Author Archives: Jasper Bergink

Utopia – the reality TV edition

27 January 2014 11:19 , Leave a Comment ,

Big Brother is watching you.

George Orwell wrote it in 1949, Edward Snowden revealed how sharp his eyes are only last year. But in 1999 in the Netherlands, and soon everywhere around the globe, everybody was watching Big Brother. The first daily reality TV show taught us that people behave, well, quite ordinarily when you lock them up in a house full of cameras for five months.

Reality TV has come a long way since.  For the latest hit, Big Brother’s creator, Dutch media mogul John de Mol, has taken Thomas More instead of George Orwell as his source of inspiration. The concept of Utopia sounds amazing: 15 people are dropped in a freezing lodge for a year. All they get is a plot of land, two cows, twenty chickens and a nice 10k in cash to get through the first months. They’re there with one aim: to build a new society. Utopia!

Petty fights

Whether the group will achieve its goal is uncertain: “Ultimate happiness or complete chaos“, says the tagline. “Will it be heaven or will it be hell“, asks the lead in the opening song. The format of the social experiment is intriguing. The show is basically 1960s/1970s commune meets 21st century reality TV. Most of the show is strikingly similar to its cousins of ordinary reality TV. A lot of the day is filled with petty fights caused by silly behaviour or miscommunication. Alfa male of the group, professional wrestler Emil, eats more than his ration; builder Paul, the self-appointed leader, loses his cool. Anybody leaves their dishes; housewife Vanessa loses her cool. Anybody says anything slightly critical; brilliantly cast ‘life artist’ Billy (a lady) loses her cool with all of them – cows included.

As a show, Utopia is a success. It has about 1 million viewers a day and the American rights have just been sold to Fox. Though the daily storyline is a bit thin, there’s enough to make a nice realistic soap. One of the problems is that some parts seem too scripted and staged. The 15 Utopians, as they’re called, are not as isolated from the outside world – or instructions from the producers – as the TV channel would like us to believe.

Human resilience

As a society, it is hard to say whether Utopia is successful. So far it’s characterised by a bit of daily progress and a dose of bigger and smaller fights that ensure that the show won’t be taken off air. But some Utopians get enough of the fights, the hunger and the cold. Two have left already.  The biggest problem is that the group lacks a common goal. Full democracy is a laudable goal, but the group is too diverse and insufficiently strategic. Some people are there with a clear intent to build a different world. Others are more down to earth and just want to have fun or be famous.

Overall, the group show an amazing resilience in front of their problems. Their lack of food, heating, loved ones and all basic amenities of daily life – worst, no wifi! But still, the negative moments are countered by others positive ones. The regular pep-talks following the crises take them to believe in their community again.

A real Utopia does not exist. But maybe Utopia only arises from a constant battle of positive and negative energy – the interaction of happiness and chaos.

Promo, in Dutch:

Posted in: happy countries , Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

Fitter, happier

20 January 2014 19:23 , 1 Comment ,

Fitter, happier
More productive, comfortable.
Not drinking too much.
Regular exercise at the gym (three days a week)

If you are like me, you’ve tried to start 2014 fitter and happier, like in the Radiohead song. Through New Year resolutions, we motivate ourselves to reinvent ourselves or to create a new and improved version.

Fitter, happier, more productive.

Evidently, New Year resolutions have something arbitrary: why would I quit smoking or start reading more often on the 1st of January? I can do that any day of the year. And psychology knows that the dark days of January aren’t the best time in the year to change a habit. Starting new habits just after the summer holidays seems to be a better moment. Still, the start of the year is a natural moment to evaluate personal development in the past year and set new goals.

But damn – does it require discipline to produce that improved edition of yourself! And I guess that by now, three weeks into the year, you might already have hit some of the dark moments. If you do, don’t fall for all the talk about Blue Monday, “the most depressing day of the year”, going around. Blue Monday is a scam, made up with the help of a fake academic to sell more holidays. And Monday is a better day than Wednesday, as I wrote before!

Instead, re-engineer your New Year’s resolutions.

