Finland Is the Happiest Country in the World, and Finns Aren't Happy about It | Hacker News Reader

Finland Is the Happiest Country in the World, and Finns Aren't Happy about It

blogs.scientificamerican.com

70 pointslnguyen15 comments

Maybe we need different words for all these different meanings of happiness.

In addition to these 3 definitions of happiness in the article, here another one: miserable happiness. Examples: startups, babies, gym. You feel exhausted, miserable and helpless while feeling a different kind of, a more meaningful, happiness inside.

Maybe it’s Eudemonic vs Hedonic happiness.

In your example we might say they score low in hedonic measures of wellbeing, but highly on eudemonic measures.

http://thebrainflux.com/2-types-happiness-psychology/

Here is another, Finnish word: sisu

‘Tis my favorite Finnish word. My grandfather was born in Finland and taught me this at a very young age. He always thought it was important to embody Sisu in every day life.

Best English translation: grit

Mark Spitznagel covers this concept quite extensively in his book 'The Dao of Capital', which I highly recommend.

I'm originally from Finland, and this article doesn't make me any happier than I was before.

But you get nice summer headlines to sell some copies of local tabloids for people to read in their summer houses...

That would appear to be expected - being Finnish and all!

I would compose a witty reply, were I not too busy drinking and brooding.

You Finns are too much!

Seriously speaking though, I love how well grounded you are as a nation. The world would be a better place with more of that.

A good measure would be something that can withstand the ups and downs of life. What I mean is that if Finland would end up in a war and drastically changing the way people live. There wouldn't be anything left that would allow them to be happy, right? Therefore I think the best measure must be ones own experience of positive emotions and expression of gratitude.

Too cold for me to be happy there. Now if Finland would move to the Caribbean, I'd move immediately.

Finland is cold but Finns most definitely are not -- 5.3 million people and two million saunas [1].

[1] https://finland.fi/life-society/bare-facts-of-the-sauna/

Trinidad is probably the closest thing to this in real life - not that Trinidadians are particularly Finnish - but Trinidad is one Caribbean country which is economically properous (without relying on tourism).

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