Happiness Report 2026
___________________________________________________________________
World Happiness Report 2026
Author : ChrisArchitect
Score : 113 points
Date : 2026-03-19 16:12 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.worldhappiness.report)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.worldhappiness.report)
| alstonite wrote:
| It's interesting to see a country's internal rank of its own
| happiness against how I would rank them using my worldview.
|
| Israel for example seems like a place that would be fairly
| unhappy right now given world events, but they rank quite highly.
|
| Saudi Arabia also sticks out as unexpected. It seems in the media
| I hear about their government being quite oppressive (especially
| against women), so seeing them just above the US is surprising.
| deadbabe wrote:
| In Israel they use happiness as a rebellion. You try to kill
| them, you say what you want, but they don't care, they stay
| happy. It fuels their enemy's rage.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Yes, maybe. It's the old jewish way of dealing with being
| powerless in exile. You try to hit us, we smile and joke.
| It's not healthy.
|
| I think it's now more about gaining power as a nation and not
| being at the mercy of those who seek to destroy us.
| 10xDev wrote:
| No they just call you an antisemite and ask America to bomb
| you.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| Not really? The current conflict with Iran is entirely a
| joint venture where Israel is taking on a significant
| portion. In previous conflicts the US was marginally
| involved and even pushed Israel to stop fighting entirely.
| I don't think you have a good grasp on these events.
| card_zero wrote:
| Perhaps all the Saudi men are very happy.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| It had a huge drop in positive emotions due to the war with
| Gaza in 2023. Actually, negative emotions were higher than
| positive which is sad and expected. But the index includes many
| metrics that don't change rapidly like GDP, life expactancy..
| so any short conflict will not have outsized effect.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| There might have been a huge drop due to the atrocities on
| October 7th which caused the Gaza war.
| dannyphantom wrote:
| IMO, everyone on Earth has to reconcile with their current
| circumstances and make the choice to go about life with a
| positive or negative disposition in spite of those
| circumstances.
| scythe wrote:
| Another big surprise is Mexico. It seems like every day there's
| another gory story about a bunch of people disappearing or
| getting shot in a gang war. But they're the second-highest
| ranked in North America at #12, behind only Costa Rica.
|
| Israel I think is similar to Costa Rica in that whatever
| problems Israelis have, they look around at their neighbors and
| realize how much worse it could be.
| bombcar wrote:
| Maybe they're ranking themselves so high because they're not
| in the "bunch of people gorily disappeared."
| 10xDev wrote:
| >Israel for example seems like a place that would be fairly
| unhappy right now given world events, but they rank quite
| highly.
|
| I'm really confused at how people still believe the narrative
| that Israel is a weak country that is suffering. _They are
| causing the suffering_.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| Tell that to the 1200+ civilians murdered, raped, mutilated
| and burned alive on October 7th. Israel is not a weak country
| but it has definitely been tested in the amount of pain it
| suffered.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Tell that to the 1200+ civilians murdered, raped,
| mutilated and burned alive on October 7th.
|
| It's pretty clear that a substantial number of them were
| killed by the Israeli military in the course of its
| deliberate war crime of indiscriminate attack with
| civilians in the line of fire under the "Hannibal
| Directive". Investigations by Israeli and Western media and
| numerous Israeli (both military sources and civilian
| witnesses) accounts support this.
|
| Its gotten relatively little play in _US media_
| specifically, but US media acts as a propaganda arm of the
| IDF and the Israeli government as much (even more,
| arguably) than it does for the domestic military and police
| forces, ignoring damaging stories, and when it can 't
| completely ignore them using exonerative and passive voice
| framing to avoid attributing effects to the actors and
| actions causing them.
| magic_hamster wrote:
| > substantial number of them were killed by the Israeli
| military
|
| Let me stop you right there, the Palestinian (hamas) raid
| on Israel was livestreamed for the psychological terror
| effect, and there is absolutely a mountain of videos
| showing how everything happened. There's an overwhelming
| number of witness accounts telling the horrors committed
| by Palestinians towards families in their homes, the
| music festival, etc. You can still visit the places they
| torched ny hand. Please don't spread disinformation on
| October 7th.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Let me stop you right there, the Palestinian (hamas)
| raid on Israel was livestreamed for the psychological
| terror effect, and there is absolutely a mountain of
| videos showing how everything happened.