Replace habits

In principle a new year’s resolution should do something very basic: replace a bad habit (like snoozing too long or wasting time on the internet) by a better one (getting up early or productively writing a blog post). But often our methods to attain these goals are unrealistic.

In this article – very much worth a read! – the author makes the analogy with a marathon. If you are training for a marathon, you don’t start your first day of training with a 30k run. You start with a couple of kilometres, and you gradually build it up until you are ready for that marathon.

So why should I suddenly spend one hour every day writing blog posts?

The point is: creating new habits is a tiresome process. You have to start slow. Start doing the activity five minutes a day (or one hour a week), until it’s a solid habit. And then increase the five minutes to ten, and so on, and so forth. That it gets done is more important than when!

In the words of US politician Horace Mann:

“Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day and at last we cannot break it.”

A pig in a cage on antibiotics

But it’s not only overly ambitious goals that may fail. Often resolutions are too vague, and require further specification. In my case, I’d like to keep better in touch with old friends across the world. If that’s how I formulate the goal, it’s easy to fail. But if I aim to write to at least three people I appreciate every week, it’s probably more effective.

Still, in a way, I actually don’t feel all too comfortable about resolutions. Do I really need all these targets and deadlines? Do they make me happier, or do I feel stressed by all my self-imposed rules? Does all this planning really make me fitter, happier, more productive?

Or do I create, as the Radiohead songs ends

A pig
In a cage
On antibiotics

If there’s one thing I don’t aspire to (apart from losing my enthusiasm and curiosity) it’s feeling like a pig in a cage on antibiotics yet. Therefore, one of the key parts of my resolutions is to allow time for a break in all of them.

Something has to happen every day. But not everything does not have to happen today.

And breaking the rules is just as important as following them.

Posted in: personal , Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,

The Happy City: lessons from Bhutan

12 January 2014 16:37 , Leave a Comment ,

I wrote this article for Stadsleven (“City Life”), an Amsterdam-based talk show about urban issues. The next session on 27 January will be dedicated to the Happy City, and the editor of Stadsleven asked me to explain what our cities can learn from Gross National Happiness (GNH) in Bhutan. The original Dutch version can be found here.

Bhutan-Happiness-is-a-Place-logo-2011-small

What is the objective of the state? Philosophers and leaders have been reflecting about this question for thousands of years. Most states focus their policies on economic development. The assumption is that when a country becomes richer, its citizens will be better off. But is that the case? Research shows that the Western world is a lot richer than fifty years ago. At the same time, we are hardly any happier than in the 1950s.

For Bhutan, a small Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas, these conclusions do not come as a surprise. Already in 1972, Bhutan based its policy on Gross National Happiness (GNH). GNH takes a broader approach than economic interests, and also helps the state to consider the influence of factors like health, mental well-being and community life. Bhutan’s king observed that these factors largely influence the happiness and quality of life of the Bhutanese, and thus put them as the central objective of public policy. The video explains how it works:

Bhutan’s core philosophy thus is different, and we hardly realise how revolutionary that is. The economy and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) are central topics in the public debate in the Netherlands. We’re confronted with growth forecasts on a daily basis. Many people in the Netherlands will know that the target for the budget deficit is 3%. But will they have an idea about national happiness level? Probably not. And consider that the Social and Cultural Planning Agency (SCP) recently concluded that quality of life decreased between 2010 and 2012, for the first time in thirty years!

After Bhutan, the UK, the OECD and the European Commission, to name some, GNH could also inspire the Netherlands (and Amsterdam). Of course there is no way that our political leaders should tell you and me how to be happy. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte is right in saying that the state is not a happiness machine. But the government does have the responsibility for our quality of life. But how, and what does make us happy?

gross-national-happiness2

The British new economics foundation has researched five ways to well-being. These are factors that affect the happiness and well-being of an individual: connect, be active, take notice, keep learning and give. Cities can integrate some elements in their urban planning and design. Public spaces can be designed to facilitate that people meet each other (connect) or are invited to do sports (be active). Through education and community activities, city councils can promote skills and values that help us to appreciate the moment (take notice), be curious (keep learning) and share with others (give).

