All Together Now
Here’s another odd or at least interesting comment. From an article on global happiness and what seems to cause it and why Denmark is Topp.
Adrian White from the University of Leicester in the UK used the responses of 80,000 people worldwide to map out subjective wellbeing…He said he was surprised to see countries in Asia scoring so low, with China 82nd, Japan 90th and India 125th, because these are countries that are thought as having a strong sense of collective identity which other researchers have associated with well-being.
A strong sense of collective identity is associated with well-being? Well, if researchers have found that (but have they found it, or merely done the associating themselves? hard to tell) then perhaps it is. But it seems a peculiar idea. You could have a strong sense of collective identity as a pack of losers or failures or victims or starving downtrodden forgotten human refuse. Would that be associated with well-being? Or you could have a strong sense of collective identity as a pack of delusional unthinking ignorant fundamentalist god-besotted fatuous arrogant buffoons who elect such another to be the most powerful human being on the planet. That can happen. It happens to me whenever I read or hear an acid comment about Americans on the BBC or the Guardian. It irritates me, because it’s not as if he was elected unanimously, after all, but however much it irritates me, one, I understand the feeling of shock and disdain all the same, and two, facts are one thing and perception is another and that is the way a lot of people think of Murkans – Lionel Shriver just yesterday for example: ‘Apologies for the condescension, but honestly: when even the American public (more than two-thirds of whom support this research) achieves a consensus on an issue, it can’t be too hard to resolve.’ (Geddit? If even the notoriously dumb American public can figure it out, it can’t be too diffy.) That’s the perception, and I’m a Murkan, so when I read that that becomes my collective identity and I have a strong sense of it. But it’s not much associated with well-being.
In short, I can see how such a sense would enhance well-being under certain circumstances, but I can just as easily see how it would do just the opposite – and that’s before we even consider the claustrophobia of the idea. So – I thought it was odd or anyway questionable.
Am I being too simplistic in noticing that the happy map;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/28_07_06_happiness_map.pdf
is uncannily similar to the wealthy map;
http://www.medicine.mcgill.ca/mjm/v05n02/v05p127/v05p127fgr2.htm
Except, for some reason, France.
OB, hmm, your comments about Americans are way off base. This happy story (Families Challenging Religious Influence in Delaware Schools) about how American public schools are spreading the blessed word of Jesus, even in spite of Jewish and Moslem criticism (not atheists — those people are quietly put in the slammer, of course), contradicts the picture of permanently primitive Americans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/29/
us/29delaware.html?ref=us&pagewanted=all.
I was particularly struck by the eloquence of the woman in the article who explained that anti-Jewish comments at the school would cease if the Jews in their midst would just commit their hearts to Jesus.
“A homemaker active in her children’s schools, Mrs. Dobrich said she had asked the board to develop policies that would leave no one feeling excluded because of faith. People booed and rattled signs that read “Jesus Saves,” she recalled. Her son had written a short statement, but he felt so intimidated that his sister read it for him. In his statement, Alex, who was 11 then, said: “I feel bad when kids in my class call me ‘Jew boy.’ I do not want to move away from the house I have lived in forever.”
Later, another speaker turned to Mrs. Dobrich and said, according to several witnesses, “If you want people to stop calling him ‘Jew boy,’ you tell him to give his heart to Jesus.””
This is what Bush’s base (base, I think, is translated into arabic as al qaeda, right?) is all about — compassionate conservatism.
Jaysus! That’s quite a story – thanks for the info and the link, roger. Which comments are off base, though? Everything I said is all about potentials, what one can feel, what you could have; much of it is in the conditional tense. So what’s there to contradict?
I know, I know, you were speaking ironically. I’m contradicting ironically.
Fuuuuuuuuuck, that’s a horrible story. PZ had a similar one from some small town in Minnesota the other day. Okay small town life has always been like that, maybe especially in the US (Tocqueville would say so), but all the same…that stuff just makes the blood run cold. ‘Jew boy.’ Aaaaaaaaaargh.
Christianity makes people good. Yeah, right.
“A strong sense of collective identity is associated with well-being”. Utter pants. My wholy unscientific view was, as yours OB perhaps, that the individual sense of *any* feeling – outraged, p1ssed off, triumphant, comfortable – will be exacerbated by a strong sense of collective identity. Even as far back as Thuciydes can this notion be found… (Histories of the Pelloponesian Wars if memory serves)
That Jebus/Jewboy story is truly hideous…
Thucydides…one of my all-time favourites. Fascinating bastard.