|
| No, there aren't videos showing how "everything"
| happened. There are videos showing a part of what
| happened, and you are extrapolating how everything
| happened from the subset of those that you have seen,
| _even though you acknowledge that they were created as a
| propaganda effort to create exactly the impression you
| have derived from them._
| magic_hamster wrote:
| The videos, the security cameras footage, alongside
| numerous first hand accounts paint a very clear, minute
| by minute picture, which I'm not sure you bothered to
| look into.
|
| Hamas raided numerous towns near Gaza where they murdered
| people and children in their homes. This is where most
| people died. This and the music festival where people
| literally came to dance peacefully.
|
| Under no circumstances did IDF kill 1200 Israeli
| civilians on October 7th, or "a substantial" part. This
| is disinformation and Hamas propaganda, and any source
| even implying this is lying to your face.
| ranger_danger wrote:
| Endless captcha loops for me whenever I click on a chapter.
|
| Not using any VPN or proxy, no CF DNS, nothing like that.
| stabbles wrote:
| https://files.worldhappiness.report/WHR26.pdf
| stabbles wrote:
| You would think that Finland's unemployment rate (10%+) would
| influence its ranking, but that's not the case at all.
| avgDev wrote:
| Nordic countries have better safety nets.
|
| I haven't travelled there but I grew up in Poland and still
| visit. US feels very capitalistic to me. I feel the pace is
| slower in Poland. In US I feel the need to produce. Might be
| just me.
| brailsafe wrote:
| This is how I feel as a Canadian. It's a just border between
| us, but on one side life seems much more transactional and
| individualistic in a somewhat repulsive way.
| PowerElectronix wrote:
| As it's selfreporting and it's more about expectations than
| actual happiness a finnish dude only needs to think that life
| is just incredible compared to what he sees at the other side
| of the border to selfreport a 10 in happiness
| lostmsu wrote:
| Could also explain Israel
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, that's just inherent in the question which asks someone
| to imagine the best possible life vs. the worst possible life.
| In a society with lots of room to grow you aren't at the higher
| rungs. In a society with no progress possible you're at the top
| easily.
| bigtones wrote:
| FYI: This world happiness report is entirely based on asking just
| one obtuse question, which does not even have the word happiness
| in the actual question:
|
| Please imagine a ladder with steps numbered from 0 at the bottom
| to 10 at the top. The top of the ladder represents the best
| possible life for you and the bottom of the ladder represents the
| worst possible life for you. On which step of the ladder would
| you say you personally feel you stand at this time?
| dismalaf wrote:
| Canada here. Feels like we're barely hanging on to rung 5 or 6
| and about to fall to the bottom.
|
| Quantifiable example: most recent jobs report we lost 100k+
| full time jobs. Biggest job less since COVID. Or the fact our
| increase in GDP per capita is the (second?) worst in the OECD
| in the last 10 years. Worse than Japan, Italy, the UK and all
| the other laggards...
| SECProto wrote:
| Also Canada, and I disagree pretty strongly with your post.
| Those two statistics have little bearing on happiness.
| Housing costs and healthcare access are much bigger concerns.
| dismalaf wrote:
| > healthcare access
|
| What healthcare access? My family has had to go abroad for
| surgeries twice in the last 3 years because there's no
| access to healthcare here...
|
| And housing prices? My sister bought a mansion in Texas for
| less than a condo here.
|
| Arguably these two data points are even worse for Canada.
| Either way our ranking is dropping.
| SECProto wrote:
| I'm saying that data (not anecdotes) on those would've
| been better justification for your ranking.
|
| That said, for most people, going abroad for surgery or
| to buy a home is not an option.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Yes. GDP per capita is data and a well known proxy for
| quality of life.
|
| For example, declining productivity (which is what GDP
| per capita is) means a worse house price/income ratio,
| ie. worse affordability.
| 9rx wrote:
| They are concerns, but not all that closely tied to
| happiness. Research shows time and time again that deep
| social connection is the key, if you will, to happiness.
|
| And today's Canadians aren't that great at being social:
| "In 1986, about one in two Canadians saw their friends on
| an average day. Now, only about one in five do." --
| https://www.cbc.ca/radio/nowornever/maintain-friendship-
| conn...
