Who knew that happiness was related to what country you live in. I guess people who live in Hawaii where the weather is beautiful all the time are happier than those living in Alaska where it's usually cold.

Unhappy with your life? You might be French.

[news.yahoo.com]

"It’s yet another piece of what Claudia Senik, who studies the intersection of happiness and economics at the Paris School of Economics, calls the “French unhappiness puzzle” – the persistent pessimism in a country where people have it a lot better than most. “Here, there are the same shocks or less, but the French feel it more,” says Ms. Senik."

"“The French compare themselves to their neighbors. They say, ‘this one is richer, this one has a better situation, this one has a better car, this one’s children are better in school and that’s not fair,’” he says."

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This comment was very inspirational --

"There is a good word that defines 'happiness'. It is 'gratitude'. Count your blessings. We are not entitled to anything in life, yet look at the blessings we have no matter what our circumstances! This happiness is available right this minute. Think about it."

people become 'dissatisfied' when they finally reach the latest version of themselves. if they get lazy and don't search for the next version then they become unhappy.

Interesting, Panchito. But I'm not sure I agree with 'GET lazy'. If someone IS 'lazy', it may be physical (like if they had eaten a raw food diet since birth, they'd be full of energy) or just their constitution. Upbringing, conditioning. Or Life. Life happens to you, you don't control life, we're just along for the ride and tell ourselves a story that makes us believe we're 'the doer', blah, blah, blah... so I don't think we can 'SEARCH FOR the next version' of ourselves. But I like that - we 'reach the latest version of ourselves'.

Didn't read the article, but I'm guessing that they never mentioned the Islamization of French culture as a factor in their collective mood. Studies have proven over and over again that forced diversity creates nothing but misery. Making the relatively sophsticated French deal with herds of violent, illiterate, Islamic reprobates and their stone-age culture is akin to national suicide. Of course they're not happy. They're living under a vile form of occupation.

That's right, HH - you just reminded me of an article I read about how some or all of the European Countries are embracing Islam and have segments of the country either set aside or that have become totally Islamic, even with the Sharia Law that is so violent toward women. It may have been France or Belgium, I don't remember, but I think I'll check it out because it's interesting and from the analysis I've read in the last few years, it does sound like what you call 'forced diversity' doesn't work. I'm not sure if that's the same thing as multi-culturalism.

Wow, lots of interesting articles on the growing Radical Islam in France - no wonder they're unhappy --

This is pretty shocking --

It looks like Muslims voted in the Socialist President last year -

The Islamization of France 2012

France is home to the largest Muslim population in Europe -- Islam and the question of Muslim immigration have emerged in 2012 as a top-ranked public concern. The French, it seems, are increasingly worried about the establishment of a parallel Muslim society there.

[www.clarionproject.org]

"In May, Muslims determined the outcome of the French presidential elections. An analysis of the voting patterns that barreled François Hollande to victory on May 6 as the first Socialist president of France since 1995 showed this was due in large measure to Muslims, who voted for him in overwhelming numbers.

According to a survey of French voters conducted by the polling firm OpinionWay for the Paris-based newspaper Le Figaro, an extraordinary 93% of French Muslims voted for Hollande. By contrast, the poll showed that only 7% of French Muslims voted for the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy."

"An estimated two million Muslims participated in the 2012 election, meaning that roughly 1.7 million Muslim votes went to Hollande rather than to Sarkozy. In the election as a whole, however, Hollande won by only 1.1 million votes. This figure indicates that Muslims cast the deciding votes which thrust Hollande into the Élysée Palace.

During the campaign, Hollande had offered an amnesty to all of the estimated 400,000 illegal Muslim immigrants currently in France. He also pledged to change French electoral laws so that Muslim residents without French citizenship would be allowed to vote in municipal elections as of 2014. These measures, if implemented, would enable the Socialist Party to tighten its grip on political power, both at the regional and national levels.

As the politically active Muslim population in France continues to swell, and as most Muslims vote for Socialist and leftwing parties, conservative parties will find it increasingly difficult to win future presidential elections in France."

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I didn't know there was a Real Clear World website -

In France, the Submission That Dare Not Speak Its Name

[www.realclearworld.com]

"French political leaders know perfectly well that there is an Islamist threat in France and that the French army is fighting Islamists in Mali; they are afraid to call things by their name. They fear riots in Muslim suburbs. They know perfectly well that Muslim anti-Semitism is rising in France, but, for the same reason, they are afraid to say it. The mainstream journalists are also scared.

