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Enjoy quick summaries of books that will help you lead a better life. These podcasts are AI generated with gentle, kind human guidance! These are part of the Healthspan360 collection, dedicated to enhancing wellness and longevity.
Welcome to the deep dive. Today, we are cracking open this really fascinating global quest. It's part travelogue, part philosophy, maybe even part academic research too.
Speaker 2:All chasing one thing. Mhmm. Right. Happiness.
Speaker 1:Exactly. We're following an author who literally went looking for the geography of bliss. And you know right away this is gonna be, well, pretty honest. Mhmm. Because the author admits upfront he's not naturally a happy happy guy.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:His favorite Winnie the Pooh character, Eeyore.
Speaker 2:Right. Eeyore.
Speaker 1:Which, you know, for most of history, being a bit gloomy was probably fine, normal even. But today
Speaker 2:Oh, it's different now. Happiness is sort of the default expectation isn't
Speaker 1:it? Totally. So being Eeyore feels like like a failure
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Personally, culturally.
Speaker 2:That's the real kicker, isn't it? Yeah. And historian Darren McMahon, he called it the unhappiness of not being happy. Oof. It's not just okay to be unhappy anymore.
Speaker 2:You're expected to be happy. And if you're not, well, the misery just kind of piles on.
Speaker 1:So this book is this, witty, globetrotting attempt to map it out, find this atlas of bliss.
Speaker 2:Yeah, where is it?
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's unpack the, the core idea behind this whole search. The basic premise is that where we are is vital to who we are.
Speaker 2:Right. Location matters a lot.
Speaker 1:He uses that great analogy from Alan Watts, you know, about drawing a circle.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. I remember that. Oh. Most people just see the inside, the the disc.
Speaker 1:Exactly. The individual. But hardly anyone looks at the outside. The hole in the wall, the culture, the environment surrounding it.
Speaker 2:But Watts says you can't have one without the other. They're, like, inseparable.
Speaker 1:Right. Your location, physical, cultural, it shapes you, whether you even realize it or not.
Speaker 2:And what gives this whole deep dive some real teeth, I think, is that it's not just philosophy. He's leaning hard on data.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. The data.
Speaker 2:His main guide is this Dutch professor, Rut Veenhoven, people call him the godfather of happiness research.
Speaker 1:Godfather, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he runs the world database of happiness, the WDH. So if there is an atlas of bliss, Veenhoven's been collecting the map coordinates for decades.
Speaker 1:So what do those coordinates actually tell us? Any big headlines?
Speaker 2:Yeah, couple of huge ones jump out right away. First, happiness. It's a team sport. Absolutely.
Speaker 1:A team sport.
Speaker 2:How so?
Speaker 1:Well, this Bhutanese scholar, Karma Ura, he puts it bluntly, happiness is 100% relational.
Speaker 2:100%. Wow.
Speaker 1:Think about it not as a thing you have or something you do, but more like like a conjunction. It connects you. It's tied up with your family, your friends, your neighbors. Your own satisfaction depends on that whole network's well-being.
Speaker 2:That makes intuitive sense. But okay, the second big conclusion really grabbed me. The link to trust.
Speaker 1:Ah, yes. John Hellewell's work.
Speaker 2:Yeah. His research found that trust is just inseparable from how happy people report being. If you generally agree that people can be trusted
Speaker 1:They're happier. Demonstrably so.
Speaker 2:Wait. Let me push back on that just a tiny bit, though. If it's all relational, why are plenty of people happy in, say, suburbs where they barely know their neighbors?
Speaker 1:That's the nuance. Holly Will gets into it. It's not necessarily about knowing everyone personally. It's more the general feeling that society is trustworthy.
Speaker 2:Ah, okay. The overall vibe. Exactly. That perception just lowers your own internal stress, makes things easier emotionally, financially. But this is where the map gets tricky.
Speaker 1:How so?
Speaker 2:Because when you actually plot Veenhoven's data, well, the Atlas of Bliss looks pretty crumpled.
Speaker 1:Crumpled, meaning?
Speaker 2:Meaning it's full of inconsistencies, big ones. You've got some of the world's happiest countries, right? Like Switzerland, wealthy, secular. Yeah. They also have really high suicide rates, which is puzzling.
Speaker 1:That is weird.
Speaker 2:And then think about all those tropical islands we dream of escaping to. Fiji, Tahiti, you'd think. But on the happiness scale, they usually land somewhere in the middle. The middle latitudes of happiness.
Speaker 1:Okay, so the data alone isn't the full picture. Maybe it's how people live in these places.
Speaker 2:Precisely. And that's where the author's travels become really insightful actually being there.
Speaker 1:Right. Let's get into those key insights, starting with, the hedonic treadmill and this surprising danger of wealth.
Speaker 2:Yeah. This observation from Abner Offer, British academic, he says affluence breeds impatience.
Speaker 1:And impatience undermines well-being.