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| > Research shows time and time again that deep social
| connection is the key, if you will, to happiness.
|
| Research suggests it, but it does not _show_ it.
| Psychological research is notoriously unscientific, with
| most studies not even being replicable because humans are
| extremely complex and it 's basically impossible to
| design any kind of methodology that concretely controls
| for all variables, all the more so when we have things
| like 'ethics' that make it even harder to do controlled
| resaerch.
|
| It is absolutely possible to be happy without deep social
| connection. I am an absolute misanthrope, I seriously
| hate every one of you bastards, but I'm pretty damn
| happy. The key to _my_ happiness is that I live a
| comfortable life and have the freedom to spend it
| creating (and consuming) things I love - art, music,
| games, software. If I had to instead spend my days
| labouring on a farm, if I didn 't have indoor plumbing
| and air conditioning, didn't have access to healthcare
| and stability and security, etc. I would be absolutely
| miserable. My happiness is only possible due to the great
| economic conditions and sensible policies of my country.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> It is absolutely possible to be happy without deep
| social connection._
|
| Well, of course it is. No matter what you think it is
| that brings happiness to the general population, there
| will be at least someone who doesn't find happiness in
| it. There are _always_ outliers.
|
| _> If I had to instead spend my days labouring on a
| farm_
|
| Farms are where you find the intersection of all cool
| tech. I have to wonder how someone who enjoys creating
| and consuming software would dislike working on a farm.
| But to each their own.
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| > No matter what you think it is that brings happiness to
| the general population, there will be at least someone
| who doesn't find happiness in it. There are always
| outliers.
|
| I'm not convinced I'm that much of an outlier
| psychologically, though; I think only my prosperous
| conditions are themselves a global outlier. I believe
| that if you gave most people the privilege I have, of
| having just enough money to pursue the things they love
| without doing work they don't enjoy, without worrying
| about being able to afford food, shelter, or medical
| bills, they would be happy too, with or without social
| connections.
|
| > Farms are where you find the intersection of all cool
| tech. I have to wonder how someone who enjoys creating
| and consuming software would dislike working on a farm.
|
| I need to do intellectually stimulating work to be happy.
| Repetitive manual labour would drive me insane. My mental
| image of "labouring on a farm" there was also "poor
| economic conditions subsistence farming", not "industrial
| farm with a million dollars worth of cool machinery".
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I'm in tech and laboring on _my_ farm are my happiest
| moments. I love to work hard with my hands. I absolutely
| hate working with what seems like pointless minutia on a
| computer but I'm good at it and can't make a comfortable
| living farming so I do what I have to do. People are very
| different so I'm interested to see what their n is in
| each country. If it's in the hundreds, this study means
| nothing.
| bombcar wrote:
| > I am an absolute misanthrope, I seriously hate every
| one of you bastards, but I'm pretty damn happy.
|
| Hey, it didn't say deep _positive_ social connection.
|
| Perhaps your hatred is what fuels you and keeps you happy
| :)
|
| And another question from a ratbastard; have you ever
| spend a significant time labouring on a farm, or without
| indoor plumbing and/or air conditioning?
| applfanboysbgon wrote:
| I have, yes. Although born in a wealthy country, I grew
| up in abject poverty. I wasn't _entirely_ unhappy then,
| and I do understand how social connection can help make
| it bearable. But I 'm a lot happier now than then, and my
| happiness no longer depends upon the whims of other
| people, one of whom in particular betrayed my trust and
| left me deeply depressed for years. I greatly prefer my
| happiness being in my own hands, and I really couldn't go
| back to manual labour now, because there is _so much_ I
| want to create and already not enough time to do it all;
| having more time to idly think about all the things I
| want to create and less time to create them would be
| torturous.
| canucker2016 wrote:
| Here's the more important data point - Canada lost to the USA
| in three 2026 Winter Olympic Hockey finals. The whole country
| is hanging their collective heads in shame...
| bombcar wrote:
| Well USA lost to Venezuela in baseball, so maybe
| something's going around.
|
| (Canada losing to a USA team made mainly of Canadians is
| another issue entirely ...)
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Canada here. Feels like we 're barely hanging on to rung 5
| or 6 and about to fall to the bottom._
|
| The _Missing Middle_ podcast went into this in a recent
| episode, and it 's age-dependent: older folks are happier
| (i.e., they have purchased homes), while younger folks are
| less happy (cost of living). We Canadians basically have age-
| dependent wealth-class nowadays.
