June 15, 2008
And The Happiest Place On Earth Is...
Morley Safer On Why The Danes Are Considered The Happiest People On Earth
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Play CBS Video Video The Pursuit Of Happiness Little Denmark, with its five-and-a-half million people, is the happiest country in the world, says a study done by an English University. Morley Safer reports why the Danes are so happy and explores why the U.S. is way down the list.
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(CBS)
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Fast Facts Denmark Learn about the people, economy and history.
Happiness is that quirky, elusive emotion that the Declaration of Independence maintains we have every right to pursue. And we do pursue it: we are suckers for an endless stream of self-help books that promise a carefree existence for a mere $24.95; and television hucksters of every kind claim they have the key to Nirvana. So the happiness business, at least, is one big smiley face.
As for the rest of us, as correspondent Morley Safer first reported last winter, the main scientific survey of international happiness carried out by Leicester University in England ranks the U.S. a distant 23rd, well behind Canada and Costa Rica. But you'll be pleased to know we beat Iraq and Pakistan.
And the winner, once again, is Denmark.
Over the past 30 years, in survey after survey, this nation of five and a half million people, the land that produced Hans Christian Andersen, the people who consume herring by the ton, consistently beat the rest of the world in the happiness stakes. It's hard to figure: the weather is only so-so, they are heavy drinkers and smokers, their neighbors, the Norwegians, are richer, and their other neighbors, the Swedes, are healthier.
So it's ironic or something that the unhappiest man in history, or at least literary history, was that Prince of Denmark, Hamlet.
Of course Hamlet had every right to be depressed. After all, his uncle murdered his father and seduced and married his mother and was an all around perfect scoundrel. But Hamlet aside, what makes a Dane so happy and why isn't he wallowing in misery and self-doubt like so many of the rest of us?
That's a question that also intrigued Professor Kaare Christensen at the University of Southern Denmark.
"If you ask people on the street where they think the happiest country in the world, they'll say, you know, like, tropical islands and nice places, like Italy or Spain. Places with nice weather and good food. But in Europe, they're actually the most unhappy people," Dr. Christensen explains.
So Christensen and a team of researchers tried to discover just why Denmark finds itself on top of the happiness heap.
"We made fun of it by suggesting it could be because blondes have more fun. But then we could prove that the Swedes have more blondes than the Danes, and they were not as happy. So we tested different hypotheses," Christensen says.
After careful study, Christensen thinks he isolated the key to Danish anti-depression. "What we basically figured out that although the Danes were very happy with their life, when we looked at their expectations they were pretty modest," he says.
By having low expectations, one is rarely disappointed.
Christensen's study was called "Why Danes Are Smug," and essentially his answer was it's because they’re so glum and get happy when things turn out not quite as badly as they expected. "And I was thinking about, What if it was opposite? That Denmark made the worst, number 20, and another country was number one. I'm pretty sure the Danish television would have said, 'Well, number 20's not too bad. You know it's still in the top 25, that's not so bad,'" he says.
History may also play a role in the country's culture of low expectations. If you go to the government's own Web site, it proudly proclaims “the present configuration of the country is the result of 400 years of forced relinquishments of land, surrenders and lost battles."
Could it be that the true secret of happiness is a swift kick in the pants, or a large dose of humiliation?
Produced By Deirdre Naphin
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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See all 148 Commentshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjJKiCgFlGU
The advantage to being a worker in Europe is strong unions and a government that''s not owned by the Billionaire class the way the Bushit administration is.
Plus, paid for medical care and a decent retirement.
Americans, on the other hand, just let themselves be used up by the employers. And when it serves the employers interests, they outsource jobs to Asia.
Perhaps the US should also take a look at the immigration policies of the prosperous European countries.
One has to wonder why some Danes are devoting so much time and energy towards provoking and demonizing Muslims, if they are so happy.
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Why is there an ad here from the greedy oil pirates and shameless war profiteers of Exxon-Mobil?
Denmark doesn''t have any oil for them to steal, do they?
In Denmark I would never have been able to build a business from nothing and take an average of 8-9 weeks vacation per year - and I intend to increase that to 12 weeks per year in the coming years.
Denmark might allow the average person with average abilities to be happy, but those that have ambition and talent will always have their spirits crushed... that''s why the best and brightest will always move to America.
There are enough socialist countries in the world already. The politicians and media are pushing to make America just like Europe. Why not let there be one country remain as its founders intended that allows people the freedom to grow to their full potential?
In Denmark I would never have been able to build a business from nothing and take an average of 8-9 weeks vacation per year - and I intend to increase that to 12 weeks per year in the coming years.
Denmark might allow the average person with average abilities to be happy, but those that have ambition and talent will always have their spirits crushed... that''s why the best and brightest will always move to America.
There are enough socialist countries in the world already. The politicians and media are pushing to make America just like Europe. Why not let there be one country remain as its founders intended that allows people the freedom to grow to their full potential?
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