The lessons of Bhutan deserve to be followed. Isn’t there a more noble cause than a happy city?

Posted in: also published elsewhere, happy countries, state/policy, video , Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The lottery of happiness

6 January 2014 21:27 , Leave a Comment ,

Who hasn’t dreamt of it? Spending a couple of euros on a lottery ticket to win an amazing prize. Probably you, like everybody else, have fantasised what you’d do with a million euros. Maybe you would buy a nice villa, buy a Porsche and a Bentley, or make a big trip to Brazil. Or donate some money to charity, of course.

Most of us are aware that the chance of winning a lottery is minimal. That’s why lotteries are also called a tax on stupidity. But still, speak to the villagers of Leganes who won  a combined €360 million in ‘El Gordo’, the fat one, Spain’s annual Christmas lottery. Or to the inhabitants in Vrouwenpolder, a village of barely 1000 people who won €42,9 million in a Dutch lottery just before Christmas.

Some ecards lottery

Source: www.someecards.com

But let’s ask another question: would winning the lottery make you happier? Large sums of money definitely make your life easier. But that big house and Porsche don’t make you happy. There are plenty of newspaper stories around of lottery winners who get completely crazy and change their lives for the worse. Take Keith Gough, who started with the purchase of a new home and a box in the stadium of his favourite football team after a 9 million pounds win in 2005. But then he started drinking, ended up losing his wife, and met a bandit in rehab tricking him into ‘deals’ that lost him his wealth. The story ends in 2010, when Gough dies of a heart attack caused by stress and drinking. And he’s just one – Time even has made a full gallery of them.

This is not just anecdotal evidence. Scientific studies confirm that large sums of money generally do not suddenly change our lives for the better. A seminal study, undertaken in 1978 by Brickman et al. surveyed the happiness level of lottery winners and people who had ended up in a wheel chair one year after the event. Their surprising conclusion was that there was no measurable effect on happiness level

A 2008 study of the Dutch postcode lottery – the same one in which Vrouwenpolder’s millions were won – found  a similar result. Though families had changed some of their life patterns (building a car or rebuilding their house, going to restaurants more often), this had no effect on their happiness.

This is due to a very simple psychological phenomenon: adaptation. Once our situation changes, we very easily adapt to the new reality of our lives. Suppose you are always dreaming of a big house with a pool. Once you have it, at a certain point in time it becomes normal – and it fails to make you happy. Somewhat fortunately, this process of adaptation also applies to negative events, such as losing the ability to walk.

So if you unfortunately win the lottery, what should you do? Their are various recipes for happiness. The most important though is to spend your money on experiences, rather than on material things. Spend your money on a vacation, go visit your friends in far away cities. Even if the experience is short, a good memory can live for a long time.

So what would I do if I won a lottery? I probably wouldn’t change my life that much. I’d keep working, I’d probably wouldn’t move houses and I’d keep this blog. I’d spend some money traveling – seeing Costa Rica and Bhutan. But most likely, you don’t give a damn!

Posted in: science , Tagged: , , , ,

Happiness. Curated by you.

18 December 2013 23:00 , Leave a Comment ,

Nowadays, when you have a blog, you don’t call yourself a blogger. No way. Your title at least is editor, or, to take it a step further, curator. A long time ago, only museums had curators. Then, theatre groups followed. Nowadays, the organisor of a conference is called a curator, and the catering manager curates food.

Anyway. One of the good things of this blog, apart from the fact that it makes me happy, is that friends are regularly sending me great articles about happiness. There are so many great stories of happiness that deserve to be shared, and I can’t always keep up with weekly posts… Therefore, this post brings some of those together: happiness. Curated by you.

 

Happiness and education – curated by Kasia.

Logan LaPlante is not your typical 13-year-old. He has long hair and a hat, loves skiing, and confidently says profound things on the TEDx stage. His argument is very simple: real learning comes from a radically different approach, far beyond the traditional education system. By creating a lot more space for discovery – ‘hackschooling’, as he calls it – we can learn how to make ourselves happy. Why doesn’t our education system teach us that?

