Quote: (08-08-2017 11:11 PM)Spaniard88 Wrote:
Quote: (08-08-2017 11:01 PM)TooFineAPoint Wrote:
OP, if you think that you need poverty to be happy, or less choices/opportunities/potential distractions... maybe you just need to work on your mental strength?
My girlfriend sometimes makes statements like this. I call this the "authenticity fallacy". In our zeitgeist, we deem poor or low class or zero material possessions to be "authentic", and everything else is inauthentic (including, presumably, language and fitness and any kind of private property at all).
You will hear very dumb people saying very dumb things like "the people in Africa are so happy".
The better question, already stated here, is "why are Westerners so ungrateful?".
It's not poverty that makes them happier than Americans.
Average folks in some of these countries have stronger social bonds, on average, across all social classes, rich folks as well as poor folks.
We're social animals.
Your average American's way of life is not healthy. Many Americans don't even know their neighbors and spend hours every day online getting triggered or watching movies/tv instead of socializing...it's not healthy long term, and results in strain on the human animal.
Eventually you get the high divorce rates, the high use of antidepressants and recreational drugs, the workaholism, the over-eating, etc., all ways to lash out at, or cope with, a very mentally and physically unhealthy environment, on average.
It's like a parrot that tears its feathers out from various forms of stress. You see a lot less of these things in some countries.
Why are so many residents of these countries still clamoring to get into the USA and Canada and Australia?
All of the above sounds like a lot of second and third world posturing to not feel so bad that one is not first world.