The general atmosphere is impregnated with a submission that dare not speak his name. Those who do not comply and who speak too clearly are vilified, caricatured, excluded. Eventually they submit and they radicalize, and, as many radical Muslims find accomplices, many non-Muslims join soft jihadi movements.

The majority of the population discerns that something is wrong, but cannot find a reliable explanation."

**************

Radical Islam apologists since 2006 -

Europe vs. Radical Islam

Alarmist Americans have mostly bad advice for Europeans.

[www.slate.com]

Fancy words, but there may be no embracing and integrating Radical Islamists -

"The problem that most Europeans face today is that they don't have a vision of the kinds of positive cultural values their societies stand for and should promote, other than endless tolerance and moral relativism. What each European society needs is to invent an open form of national identity similar to the American creed, an identity that is accessible to newcomers regardless of ethnicity or religion. Europeans should have started a discussion about how to integrate their Muslim minorities a generation ago, before the winds of radical Islamism had started to blow."

*************

I presume this is spreading all over Europe and will eventually make its way to the USA. No, it could never happen here

Most of the Muslims in France are idiots. Sorry, but it's true. France is not getting the best of the Muslim world. They wouldn't know the difference between a socialist and a capitalist if you spelled it out for them. They voted gainst Sarkozy because he's a Jew. They're too stupid to see that a gentile socialist is more than lkely a puppet of Jewish socialists.

Muslim immigrants rape 24K French women a year. Why are the French not happy again? [themuslimissue.wordpress.com]

That was a shocking article, HH. I never realized radical Islam was so prevalent in Europe. I had read about the immigration situation in Sweden. Someone commented that they don't have a problem in Canada, and the writer said -

"Actually, you are completely wrong. Canada has the exact same problem as Sweden does: a dhimmi government and press who refuses to report on the staggering Muslim crimes that happen in society. Figures we report is not found in Swedish or European media because they ban it.
In Canada the public is completely unaware what is happening around them unless they live in a Muslim area. But those problems will spread. You are simply not allowed to know reality. Also, Canada is a huge country. When the problems become visible, the damage is extensive and it’s almost too late to address. In smaller countries problems are much more visible and don’t disappear into the vastness of land area."

So if the news and media is controlled by the government, or people don't search out the information, they're unaware.

It's so complex - I have a big problem with Conservatives being 'warmongers' because of the way they seem to want to bomb the smithereens out of Iran, and I'm anti-war isolationist, but when you hear about this kind of behavior, how do you stop it? I guess if they could all just stay in their own countries and fight amongst each other, that would be OKish. Although didn't we/don't we want to help the Muslim women become free.

I would be very impressed if western feminists started directing their ire at the world's real enemy of womanhood, Islam. That's an infuriating contradiction of modern, western feminism, they fight for women's rights but are too politically correct to point any fingers at Islam. The result is that they continue to rail at a large body of egalitarian-minded western men who have already gotten the message and helped to implement it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/06/2013 01:29AM by HH.

I am too lazy to maintain any degree of unhappiness. It really does take a great deal of effort to be angry or dissatisfied with things as they are. I am mostly neutral, occasionally tetchy, more often slightly pleased, very occasionally mad or sad or ecstatic. And I'm French but French-Canadian . Serenity now, eh?

The percentage of income confiscated by a government is a good indicator of how Socialistic that country is.

Taxes on Some Wealthy French Top 100% of Income

[www.reuters.com]

"The government has been forced to redraft a proposed bill to levy a temporary 75 percent tax on earnings over 1 million euros, which had been one of Hollande's campaign pledges.

The Constitutional Council has judged such a high rate of taxation to be unfair, leaving the government to rehash it to hit companies rather than individuals.

Since then, a top administrative court has determined that a marginal tax rate higher than 66.66 percent on a single household risked being considered as confiscatory by the council."

That's nice to hear.

coco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am too lazy to maintain any degree of
> unhappiness. It really does take a great deal of
> effort to be angry or dissatisfied with things as
> they are. I am mostly neutral, occasionally
> tetchy, more often slightly pleased, very
> occasionally mad or sad or ecstatic. And I'm
> French but French-Canadian . Serenity now, eh?