JCC World Happiness Report - Norway first, U.S.

I'd likely be in the running for happiest JC er and also oldest.

 

Smiling away whilst authoring gloomy threads about the end of the world

 

I didn't figure you for an oldie. Although that explains your glee in spelling out the doom of the rest of us in countless threads.

 

I want whatever the people who wrote those articles are snortin'

 

I have a kid who's graduating from college next year. Just the thought of getting him off the payroll makes me ridiculously happy.

 

I don't see why old people would be happiest... Getting old means deteriorating health, doesn't it? All kinds of aches and pains, and sexual impotency and all sorts of other nightmares...

I'm gonna be 28 in 4 days. I don't even want to think about being 40, let alone 60

I have a sister who is twenty years older than me. Long story how that happened. I am kind of an... "accident", shall we say, and leave it at that lol Well, I asked her not long ago, what it's like to be almost 50. "Not as fun as I once thought it would be" was her answer

Well... Then again, by the time I am 50, I hear they will have these nanobots they can inject into your bloodstream, and they'll swim around in there and protect you from all diseases and keep you eternally young, essentially. I hope that happens. And that I can afford it if it does...

 

I'm too old to:
- dance
- smoke
- perform dumb work
- customize a new version of Windows
- program a new TV
- join in a debate
- be very interested in new music
- be very interested in concerts
- watch superhero movies
- watch movies in general
- watch TV shows
- watch porn
- put any stock in World Happiness Reports

 

I do marvel at my parents, they are both in their 70s now, and still (at least, it seems) as strong and hardworking as ever been... They are both retired now, and have much free time, and they are out and about fixing up and beautifying our house, every day, putting up new pictures and plates and such on the walls; planting stuff in back yard, dad cutting down bad branches from trees there and chopping them up with his axe; moving furniture around, etc. Me and my brother in law have to practically beg them to let us help, especially dad, with the heavy stuff, before he injures his back or something... He won't let us. Beneath his dignity, to ask younger men to do stuff for him...

 

It's not really measuring happiness anyway, Watts. It's just measuring the things it's measuring, which are just somewhat arbitrary proxies for happiness. Even some of the proxies it's measuring are just proxies for the chosen proxy for happiness, like the measurement for generosity.

 

You watch TV series and superhero movies? You're wasting what little time you have left.

 

What do you consider "dumb" work, btw? lol

 

Well, the kind of work I pawn off on people like you!

 

Well, yes, I would not call my occupation (concierge at an apartment building) a particularly intellectually stimulating or exciting one lol

 

i'm glad i'm not as old as watto even though i am probably actually older.

 

Your icon is Kermit - you're old.

 

Oh the irony of Norway being the happiest country and the birth place of true kvlt black metal.

Seriously though, that's a nice metric to read and one I understand.

 

Really surprised the US is as high as it is.

 

Maybe they polled a bunch of little kids?

 

Not only that. They're also famous for their many authors of dark hard-boiled detective novels. Jon Michelet, Anne Holt, Gunnar Staalesen and Jo Nesbø are some of the most read of them.

They're aware of the dichotomy themselves, too, and it's a question that is pondered in the popular discourse from time to time with bemused fascination. The only possible explanation anthropologists have been able to give is that living in as safe and worriless societies as those of the Nordic countries makes it easier to indulge in dark fiction and art as escapism. Whereas if you already have a list of worries and looming fears in your everyday life, you tend to prefer something ligther and more hopeful as your escapism. They're a nation of Rylo Kens.