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dizaUBC22o4&t=4m13s
| dismalaf wrote:
| The fact boomers have it so good yet our ranking is
| dropping like a rock tells you just how bad it is for the
| working class, especially those who don't have government
| jobs...
| girvo wrote:
| It's the same in Australia. And they will live for
| another few decades most likely, so this only gets worse
| as far as I can tell.
|
| While the government removes all the benefits boomers and
| Gen X got to use to build their wealth, ensuring the
| ladder is firmly pulled up behind them.
| bombcar wrote:
| Reminds me of the labour union negotiations where to
| preserve existing member benefits they forfeited future
| member's access to the same.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Its hard to frame a question across languages and cultures.
|
| The ladder metaphor isn't the worst.
| semilin wrote:
| It's especially hard to express "happiness" across languages.
| It's a word that is hard to define and generally has no
| perfect synonyms between languages. It ranges broadly from
| "present feeling of contentment" to "ultimate feeling of
| fulfillment in life," and it seems like the survey is aiming
| for the latter aspect. Therefore the ladder analogy is a
| decent way to communicate that.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| This isn't gauging happiness but rather if your country is
| fulfilling your aspirations. I bet someone that works in a
| role he didn't really want still might be very happy on a
| day to day basis but he never had the chance to become the
| doctor or botanist he always wanted to be.
| jamilton wrote:
| An obvious issue with the metaphor that comes to mind is that
| if you consider yourself to have a pretty good life, to be
| overall happy and satisfied, but you think it's possible to
| have an objectively much better life, then you'd rank
| yourself relatively low. And vice versa, if you think your
| life sucks but it could be much worse you'd rank yourself
| relatively high.
| lores wrote:
| Same problem as rating your pain on the pain scale: is 10
| the worst pain I've experienced, or the worst I can
| imagine? Because I've got a... very vivid imagination. And
| still, that's the best we can do. I blame an imperfect
| universe.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| But, that is still giving a happiness score.
|
| If the society/culture you are living within. Is well off,
| but swamped with cravings that it could be better. Then you
| are less happy.
|
| This study isn't trying to measure how 'materially well off
| you are', it is happiness. So if you are un-satisfied even
| with your big house, and un-happy, that still says
| something.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It's also a culture score. Objectively we should all be
| very unhappy because we're not all billionaires and can't
| do whatever we want but culture tempers at what point
| you're content.
| throw0101d wrote:
| The _Howtown_ channel had a video on this last year, 'One
| weird metric picks the world's "happiest country"':
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg1--c2r8HE
|
| They link to their sources:
|
| * https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vFO-3Sq5-rorCWBIKwuR-
| Spk...
|
| Specifically the Cantril Self-Anchoring Striving Scale
| ("Cantril Ladder") is used:
|
| * https://www.sciotoanalysis.com/news/2024/2/9/what-is-
| cantril...
|
| * https://news.gallup.com/poll/122453/understanding-gallup-
| use...
|
| It's been around since 1965, so it's presumably been studied a
| lot and the pros and cons of it explored in the literature.
| rapnie wrote:
| It looks to me that this refers to a 272 page PDF report [0] on
| the theme "Happiness and Social Media" and the Executive
| summary explains that it is about _much more_ than that simple
| question.
|
| [0] https://files.worldhappiness.report/WHR26.pdf
| boringg wrote:
| Doesn't that almost imply the happiest countries in the world
| have a lack of imagination on what could be better? Or maybe
| they don't suffer from comparison (the thief of joy) as a
| culture.
| bauerd wrote:
| >a lack of imagination on what could be better
|
| I'd argue it's likelier that people are more informed about
| their absolute position globally. Any screen gets you the
| mental image of the top of the ladder. So happy people would
| end up scoring themselves low, because there's a globalized
| vision of wealth nowadays.
|
| Besides there's a difference in life self-evaluation and
| experienced happiness, so the report really is a misnomer.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Pretty good question I would say. It's rating your life on a
| scale of 1 to 10. That being said it doesn't gauge actual
| happiness. For instance the Nordic countries have very high
| levels of depression with a third of the some countries being
| on antidepressants. As a whole I would say on a day to day
| basis people are much more ebullient and happy seeming in a lot
| of other places like the Mediterranean. I would wager that this
| doesn't capture the percentage of time people are "happy".
