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Edgar Ceja Essay chapter 2 In the book the geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner, the author Weiner travels to ten different countries around the world to find out about the source of happiness of each country. Mr. Weiner starts out his journey by going to the Netherlands, home of the World Data Base of Happiness where he meets Ruut Veenhoven, Professor of happiness. After acquiring knowledge about happiness from Mr. Veenhoven, doing research and taking some conclusions Mr. Weiner continues his journey to the next of his nine countries yet to visit to find out about the source of happiness of each country.
The Swiss occupy a place near the pinnacle of Ruut Veenhoven’s happiness pyramid. The source of happiness of the Swiss is primarily a set of good values privileges and positive attitudes. Despite the Swiss having one of the world’s most liberal euthanasia laws and plenty of rules to follow, they are still one the happiest countries in the world. The Swiss are wealthy and very clean. The streets in Switzerland are nearly spotless and the air is really clean, in fact everything else is clean.
The toilets in the public are very clean as well as the water from the water fountains is very clean and the Swiss found drinking water from water fountains very fashionable. There are no potholes on the road and as I mention before everything looks clean. Also the Swiss are wealthy, and even though they are they hate to talk about monie. They would rather to talk about anything else but money. The reason of it as the author mentions on the book is that “the Swiss know that money, more than anything triggers envy” and envy does not match with happiness.
That being the reason of why in Switzerland being a flashy winner is a not good thing. Secondly, The Swiss like nature and generally they trust people around them. The Swiss like to feel around nature, they like to experience biophilia a word that the naturalist E. O Wilson defines as ” the innately emotional affiliation of human beings to other living organism” stating also that natural settings are found very peaceful to humans and that could be one of the source of the happiness in Switzerland.
Also, the Swiss do trust one another, as a lot of Switzerland works on the honor system, they could book a hotel room without providing a credit card or pump gas without paying first. A Canadian economist has studied the relationship between trust and happiness and he has found the two to be inseparable. Finally, Another of the reasons of why the Swiss are among the happiest in the world might be because the Swiss have more choices than anyone in the world. The average swiss votes from 6 to 7 times a years, they might vote for anything that they think it is important to vote.
They have the choice to do so. Also they have even voted to increase their own taxes. According to the Canadian happiness researcher Jhon Helliwell believes that ” The quality of government is the single most important that explains why some countries are happier than others” and the Swiss economist named Bruno Frey investigated the relationship between democracy and happiness across switzerland’s twenty-six cantons. He found that the greatest number of referendums, the most democracy were also the happiest.
Being that possibly another of the reasons of why the Swiss are happy because they have the choice to vote for the things that they like or dislike. The Swiss sure have a lot of rules and might be strict but they sure know how to make themselves happy by voting for what they like or don’t like, being democracy one of the sources of their happiness. Also, they love and know that nature is a way of bringing happiness and relaxation to life and will invest billions in nature to take care of it, keeping nature and cleanliness as one the many sources of happiness close to them, the Swiss sure know how to “conjoy” themselves.