Speaker 2:Wow. And you see it perfectly if you contrast say the Swiss with people in, Qatar.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:The Swiss, despite being wealthy, are generally patient, they know how to linger, they value community, craft. Yeah. Meanwhile in Qatar, you have these extreme cases of ghost workers. People paid full salaries just to hang out, not even show up to a job.
Speaker 1:Seriously? Max leisure, max salaries. That would Sounds like the dream.
Speaker 2:You'd think. But apparently, deeply unhappy.
Speaker 1:So the research backs this up that endless fun isn't fun.
Speaker 2:Kind of. The inconvenient truth seems to be that interesting work is often more fun than fun.
Speaker 1:So the goal isn't just kicking back, it's finding work that feels engaging, satisfying.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Insight two: we gotta lower our expectations sometimes.
Speaker 1:Lower expectations, that sounds un American.
Speaker 2:Maybe. But back in Bhutan, this happy scholar, Karma Ura, he doesn't have unrealistic expectations. Right. He finds satisfaction if, at the end of day, he feels he's just done that, lived well. He can just sigh and say
Speaker 1:It was okay.
Speaker 2:It was okay. Yeah. And that simple contentment is so different from, say, the American drive for everything to be great or amazing all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that constant pressure for the extraordinary, it's exhausting. Okay, what else? The environment.
Speaker 2:Insight three, the power of biophilia.
Speaker 1:Biophilia. That's E. L. Wilson's idea.
Speaker 2:That's the one. Our innate emotional connection to nature, to living things.
Speaker 1:So those Swiss mountains or the clean air in Iceland, it's not just pretty scenery.
Speaker 2:Not at all. Being near nature literally affects our bodies measurably. Lower stress, blood pressure.
Speaker 1:Which is why offices build those huge indoor gardens, right? An atrium makes workers calmer, more productive.
Speaker 2:Precisely. And what's cool about the biophilia argument is that it's kind of selfish.
Speaker 1:Selfish?
Speaker 2:How? It's not saying save the planet out of guilt. It's saying protect the environment because it will make you happier and healthier.
Speaker 1:Ah, self preservation through preservation. Clevver.
Speaker 2:Okay, insight four gets into how we interact. The currency of attention.
Speaker 1:Attention as currency. Yeah. Tell me more.
Speaker 2:Avner Offer again. He argues, attention is like the universal currency of well-being. Think about a kid demanding love. Often what they really want is just pure focused attention. Without it, people feel empty, meaningless.
Speaker 1:So being present, being attentive to others to the moment, that's key to satisfaction.
Speaker 2:It seems to be a huge factor, which leads nicely into self worth and embracing imperfection. That's Insight five. Where
Speaker 1:did he see that?
Speaker 2:Iceland. They have this amazing culture where failure isn't really stigmatized.
Speaker 1:Really?
Speaker 2:Yeah. They actually kind of admire people who fail with the best intentions. Try hard, fall flat. That's okay. Even heroic sometimes.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:That must free people up to take risks, be creative.
Speaker 2:Totally. If you're not terrified of failing, you're way more likely to try something bold.
Speaker 1:And that can expect a psychology, doesn't it? Like, Martin Sullivan saying happiness needs a pinch of self delusion.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Or six ms Mahali's idea of flow. You need confidence, even slightly inflated confidence in your skills
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:To really lose yourself in an activity.
Speaker 1:Right. That state where time just vanishes. Embracing imperfection helps you get there.
Speaker 2:Precisely. Allows you the confidence to even start.
Speaker 1:Okay. Let's shift gears. The book club debate part. What really worked well in this book, research wise?
Speaker 2:TK: Well for me, just the sheer amount of information he pulls together is impressive. And tackling something so subjective They do ask people directly how happy are you? Which is subjective obviously but then they check it. They ask friends, family.
Speaker 1:Oh interesting, like a cross reference.
Speaker 2:Exactly And apparently those outside views tend to line up pretty well with the self reports, so the data is maybe more solid than you'd think.
Speaker 1:Okay, fair enough. But critique number one has to be the measurement difficulty itself.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. Cultural differences are huge. There's that great bit from a Polish immigrant.
Speaker 1:Ah, yeah, about Americans.
Speaker 2:Right, how Americans say something was great when they really just mean it was good. We tend to inflate our happiness, maybe to impress people.
Speaker 1:So a seven out of 10 in Bhutan might actually feel the same as an 8.5 in The US?
Speaker 2:Could be. The context really matters and it potentially skews the numbers.
Speaker 1:Okay. Another highlight for me was the author just diving in. He wasn't just an observer.
Speaker 2:Definitely. He put himself out there.
Speaker 1:I mean, that terrifying road trip in Bhutan, trying hash in Rotterdam for, research?
Speaker 2:Uh-huh. Research? Or just sleeping in that grim apartment in Moldova. He really lived it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. He went beyond just reading studies. Risks some real discomfort.
Speaker 2:Which makes for a great read, no doubt. But, you know, it doesn't magically solve the contradictions in the data. That's still a critique.
Speaker 1:Like the suicide rates.
