Knowledge should be free

I read a CNN Article today about a self-professed grump who travelled the world as a foreign correspondant for NPR and found a lot of unhappy places. He decided to travel the world in pursuit of happiness.

Sometimes I forget I am part of the world and live off the fumes of america: make money, buy things, build things, lather, rinse, repeat. These are highly individualistic goals. “The Grump” seems to find that happiness is found where there is a strong social fabric and context, where people are interested in taking care of each other and legitimately empathize with others in their community.

I think the definition of social context has evolved with the internet. Many of my friends I correspond with over the internet primarily because of their locations. I can fufill many of my social needs on the internet, but face to face contact is still important in other communities to which I am a member.

Death is the ultimate solitude and perhaps the social fabric alleviates that fear in the same way your mother made you feel better when you were sick. If you believe no one cares about you, or you care about no one, you are effectively dead.

Another point mentioned in the article is that Qatar, which has the highest per-capita GDP, isnt that happy. The extra money leads to a breakdown of community and build-up of walls, whether socio-economic or physical. The walling off of a person from another is an unhappy exile.

I would be interested to read a scientific study on the correlation of social ‘connectedness’ to happiness. Happiness is tough to measure quantitatively, but you could probably find excellent data on ‘connectedness’ by plumbing the social network sites like facebook and myspace.

Time to make more friends!

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