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| I mean.. even if I was a bit worse off financially, if the
| leadership in the country was even borderline normal, I would
| give a much higher rating than currently.
| mjdiloreto wrote:
| > On average, heavy social media use (more than five hours per
| day) is associated with lower wellbeing. Heavy users are
| significantly more likely to report higher stress and depressive
| symptoms, and believe they are worse off than their parents,
| compared with non- or moderate users.
|
| I like this framing of social media use in the same terms as drug
| use. There are significant risks to this activity that so many
| people are ambivalent toward. Depression is not a condition you
| want to have, and here's this activity that causes it (or at
| least significantly contributes to it). And yet, so many persist!
| crossbody wrote:
| You quote correlation and then jump to causation. Any high
| quality evidence for causation that make you confident it's not
| depression that drives SM use (or something else entirely
| driving both)?
| myth_drannon wrote:
| It's sad to see Canada drop so much, as much as Congo, Malawi and
| a bunch of other war torn places.
| throw0101d wrote:
| Young people with difficult housing affordability and general
| high cost of living is dragging down the score. Boomers that
| own their homes are more satisfied:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dizaUBC22o4&t=4m13s
| 9rx wrote:
| Except the biggest drop was among teenage girls. Housing
| affordability and cost of living isn't usually yet a concern
| to most teenagers, and to the extent that it is a concern, it
| is equally a concern to teenage boys who haven't felt the
| same decline in happiness.
| bombcar wrote:
| I suspect you're right, in general, but teenage girls may
| also be more susceptible to "future worry" than the boys
| are.
|
| Tell the girls that housing will be unobtainable and they
| start worrying; tell the boys and they laugh. Not saying
| it's the case (and it's likely that the cause is more
| social than financial) but it could be.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Except the biggest drop was among teenage girls._
|
| Even if it is the _biggest_ drop it is not the _only_ drop.
| twoodfin wrote:
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
| mvdtnz wrote:
| If you only followed my country's subreddit (New Zealand) you
| would believe we live in hell, it's the most miserable time in
| our nation's history and nobody has a future here. Of course this
| doesn't resonate at all with my own personal experience in my
| life. We rank 11th, unchanged year on year.
| weisnobody wrote:
| Well, someone once tried to get happiness classified as a
| psychiatric disorder:
|
| * https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1376114/ (1992)
|
| The abstract: " It is proposed that happiness be classified as a
| psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the
| major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective
| disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature
| it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of
| a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of
| cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal
| functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection
| to this proposal remains--that happiness is not negatively
| valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically
| irrelevant."
| temp0826 wrote:
| I guess a Buddhist point of view would be that any
| emotion/feeling should not be held on to. (It is best to feel
| and let all things pass, I think, but to consider it a disorder
| to "hold on" to happiness doesn't seem right...I am not well-
| read enough about it to know if it can in fact cause suffering)
| roenxi wrote:
| Yes. The argument is something like at some point in the
| future the conditions causing the happiness will be gone
| (probably quite soon, happiness is fleeting) and so will the
| feeling. If that transition away from happiness upsets you
| then it will cause suffering so you shouldn't cling to it.
|
| There's a related sutta (MN87) with some dicussion about how
| love, which is generally an even more pleasent feeling than
| happiness, causes suffering if clung to because we are all
| inevitably separated from our loved ones.
| onraglanroad wrote:
| I think that's more of an attempt to get a lack of a sense of
| humour classified as a psychiatric disorder.
| pegasus wrote:
| I have a feeling our collective leg is being pulled:
|
| "The behavioural components of happiness are less easily
| characterised but particular facial expressions such as
| 'smiling' have been noted"
|
| "Certainly, if television soap operas in any way reflect real
| life, happiness is a very rare phenomenon indeed in places as
| far apart as Manchester, the East End of London and Australia.
| Interestingly, despite all the uncertainty about the
| epidemiology of happiness, there is some evidence that it is
| unevenly distributed amongst the social classes: individuals in
| the higher socio-economic groupings generally report greater
| positive affect which may reflect the fact that they are more
| frequently exposed to environmental risk factors for
| happiness."
