People living in remote Indigenous communities are as happy as those in wealthy developed countries despite having “very little money”, according to new scientific research that could challenge the widely held perception that “money buys happiness”.
Researchers who interviewed 2,966 people in 19 Indigenous and local communities across the world found that on average they were as happy – if not happier – as the average person in high-income western countries.
“Surprisingly, many populations with very low monetary incomes report very high average levels of life satisfaction, with scores similar to those in wealthy countries,” said Eric Galbraith, the lead author of the study which was published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). “I would hope that, by learning more about what makes life satisfying in these diverse communities, it might help many others to lead more satisfying lives while addressing the sustainability crisis.”
That is, you’ll still be just as happy when we’ve made you as poor as we’re going to make you.
And yes, we know this.
The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes
Chop off someone’s leg and like as not a year later they’re about sa hppy as they were before you chopped their leg off.
Doesn’t mean you should go round chopping legs off, obviously.
Nor deliberately making people poorer either.
Good.
All the people agreeing with this can live as poorly as those in the remote indigenous communities. And give their money to the rest of us.
People living in remote Indigenous communities are as happy as those in wealthy developed countries despite having “very little money”
Is it because of the lack of Diversity?
I dispoute that if you chop off someone’s leg like as not a year later they’re about as happy as they were before you chopped their leg off.
“I would hope that, by learning more about what makes life satisfying in these diverse communities, it might help many others to lead more satisfying lives while addressing the sustainability crisis.”
I think we could probably get used to eating less meat or walking more, if we really had to, but the biggest test is going to be higher levels of infant mortality.
It’s far easier to understand if you use the opposite metric.
The default position is being content. Ug was, no doubt, content in his cave. As is a cow is in her field providing there’s grass to graze. If you don’t know any better you’re content with your lot. In developed societies it’s possible to do better. Being aware of that but not attaining it produces unhappiness. And unhappiness is the driver for change. Like a cow going off to find fresh grass when she’s grazed out the plot she’s on. It’s why a society has developed in the first place. If people were happy, they’d just be cows in a field or Ug in his cave.
Scientific research? Yeah right. Rather confirms contentions from a recent thread. Only university graduates couldn’t spot the obvious point above.
“I think we could probably get used to eating less meat or walking more, if we really had to, but the biggest test is going to be higher levels of infant mortality.”
And why would we really have to. Any honest attempt to answer that exposes the lie.
Turns out chopping the dick of someone who really really really wants their dick chopped off doesn’t seem to make them happy either.
BiFR – Not even if they support Newcastle United?
People in poor indigenous communities don’t read the Guardian and are not constantly badgered that they must spend their lives in a constant state of anxiety over fake scares from climate change through second hand smoke to institutional wacism.
I’d be sending the author and those of like mind into the Bay of Bengal to see if they can persuade the people of North Sentinel Island of their thesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese
And yet the flow of migration is from poor places to rich. As in, I could be just as happy but a damn sight more comfortable and a lot less hungry.
“I would hope that, by learning more about what makes life satisfying in these diverse communities, it might help many others to lead more satisfying lives while addressing the sustainability crisis.”
Indigenous communities are almost universally the epitome of *non*diverse communities.
Money may not bring happiness but it certainly makes one’s misery more comfortable.
The old joke is that the best things in life are free but the second best cost a bundle.
I would ask if the life expectancy in these indigenous communities is anywhere near as long as it is in the richer world.
Can we expect to see a flood of Guardian readers selling off their possessions and heading off to establish their very own remote indigenous communities?
I think not.
@V_P
North Sentinel Island sounds a great deal like parts of UK cities, these days.
By definition remote Indigenous¹ communities which are the focus of the study are homogenous by dint of being ‘remote’.
Yet Eric Galbraith, the lead author of the study contends that there is something that makes life satisfying in these diverse communities when their ‘diversity’ consists of being different from one another while individually very distinct.
We badly need more of this kind of diversity.
________
¹ Capitalised out of rispeck?
Is this not just some variant of the Easterlin paradox?
BiS
The wondrous world of a ‘multicultural’ society….
“Indigenous communities are almost universally the epitome of *non*diverse communities.”
You keep meeting the same people, generation after generation.
@Dennis
“Can we expect to see a flood of Guardian readers selling off their possessions and heading off to establish their very own remote indigenous communities?”
I wish they fucking would.
I’m pretty happy with my lot. I put it down to my wife and I having had decent jobs and fairly modest wants and needs. I’m also sixty-five years old, would I be correct in saying that, if I lived in one of those less developed places, I would probably be less happy due to being dead?
bloke in spain,
But also, maybe the people who stay behind in the Xokleng tribe are those who have selected to be there. They like having their extended family close, they like living in nature. I know people born into farming who left to become lawyers, but their brother still does it. Some people really value having all their old school mates around, or being near their family all the time.
Self selection, the unhappy people leave for the bright lights, 60% of indigenous people in British Columbia are classed as Urban or Away from Home and remote communities are a further subset of the 40%. In Australia remote communities account for less than 20% of the aboriginal population
Funnily enough these remote communities are not usually as happy when it comes to things like access to medical care, so it does also depend on what happiness you are measuring
Out in the car today the Tim Minchin song Airport Piano surfaced on the Spotify playlist. I find the song quite thought provoking as it explores the world of middle class folk who are unhappy because materialism is pretty much all that they have in their lives.