Central America has come out rather well from the second global compilation of the Happy Planet Index. The colour-coding in the map above reflects each country's rating relative to the three key metrics of Life Satisfaction, Life Expectancy and Ecological Footprint.
Meanwhile, the US ranks alongside sub-Saharan Africa as the shittiest place to live on Earth.
One does however tend to be suspicious of data emanating from a region where so many people are manifestly incapable of thinking for themselves. Unlike Richard Dawkins I don't actually think the world would necessarily be a more functional and contented sort of place if atheism and free thinking were the norm, but it does bother me how the majority of my neighbours here in Guatemala wear their conventional (and conditioned) worldviews like a kind of straight-jacket, which indubitably hampers them in so many ways...and yet their very rigidity prevents many from flourishing as they ought, for they seemingly fear unconventionality as others fear depravity.
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