|
| ...pretty hilarious if you ask me :)
| erelong wrote:
| I think social media is being wrongly made in to a scapegoat
|
| Rather, social media mis-use is a symptom of young people having
| a lack of things like "third spaces" to go to to socialize at, of
| not having meaningful work or volunteer opportunities, of lacking
| certain other things that may have existed in the past.
|
| Social media offers a new engaging experiment that fills the void
| of some of these things that don't exist elsewhere otherwise but
| doesn't act as an equivalent replacement
| chalupa-supreme wrote:
| Social media companies are actors that actively compete for the
| attention of young people. That does result in collapsing third
| spaces and social events because it's easier/cheaper to just
| post on IG or hang out on discord.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Are you positing that not-young people aren't suffering from
| the same?
| genghisjahn wrote:
| I was not an athlete growing up. Didn't do much in organized
| sports. But all three of my kids play a team sport. It does
| wonders for them. I really helped them get out of the pandemic.
| But having them outside several hours a week, working with
| peers and other adults, practicing new skills. Really cool to
| see and I think it really helped their mental health (and by
| extension, my own).
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Yes! I do think playing team sports (for kids and adults) is
| incredible for mental health. Exercise, learning new skills
| and socialization all rolled into one fun package. I honestly
| think that's why Crossfit has become popular. It's
| essentially an after school sport for adults.
| alephnan wrote:
| Because of social media, there are less teenagers hanging out
| at the malls. Shops close down. It forms a feedback loop
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Well they're also closing down because most people buy the
| vast majority of their stuff online now.
| rsolva wrote:
| The term 'social media' has changed a lot over time. The
| attention grabbing kind we have today is a very different beast
| than what we started out with; no ads and only a chronological
| timeline showing posts from your network.
|
| The original kind was genuinely connecting people and adding
| value. The current one is in effect isolating and driving
| people and groups apart.
|
| Luckily, the original kind did not vanish. I find a lot of joy
| hanging out on the fediverse. I spend far less time on it than
| what I did on Twitter of FB back when I still had accounts
| there, but that is a good sign.
|
| Social media is too generous term to use when describing
| products from Meta, TikTok, Snap, X etc. It is an ad platform
| that also, occasionality, shows you what your friends are up
| to.
|
| We should come up with a better term than 'social media' when
| describing platforms that has reached the last stage of
| enshitification.
| HerbManic wrote:
| It seems to be a bit of both working in tandem. Social media
| companies are in a race to the bottom of what is socially
| acceptable to drive as much engagement as possible. But a lack
| of third spaces also pushes folks into that cycle.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> social media mis-use is a symptom of young people having a
| lack of things like "third spaces" to go to to socialize at_
|
| I see all kinds of active third spaces, but never any young
| people in them.
|
| I get that it is hard to bootstrap now. Trying to convince a 20
| year old that they should hang out with a 70 year old to get
| the ball rolling for more 20 year olds to show up is not an
| easy sell, but when I was 20 (just before the emergence of
| social media) these same third spaces were full of people of
| all ages. It _was_ bootstrapped once upon a time.
|
| Why did the young people stop coming?
| contingencies wrote:
| Speak to anyone in China and they're less happy this year because
| the economy is heavily depressed. This is not reflected in the
| chart. COVID doesn't even appear on most countries' charts
| despite huge impact globally. I am very skeptical of their
| process if it results in such questionable macro-narratives. I
| wonder if their interviewees are "business owners capable of
| answering the phone in English" or some similarly skewed dataset.
| Archit3ch wrote:
| As a foreigner living in Finland, people here don't necessarily
| have more, but they behave like the proverbial fisherman.
|
| An ambitious CEO moves to a small coastal town, living right on
| the beach to "optimize his lifestyle." Every evening, he sees a
| local fisherman sitting on his deck, playing guitar and watching
| the sunset with his family.
|
| After a week, the CEO approaches the fisherman and says, "You
| know, if you spent less time playing guitar and more time
| fishing, you could buy a second boat."
|
| The fisherman asks, "Why would I do that?"
|
| "To catch more fish, sell them, and buy a whole fleet! Then you'd
| be rich," says the CEO.
|
| "And then?" asks the fisherman.
