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The Peru-it of Happiness!

12:41pm Friday, 7th January 2005

I spent the month of December travelling around Peru and have fallen in love with the country. The people are warm, kind, genuine and I am in awe of all the sincere smiles I received along the way. So I have been asking myself since I have come back why is it that the people of a supposed developing country are so kind and genuinely happy. The word "depressed" does not seem to exist. The genorosity and kindness of these people have amazed me and I am wondering why generally the western world appears to be unhappy and unsatisfied with what they have. Why are the people of Peru happier than the western world?

Comments

1
I can only say how surprised I am at how surprised Lisa is. The fact that we in the West are less happy, more depressed than our brethren in the East has been apparent to anyone willing to set foot in those oh so exotic lands, as well as to anyone willing to take a step back from our relentless consumer culture and ask the simplest, yet most important question: "Will my new Louis Vuitton handbag actually make me any happier?" For me, the most cogent critiques of the Western economic model come from the post-development school. The central tenet of this school is that the 'more is better' philosophy that has driven modern Western economic growth is critically flawed. Please follow these links for more information: http://www.unc.edu/~aescobar/arturoes.pdf http://www.incommunicado.info/node/view/20
Posted by Louis Louis  at 3:38pm on Wednesday, 12th January 2005

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