Speaker 2:Exactly. The things that stop suicides like maybe strong religious rules in some Catholic countries aren't necessarily the same things that make people report high levels of happiness day to day.
Speaker 1:Ah. So happy, secular places might lack those specific suicide prevention factors?
Speaker 2:It could explain some of it. The data points don't just disagree. They sometimes feel like they're actively fighting each other. It remains murky.
Speaker 1:And one last critique, maybe a big one, the whole moral dimension.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's tricky territory.
Speaker 1:If we go back to someone like Aristotle, happiness wasn't just feeling good, it was doing good, being virtuous.
Speaker 2:Right. Eudaimonia, flourishing.
Speaker 1:But if happiness research is just about a self reported score, one to 10, what about someone awful? Like a truly bad person who genuinely feels happy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Could a terrible person score a 10? Maybe. But would we call that true happiness in a moral sense? Probably not.
Speaker 1:It creates this moral confusion that the research often seems to sidestep.
Speaker 2:It does. It's a limitation for sure.
Speaker 1:Okay. So after all that travel, all that data, how do we actually use this stuff? Any practical takeaways?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah. The book has some great, practices we can try right away. The first one comes from that Rinpoche in Bhutan.
Speaker 1:The monk. What did he say?
Speaker 2:He told the author basically, you need to experience, really experience, stop analyzing so much.
Speaker 1:Okay, so how does that translate for us?
Speaker 2:We can call it the no notes challenge.
Speaker 1:No notes, I like it.
Speaker 2:The author had this moment looking over a river in Bhutan, realizing recording life is a poor substitute for living it.
Speaker 1:Oh, that hits home.
Speaker 2:So the challenge is simple. For twenty minutes, just be somewhere without recording it. No phone camera, no notebook, no analyzing.
Speaker 1:Listen, feel, Be present.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Listen to the traffic, the birds, the air conditioner, whatever's there. Just exist in it.
Speaker 1:I should try that. Probably fail miserably, but try. Okay. What's the second practice?
Speaker 2:This one's about belief. Adopt the twilight of half belief.
Speaker 1:Twilight of half belief? Sounds mysterious.
Speaker 2:It comes from this happy Heezing guy in Iceland, Hilmar. His idea is that happiness often lives in that space between fully believing something and fully not believing it.
Speaker 1:So it's not what you believe but the act of believing.
Speaker 2:Pretty much. Or maybe the community that forms around the belief. It's about keeping the door open a little.
Speaker 1:He uses that milk miracle story from India, right? Where the statues seem to drink milk.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Physics explained it away pretty quickly, capillary action. But the author felt his life was actually richer because other people did believe.
Speaker 1:So don't become a total cynic. Keep a little room for possibility.
Speaker 2:Exactly. Keep that door to the unexplained just slightly ajar. It might make the world feel, well, richer.
Speaker 1:Okay. Love those. So if you enjoyed this deep dive into finding happiness around the globe,
Speaker 2:then we definitely recommend Lost Horizon by James Hilton.
Speaker 1:Ah, the classic Shangri La.
Speaker 2:That's the one. It's famous for creating Shangri La, which is sort of the ultimate blended paradise, isn't it?
Speaker 1:How so?
Speaker 2:It had all the accumulated wisdom of the East, but crucially,
Speaker 1:modern plumbing.
Speaker 2:It also had the accumulated plumbing of the West.
Speaker 1:The perfect mix of spiritual depth and practical comfort.
Speaker 2:The classic for a reason. Great pairing. Okay to wrap up our own journey here's the haiku. Blue mountain thoughts call. Our small steps find quiet paths now.
Speaker 2:The soul begins to sprawl.
Speaker 1:I like that the soul begins to sprawl. It captures that feeling of searching, expanding.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because as Henry Miller said and the author quotes him, the real destination isn't usually a place, it's a new way of seeing things.
Speaker 2:That feels right. And the world is full of these contradictions, isn't it? The Swiss way, the Thai way, the Icelandic way, they're all valid paths even if they seem opposite sometimes.
Speaker 1:So there's no single answer.
Speaker 2:Seems not. More than one path to happiness. That's maybe the biggest lesson.
Speaker 1:And the author himself, he didn't end up a 100% blissful, did he?
Speaker 2:Nope. He landed closer to that Moldovan woman, Luba's assessment.
Speaker 1:Fiftyfifty
Speaker 2:fiftyfifty which honestly sounds pretty good. Sustainable maybe?
Speaker 1:I think so.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's leave you with one final thought to chew on. It ties back to that distress the author saw in places like Moldova after the Soviet Union collapsed.
Speaker 1:The identity piece.
Speaker 2:Exactly. The book suggests we really need a solid identity, something to ground us. Ethnic, national, linguistic, even culinary.
Speaker 1:Like money in the bank, he calls it. Something to fall back on when things get tough.
Speaker 2:Right. So the question for you is, what identity or identities are grounding you? What's your money in the bank when times get hard?
Speaker 1:Something to think about.
Speaker 2:Definitely. We'll leave that with you until the next deep dive.