CRISIS OF HAPPINESS

Aneta Dimovska

Perhaps it is due to the weather (we spend too much time in smog, fogs, rain), perhaps the uncertain political situation in which our country is in, perhaps to my personal perception, but I think that we are in a crisis, a crisis of happiness.

Pedestrians on the sidewalks with their heads down, looking right in front of them, not by accident, cross their eyes with someone they will need to greet and stop talking. People with empty views in buses that penetrate through traffic jams to the next bus stop to embark on even those people with empty eyes. Drivers who play in the first part of a second if you do not go green, and try to insert in another lane because you need to turn, you will wait longer, although you have a flashing tidy. It’s not all about upbringing and culture, but the epidemic of apathy has taken us.

More than 2,300 years ago Aristotle in “Nicomachean Ethics” one of his most influential works represents the theory of happiness that is still relevant today. The key question he is trying to answer in this work is “What is the ultimate goal of human existence?”.

He “searches” for the main good to which mankind should strive. And then, as today, people were looking for pleasure, wealth, good reputation and honor. According to Aristotle, each of these goods has a certain value, but none of them is the ultimate goal. All other goods are a means of achieving happiness, while it – happiness is always an end in itself, never for something else, which makes it good over all good and purpose practically on everything. Furthermore, Aristotle points out that the happiness of people needs things such as: health, healthy children, food, home and freedom, and that it is achieved through certain means, that is, with the help of friends, wealth and state. He names happiness as a virtue of the soul and says that as the doctor must know the human body, the politician should know the human soul and therefore must study it.
Through history, happiness as the ultimate goal of human existence has made many prominent intellectuals, philosophers and political leaders in their work.

In economic science there are some attempts to treat happiness in the sense of identifying the determinants that define it, attempts to quantify it at the individual and national level and giving theoretical explanations, which, in addition to economics, often include many elements of psychology, health and sociology, and which should further be the basis for policy-making in order to achieve well-being. There are already attempts to define indicators such as Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH), Gross National Happiness (GNH) and others, and the importance that the field receives from organizations such as the OECD, the United Nations Organization, etc., but also from certain political leaders who probably understood Aristotle’s message that they must study the soul of the people.
Thus, after the former Bhutan king who introduced the Gross National Happiness Index (GNH) in 1972, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is dissatisfied with the fact that the data and indicators available for the economy and society do not give a proper explanation of the situation, in 2008 , commissioned a report from three prominent economists: Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and Jean-Paul Fitoussi. This report should have overcome the limitations of indicators that measure exclusively economic production, including the well-being of people through certain indicators of health, education, personal activities and work, political voice and government, social relations and relationships, the environment and uncertainty of economic and physical nature.

A group of economists with the support of the United Nations in April 2012 released the first World Happiness Report, which, in addition to GDP per capita, also relies on additional variables such as: years of service life spanning health, social support (measured by the question: “If you are in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on?”), the trust in the system (measured by the perception of corruption in government and business), the freedom to animal decision and, like generosity (as measured by the amount of donations in the earlier period to charity).

According to the latest World Happiness Report 2017 for the period 2014-2016, the citizens of: Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland and Finland are the happiest.

Macedonia is on the 92nd place in the world (from 155 countries) and according to this report, Macedonian citizens are less fortunate than almost all countries in the region. We are less fortunate than the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina (in the 90th place), Greece (87th), Montenegro (83rd), Kosovo (78), Croatia (77), Serbia (73) , Turkey (69) and Slovenia (62). Interestingly, only the citizens of Bulgaria (ranked 105th) and Albania (109) are less fortunate than Macedonian citizens.

According to the results of this report, my impression that we are in a crisis of happiness is correct, and that makes them less valuable our lives, because we do not achieve the goal above all goals. This should primarily be understood by politicians, and apart from traditionally measurable values such as GDP, average wages, employment, unemployment and others, people’s happiness needs to be taken care of. Additionally, because happy people are healthier, more productive and more resilient to the shock of social and economic nature.
If we start from the variables that are taken into account in the countries’ ranking according to happiness, probably this year we will be even worse, due to the stagnation of GDP per capita, health conditions that are not improving, the present corruption, because there will be fewer relatives and friends who can be counted in difficult moments, because people are moving …

I wish to make a mistake … I’m sure that the sun will come in the spring, so the crisis of happiness in Macedonia may not seem so deep.
Until then, the 50s will collect people with empty views from an old new bus in the GTC, and drivers will continue to jump nervously through the streets, even when driving on the newly named Highway “Friendship”.