Are people living in developing countries happier than people living in developed countries?

I know what you’re thinking. This is just another of those hippy stories. Some privileged white guy travels the world backpacking and all of a sudden realizes that people living in Favelas seem much happier than anticipated. They do have to face problems on a daily basis that people from developed countries do not even dare to imagine. Nonetheless, when you get to know these people personally, you can’t help to notice that, at least on the surface, they seem much happier than almost anyone you’d meet on the streets of Frankfurt or Paris.

I know, I know, you’re thinking I am ungrateful for all the commodities, the social services, and the overall quality of life that modern-day society in developed countries allows me to have. Quite the contrary! I have seen with my own eyes some of these people’s struggles, and with my words I do not intend to imply that I’d want to swap places. Does this mean I am not free to make observations about the society I live in? Absolutely not! 
By the way, I live in Europe, in Italy to be exact, and in the past, I have lived in the Netherlands, Spain, and the US.

Do you know how many people from Latin America describe countries in Europe? They say it’s where la gente no baila, which means where people don’t dance. Does it only mean that we don’t know the technique of dancing, that we don’t know how to move our body in accordance with the rules of Salsa? On one hand, the answer is yes, but the implications of this statement go beyond the superficial technical aspect of dancing.
What it actually means is not only that people can’t dance, but as I said, that they don’t dance, meaning they don’t allow themselves to feel the life within themselves and to freely express themselves through dancing. Because music is life, and dancing is a celebration of life itself. When I was in Colombia, I remember people dancing literally everywhere: on the streets, in shops, at the beach. It was very clear that people were not celebrating for anything in particular, they didn’t need a reason to be dancing. They didn’t win the lottery. They didn’t have a promotion. They were just alive, and that was enough.

Yet, despite the cheerfulness that characterizes Latin American people uniquely, the countries that populate the first positions of the World Happiness Report are maybe the most different from Latin America in terms of culture, especially regarding the warmth and the openness of the people. Finland tops the ranking, followed by Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. Needless to say, these countries have numerous qualities and merits, such as extraordinary social welfare, low levels of corruption and crime, great education, and many opportunities to make life choices freely. These aspects play an important role in the definition of quality of life, but I think that by only considering these aspects we are leaving behind something crucial if we really want to talk about happiness in a way that is not merely materialistic. The formulation of the ranking of happiness of the World Happiness Record, to be completely honest, also takes into account positive and negative affect, so it is not entirely materialistic, only for the most part. I don’t want to devalue materialistic well-being, which is obviously necessary and essential for the individual to be able to live a good life, but it is not enough not to be miserable. Materialistic well-being is a necessary part of happiness, but it is not sufficient.

How can we resolve this discrepancy? Why do people living in countries ranking very low in the World Happiness Record seem happier than people living in the top spots? The answer is to be found in the definition of happiness given by the World Happiness Record, which is a mostly materialistic, measurable variable that inevitably leaves behind the interior side of it. This is the kind of happiness that privileged people living in developed countries seem to be slowly losing. A kind of happiness that you can’t measure with numbers, but that you can feel in the intensity of a gaze, in the warmth of a handshake, in the joy of sharing a meal. It’s the same happiness that you feel when you witness the vivacious abundance of sentiment in human interactions, the freedom of the body and the mind while dancing, and the enjoyment of the small things. And most incredibly, all of this happens in countries that are troubled by widespread corruption, organized crime, and poverty.

On the other hand, Western society is characterized by the dominance of the mind and by the subordination of the body, as famous spiritual gurus like Eckhart Tolle and Osho have remarked. This can be observed, for instance, in the educational system, which does not give any importance to the development of body awareness, let alone emotional and spiritual awareness. Many of us live or have lived for a long time feeling ashamed of our own bodies, and I dare to say that the puritanical elimination of music and dance in our culture, or at least its confinement to weekends’ intoxication, has enormously contributed to the proliferation of psychological distress, such as depression. The positive influence of dance and music has been confirmed by studies at Colombia University, which demonstrated that the brain releases endorphins, the hormones responsible for feelings of comfort, relaxation, fun, and power. When we study Freud and the social context of the Victorian age, characterized by a rigorous sexual morality, we think we have come a long way, but there is actually still a lot to do to completely free ourselves from puritanism.

I don’t have the arrogance to think that my observations will solve anything in the extreme complexity of society, but I strongly believe in the power of self-awareness. Getting in contact with cultures that are very different from our own gives us an incredible opportunity to look at ourselves and become more aware of all the things that we consider normal. Thanks to the cultural confrontation that traveling facilitates (I’m talking about real traveling, not tropical resort vacations), we can unveil our cultural unconscious, helping us to see the patterns that make us suffer, hence enhancing our self-awareness. Materialistic happiness is necessary, but it is not sufficient, and the challenge we all have as a society nowadays is to find a way to reintegrate a different definition of happiness, where human connection and unmeasurable human qualities are valued more highly, in a society that seems deemed to individualism and functionalism. Will we be able to do so?