Harry, Meghan and my Papañca

A place to discuss casual topics amongst spiritual friends.
binocular
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Re: Harry, Meghan and my Papañca

Post by binocular »

DNS wrote: Tue May 22, 2018 3:37 pmI believe it is by self-reporting of their happiness on those surveys. For some that might be worldly standards, for others it might be loftier, spiritual type happiness, general physical and psychological well-being, etc.
Those are very mixed and unclear standards then. How can they be reliable?

Moreover, when people self-report, they possibly present a more favorable image of themselves than they actually have most of their time. Someone could be miserable much of their days, but when questioned directly about their happiness, will say that they're quite happy.

For example, when I was little, I was raised to always answer "Thank you, I'm fine" whenever anyone asks me "How do you do?" It was a lesson that I was slow to learn, as I would answer truthfully each time, half of which was that I wasn't fine. After that, I was taught quite explicitly that regardless of how I feel, I must always reply "Thank you, I'm fine". I remember distinctly how exasperated my educators were with me.
I'm quite sure I'm not the only one who raised to always present an optimistic, positive persona.
Hic Rhodus, hic salta!
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No_Mind
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Re: Harry, Meghan and my Papañca

Post by No_Mind »

DNS wrote: Tue May 22, 2018 2:03 amI mostly agree with No_Mind; misery can come in all socioeconomic classes, but clearly the most misery is among the impoverished. The biggest gain in happiness comes when one comes out of poverty. It continues to rise up to the peak at about middle-class to upper-middle class. After that it is diminishing returns with the rich still relatively happy, but the line starts to decrease slightly due to the extra stress from increased responsibilities, increased expectations placed upon them, etc. For Royals, we could place them in the upper classes, diminishing returns area of the graph with the happiness line going down slightly, but no where near the poverty level of misery.
This is quite a well known study by a psychologist and a Nobel Laureate in economics back in 2010.

"Are you satisfied" can be answered quite accurately. That flattened out at $75,000 (meaning people earning below $75,000 were not satisfied with their income)

This is link to the full research conducted by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton giving details of how happiness or satisfaction was measured by them

http://www.princeton.edu/~deaton/downlo ... st2010.pdf

Now obviously one can toss it out and continue to argue .. but I being what I am (rational man) will believe opinion and findings of a Nobel Laureate over ceaseless and unsupported arguments from an anonymous user_id from central Europe any day.

Thanks David for showing the graph. Will spend a day or two reading the research paper I unearthed.


:namaste:
"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”― Albert Camus
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Kim OHara
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Re: Harry, Meghan and my Papañca

Post by Kim OHara »

missed-out.jpg
missed-out.jpg (80.86 KiB) Viewed 24477 times

Michael Leunig, one of our best cartoonists and a gentleman well aware of social justice and mental health issues, makes a comment which is completely in line with my own prime reason for rejecting the wedding hoopla.

:namaste:
Kim
Meezer77
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Re: Harry, Meghan and my Papañca

Post by Meezer77 »

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