 

Material mass unhappiness – curated by Maria.

Materialism promises satisfaction. It delivers despair.

That is the main message of a great piece by Guardian writer George Monbiot under the title ‘One Rolex Short of Contentment‘. The sarcastic remarks are illustrated with unintendedly hilarious pictures from the Tumblr ‘Rich Kids of Instragram‘. Customised car seats, tiny dogs, ridiculously expensive watches, that kind of stuff.

Citing several studies, Monbiot also has a serious message: research demonstrates that there is a causal link between materialism and lower levels of happiness. One example are the developments in Iceland after the crisis researched by Tim Kasser. After the financial crisis, some people focused on material goods to recover lost incomes; others dedicated themselves to family and community values. The well-being of the second group increased. Monbiot’s conclusion is simple: material aspiration is a formula for mass unhappiness.

Image found in Monbiot's article; original source Rick Kids of Instagram.

Image found in Monbiot’s article; original source Rick Kids of Instagram.

 

How to build a happy city – curated by Eva.

Some time ago, I already stumbled upon a piece by Charles Montgomery, author of Happy City. Very comforting to a Dutchman, his article seemed to back my claim that cycling to work brings happiness. Montgomery stated that for a single person, exchanging a long commute for a short walk to work has the same effect on happiness as finding a new love.

On the BBC Future blog, Daniele Quercia takes it a step further. Architects are trying to build smart and efficient cities. But they are functional people and interested in how people use space. What would their design look like if instead, they’d wonder how their work makes people feel? Quercia cites the case of Bogota, where residents felt more optimistic on the day the mayor decided to ban cars from the streets for 24 hours. She also mentions work by Yahoo Labs, concluding that cars are associated with sadness. But smart cities are  not just walkable. It’s about identifying the happiest places in a city, and creating routes to connect them.

 

Time for some well-deserved Christmas holidays! I’ll be back on the first Monday of the New Year.

Posted in: personal, science, TED talk, video , Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The optimal income for happiness

9 December 2013 22:18 , Leave a Comment ,

What is the optimal income for happiness? How much happier are people with a large bank account than those who suffer through the last days of each month? Scientists have done a lot of effort to investigate the relation between money and happiness.

The conventional wisdom in happiness economics states that, indeed, happiness levels rise with income, to a certain point. After this point, the impact on happiness of an additional euro, pound are dollar is virtually zero: more money does not mean more happiness. But is it possible to exactly measure the cut-off point? That is, can we measure what the ideal income is, generating the best happiness bang for the buck?

Eugenio Proto of Warwick University and Aldo Rustichini of the University of Minnesota claim to have the answer. Their research attests that life satisfactions reaches its maximum level at an income level of $30,000, or about the level of Equatorial Guinea using World Bank data (though French people aren’t necessarily the happiest ones).

But Proto and Rustichini’s research reveals there is even more: after this point, people even become less happy. They  explain that this effect arises due to changes in what they label the ‘aspiration level’ of people with a below average income in rich countries.

Simply speaking, when incomes rise, the gap between the have-lots and have-less become bigger. When surrounded by wealthier people, people have higher aspirations for their own life, often irrationally> as the gap between reality and dreams increase, life satisfaction diminishes.

Their data set out the income level versus the likeliness of reporting the highest level of happiness. People in a country with an income per head of $5,600 are 12% less likely to report the maximum number than in a country with an income of $15,000. As incomes rise, the effect disappears. And after $30,000, the link even becomes negative.

What does this mean? Of course, you may consider moving to Equatorial Guinea if you live in a richer country but make less than the holy number of $30,000. Jokes aside, there is more  at stake here. Higher incomes aren’t necessarily a sign of progress. They might be caused by longer working hours, more overtime and less time for leisure, all factors that bring down happiness.

