Why Are Europeans (So Much) Happier Than Americans? - 0 views
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europe us happiness social democracy dignity capitalism culture
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Why are Europeans so much happier than Americans? Or, conversely, why are Europeans the happiest people in the world…in human history?
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one answer to my question is obvious: social democracy. Europeans enjoy generous public goods — public healthcare, retirement, education, high speed rail, and so forth. And so they don’t live the lives of bruising, battering, endless — and pointless — competition that Americans do.
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Europeans, in contrast, simply gave each other the very things Americans forced one another to compete for — healthcare, retirement, and so on.
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The stakes in American life are therefore life and death, every single day — lost that job? Bang! You’re dead. European life is gentler — because social democracy is fundamentally more humane.
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Europeans have much — much — more human contact than Americans do. They are much less isolated — but they are also able to be together not just more, but in better ways. The contact that they have with one another is fundamentally different, of a far richer and and more substantial and fundamental kind
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It’s not just “warm cultures”, as the sociologists say: even in staid Germany or fusty Holland or cold Scandinavia, the American stereotype is wrong: far from being unfeeling, long, passionate, sophisticated discussions and interactions will ensue at the drop of a hat.
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(What do we Americans do? We are always working. Working away in solitude. Not just on our jobs. But at our lives.
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Life itself has become a kind of capitalist project for us, endless labour to produce the perfect self — and that way stand atop everyone else. But what’s the point?
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Happiness as a hyperindividualistic quest to become the perfect, prettiest, richest, uberperson hasn’t worked, self-evidently.
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How do Americans relate to each other? The first question, inevitably, is “what do you do?”, followed quickly by “where are you (really) from?” We’re trying to place the other person on our little ladder of status, our mental model of social structural power.
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if I asked these question at my local dog park in London — or the one in Paris or Nice or Berlin or Barcelona — people would pretty quickly roll their eyes, stop talking to me, and avoid me whenever they could. They’d see me as a kind of gross simpleton, someone best not associated with. But why? What unsaid social norms have I violated?I’ve violated the norms of equality and dignity. It doesn’t matter what the other person does. Not in this space. In this park, cafe, bar, restaurant, square. Here, we are equals
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Europe is more alive than America — in these very concrete terms. People are more alive. Life is more lively. There is more life to be lived there. That is because I have more to live — I am not just a consumer, producer, competitor. I am a human being, first — and so are you. Just being is OK — in fact, crucial, vital, necessary.
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equality and dignity and nourished, maintained, sustained. People are able to relate to one another as true equals, with equivalent levels of dignity.
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Life itself comes to be a much, much bigger thing than we Americans grant ourselves the power to enact, express, live.
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These attitudes of equality and dignity, which are so firmly, gently, and beautifully woven carefully and delicately into not just the European project, but European culture, attitudes, values, norms. That sense of aliveness.
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n America, we don’t have those norms. We have two forces that have produced just the opposite: capitalism and supremacy. We have centuries of slavery and segregation, and we have centuries of capitalism — so much so that they’re indistinguishable.
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We’re asking: where do you sit on two hierarchies, two ladders. One, capitalism’s ladder of money, and two, whiteness’s ladder of purity. Together, we can quickly assess someone’s status — their utility, their usefulness to us.