|
| "Then you could retire, move to a quiet beach, and play guitar
| all evening!"
|
| The fisherman smiles and says, "What do you think I'm doing right
| now, while you're trying to figure out the ROI on my hobby?"
| mazsa wrote:
| "14 1 Now, there was a certain Cineas, a man of Thessaly, with
| a reputation for great wisdom, who had been a pupil of
| Demosthenes the orator, and was quite the only public speaker
| of his day who was thought to remind his hearers, as a statue
| might, of that great orator's power and ability. Associating
| p387 himself with Pyrrhus, and sent by him as ambassador to the
| cities, he confirmed the saying of Euripides, to wit, "all can
| be won by eloquence
|
| That even the sword of warring enemies might gain."
|
| 2 At any rate, Pyrrhus used to say that more cities had been
| won for him by the eloquence of Cineas than by his own arms;
| and he continued to hold Cineas in especial honour and to
| demand his services. It was this Cineas, then, who, seeing that
| Pyrrhus was eagerly preparing an expedition at this time to
| Italy, and finding him at leisure for the moment, drew him into
| the following discourse. "The Romans, O Pyrrhus, are said to be
| good fighters, and to be rulers of many warlike nations; if,
| then, Heaven should permit us to conquer these men, how should
| we use our victory?" 3 And Pyrrhus said: "Thy question, O
| Cineas, really needs no answer; the Romans once conquered,
| there is neither barbarian nor Greek city there which is a
| match for us, but we shall at once possess all Italy, the great
| size and richness and importance of which no man should know
| better than thyself." After a little pause, then, Cineas said:
| "And after taking Italy, O King, what are we to do?" 4 And
| Pyrrhus, not yet perceiving his intention, replied: "Sicily is
| near, and holds out her hands to us, an island abounding in
| wealth and men, and very easy to capture, for all is faction
| there, her cities have no government, and demagogues are
| rampant now that Agathocles is gone." "What thou sayest,"
| replied Cineas, "is probably true; but will our expedition stop
| with the taking of Sicily?" 5 "Heaven grant us," said Pyrrhus,
| p389 "victory and success so far; and we will make these
| contests but the preliminaries of great enterprises. For who
| could keep his hands off Libya, or Carthage, when that city got
| within his reach, a city which Agathocles, slipping stealthily
| out of Syracuse and crossing the sea with a few ships, narrowly
| missed taking? And when we have become masters here, no one of
| the enemies who now treat us with scorn will offer further
| resistance; there is no need of saying that." 6 "None
| whatever," said Cineas, "for it is plain that with so great a
| power we shall be able to recover Macedonia and rule Greece
| securely. But when we have got everything subject to us, what
| are we going to do?" Then Pyrrhus smiled upon him and said: "We
| shall be much at ease, and we'll drink bumpers, my good man,
| every day, and we'll gladden one another's hearts with
| confidential talks." 7 And now that Cineas had brought Pyrrhus
| to this point in the argument, he said: "Then what stands in
| our way now if we want to drink bumpers and while away the time
| with one another? Surely this privilege is ours already, and we
| have at hand, without taking any trouble, those things to which
| we hope to attain by bloodshed and great toils and perils,
| after doing much harm to others and suffering much ourselves."
|
| 8 By this reasoning of Cineas Pyrrhus was more troubled than he
| was converted; he saw plainly what great happiness he was
| leaving behind him, but was unable to renounce his hopes of
| what he eagerly desired."
| https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/e/roman/texts/plutarch/...
| Herring wrote:
| _> ... but was unable to renounce his hopes of what he
| eagerly desired._ (Power)
|
| Yeah that last bit is key. As MLK said, injustice anywhere is
| a threat to justice everywhere. You can't just sit at the
| beach, because humans are hungry animals and you're probably
| somewhere in that chain (Rome - Italy - Sicily - Carthage -
| Greece).
|
| If you want peace, prepare for peace.
| card_zero wrote:
| OK, but now that we're in this comfortable position that puts
| us at liberty to chat with friends and family and drink huge
| amounts of booze on a beach, what is it all _for?_ What are
| we going to do next? Invade Italy maybe for instance?
| olegp wrote:
| If you happen to be based in the capital of the happiest country
| in the world and want to be even happier, we have a Hacker News
| meetup: http://bit.ly/helsinkihn
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