A Few Words About Denmark

For any of you who have not heard, Denmark is the happiest place in the world. Again. According to an extensive international study involving some 100 countries, the Danes are the happiest people in the world. 60 Minutes had a piece on this last Sunday as well. It is fascinating on many levels–Denmark is not an inherently wealthy country, the average climate is quite harsh in the winter, Copenhagen is probably the 20th European capital you would name if asked to recite as many as you can, and they are bordered by countries (Germany directly, and the U.K., Sweden, and Norway being not too far off) who have a great deal more things going for them including, but not limited to, politics, technology, and other social luxuries. Why is this country filled with the happiest people? Not surprisingly, it is all about perception to some degree.

The easy answer to the question of why the Danes are happy with their lives would be that they are a State-run country, meaning that their government foots the bill on everyone’s health care, child care, schooling, higher education, and so on from the cradle to the grave. Cradle-to-grave policies, subsidies, and management is a touchy subject, especially with Americans as we have been conditioned to be weary of anything that does not fit the democratic capitalist design. To their credit 60 Minutes did not delve too heavy into the whole “Why can’t the U.S. be more like Denmark?” line of thinking but everyone inevitably thinks about it if only because of the inherent inertia that such a topic possesses. But I would like to bring up this topic, if only in summary.

Personally, I tend to think of State-run health care and management as a bit Utopian because it requires that you inherently trust your government (a hard sell), give up roughly half of your paycheck to pay for it (a harder sell considering most people won’t see the benefits early on), be alright with the first two points co-existing in a mandatory manner, and, I believe, it also stunts the nation’s overall ambition. Think about it: Denmark is a pretty homogeneous country, is not a hotbed destination for immigration, and, because of physical geography, is bordered by friendly countries and does not possess deep variable climate areas (i.e.-there is no part of Denmark that resembles New Orleans, Miami, or Los Angeles—areas that, because of its warm weather, always seem to be fertile ground for different types of crime). Given that, what is there to worry about? They are probably two, three, or four generations deep in to State-run living management so that almost everyone has seen the benefits of this and that is a big hurdle to overcome when you are talking about the collective happiness of a country as trust in government is a huge indicator that affects other areas of life.

People here (for the most part) in the U.S. would not sign on for a State-run living management body of government because we do not trust our current government really in any capacity—people’s trust in virtually all aspects of government and corporations has been in free-fall mode for about three decades. Whether it is founded in truth or perceived reality, that is what most Americans would believe so we would never be able to successfully implement anything like what Denmark or half of the EU uses for its health care and education system. You may mildly lament to yourself, “Well, we should get away from our current system and move over to what Denmark or the U.K. uses.” Or, you may angrily voice your problems with our current system a la SiCKO and hold Michael Moore as patron saint of Fixing Big Things. Or, you could sit somewhere in the middle of the proverbial fence. Wherever you stand on the issue probably says most everything about your political ideologies, though.

If you have a liberal constitution you probably think that the government (provided the right people and groups are tasked) should and could provide universal, State-run health care and education. If you have a conservative constitution you probably think that the current, private system has some flaws but can ultimately be corrected (provided the right people and groups are tasked) and a universal, State-run health care and education system is not needed. What does this all have to do with personal happiness?

In The Progress Paradox (a book that should be required reading for just about everyone, by the way), Gregg Easterbrook points out that almost every single facet of life in America and the European Union has increased positively (pollution levels are lower, medical advancements keep getting better, people make more money, fewer unemployed people, fewer homeless people, people live longer, overall quality of life has increased) yet most Americans and Europeans generally believe that life has gotten worse. Ironically enough, a good percentage of people believe that their parent’s generation (or, in some cases, grandparent’s generation) was better off than we are and that if they could they would choose to live during that time. This is ironic because nostalgia distorts our reality. We may like the notion of living during the ’50′s, ’60′s, or ’70′s but the reality is that those decades saw in some capacity more racial intolerance, more crime, more unemployment, more war, people living few years, more gender intolerance, more pollution, and an overall lower quality of medical care compared to what we see and experience on a daily basis now. Our inability to put in to perspective how great life is right now is further blurred by our overall distrust in the political and business spheres. Personally, I put a lot of the blame for this on Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara because if the Vietnam War never happens or, at the very least, was severely limited in scope we would not have the explosion of distrust amongst people and the government. The Vietnam War polarized Americans like no other event since the Civil War and the societal tremors are still being felt by it in almost every aspect of our society today.

It should be noted that this is another difference that separates America and most European Union countries too: after World War II, America went and got itself tangled in three other polarizing military conflicts—the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the War on Terror. Countries like the U.K., Germany, Belgium, Norway, France, and Denmark for the most part stayed out of global conflicts and tried to build themselves up from the inside after WWII.

Maybe the Danes are not so much the happiest people in the world as they are the most pragmatic or objective. While America, Germany, the U.K., Australia, Japan, and France all fret about what is wrong with their respective societies and disregard the positive advancements and overall positive quality of life all around them, the Danes are seemingly content to realize everything is, in fact, just fine. To be sure, there will always be political, economic, and military questions to worry about regardless of where you live but to believe that life all around you is deteriorating when every major indicator shows just the opposite seems indicative of a society that is not comfortable in its own skin, rather than an indication that Doomsday is hiding around the corner. (Easterbrook notes in his book that this may just be simply our hereditary nature to be wary of everything and that trouble is always around the corner.)

We should all take a page from the Danes and Gregg Easterbrook and realize that we are living in a pretty great time, warts and all. And if the warts really bother you and you want to eradicate them all just realize that Utopia was the basis of a book and not real life.