But maybe the real effect displayed by the study is the cost of inequality. Earlier studies have shown that it is not only the absolute figure of income that determines your happiness. It is also about your income relative to what you could make. If you make less than your friends, your colleagues, or than your did in a previous job, this might cause total misery. The moral of the story is simple: if countries care about our quality of life, they should seek to control income inequality. Equal countries, like Denmark, Norway and Sweden are all in the top-five of happiest nations. At least, their high government spending seem to be good for something. Money can’t buy you happiness, the adagium goes, but maybe their high taxes do?

Posted in: science , Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Gratefulness brings happiness. Stop, look and go.

2 December 2013 21:35 , Leave a Comment ,

In the life of Benidictine monk David Steindl-Rast, happiness is a very, very simple thing. Gratefulness brings happiness. Stop, look and go. That’s all. Why say more? Just stop, look and go.

PS: Thanks to Julio for sharing.

Posted in: spiritual, TED talk, video , Tagged: , , ,

Costa Rica: the secret of ‘pura vida’

25 November 2013 22:55 , Leave a Comment ,

For some time, I believed Bhtuan was the happiest country on earth. A close relation to nature, a gentle Buddhist philosophy and to top it off: the cradle of Gross National Happiness. Bhutan probably is quite a happy place (and my dream is to travel there). But reading more about national happiness levels, I discovered more and more about another positive outlier: Costa Rica.

Costa Rica ranks twelfth in the World Happiness Report list of happiest countries, dominated by Western countries. It even tops the list of the Happy Planet Index, an index that doesn’t only measures happiness, but also adds environmental performance in the equation.

Why is Costa Rica, despite its relative poverty, such a happy country? When I asked Google, I got several different answers: the lack of an army, healthy food, a slow pace of life. As I wanted to validate these points in a scientifically completely invalid survey, I also asked some Costa Rican friends of friends and people who lived there for their comments.

“General speaking I  believe that Costa Ricans are quite positive in their live, even though they suffer from corruption, unemployment, injustice and crime. Why are we still so positive? Honestly I don’t know. Maybe we are born with this mindset.” – R.

 

Is this mindset to Costa Ricans, or is it of a factor that holds true for all Latin Americans? The case is made that a manana manana attitude prevalent in Latin America leads to higher happiness levels. Indeed, the figures of the World Happiness suggest that there is a ‘Latin American bonus’ in happiness levels. When taking values about more objectives indicators associated with happiness (wealth and comfort, social support, freedom, generosity), happiness levels in Latin American countries are about 0,5 (on a scale to 10) higher than one would expect on basis of the data. Butnature, weather and food also count:

“Close contact with the nature and the very very nice weather help to be happy. Latin culture and in particular the tendency not to be worry is another important point. They are simple people and they enjoy the life with simple things.” – C.
“We eat healthy food: a variety of fruits, vegetables, rice, beans, eggs, milk, bread, good coffee, not too much meat and artificial deserts, etc.. Yes, nature is generous…” – F.

The lack of an army could also be a factor in it (though Costa Rican policemen are heavily armed), in an indirect way:

“Since we don’t have army (we are pacifist), all the money of the State is distributed in education (schools, high schools and universities), health (hospitals, social security), and ecology (beaches, forests, tourism). In my opinion, these three elements are very important to have a ‘quality of life’.” – F.

But one of the key factors, apparently, is what Costa Ricans call ‘Pura Vida’ – a generally positive concept that can mean anything, from hello to thank you and that can be used in happy situations, and even in sad ones.
“We have a tendency not to worry…I would even go as far as to say, a tendency not to care. Maybe it’s related to the fact that since we have never known conflict or difficult times as a country, it means we have never really learned to fight for things that are important to us. For example, most people are unhappy with our government and political parties, but no one does anything about it, indeed 35% of the population did not even vote last election.” – M.
“The Pura vida phrase does influence the way to see our lives. Pura vida is something cultural- we say this phrases a lot during the day. It has different meanings , but all of then positive.” – R.
“Pura Vida to me means to take life carefree: you can fix all problems. If you can’t fix it, don’t worry: life still goes on.” – C.
pura-vidaThere certainly are a couple of factors that make it a lot easier to be happy than miserable in Costa Rica: wonderful nature – and a close relation to it, good food. Of course paradise on earth does not exist, not even in Costa Rica. But the basic quality of life is quite good, and the Latin bonus gives another boost. A pura vida philosophy – ready to every situation – does the rest. A pure life: what else do we need?
PURA VIDA!
Posted in: happy countries , Tagged: , , , ,

Intense London days

18 November 2013 22:58 , Leave a Comment ,

London, lovely London! I just spent five intense days in the City. The programme was so full with meetings, pub meals, walks and quality time with nice folks that the post on Costa Rica that is writing itself in my head didn’t make it to paper yet.

