meik wiking
intro’d to Meik here:
http://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20170121/413540966412/hombre-mas-feliz-mundo.html
Since then my career and my work are to find out three things: how to measure happiness, why some people Are happier than others, and how to improve the quality of life.
let’s try rat park w/a&a as constitution [a body of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is acknowledged to be governed…the composition of something.]
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If we know that egalitarian societies are happier, why do not we turn that into concrete policies? If people make them unhappy to invest a lot of time in commuting, they are happier if they are walking or cycling, why not prioritize it in the design of cities and in the flexibility of work?
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The word hygge means welfare, and Danes the combine in a thousand ways, can be verb and adjective, and constantly use. They want one day hyggelig and when they have cold feet about get hyggesokker good wool. It is a lot of the art of creating intimacy, the comfort of the soul, the pleasure of the presence of comforting things, of the welcoming union.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygge
Hygge is a Danish and Norwegian word with a unique definition (although very similar to the widely known German word Gemütlichkeit). “Hygge” as a noun includes a feeling, a social atmosphere, and an action. The word is also used in compositions as “Julehygge” (Christmas-hygge). “Hygge” is also a verb e.g. “Lets hygge” and as an adjective e.g. “A small, hyggeligt house with grass on the roof”.
The noun “Hygge” includes something nice, cozy, safe and known, referring to a psychological state. “Hygge” is a state where all psychological needs are in balance. The antonym of hygge is uhyggelig, which translates as “scary”.
Collins English Dictionary named hygge the runner-up (after Brexit) as word of the year in UK in 2016. This followed a period with quite a lot of books sent to the British market focusing on hygge. Collins defines the word as “a concept, originating in Denmark, of creating cosy and *convivial atmospheres that promote wellbeing.
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2016 tedxcopenhagen – the dark side of happiness
on suicide/day in denmark.. more than 500 people/year.. 3x as many as in traffic.. denmark ranks in middle.. but why is happiest country in world not at bottom of list
more difficult to be unhappy in an other wise happy society..
everyday: why are some people happier than others… gets me up in ams but also keeps me awake at night
i hear a silence.. of those that felt life was not worth living.. i fear their silence might be the dark side of our happiness..
2 min – skepticism.. 1/2 in audience.. skeptical toward happiness research/ability to measure happiness..
3 min – diff perceptions of what happiness is.. need to acknowledge that happiness is an umbrella term.. so we break it down..
4 mmin – image: triangle top – evaluative (life satisfaction); bottom left – affective (emotions); bottom right – eudaimonic (purpose)
we look at: 1/ life satisfaction (step back and eval life) 2\ emotions (on daily basis) these two dimensions are linked.. 3\ eudiamonic (meaningful.. ancient greek for happiness)
5 min – how happy are you.. i’m interested in how impacts on happiness effect you.. start to see patterns.. what happy people have in common.. that’s what we try to find out..
8 min – at end of day.. it’s how we as individuals feel about our lives.. i’m’ yet to hear a convincing argument that happiness is the one thing we can’t study in a scientific manner.. and i think we should.. because i think it’s what matters the most
story about people grokking what matters
9 min – on salary.. deciding where you would want to live.. we don’t only care about absolute income but relative income.. social comparisons matter
equity – everyone getting a go everyday
11 min – summer is a nightmare for a lonely person.. see happy/connected people everywhere
12 min – unemployed associated with higher risk of suicide.. higher risk of suicide with low unemployment than high.. a lot more social stigma.. if you’re the only one around.. don’t blame econ.. start to question self.. social comparisons matter
experiment: how social media affects our perception of reality and how we view our lives… constant bombardment of great news that happens for everybody else.. 1100 people .. surveys.. 1/2 took week break from fb..
15 min – being exposed to other people’s happiness can affect us.. suicide rates..
16 min – chart.. happier countries/states w higher suicide rates.. *social comparisons matter..why we need to bridge gap of well-being and equality
17 min – been talking econ ineq.. cause crime/social-unrest/armed-conflict.. but time to look beyond that.. need to go beyond averages..
18 min – moral obligation to focus on where well-being is the most scarce.. on well-being ineq.. bigger impact than econ ineq
take notice there are people living dark side of our happiness.. best measure of any society is how we treat our most vulnerable citizens
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find/follow Meik:
CEO at The Happiness Research Institute, New book – The Little Book of Hygge – published by
@PenguinUKBooks this September
happiness research institute site
http://www.happinessresearchinstitute.com/
The Happiness Research Institute believes that the ultimate goal of public policies should be to increase quality of life. Therefore, we want to place human well-being at the core of policies. Similarly, we want a new measure that complements the conventional ways of measuring progress in society – in terms of growth and GDP per capita
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The Happiness Research Institute also believes in the noble idea that the true measure of any society can be found in how we treat our most vulnerable members.
That is why we are committed to explore and address well-being gaps and inequality.
The aim of this work is not to belittle the importance of economic equality, but to shed light on an overlooked dimension of inequality. For more than a century, we been talking about economic inequality thanks to the idea of the Italian statistician Gini in 1912 – and we now know inequality causes crime, social unrest and even armed conflicts.
Meanwhile, the World Happiness Report 2016 argues that well-being inequality has a stronger negative impact on how we feel about our live than income inequality.
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happiness – daily happiness via twitter, the science of happiness
happy – peter reading the curious/happy boy
happy\ness – pursuit of happyness trailer
be you. 