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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sun Tzu who wrote (95182)	4/20/2003 5:43:16 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 281500

<According to the research, happiness in rich countries now is far more dependent on close personal relationships, good health and job satisfaction. ...In order to be happy, the study subjects most needed to believe they were autonomous and competent, to have self-esteem and to feel a sense of closeness with others.> That's almost a recipe to make people unhappy in rich countries because those countries are very repressive in terms of bureaucracy, rules, regulations, laws, permits, inspectors, licensing, taxes, controls, officialdom, restriction and a vast panoply of state nannyism. People are specifically NOT autonomous. They are closely watched serfs of the state. They designated as NOT competent to decide almost anything for themselves, from the food they are allowed to eat, substances they ingest, how they alter their vegetation on their own property, how they design their house, and nearly everything. Self-esteem is specifically forbidden and anyone exhibiting self-esteem will soon be squashed by the nanny statists, unless the self-esteem derives from compliance with the controlling authorities' desires. Closeness with others is prevented by fragmenting families who depend on state aid and external agencies who enable their survival provided compliance is made with the external agencies' demands. Obviously Big Brother has not achieved a lot yet, but they are working on it. In poor countries, people are ironically more free to get on with their lives, unless they are in Saddamistic regimes of fear, repression and brutality. The wealthy countries don't frighten their serfs, they just bind them with a thousand invisible enervating threads of bossiness. I know that's a half-baked theory - an ear or hoof on the elephant I'm describing by touch. Mqurice