Back in the metro from Brussels Midi to my stop I realised I was too busy being happy to write about it – probably the best excuse ever. I’ve heard before, in this TED talk by Shawn Achor, that writing down your happy experiences on a regular basis has proven to have a lasting positive impact on your happiness levels. So, here are some of the highlights:

  • A walk to Kensington gardens on Thursday, just after my arrival to London. I had a very long working day on Wednesday. Fifty minutes through a park with coloured leaves, and my head was empty and ready to absorb new experiences.
  • A series of challenging meetings with financial sector experts, and a feeling of mastery and true understanding of what’s happening in this field.
  • Meeting some wonderful old friends in a new environment and noticing they haven’t changed even a little.
  • Sharing a hostel room of dubious quality with nine Dutch guys in a constant flow of mildly offensive remarks and attempts to outsmart each other.
  • The surprisingly flashy colours in the collection of Renaissance art in the National Gallery.
  • Extreme friendliness and hospitality of two friends who now wisely decided to date each other.
  • This lovely piece of street art in Shoreditch:

IMG_0880

Posted in: personal , Tagged: , , , ,

The magic of TEDxAmsterdam: Humour, flow, wit, passion and power

11 November 2013 15:38 , Leave a Comment ,

There is something magical about TEDx events. Two weeks ago, TEDxBrussels kicked off my TEDx autumn. And last Wednesday, TEDxAmsterdam was something truly special. I don’t want to say too much about all the talks here – all my articles are on the TEDxAmsterdam site, and my fellow blogger Bibi Veth made an amazing visual storyboard.

Photo: Peter Clausman/TEDxAmsterdam

This year’s theme was ‘Connected Consequences’. Photo: Peter Clausman/TEDxAmsterdam

Instead, I’d like to share a couple of videos that show the humour, flow, wit and power of our speakers. TEDx speakers are people with amazing stories and know how to package a good idea in a captivating talk. As a listener, you can only stay silent in awe during the rollercoaster of ideas, energy and surprises.

Humour: Fons Trompenaars

Fons Trompenaars clearly is a gifted public speaker and applies a healthy dose of ironic remarks, often aimed at himself in his speech. It certainly works with a Dutch audience. In addition, the cultural differences and prejudices he refers to make a good laugh.

Flow: Benno Naaijkens

Every year, TEDxAmsterdam organises the TEDxAmsterdam Award to use its platform to bring great ideas closer to reality. This year’s winner is Benno Naaijkens. He delivered his speech seconds after he heard he had win, and is evidently extremely nervous (it has been cut out from the video, but he started with a nervous “Can you imagine… oh, fuck!”). Yet, during his speech, he forgets about the polished lines he had rehearsed, gets into his flow, and makes his call for support in a very authentic fashion.

Wit: Floris Kaayk

Floris Kaayk is an artist. He has a natural sense of creativity over him. In a brilliant, witty talk talk, he talks about a even more brilliant project by Jarno Smeets, an ordinary Dutchman with one dream: to fly with birdwings.

Passion: Jimmy Nelson

Photographer Jimmy Nelson’s wants to conserve the traditions of human civilisations all over the globe. In his book ‘Before they pass away’, he documents the lives of isolated tribes. Thanks to the personal stories he tells and the amazing pictures he shows, as a viewer you can personally feel his passion.

Power: Mona Eltahawy

Bam! Mona Eltahawy’s talk is like a storm, blowing you away with her energy and persuasion in her mission to bring sexual freedom to Arab women.

Posted in: personal, TED talk, video , Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , ,