1001 Wows
video at bottom
by Bent Lorentzen
image courtesy of entertainmentrundown.com, (c)2009 all rights reserved
October 22 2009
Copenhagen Denmark
Yesterday evening (October 21, 2009) Oprah Winfrey ”Wowed!” the US public with her special program on the happy... well, the happiest ... people in the world: Danes. I didn't see the program as I was traveling. "Surrealistic!" is how one Danish TV news journalist - trying to analyze the Oprah Show this evening - described the experience of watching the program.
Oprah had come to Denmark several days ago with Michelle Obama, in their efforts to get the International Olympic Committee to vote for Chicago as the host-city for the 2016 Summer Olympics. On the flight back to Chicago from Copenhagen, she nearly burst into tears when she heard that Rio de Janeiro had received that honor and responsibility, and had at first decided not to air her program on the world's "happiest people."
The notion that the people of Denmark are the happiest in the world, as an American TV news magazine last year year focused on, is based on a University of Leicester (England) survey study completed in 2006. Dr. Adrian White, an analytical social psychologist at the university, surveyed 178 nations and attempted to get answers for the survey from as best a cross-section of the population groups as possible, and found determinants such as prosperity and availability of education, to be the best indicators of respondents' levels of “happiness.” “Happiness” is of course a very relative thing to analyze, especially in terms of cultural relativity and also the availabilities of a true cross-section among population groups who, for various reasons, either could not respond or would respond in ways that are hard to analyze objectively.
The USA came in 23rd, , Japan 90th and Burundi came last at 178.
One of the many “Wows!” exclaimed by Oprah during the program (discussed at length in the local news-programs in Denmark today) was the fact that Danish parents are legally entitled to a one-year maternity leave by both parents. However, among all the Scandinavian nations, Denmark ranks at the bottom in terms of the men who allow themselves to take a leave of absence to nurture the newborn.
And to close off this article, I'd like to share a video I just produced of some very happy people in Copenhagen enjoying themselves in the Tivoli Gardens amusement park. It opened for a few days to prematurely celebrate Halloween and to close off the Danish Potato Crop Vacation for Danish school children on the weekend of October 16 – 19 (2009).
Enjoy the day with us Happy Danes, as you hear this author/therapist's Danish voice behind the camera. The video is also designed to, in a very subtle and lightly happy way, analyze and question “happiness.” I got the permission of everyone talking to me up-close to take the video into the public arena.
I tried uploading the video directly to Gather, but alas, the Gather video-upload feature is still, after all these years, making me unhappy (smile)
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Comments: 40
I like where you seem to be going with that one
Chicago is a great city, but not world class in the same way that Rio is. People need to realize that. That said, Rio DOES have a serious issue with violence, with some violence just the last couple of days.
As far as being the happiest, yeah the surveys are very subjective. I don't think the US is all that happy, now or ever. We have so much diversity here, it is impossible to categorize in that way.
I am also amazed, as mentioned last time, that what I remember most about Cophenhagen is the hippie area - that I MUST have seen - because when I returned to Montreal, i began living downtown for the first time out of my British suburb - and the murals reminded me of Copenhagen. I only had 24 hours, but I walked around as much as possible, enroute from Poland via Malmo, Copenhagen, then somehow - back to London.
But I decided not to directly go there with this article, as it's a nice moment and I like it for people to seize the moment, so to speak
sharing the light,
the Enlightenment Advisor
But I don't credit my happiness to being a Dane at all. And that makes me incredibly happy!
Now I'm laughing... at myself
All the women couldn't comprehend that we have people here that are against National Health Care "Why wouldn't you want to take care of your sick and your elderly? We're very grateful for our healthcare and are glad to pay to provide it for all."
The Danish women interviewed also noted that none of their group were religious and as far as they knew, not many other danes were either. They felt that that also accounted for their happiness. They categorized themselves as spiritual, not religious, which is a theory after my own soul.
The apartment they showed were also very spare and smaller spaces. One of the husband's chimed in with "Less stuff, more time for family". There was a big emphasis on families eating supper together and the importance of education.
I think we can learn a lot from that.
Your country is beautiful and Tivoli Square is a gem. Thank you Bent for sharing your home and you love.
A social worker I know very well here just came back to work after spending almost a year with her newborn, getting full pay. Now her husband has taken off from work, salary paid, to take the next several months, nurturing from the male POV.
