i agree with you that it is relative. my point is that it is only to a certain point. maybe take maslows pyramid or a corresponding theory. i think you are making it too easy for yourself. maybe it is so you can sleep at night in your warm bed. not that i do anything about it, but i feel downright guilty that i have all of this.
and the gross national happiness index (0) covers a lot of things. please look it up. happiness is not as relative as you would think.
your attitude makes me sick actually. you sound like you wouldnt donate money under any circumstance because most people are happy anyways and are at worst slightly under their own level of normality. i hope thats not the case.
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whats with all the people risking their lifes to leave refugee camps? whats with all the immigrants looking for a better option in another country. in your world there should be close to NONE immigrants (always keep in mind what the stuff implies you are saying).
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i will give you the fact that these people have a better life in some aspects, but when it comes down to the elementary stuff (food, water, shelter, social), you cannot say that its just normal to not have them.
-3 billion people (1) have no permanent access to clean water
-1 billion people (2) have not enough to eat
look at the following map and tell me how many people live in countries where its normal that a city with 100,000 inhabitants has over 20 murders per year?
, btw, lol @ southern US and nunavut.
now look at the next map and tell me how nice it is to live in a country where the average life expectancy is 45 years or so? that doesnt mean that a 60 year old person is very old, just that not a lot of children survive past the first few years. it sure is a normal thing to have all your brothers die.
so A LOT of people have no chance of satisfying their first two primary needs. i am not saying maslows pyramid is perfect, but i think it gives a nice approximation to how people think. the third step might not be influenced much by the GDP of your country, but maslows pyramid is a pyramid for a reason, it says that whenever a lower level is not satisfied, you cannot satisfy a higher one. the corresponding results are that people in very poor environments have no chance of satisfying their need for self-esteem or self-actualization.
SOURCES
0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness
1 wiki article "trinkwasser" german: (drinking water)
2 wiki article "welthunger" german: (world hunger)
pics are obvious (see in url)
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think what you want, but i am happy to have all that stuff that i need and ten times more. and if its not just happiness, i am among the few people in this world that has a future, an education and political and legal stability (on top of all the things i mentioned). i am free of religious laws and have a right to say what i want and read the newspapers i want. all that stuff is not so easy when a country is very poor, obviously.
sorry if i have offended you and now we both go on and live our lives.
and i have never said that my life was overly bad. there was obviously a reason why we would leave our home. and obviously, in my case, there was NEVER hunger nor was i homeless, so there was no reason to be unhappy. happiness is relative, YES, but only up to a certain extent of poverty.
