More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Meik Wiking
Read between
February 8 - February 27, 2019
Budapest, Bangkok, and Berlin come out on top on the list of destinations for digital nomads. One month’s rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the center of the Hungarian capital is around $500—and a cup of coffee in a café will set you back only $1.25.
Danes are happy because of the high level of trust in their society.
trust is one of the six factors that explain why some countries are happier than others.
In Denmark, the students are not ranked. And the kids do not receive formal grades until eighth grade. Instead, there is a teacherparent conversation about the child’s development, academically, socially, and emotionally, each year.
Despite the fact that the Danish education system focuses on life skills as well as math and reading, this does not mean that Danish children do badly when it comes to academic skills.
The real reason I am here is to understand what you
could call the beauty arms race.
one in fifty have turned to the knife or the needle in South Korea, putting the country in first position on a per capita basis:
twenty procedures per thousand people, compared with thirteen per thousand in the US. The UK is not included in these statistics, but data from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons found that 51,140 procedures were carried out in 2015, which would put the UK at around 0.8 procedures per thousand people.
some reports say that 20 percent of the female population has had plastic surgery at least once in their lives, while others claim as many as 50 percent of women under the age of thirty have undergone cosmetic surgery in Seoul.
Hagwons and private tutors are big business and serve to accelerate the academic arms race to get into one of the three most prestigious universities in South Korea—Seoul National University, Korea University, and Yonsei University (also known as SKY)—and subsequently on the pathway to a job at one of the top companies.
If we trust one another, we feel safe and have less to worry about—and we tend to see others as cooperators rather than competitors.
Inequality leads to mistrust, competition, resentment, and anger.
poorer people now feel left behind.
“I just got to this point where I was doing things that didn’t seem to have any kind of meaning. Commuting, working, and struggling with it. Just feeling a bit lost. I imagined myself five years down the line, doing the same thing, and had that feeling that somehow it didn’t feel right. So I quit.”
According to the World Happiness Report 2012, a society cannot be happy unless there is a high degree of altruism among its members.
The term is based on the theory that doing something good makes us feel good, because the action produces a mild version of a morphine high. Our brain has something called the nucleus accumbens—also known as the reward center—which is activated in response to food or sex.
our brain that is activated in response to food or pleasure also lights up when participants in the study think about giving money to charity. In other words, we are wired to feel good when we do something that makes our species survive. Cooperating is good for the survival of our species, so we are wired to feel good when we engage in it.
There are two points to this story. First, doing volunteer work is a great way to meet new friends—and second, always make friends with people who can see through you. Studies back up my experience that volunteering can lead to more social relationships and friendships, and this (I hope it comes as no surprise at this point) has an impact on our happiness.
It may also be one of the reasons for the large number of Danes who engage in volunter work. At the time of writing, 42 percent of Danes are engaged in unpaid activities and 70 percent have been active in the last five years, according to the Danish Institute for Voluntary Effort—and this helps to keep Denmark happy.
As a result of the financial crisis, Sophie was made redundant. “I had been used to working at full speed. I loved my work, but I also had all these ideas of what I would do if I had the time. The irony was that, when I lost my job, I couldn’t seem to get out of bed.”
That is not always the case. Danish men and women have been accused of suffering from RBF (resting bitch face) or having a zombie death stare. Despite being happy, Danes do not necessarily look kind and friendly.
On average, 12.7 percent of people smile in Copenhagen, less than 2 percent in New York, and people in Málaga smile more frequently (almost 14 percent).
There is a strong link between whether people walk alone or with other people and how often people smile. In cities like New York, Seoul, and Riga, people usually walk by themselves in the daytime. Fewer than one in five is with someone else—and the smile ratio in these countries is among the lowest in the world. At the other end of the spectrum are smiling cities like Málaga and Milan, where people are more often with others.
Culture also comes into play. In some countries, smiling people may be perceived as kinder, friendlier, and more attractive, while in others smiling is associated with lower levels of intelligence.
Russian proverb that translates as “Laughing for no reason is a sign of stupidity.” HAPPINESS TIP: SMILE AND CHAT
If there are more people, individuals feel more disconnected and less responsible for others and are therefore less willing to help. When they looked at twenty-four cities in the US, the researchers found that the lowest level of help was in New York City and the highest was in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Nevertheless, Rio de Janeiro in Brazil turned out to be the place with the kindest people on earth—more helpful than those in Copenhagen, for example—even though Rio has about twelve times more citizens than the Danish capital. (One
The importance of simpático could also explain the high levels of kindness in Hispanic cities such as San José, Mexico City, and Madrid.
For Robert Levine, it doesn’t make sense that the people of New York have a less kind nature than the people of Calcutta. What seems to matter is what we are taught and how our citizens act. In a time when more and more people are moving to cities, this raises the question of how we may all be kinder, even though our cities are becoming more densely populated.
He believes that kindness breeds more kindness. “But what I have realized is that I am happier when I forget about myself and focus on other people.”
people considered the reviewers with negative versions 14 percent more intelligent and as having 16 percent more expertise in literature.