In the past couple of years, the national government and industry has been trying to reduce and remove that possibility attempting - since the housing and stock market collapse - to use the argument that it is economically essential. But that stupid argument is not holding water right now, though for a "moment" it seemed it would earlier this Summer.
At the more local level (county/city-level governments) which is where the general Danish population has real influence without much interference from major corporations and special interest groups that effort from our right-wing national government is going nowhere fast, and that debate has also resulted in the almost certain defeat of that government at our next election.
A lot of "words" have gotten a bad taste in the mouths of the general population due to a history of people with power who have learned how eliciting fear is a god device to further entrench control over resources and people. There's a saying i Denmark that goes "mere vil have mere." (the more you take the more you want).
So as Obama works to make health care available to everyone, those who have held economic non-transparent control over medical resources and earned unbelievable moneys for a long time on people's health care problems that way, need only whisper "socialism", and the whole public debate gets sidetracked by that "fear" without regard for evidence.
Way back in 1949, just as McCarthyism was heating up in America, even Einstein saw the problem, and so he wrote an article for the Monthly review called "Why Socialism."
Below is one paragraph from the article, and you can click on any part of the long quote to link to the whole article:
Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society. It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior. The abstract concept "society" means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is "society" which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society.”
Sometimes I bring the solitude of nature mountains and sky with me as I walk and have fun among a lot of people in a metropolitan environment.
There are few things so beautiful in the universe than looking into the eyes of another human being when he or she smiles back at me.
I'm sure the video Oprah showed was carefully edited to reinforce the "Happiest Country in the World" theme, but I was impressed by the Danish women's matter of fact attitude and their poorly concealed amusement at some of Oprah's questions about Danish customs and, especially, the tax rate. Oprah definitely seems to worry about income tax. :)
And then think of what your deductibles and premiums would be - if insurance even is attainable - when you have a pre-existing medical condition and try to get health care insurance in America?
In Denmark, it makes no difference what your state of health is when you need hospitalization or other sorts of medical care, unless you are one of the few who also opts for private health care.
Look at my comment to libramoon et al, a bit above this thread, where I pull from an article by Einstein in 1949, in terms of the concept "socialism."
I find the path to happiness is simply deciding to be happy. Each morning I say "I'm going to be happy today" and it works every time.
As I've never been to Danemark I am asking you!
Happiness may be seconds in the spiral of time but peace within and shared with others is great!
I would like to say more but my computer is working slow today and gather glitches is not helping.
In this article I decided not to go there at all, except in the most subtle of ways, since there's a cultural feature to that "smile" which I don't want to denigrate and would like to actually empower. Danes are a bit too caught up in their own "danishness," and that weakens the good in Denmark. It actually weakens the very thing which the nationalistic element of danish government is so intent on preserving.
A few years ago, I observed at a distance the deportation of some asylum seekers being forced back into a hell just to appease the nationalistic element of our government. It was one of the most cruel things I've ever seen, and I've observed and even experienced a lot of cruel things I would rather that a spade be called a spade. That cruelty be stated and expressed for what it is, rather than that even more cruel and truly disempowering feature of smiling whilst being cruel. Since that also tends to entrench one into deeply self-justifying and feeling snug and able to ignore one's spirit that maybe trying to shout out, "Hey, be empathic, be compassionate."
The police provided the two with coffee, Danish (called Vienna-bread in Danish), and smiled in such a disarming way whilst behaving so cruel and assertively blind to the horrific trauma they were inflicting on the deportees, who had come to Denmark already deeply traumatized...
This is one reason there is an embedded double entendre within my video and within a couple of choicely written sentences in my article.
As Devin points just above your excellent comment, Marinela, happiness is simply deciding to be happy, and that often can only happen if one's nature sees others, especially those "alien" to us, as part of the same family It ought never be used to cover up something.
But the happiness I did capture among the children in Tivoli, Ya! That one is very real and covers up nothing.
Thanks so much for having brought that out. I was waiting for someone to bring it out so I could freely describe it. Thank you so so very much, and the priest at Broson's Church, who's been harassed by the police and our government for having given asylum in his church for a few months this summer to Iraqi refugees who'd been denied asylum in Denmark likely also thanks you.
Tusind tak as we say in Denmark